Amazon.com Inc., the world's biggest online retailer, will start a separate Web site dedicated to classical music to boost sales from novice fans and capitalize on closures of traditional record stores.

Amazon's Classical Music Blowout Store will have more than 2,000 titles, largely consisting of popular composers such as Mozart and Beethoven. Prices will start at $2.98.

FREE CUP OF JOE

Starbucks will host its second annual "Coffee Break" on Thursday, offering free 12-ounce drip coffees from 10 a.m. to noon at all its stores in the United States and Canada.

STATE TOUTS ITS AUTHORS

Mississippi recently put out an ad campaign designed to counter the state's negative stereotypes. One ad says: "Yes, we can read." It goes on, with pictures of William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Eudora Welty and others, to say "A few of us can even write."

QUOTABLE

"It's kind of a way of fighting back, because we do get hammered. But things aren't all hopeless down here. There is some life and culture and education and football and stuff like that."

John Grisham, best-selling author who lives in Oxford, Miss., talking about the state's ad campaign

AT&T OPENS MEGASTORE

5,000 square feet are in the first AT&T megastore, which opened this week in the Compaq Center complex in Houston. The store is the first of 11 "AT&T Experience" stores the company plans to open this year that aim to make shopping for communications equipment less daunting.