NewsTrust - Industry - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

Old-school manufacturing leads U.S. recovery

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Don Lee - Mar. 16 (News Report) - Improbable as it seems, the brightest spot so far in the nation's spotty economic recovery is a sector long considered all but dead — good-old-fashioned manufacturing.

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For Apple suppliers, loose lips can sink contracts

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Reuters - Feb. 17 (Special Report) - "You're free to do what you want," the policeman explained, "But this is Foxconn and they have a special status here. Please understand."

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Company’s Record on Beef Treatment Questioned

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Michael Moss - Dec. 31 (Investigative Report) - E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in meat processed with a company’s novel ammonia treatment.

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Scientists: Nuke panel owes Utahns an apology

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salt Lake Tribune - By Judy Fahys - Nov. 09 (News Report) - Three scientists say federal nuclear regulators owe Utahns an apology -- and a policy change -- for allowing shallow burial of depleted uranium, including the 49,000 tons already at EnergySolutions Inc.'s landfill in Tooele County.

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Senate Global Warming Bill Is Seeking to Cushion the Impact on Industry

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By John M. Broder - Oct. 25 (News Report) - The Senate bill aimed at reducing global warming pollution will initially grant billions of dollars of free emissions permits to utilities and industry but will require the bulk of the money be returned to consumers and taxpayers, according to newly released details.

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From bush to bike - a bamboo revolution

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - By Kieron Humphrey - Jul. 01 (News Report) - On the outskirts of Lusaka, Zambia, next year's crop of bicycles is being watered by Benjamin Banda. "We planted this bamboo last year," he says, "and now the stems are taller than me. When it's ready we'll cut it, cure it and then turn it into frames."

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Industry is critical of Michelle Obama's organic garden

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Marian Burros - Jun. 17 (News Report) - No sooner had the garden been announced than a letter addressed to Mrs. Barack Obama arrived at the East Wing from an organization that represents companies selling chemical pesticides and fertilizers. The Mid America CropLife Association, an agribusiness media group, urged the first lady to give conventional agriculture equal time. Referring to chemicals the group euphemistically called “crop protection products,” the letter said not only are such nonorganic techniques necessary, but their safety is also “supported by sound scientific research and innovation.”

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New Era in Autos as GM Set for Bankruptcy

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Kevin Helliker, Neil King Jr., John D. Stoll - Jun. 01 (News Analysis) - The question now facing 56,000 auto workers, 3,600 GM dealers and the Obama administration: Will it work?

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| Carbon capture technology tested

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

BBC News - May. 28 (News Report) - A 30-tonne test unit will process 1,000 cubic metres of exhaust gas per hour from Longannet power station in Fife. Carbon dioxide will be removed using chemicals and turned into a liquid, ready for storage underground.

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How Carbon Caps Could Help Detroit

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Andy Stone - Apr. 25 (News Report) - The auto industry that emerges from the current crisis will face tough new environmental standards, and that's not all bad.

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Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrew C. Revkin - Apr. 24 (News Report) - For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

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How the Crash Will Reshape America

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Richard Florida - Feb. 19 (Special Report) - “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The United States, whatever its flaws, has seldom wasted its crises in the past. On the contrary, it has used them, time and again, to reinvent itself, clearing away the old and making way for the new. Throughout U.S. history, adaptability has been perhaps the best and most quintessential of American attributes. Over the course of the 19th century’s Long Depression, the country remade itself from an agricultural power into an industrial one. After the Great Depression, it discovered a new way of living, working, and producing, which contributed to an unprecedented period of mass prosperity. At critical moments, Americans have always looked forward, not back, and surprised the world with our resilience. Can we do it again?

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General Motors, Driven to the Brink

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Bill Vlasic, Nick Bunkley - Oct. 26 (Investigative Report) - In late May, senior executives at General Motors confronted a decision that few thought they would ever face: whether to continue developing the next generation of one of the most successful products in G.M.’s 100-year history — the full-size sport utility vehicle — or to punt the program entirely. It’s rare for an automaker to pull the plug on high-profile initiatives, much less one involving a $2 billion, top-to-bottom overhaul of a high-volume vehicle that once helped it rake in cash. This was also G.M.’s flagship platform, code-named CXX, which would underpin popular models like the Escalade, Yukon and Suburban, brawny tanks that had defined the auto giant’s image for more than 15 years. The executives killed the CXX project without a single dissenting vote. And with that, the era of the big S.U.V. was as good as dead, done in by soaring gasoline prices and consumers fleeing to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

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GM Cuts Costs to the Bone

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Business Week - By David Welch - Oct. 23 (News Report) - Cash is getting so tight at General Motors (GM) that management has launched another wave of cost-cutting. The company is even scrutinizing the electricity bills. Auto sales are in their worst slump in decades, resulting in a cash burn rate of about $1 billion a month at GM. The company is selling assets to raise money, but as the economic slump appears to be gaining traction, GM is now delaying new models, cutting benefits, laying off salaried workers, and looking at even small items like utility bills. The latest round of cuts show just how quickly the world has changed around GM and how much pressure the company is under. In July, Chairman and CEO G. Richard Wagoner announced a plan to boost cash by $15 billion through cost-cutting, asset sales, and some borrowing. He said that the $15 billion would be enough even if sales fell to 14 million vehicles in the U.S. Last year, Americans bought 16.2 million vehicles.

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Meanwhile, in the real economy...

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Oct. 20 (News Report) - Since the early summer the prices of various kinds of steel have fallen by 20-70%, iron ore is down by a third and the key rate for bulk shipping of commodities such as iron ore, coal and grain is down by more than four-fifths. There is even talk of grain cargoes piling up in ports in the Americas.

