Beetle

Strawberries & Creme Frappuchinos at Starbucks Corp.will no longer feature a splash of bug - the coffee giant is ditching the red dye made from crushed beetles. The tropical, cochineal insects were dried and then processed into a coloring product to give that rosy hue to the Frappuchinos, as well as strawberry banana smoothies, raspberry swirl cakes, birthday cake pops, mini doughnuts with pink icing and red velvet whoopee pie. The insects, often found in a woolly-looking mass that covers prickly pear cactuses in Latin America, are also commonly used to color fabrics and cosmetics.

It would be impossible to count the number of automotive makes and models that have come and gone since the car was first invented - or the number of books that have been written about them. The inescapable ubiquity of the automobile has made them, for better or worse, a sort of cultural fodder that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Ingrassia inventively exploits in "Engines of Change. " The question at the center of his nonfiction treatise: Do cars shape the culture, or does culture shape the cars?

Consider, if you will, the humble diving beetle. It's not a particularly glamorous creature, with its six legs and hard exoskeleton. A living being further removed from the distractions of show business could not be found, or so you might think until you run across the name of one recently discovered species: Agaporomorphus colberti . Yes, Stephen Colbert, the endlessly mocking and jibing host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," has...

NEW YORK - Leah Tyrrell wants to make something clear: She does not wear ladybug sweatshirts. She does not carry her belongings in ladybug bags, shelter from the rain beneath a ladybug-shaped umbrella, or take notes with pens decorated with little ladybugs. True, someone did give her earrings in the shape of ladybugs, and another admirer gave her a rock painted like a ladybug. A woman once saw her in the supermarket and said loudly, "Oh! The ladybug lady!" For the most part, though, the Buffalo-based student and mother of two says she is no different from thousands of other people across North America and Mexico who have become absorbed in an effort called the Lost Ladybug Project, which Cornell University entomologist John Losey started 12 years ago to document the insects and determine why some species are declining.

Volkswagen, whose cars have been known to have nagging reliability problems, is hoping Passat sedans rolling out of its new $1-billion factory here won't need a lift from the city's historical hallmark — tow trucks. Nearly a century after claiming its fame as the birthplace of the wrecker, Chattanooga is again in the automotive spotlight as VW looks to regain traction in the U.S. "We know what we have to do here, " said Hans-Herbert Jagla, who heads human resources at the factory.

Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests Andrew Nikiforuk D&M Publishers: 231 pp., $17.95 paper

Animal "sporting events" around the world: THAILAND: Beetle fighting SOUTH AMERICA: Spider fighting ENGLAND: Dogs-vs.-rats fighting TURKEY: Camel fighting CHINA: Cricket fighting Source: World Features Syndicate

Re "The case of the shadowy beetle," May 18 As a lover of the Sierra Nevada and of insects, I enjoyed your article on Pleocoma, the rain beetle. I tried to imagine you, like the expert and his assistants, scuttling around a dusky forest after the beetles and a story. It's good for writers to remind us there is a real world out there, full of creatures with real histories; that there is so much more to be discovered and understood. Joyce Thompson Tustin

Jonathan Browning, the new chief of Volkswagen's U.S. operations, has a tall order from the automaker's corporate czars in Wolfsburg, Germany: Start selling 800,000 VWs annually by 2018. That's more than three times its sales last year. Decades ago, VW sold hundreds of thousands of the iconic Beetle and was the top auto importer in America, and such a goal seemed within reach then. But a long battle with quality and reliability problems have driven those buyers to Asian brands and even back to domestic manufacturers.

The title alone--"Beetle and the Beast"--gives away your prejudice, and the article confirmed it. I frankly resent your crusade to malign vehicles such as the Ford Excursion. These vehicles fill an important need that you don't seem to appreciate. Those with feelings of inferiority get an instant ego boost when pulling up in one of those babies in front of their buddies. No more questioning their masculinity now, and it's a lot more fun and possibly cheaper than therapy. A variation on this theme: the feminists for whom it is de rigueur to project a tough image lest one suspects them of any vulnerability, a tough act to pull off if you are driving a Beetle with a bud vase.

