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counters in Mumbai's famed Zhaveri gold bazaars are crowded with customers eyeing elaborate headpieces, nose rings and necklaces. No one does jewelry quite like an Indian bride, who by tradition wears all the gold she can stand up in and her family can afford.
• These days, though, even the most ambitious bridal budgets don't bring the bling like they used to, thanks to hikes in import duties and a rise in local gold prices that have shoppers like Rajanikant Mehta grumbling.
• Mehta, who owns a factory outside the capital, had planned to spend about 100,000 rupees ($1,800) on a necklace for the woman marrying his son late this month, but he's unhappy about what he's getting for his money. Gold prices in India, which imports nearly all its gold, have risen 50 percent over the past three years to about 87,000 rupees, or about $1,400, an ounce.
• Thanks to the new tax and weaker rupee, that's about a 20 percent premium over the world market price, hovering just under $1,200 an ounce.
• "The price of gold should be lower," Mehta complained. "This is a globalized world. If the prices are similar to the prices elsewhere, then the purchase of gold will increase."
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• DETROIT (AP) -- When an ice storm glazed over Michigan last weekend, Tony Carone feared he wouldn't be spending Christmas at home with his family.
• "Nobody had to call. I heard it on the top of my roof," Carone said.
• The 52-year-old lineman for Detroit-based DTE Energy is one of the thousands of electrical workers who have put in double shifts trying to restore power to more than a half-million homes and businesses. Outages stretched from the Great Plains to Maine and into eastern Canada.
• "My power went out the same time as everybody else's," Carone said of the power to his Lapeer home, north of Detroit. It was about 7:30 a.m. Sunday, while he was on the phone with his utility's area leader. He walked out the door a half-hour later and has been working 16 hours a day ever since.
• The storm has been blamed for 17 deaths in the U.S. and 10 in Canada. Five people apparently died from carbon monoxide poisoning tied to using generators.
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