Coca

Coca-Cola Co. has agreed to pay $43 million for a stake in Honest Tea Inc., the Bethesda maker of organic low-calorie bottled tea. The deal gives Coca-Cola 40 percent of Honest Tea and an option to buy the rest of the company after three years, said Seth Goldman, Honest Tea's co-founder and chief executive officer, in an interview yesterday. The deal values Honest Tea at $108 million. Goldman also said that Coca-Cola's investment will "help take our brand and our mission to a larger scale and wider audience."

A map published this year by the Colombian newsmagazine Semana shows the location of 183 known massacre sites around the country. But the magnitude of the paramilitary slaughter in Colombia likely never will be fully documented. Typically, paramilitary soldiers enter rural villages and round up townspeople they accuse of collaborating with leftist guerrillas. Some are tortured and killed and many others are taken away, never to be seen again. Human rights groups estimate there are tens of thousands of disappearances in Colombia that can be linked to the country's 50-year-long conflict.

We've all been there, yawning, tired, brain dead and in desperate need of a quick-hit energy boost. In times like those, we love our caffeinated beverages. A nice, cold soda perks us right up and goodness knows, we will always love, love, love our coffee. But mixed together in a "carbonated beverage that fuses Coke effervescence with coffee essence ... to enliven your senses and welcome new possibilities?" Effervescent coffee? Carbonated fusion java? Soda and coffee, all at once in one brew?

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- With the presidential election hours away, the leading candidate is Evo Morales, a charismatic champion of the peasant producers of coca leaf - the raw ingredient in cocaine - and a devoted acolyte of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, South America's premier critic of the United States. If elected, Morales, 46, would be the first Indian president in a nation where long-marginalized indigenous groups have focused their rage on multinational corporations and economic and anti-drug policies backed by the United States.

Earlier this month, I traveled by air from the Colombian capital of Bogota to the southern town of Ipiales and found myself in the company of Carlos Palacios, a former Roman Catholic priest who is the governor of Putumayo state. Mr. Palacios, a short man with an honest-looking, weathered face and close-cropped hair, was dressed in denim and looked more like a farmer than a governor. The 42-year-old official has problems that are unique to Colombia. His province, which borders Ecuador, is a center of coca cultivation.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Jimmie Johnson came out of Turn 4 with three laps to go in the Coca-Cola 600 on Bobby Labonte's rear bumper. He tried to pass high, but Labonte moved up the track. And then he tried low, only to see Labonte move down to block. It was the current Nextel Cup points leader against a past champion, and it was something, as the two used all their skill to beat the other at this high speed game of chess. Two laps later, Johnson went high out of Turn 4 and caught Labonte defending low. Side by side they came toward the finish, with Johnson winning the battle last night by .027 of a second in his No. 48 Chevrolet.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Nextel Cup driver Jimmie Johnson won the Coca-Cola 600 last night in one of the most exciting finishes in NASCAR history, and in the most accident-riddled race in NASCAR's top series. Johnson came from a lap down to nip a valiant Bobby Labonte at the finish line by .027 seconds. The win was the second of the season for Johnson, the series points leader, and prevented Labonte from winning for the first time since November 2003. The race was also historic because Johnson became the first driver ever to win three consecutive 600s, as he proved to be the ring master supreme on Lowe's Motor Speedway's slippery 1.5 mile, newly smoothed oval.

ATLANTA - The Coca-Cola Co. overstated its volume of beverages sold for the past three years because of errors in reporting bottled-water sales in Indonesia, the company said yesterday in a regulatory filing. Volume was inflated by 2 million to 13 million cases per quarter since 2001's third quarter, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Coke revised growth rates for Asian and global volumes to correct the figures. Coke revised its worldwide unit case volume increase to 4 percent for the second quarter of last year compared with the previous year.

Richard H. Norwood, a former Coca-Cola Co. account manager who had lived in Arbutus and Catonsville, died of prostate cancer July 21 at his home in Anchorage, Alaska. He was 58. Mr. Norwood was born in Baltimore and raised in Morrell Park. He was a 1963 graduate of Polytechnic Institute and was a member of the Navy Reserve during the 1960s. Mr. Norwood had been employed as a Coca-Cola account manager in Baltimore from 1967 until 1993. After moving to Anchorage in 2001, he worked as an assistant manager for Alaska Industrial Hardware.

CONCORD, N.C. - To even things out for the boys in the back of the pack trying to chase down Jimmie Johnson, we suggest a few changes. Rename Lowe's Motor Speedway. Force Johnson to ditch Lowe's as a sponsor. Make him move to Manhattan to keep teammate Jeff Gordon company. Anything to loosen Johnson's grip on this 1.5-mile piece of NASCAR country. Johnson won last night's Coca-Cola 600 in a dominating performance before an estimated 170,000 spectators. Johnson didn't give them much to rant or rave about (unless they had him in the betting pool)