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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans have a bias against cars made by U.S. automakers, but an AP-AOL Autos poll found flickers of loyalty that could offer hope for an industry struggling to survive. The problem for Detroit is changing perceptions that often don't match reality. hose questioned in the survey said they have more faith in Japanese-made cars than in vehicles produced by Detroit's Big Three. But General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the Chrysler Group are going back to the future in their uphill effort to again inspire consumer loyalty and regain market share. What is the American auto...

the rant the kine that tread the corn2006.09.24 As one who comes from a background of working class poverty, I know what it's like to live in fear. While the average middle-class worker gets a yearly raise (plus a Christmas bonus and plenty of paid holidays) and has a little cash put away for a rainy day, most low-skilled workers are people who live paycheck to paycheck and who do not receive regular wage increases. These workers are extremely reluctant to agitate for more money out of fear of being fired and replaced by a lower-paid foreign worker (legal or...

Like many other baseball fans, Joe Kosa, 28, is spending his Sunday glued to a TV. But relaxed he's not. Instead, the ESPN (NYSE:DIS - News) production assistant is stationed in front of dozens of flat-screen TVs tuned to global sporting events at the headquarters of the Disney-owned network. He's furiously jotting down notes to weave into a storyline that will be read in 60 seconds flat on tonight's 6 p.m. SportsCenter broadcast. With the San Diego Padres leading the Chicago Cubs 9-0, the outcome is hardly in doubt, and writing the highlights should be easy. Then, Clay Hensley, who...

STOCKHOLM -- Idiots in the office are just as hazardous to your health as cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food, an eye-opening new study reveals. In fact, those dopes can kill you! Stress is one of the top causes of heart attacks -- and working with stupid people on a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according to researchers at Sweden's Lindbergh University Medical Center. The author of the study, Dr. Dagmar Andersson, says her team studied 500 heart attack patients, and were puzzled to find 62 percent had relatively few of the physical risk factors commonly...

Suit says state at fault in grizzly mauling... The widow of a hunter mauled by a grizzly bear while he was gutting an elk has filed an appeal with the Montana Supreme Court after a district judge here dismissed her lawsuit against the state. Mary Ann Hilston contends negligent management practices led to the death of her husband...in the fall of 2001. She filed a lawsuit in federal court in September 2004, claiming the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks knew there was an aggressive grizzly bear with two cubs prowling the...

LONDON (AP) - British police charged three suspects Wednesday in the 53-million-pound (about $105 million Cdn) robbery at a cash depot in southeastern England. The charges against the trio are the first in the investigation of the theft last week at the security warehouse in Tonbridge, 50 kilometres southeast of London. Police said car salesman John Fowler, 57, was charged with conspiracy to rob the Securitas Cash Management Ltd. warehouse and with kidnapping depot manager Colin Dixon, his wife Lynn and their nine-year-old son. Stuart Royle, 47, was charged with conspiracy to rob, while Kim Shackelton, a 39-year-old woman, was...

Here is a petition I though many would be interested in. This petition calls for Congress to pass a law that requires that all management of our ports to be conducted by either elected officials or contracted to companies located here in the United States. Top reasons to end foreign management of our ports. 1. Security: Our ports are one of the most sensitive access points to our country. Even though we manage the security do we want people from foreign countries having access to every detail about how one of our ports is run, how to access the port,...

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany (AFPN) -- Five members of the Botswana Defense Force, or BDF, visited Ramstein last week to learn about the Air Force’s warehouse management procedures and operations. The 435th Logistics Readiness Squadron hosted the visit, touring the group through the base’s inbound cargo sections, receiving section, storage and issue element, hazardous materials section, aircraft parts store, storage and issue area, flight service center, and outbound cargo element. During the team’s visit to the hazardous materials section, Tech. Sgt. Kirk Vore, assistant noncommissioned officer in charge of HAZMAT, briefed the team on everything from procedures and initiatives to...

CHICAGO, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Training and education of experienced IT professionals already established in the workforce is becoming a major concern, one certain to be on the consciousness of senior management at corporations all over the United States in the coming year, experts tell United Press International's Networking. A survey, released last week by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a trade association for the IT industry, based in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., in suburban Chicago, indicates that workers are taking the initiative to get the new training and skills they need for their careers, and that employers, thus far,...