Beetles and Rogues are for chicks, 911s and F-series trucks are for dudes. That's the finding of TrueCar.com's study of new-vehicle buying preferences by gender. "Female car buyers really gravitated toward smaller, more fuel-efficient cars and crossovers," said Kristen Andersson, a TrueCar analyst. "It was the complete opposite for male buyers, who preferred either a fast and sporty vehicle with distinctive curb appeal or a big vehicle, like a large truck or SUV. " The Volvo S40 had the highest percentage of women buyers, 57.9%.

Strawberries & Creme Frappuchinos at Starbucks Corp.will no longer feature a splash of bug - the coffee giant is ditching the red dye made from crushed beetles. The tropical, cochineal insects were dried and then processed into a coloring product to give that rosy hue to the Frappuchinos, as well as strawberry banana smoothies, raspberry swirl cakes, birthday cake pops, mini doughnuts with pink icing and red velvet whoopee pie. The insects, often found in a woolly-looking mass that covers prickly pear cactuses in Latin America, are also commonly used to color fabrics and cosmetics.

Election day has arrived -- at Frontier Airlines . For the first time, the Denver-based airline on Monday asked fliers to vote for the next animal  that should grace the tail of one of its planes. And here's a game-changer in this election: Not all 18 contenders follow the cute-and-cuddly model. In fact, some are downright off-putting. Fans may cast their ballot for hopefuls such as Paula the Pig and Duke the Arctic Dog (high on the cute index) or Doug the Dung Beetle and Samson the Sloth (uh, freakish and strange)

Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests Andrew Nikiforuk D&M Publishers: 231 pp., $17.95 paper

The bark beetle is well-known to Southern California for the trail of devastation it inflicted in late 2003 on vast tracts of pine forests surrounding the upscale resort communities of the San Bernardino Mountains. Firestorms pushed by hot, dry Santa Ana winds claimed close to 300 homes that year in the heavily populated Lake Arrowhead area, a weekend playground that had become a tinderbox of dead and dying pines, all victims of drought and the pest the size of a grain of rice.

2012 Volkswagen Beetle 2.5 Base price: $19,765 (including destination) Price, as tested: $25,965 Powertrain: 2.5-liter, DOHC, inline five-cylinder engine; six-speed automatic transmission with manual and sport modes Horsepower: 170 at 5,700 rpm Torque: 177 pound-feet at 4,250 rpm 0 to 60: 8.8 seconds (according to Motor Trend magazine) Curb weight: 2,983 pounds Wheelbase: 99.9 inches Overall length: 168.4 inches EPA fuel economy: 20 mpg city/29 mpg highway Final thoughts: The Beetle shifts into gender-neutral

Volkswagen, stuck in neutral, has unveiled a bigger and less expensive Jetta, a vehicle that is central to its efforts to regain prominence in the U.S. market. The Jetta was introduced by pop artist Katy Perry, who danced barefoot on its hood in the middle of New York's Times Square on Tuesday. Using Perry to introduce the car was seen as one way to broaden its appeal to a younger generation of drivers. The Jetta is the linchpin of the automaker's strategy to increase U.S. sales fourfold after a variety of missteps that squandered a huge advantage VW once had over other import brands.

J. Nicholas Nisson's job doesn't bug him. His job is bugs. As the only entomologist employed by the county agriculture commissioner's office, Nisson helps to detect insects that hitchhike on goods brought into the county from other states and countries and threaten crops. I "wouldn't trade it for anything," said Nisson, whose constant task is to preserve crops worth millions of dollars. One of the nastiest and most dangerous critters Nisson has helped to battle is a little brown beetle from Australia named the eucalyptus longhorn borer.

You have to hand it to Volkswagen. The company is axle deep in the middle of a global automotive ascent that hinges on mainstreaming and Americanizing the schnitzel out of its sedans, the Jetta and Passat. Yet at the same time, albeit with a hefty reliance on the corporate parts bin, Volkswagen manages to put together one of its most unique and balanced models in the entire fleet. That effort is the 2012 Beetle. Volkswagen went to some lengths to make sure this new Beetle is not the "New Beetle" that debuted in 1998.

Volkswagen, whose cars have been known to have nagging reliability problems, is hoping Passat sedans rolling out of its new $1-billion factory here won't need a lift from the city's historical hallmark — tow trucks. Nearly a century after claiming its fame as the birthplace of the wrecker, Chattanooga is again in the automotive spotlight as VW looks to regain traction in the U.S. "We know what we have to do here, " said Hans-Herbert Jagla, who heads human resources at the factory.