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In the political battleground of Colorado, a labor-business fight is raging

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Nicholas Riccardi - Aug. 17 (News Report) - Colorado has become an important battleground state in the presidential election, and one of the biggest senatorial races in the nation is over filling the seat of its retiring senator, Wayne Allard. Yet the most ferocious political fight in the state doesn't involve Democrats and Republicans. Instead, unions and business groups have loaded the November ballot with an array of competing initiatives. Each side says it will spend tens of millions of dollars to push its agenda and defeat its opponent's measures, which each contends would cripple the state's economy.

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Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Louis Uchitelle - Jul. 22 (News Report) - Indeed, for the first time since the women's movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Each of the seven previous recoveries since 1960 ended with a greater percentage of women at work than when it began. When economists first started noticing this trend two or three years ago, many suggested that the pullback from paid employment was a matter of the women themselves deciding to stay home -- to raise children or because their husbands were doing well or because, more than men, they felt committed to running their households. But now, a different explanation is turning up in government data, in the research of a few economists and in a Congressional study, to be released Tuesday, that follows the women's story through the end of 2007.

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Unions Forge Secret Pacts With Major Employers

Sat, 10 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Kris Maher - May. 10 (News Report) - The agreements involve workers who provide food, laundry and housekeeping services on an outsourced basis. The employers are Sodexho Inc. and the Compass Group USA unit of London-based Compass Group PLC. The unions are the 1.7 million-member Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, and Unite Here. The unions say they negotiated a similar agreement with Aramark Corp. but that Aramark broke the deal last year, and they're trying to reach a new one. An Aramark spokesman declined to comment on that.

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Yellow River

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

National Geographic - By Brook Larmer - Apr. 16 (Special Report) - The proliferation of factories, farms, and cities--all products of China's spectacular economic boomis sucking the Yellow River dry. What water remains is being poisoned. From the canal bank, Shen points to another surreal flash of color: blood-red chemical waste gushing from a drainage pipe, turning the water a garish purple. This canal, which empties into the Yellow River, once teemed with fish and turtles, he says. Now its water is too toxic to use even for irrigation; two of Shen's goats died within hours of drinking from the canal.

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Meat Packer Admits Slaughter of Sick Cows

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Matthew L. Wald - Mar. 13 (News Report) - The president of a slaughterhouse at the heart of the largest-ever meat recall denied under oath on Wednesday, but then grudgingly admitted, that his company had introduced sick cows into the hamburger supply. He then tried to minimize the significance.

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Outspoken scientist dismissed from panel on chemical safety

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Marla Cone - Feb. 29 (News Report) - Toxicologist Deborah Rice was appointed chair of an EPA scientific panel reviewing the chemical a year ago. Federal records show she was removed from the panel in August after the American Chemistry Council, the lobbying group for chemical manufacturers, complained to a top-ranking EPA official that she was biased.

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In global race, GM edges Toyota by one day of pickup sales

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By Nick Bunkley - Jan. 24 (News Report) - Even with subpar sales growth in the U.S., General Motors managed to gain significant market share in Asia and South Asia, edging Toyota out of the top spot.

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Health insurer tied bonuses to dropping sick policyholders

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:36:19 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Lisa Girion - Nov. 09 (News Report) - One of the state's largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved. Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.

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CPSC's Ethics-Review Process For Travel Criticized by Experts

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:42:43 -0800

Washington Post - By Elizabeth Williamson - Nov. 06 (News Report) - On Friday, acting commission Chairman Nancy Nord publicly defended the agency's review process for the industry-financed travel as "painstaking."..."It's never a good idea to have your expenses paid for by a party or parties who will be advocating on a matter before your agency," said a career ethics lawyer at another government agency who requested anonymity because he was not cleared to comment for the record. "It's legal . . . but it is clearly an abuse of discretion. . . . It exhibited at best enormous insensitivity, and at worst outright disdain for the ethical principles of government service." ...Danielle Brian, who directs the Project on Government Oversight, called the request "creepy." After reviewing documents for several trips, she said, "It's as if they're tone-deaf. . . . In every explanation for why 'it's not a conflict,' they make a forceful case for why it is." R. David Pittle, who was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon to help found the agency in 1973, and served as a commissioner until 1982, said: "The CPSC is the only thing standing between a consumer and a potentially dangerous product. . . . For me, it doesn't matter if these trips and gratuities pass some legal test -- it's highly inappropriate public policy."

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Industries Show Uncertainty Over Ruling's Impact

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:47:21 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Jeffrey Ball, Mike Spector - Apr. 03 (News Report) - Yesterday's Supreme Court decision over global-warming emissions is the latest sign that greenhouse gases are about to affect U.S. industry and the economy in a big way. Even before yesterday's ruling, many big businesses concluded it was only a matter of time before they were hit with a rule that will limit how much fossil fuel they can burn. How such regulation will affect particular industries and companies remains unclear because the rules have yet to be written and will be the subject of an intensifying fight in Washington. Limits on auto-emissions would add further urgency to the efforts of Detroit's Big Three auto makers to wean themselves from their dependence on gas-guzzling large vehicles amid massive losses. Limits on emissions from utilities could pressure those that rely heavily on coal, which supplies roughly half of U.S. electricity but is a major source of greenhouse gases. Oil producers, steelmakers, building-materials suppliers, airlines and other industries could be affected as well. On the other hand, limits could also add greater impetus to growing investments in a new generation of fuel-efficient technology, including improved gasoline-hybrid engines and electric cars, clean-coal technology and greater investment in nuclear power.

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