Sky-high gasoline prices have left Honda (HMC) short of vehicles with four-cylinder engines, a problem that it hopes a new Midwest assembly plant announced Wednesday will help relieve.The $550 million, 2,000-employee facility outside Greensburg, Ind., will build Honda cars or trucks with four-cylinder engines to "meet increasing customer demand for our fuel-efficient vehicles," said Koichi Kondo, president of American Honda Motor. The company didn't say which models it will make there. The focus on building cars with small engines is an indicator of how the auto industry is retooling to meet growing consumer demand for gas-saving technology. The national average price of a gallon of regular gas was $2.86 a gallon Wednesday, virtually unchanged in the past month but up 29% from $2.21 a year ago, according to AAA. ...
http://www.usatoday.com
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Editor - 21:55:00 06-28-06
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 U.N.’s $950 million spending cap lifted Financial crisis averted; move seen as blow to U.S. |
U N member states lifted a $950 million spending cap on the United Nations budget Wednesday, averting a financial crisis for now but dealing a blow to the U S which had pushed for the limits as a lever to pressure for reforms. Members will likely put off many of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s most important management reform proposals until the next session of the General Assembly, which begins in Sept a decision sure to disappoint the U N chief. The decision to lift the spending cap was a defeat for U S Ambassador John Bolton, who played a key role in getting the General Assembly to adopt it last year as a way to increase pressure for reform. Most U N member states were never committed to their promise to achieve reform before lifting the spending limit. The decision now shifts the spotlight to the U S Congress, which has threatened to block U S funding for the U N if it does not enact serious reform. The U S pays more than 20 % of the $2 billion annual U N budget....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13603676/
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Editor - 21:38:00 06-28-06
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| Floods Force Up To 200,000 Evacuations Rising Susquehanna River Forces Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Residents To Leave Homes |
Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area were ordered to evacuate their homes Wednesday because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that has killed at least 10 people across the Northeast. Thousands more were ordered to leave their homes in New Jersey, New York and Maryland. Across the region, rescue helicopters plucked residents from rooftops as rivers and streams surged over their banks. Wilkes-Barre, a northeastern Pennsylvania city that was devastated by flooding in 1972 by the remnants of Hurricane Agnes, is now protected by levees. But county officials said the Susquehanna was expected to crest just a few feet from the tops of the 41-foot floodwalls....
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/27/national/main1754148.shtml?source=RSS&attr=U.S._1754148
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Editor - 14:03:00 06-28-06
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| Clinton Opposes Democrats' 2nd-Caucus Plan |
Former President Clinton says both he and his wife oppose a change to the Democratic presidential primary calendar that would allow another state to hold a caucus after Iowa and before the New Hampshire primary. Clinton said his opposition to the Democratic National Committee plan has nothing to do with loyalty to the state that helped launch his 1992 campaign and everything to do with the need to preserve the integrity of the election process. After starting in the back of the pack, Clinton turned his second-place finish in New Hampshire that year into a victory, dubbing himself the ``Comeback Kid.'' He said the one-on-one campaigning that he did in New Hampshire made him a better candidate and president. We all thought Clinton was the worst empty suit to get into the White house, then came Bush Junior. And he is starting to make the Slime Ball look good...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5917611,00.html
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Editor - 14:00:00 06-28-06
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| Belgium to probe US monitoring of international money transfers |
Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt has ordered a probe into whether a Brussels-based banking consortium broke the law when it provided US anti-terror authorities with confidential information about international money transfers. The consortium known as SWIFT society for worldwide inter-bank financial telecommunications was brought into the limelight when the N Y Times last week reported that officials from the CIA, the FBI and other US agencies had since 2001 been allowed to inspect the transfers. Prime minister Guy Verhofstadt asked the Belgian justice ministry on Mon (26 June) to investigate whether SWIFT acted illegally in allowing US authorities to inspect the transfers without the support of a Belgian judge. "We need to ask what are the legal frontiers in this case and whether it is right that a US civil servant could look at private transactions without the approval of a Belgian judge," said government spokesman Didier Seus, according to the International Herald Tribune...
http://euobserver.com/9/21963/
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Editor - 13:38:00 06-28-06
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| German Cabinet OKs opening of Nazi archive |
Germany's Cabinet agreed Wednesday to open to researchers an archive of millions of Nazi files that describe the mechanics of the Holocaust. The accord will likely be signed July 26 in Berlin, Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said. Germany's move follows an agreement to unlock the archive reached last month by the 11-nation governing body of the International Tracing Service, the arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross that oversees the archive in the German town of Bad Arolsen.The strongest pressure to open the storehouse of some 50 million files came from the dying generation of Holocaust survivors and victims' families who feared the histories of their loved ones would be lost forever unless the rules were changed.The archive, controlled by 1955 agreements, holds virtually everything the Nazis recorded on the concentration camps & the prisoners held there. Experts say the opening could provide new insights into the mechanics of the Nazi extermination campaign...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-28-nazi-archives_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 13:34:00 06-28-06
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