Free Republic

Volkswagen plans to pick Mexico as the site for an engine plant to serve its assembly plant in that country and the automaker’s Chattanooga factory, according to a report. Automotive News reported Tuesday an announcement could come as soon as today. Last month, Frank Fischer, chief executive of VW's operations in Chattanooga, told the Times Free Press he didn't expect the engine plant to come to the city. “We said, ‘Please do it,’” Fischer said in August. “We were supporting it.” But VW officials were looking at manufacturing capacity and consumer demand in locating the plant, he said. Mexico had...

...In "The Graduate"...Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin is given a one-word bit of career counseling by one of those shallow and corrupt grown-ups at a shallow and corrupt grown-up cocktail party: "Plastics." Forty-two years later, the line has picked up a meaning that the makers of "The Graduate" could not possibly have anticipated.. today, the reaction is, "Oh, right: America still made things then." We don't any more...Since 1987, manufacturing as a share of our gross domestic product has declined 30 percent. Once the world's leading net exporter, we have become the world's leading net importer. In 2007, we exported $1.2 trillion...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California's utilities, refineries and large factories must transform their operations to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of a new climate plan before state regulators. On Thursday, the California Air Resources Board was expected to adopt what would be the nation's most sweeping global warming plan, outlining for the first time how individuals and businesses would meet a landmark 2006 law that made the state a leader on global climate change. It would hold California's worst polluters accountable for the heat-trapping emissions they produce _ transforming how people travel, utilities generate power and businesses use electricity. At...

BEIJING - Construction will halt, heavy industries will close, and even spray painting will stop in order to clean Beijing's polluted air for the Olympics — an issue that suddenly has taken a back seat to political protests. An aggressive plan to temporarily shutter belching steel and chemical plants, cut back emissions by 30 percent at 19 heavy-polluting companies and stop excavation and pouring of concrete at hundreds of sites around the city was explained Monday by the city's Environmental Protection Bureau. "From the suggestions of experts we think that we need to take these measures to guarantee the air...

WASHINGTON - It's a nickname no principal could be proud of: "Dropout Factory," a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high schools across America. "If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?" asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term "dropout factory." There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2007 – Santa might be visiting Iraq this year to fill his holiday wish, as Iraq’s once-sagging textile industry gears up to export Iraqi-made clothing to the United States, a senior Iraqi government official said yesterday in Baghdad. Deputy Industry Minister Sami al-Araji joined Paul Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business transformation, and Iraqi Minister of Finance Bayan Jabr at a joint news conference to discuss plans to get Iraq’s factories up and running. Many of the 200-plus state-run factories have been idle more than four years, resulting in mass unemployment that officials say creates a...

Child slaves found in China's brick factories By Richard Spencer in Beijing Last Updated: 2:10am BST 16/06/2007 Hundreds of Chinese children have been kidnapped and forced to work as slaves in brutal conditions. President Hu Jintao and the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, have intervened to call for urgent efforts to trace hundreds more boys and young men who are still feared missing despite raids on brick factories across north and central areas of the country. The reports of children being abducted, locked in factories for years, beaten, left untreated for severe burns and, in some cases, killed spread this week...

WASHINGTON - Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods rose in March at the fastest clip in three months, helped by the biggest jump in orders by businesses to expand and modernize in 2 1/2 years. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that demand for durable goods rose 3.4 percent last month compared with February. That was significantly better than the 2.5 percent increase that had been expected. Much of the strength last month came from a 37.6 percent surge in demand for commercial aircraft. However, orders for business capital goods excluding aircraft also posted a strong gain of 4.7...

WASHINGTON, March 28, 2007 – With straight unemployment running at 20 percent nationwide, there is no wonder that Iraqi men would be sympathetic to violence and insurgency, the Defense Department’s point man for Iraqi reconstruction said today. Paul Brinkley, deputy defense undersecretary for business transformation, acquisition, technology and logistics, said Iraqis want work, normalcy and security. He is working with the Iraqi government and coalition officials to open factories and create jobs for those unemployed and those underemployed, said during a Pentagon news conference today. Getting Iraqis back to work, he said, takes groups of people out of the...

AR RAMADI — U. S. officials are working with the Iraqi Government to reopen various production factories to stimulate the local economy here. Mohammed Abdullah, the deputy minister of industry, met with Bob Love, the director of Iraqi operations for the Defense Business Transformation Agency, during a Jan. 31 visit to ceramics and glass factories to discuss the future of the businesses. “The factories in Ramadi are important to the government of Iraq and the United States,” Love said. “We have to move quickly.” Love said that meetings like this would speed up the process of opening the ceramic factory’s...