Message From United Management: Let Them Eat Cake Now That Your Pension's Gone... United Airlines senior management just announced another part of its grand Chapter-11 exit plan. It seems that when the company emerges, 400 select members of United Airlines' executive and senior management team will be awarded 15% ownership of the carrier, worth a tidy $285 million - or more. From The Marie Antoinette School of Management... Nice compensation. Royalty does have its privileges and perks, you know. And, why not? Now that United's employee rank-and-file saved their airline via double-digit pay and benefit cuts, not to mention having...

China river contamination illustrates paralysis in crisis By CHING CHING NI Los Angeles Times 12/5/2005 BEIJING - The long-term environmental impact of last month's chemical explosion in northern China that left millions of people without safe drinking water remains to be seen. But the political fallout has begun. Beijing sacked its top environmental official Friday in an effort to show accountability for the mishandling of the crisis. More heads are likely to roll, possibly including local party leaders in Jilin province where an accident at a petrochemical plant spilled 100 tons of benzene and other cancer-causing chemicals into the Songhua...

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has declared it "plain wrong" to think of achieving victory in Iraq, prompting President Bush, and some fellow Democrats, to flatly disagree. "The idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Mr. Dean said Monday on WOAI Radio in San Antonio...

Hi, all, I'm posting here because I know that this place is the one place to get good advice in a hurry. I called on you all recently when my Chrysler Minivan wouldn't start. Long story--but once again, Freepers came through. So now.. My husband is totally stressed. He has a MAJOR job interview tomorrow. He doesn't expect to get the job (there's already someone there and in the Cdn. government sometimes you have to re-apply for your job). However, tomorrow is part one of the interview. There will be actors bringing him problems and he has to basically demonstrate...

Large populations of deer are edging out forest birds in North America, report scientists in this month's issue of the journal Biological Conservation. The study is the first to evaluate the impact deer grazing can have on nest quality and food resources in areas unaffected by human activities such as forestry or hunting. It also offers general rules for predicting the influence these animals could have on bird ecosystems in the future. The decline of forest birds has been blamed mostly on such factors as disease, loss of habitat and an increase in the number of animals that prey on...

A relative of mine, immediately after graduating from college, went to work for a bank. Even though he had a university degree, he was assigned the job of repossessing cars. We kidded him a lot about that. He eventually ended up a vice president, but his entry into the banking industry was about as low as you can get, and we never let him forget it. In similar fashion, the Enterprise car-rental firm goes to college campuses to recruit management trainees, but among the first jobs these trainees handle is washing and cleaning cars coming off rental. When I moved...

The word "reinvent" is a dumb term, having an overtone of redundancy. After all, when you have invented something, it exists. You can revise it or change it, but you can't "reinvent" it after you have already invented it. I never heard the term when I first entered the workforce. But somewhere in the 1970s or so, corporate executives-began using the word, and using it a lot. Then as now, the nation had its usual economic ups and downs, but suddenly after one downturn, our nation was heavily laden with companies that had reinvented themselves. What happened is that after...

US president George Bush's promise to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf coast "higher and better" has triggered a wave of anxiety among conservatives in his own party, who are shocked at the expansion of the federal role in disaster relief. Yesterday Mr Bush led the country in a day of prayer for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in Washington's national cathedral, declaring: "The destruction of this hurricane was beyond any human power to control, but the restoration of broken communities and disrupted lives now rests in our hands." But his ambitious pledge the night before to lead "one of...

There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today - something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them - like watching a parent melt down. ...snip...Singapore pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1 million a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants handsomely down the line....snip...Janadas Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives," he...

U.N. reform agenda watered-down General Assembly adopts wording stripped of details UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday adopted a watered-down draft document on poverty, human rights and reform for this week's summit of world leaders to consider, shedding many of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's ambitious goals after weeks of bitter debate. The compromise 35-page document is supposed to launch a major reform of the United Nations itself and galvanize efforts to ease global poverty. But to reach a consensus, most of the text's details were gutted in favor of abstract language. A definition of terrorism and details...

BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AP) -- The chief financial officer of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has completed half of a 24-hour jail sentence for speeding and is to return this weekend to complete the other half. Thomas M. Schoewe, 52, pleaded guilty Aug. 5 in Rogers District Court for reportedly driving 110 mph on Interstate 540. A state trooper stopped Schoewe in his red Corvette at 1:30 a.m. Jan. 1. District Judge Doug Schrantz sentenced Schoewe to a day in jail.