US to reopen Iraq's factories in $10m U-turn By Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Colin Freeman, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:11am GMT 28/01/2007 US officials in Iraq are planning to re-open lumbering state industries set up as part of Saddam Hussein's command economy in an attempt to bring jobs to the country's most troubled areas. Moribund government-owned plants, including ageing tractor factories, tyre manufacturers and cement companies, have been earmarked for a multi-million dollar scheme designed to lure Iraqis away from the insurgents' payroll. A worker recycles glass at an oil lamp factory in Baghdad The plan represents an extraordinary...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2007 – In an effort to bolster Iraq’s economy and employ thousands of Iraqis, the United States is working to restart operations at several factories around the country. A team from the Defense Department’s Office of Business Transformation has been visiting Iraq since May to evaluate the situations at the country’s roughly 200 former state-owned factories and determine what is needed to restart operations. So far, the team has visited and done detailed assessments of almost 40 factories, and has a list of 10 priority facilities it will focus on, Paul Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense...

Three Iranian factories 'mass-produce bombs to kill British in Iraq' Toby Harnden in Washington (Filed: 20/08/2006) Three factories in Iran are mass-producing the sophisticated roadside bombs used to kill British soldiers over the border in Iraq, it has been claimed. The lethal bombs are being made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at ordnance factory sites in Teheran, according to opponents of the country's theocratic regime. Designed to penetrate heavy armour, the devices being manufactured in Iran involve the use of "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges, often triggered by infra-red beams. The weapons can pierce...

Modine Manufacturing is developing a cooling system aimed at nuclear-powered spaceships. The Racine company, which builds engine radiators for cars and trucks, hopes to hitch a ride on space voyages to Mars, Jupiter and beyond. Such equipment also could be part of a scientific outpost on the moon. Modine is creating liquid-filled titanium pipes that would pull heat away from a spacecraft's engine and dissipate it into the vast emptiness of space. Nuclear-powered engines could become essential as NASA looks for ways to explore the depths of the solar system.

CAMP BLUE DIAMOND, AR RAMADI, Iraq (August 18, 2005) -- The Ramadi Glass Works Factory, which was once the second largest employer in western Iraq’s Al Anbar Province, is slowly coming back to life. The factory’s management is working with coalition forces to gradually reopen the plant, which was closed last November after insurgents used the factory to stage attacks. Due to its key role in the local economy, both groups have pushed to open the facility, which also includes a ceramics factory. “It employs 2,300 people and the way we look at it those are 2,300 families affected,” said...

After last week's strong durable goods and Midwest manufacturing reports, the ISM confirmed a brighter outlook for factories — and economic growth overall. "The latest few reports suggest that the industrial side of the economy is reaccelerating," said Manufacturers Alliance Chief Economist Daniel Meckstroth. The ISM's new orders index rose 3.4 points to 60.6, also a 2005 high. The production subindex shot up 5.6 points to 61.2, the highest since September. Manufacturers have worked down inventories and are pumping up production to meet continued strong consumer demand.

WASHINGTON, June 23 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is a statement from Teamsters General President James P. Hoffa: The clock started ticking today on thousands of jobs in the United States with the introduction of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. Congress has only 90 days to reject this job-killing trade proposal. I call on my 1.4 million brothers and sisters in the Teamsters Union, along with working families across the United States and around the world, to mobilize against CAFTA and for job protections and basic international labor standards. The time constraints imposed by the fast track...

Widespread falsification of factory records is undermining western companies' efforts to enforce their corporate social responsibility standards in China. ADVERTISEMENT Factory managers' forgery of payroll documents and time cards is increasingly sophisticated, according to auditors and western buyers who work with Chinese factories. Some estimate that more than half of the factories surveyed in social compliance audits have falsified at least some of their records. “A few years ago, we were able to detect when records were altered by simply interviewing workers. Now workers are coached,” said Daryl Brown, vice-president for global ethics and business practices at Liz Claiborne. The...

Palestinian Terrorists: Israel Gives Jobs, We Make Peace Palestinians are learning that the dove of peace lives on bread and software, not bullets and bombs. By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem----April 12..... After so many years, it appears that they finally got it. First it was war money from Egypt and Jordan, the promises of land in Palestine. Then the cash poured in from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Cash for terrorism, guns and Islamic terror suicide bombers. To make the job easier for the bombers, they were promised 72 virgins in heaven and their proud parents...

In a stunning about-face, the New York Times reported Sunday that when the U.S. attacked Iraq in March 2003, Saddam Hussein possessed "stockpiles of monitored chemicals and materials," as well as sophisticated equipment to manufacture nuclear and biological weapons, which was removed to "a neighboring state" before the U.S. could secure the weapons sites. The U.N.'s Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission [UNMOVIC] "has filed regular reports to the Security Council since last May," the paper said, "about the dismantlement of important weapons installations and the export of dangerous materials to foreign states." "Officials of the commission and the [International] Atomic...