| US: Cleanup Costs for Toxic Gas Additive Could be Billions
by Michael Gardner, Copley New Service June 15th, 2005 Staring at potential payouts in the billions of dollars, the U.S. oil industry is maneuvering to escape responsibility for cleaning up after MTBE, the now-banned toxic gasoline additive that has seeped into drinking water across the country. |
| BRAZIL: Homegrown Fuel Supply Helps Drivers Breathe Easy by Marla Dickerson , L.A. Times June 15th, 2005 Today about 40% of all the fuel that Brazilians pump into their vehicles is ethanol, known here as alcohol, compared with about 3% in the United States. No other nation is using ethanol on such a vast scale. The change wasn't easy or cheap. But 30 years later, Brazil is reaping the return on its investment in energy security while the U.S. writes checks for $50-a-barrel foreign oil. |
| UK: Backlash to Animal Testing Flight Ban Rattles British Airways by Andrew Clark, The Guardian June 6th, 2005 British Airways' decision to stop carrying animals bound for scientific experimentation, which was revealed in the Guardian last week, has delighted anti-vivisection activists who highlight the suffering of mice, monkeys and guinea pigs in transit for laboratories. |
| US: SUV Drivers Reconsider by Oliver Prichard, The Philadelphia Inquirer June 1st, 2005 Some vehicles aren't worth their weight. |
| US: Bicoastal Blues For G.M. and Ford by Danny Hakim, The New York Times April 23rd, 2005 Setting aside its home base in the Upper Midwest, Detroit has a blue state problem -- and it is about to get worse. Washington and Oregon plan to become the 9th and 10th states to adopt California's tough car emissions rules, forming an increasingly potent market for more fuel-efficient vehicles on the West Coast and in the Northeast. |
| US: Honda Offers At-Home Natural-Gas Fill-Ups by Chris Woodyard, USA Today April 21st, 2005 New device offers at-home natural-gas fill-ups |
| US: When Media Dogs Don't Bark by Norman Solomon, AlterNet April 18th, 2005 The recent decision by General Motors to pull its advertising from the Los Angeles Times has not gone over very well. |
| SINGAPORE: Rolls-Royce in Venture to Develop Fuel Cell-Based Power System by Siti Rahil, Kyodo News International April 6th, 2005 Luxury car maker Rolls-Royce plc signed an agreement Wednesday with a Singapore consortium that includes several Singapore government-linked entities to jointly invest US$100 million in a new venture to develop a commercially viable power system based on fuel cell technology. |
| CANADA: Automakers Agree to Emissions Reductions
by Ian Austen, New York Times April 5th, 2005 The Canadian government and nearly all the world's major automakers reached an agreement Tuesday under which the companies would voluntarily reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of their vehicles. The Canadian minister of natural resources suggested that the nation can be a model for the state of California. |
| GERMANY: Volkswagen forced to stop paying salaries to ex-workers in politics by Bertrand Benoit, Financial Times January 14th, 2005 Volkswagen, the German car maker, bowed to public pressure yesterday, saying it would abolish its controversial practice of paying salaries to employees who leave work for full-time politics. |
| IRAN: France Steps Up Its Investments in Iran by Borzou Daragahi , The New York Times June 23rd, 2004 Undeterred by Iran's pariah status in the United States and by the shortcomings of the country's commercial climate, French companies (many of them car companies) have been increasing their presence in the country in the last few years. |
| JAPAN: Former Mitsubishi Boss Arrested
BBC June 10th, 2004 Japanese police have arrested a former head of Mitsubishi Motors and five other executives as part of a probe into the death of a truck driver. |
| US: Bush Proposal May Cut Tax on S.U.V.'s for Business by Danny Hakim, New York Times January 21st, 2003 The Bush administration's economic plan would increase by 50 percent or more the deductions that small-business owners can take right away on the biggest sport utility vehicles and pickups. |
| US: For Cruise Ships, A History of Pollution by Edwin McDowell, The New York Times June 16th, 2002 On April 19 the Carnival Corporation pleaded guilty in United States District Court in Miami to criminal charges related to falsifying records of the oil-contaminated bilge water that six of its ships dumped into the sea from 1996 through 2001. |
| US: General Motors Protests Proposed Fuel Standards Associated Press February 25th, 2002 Fearing that increased fuel economy standards will doom the pickup trucks they produce, hundreds of General Motors Corp. workers chanted "Save our trucks, save our jobs," during a meeting Monday with union, company and political leaders. |
| US: Bostonians Outraged at Corporate Subway Sponsorship Plan by Pamela Ferdinand, San Francisco Chronicle February 26th, 2001 State transportation officials, looking for new revenue, are taking a cue from professional sports arenas and seeking corporate sponsors to purchase naming rights for subway stations here. |
| Grave Danger Posed Under NAFTA by Unsafe Mexican Trucks Public Citizen February 6th, 2001 Although a trade panel is expected this week to order the United States to permit access to all U.S. roads by Mexican trucks, the U.S. should continue to limit access because of the grave dangers many Mexican trucks pose to motorists on U.S. highways, Public Citizen has concluded in a report released today. |
| US: Ford/Firestone = Homicide? by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on Corporations September 12th, 2000 Matthew Hendricks is one of more than 150 deaths around the world linked to Firestone tread separations. The families and friends of those killed in these accidents want to know -- what did Ford and Firestone know about these tires and when did they know it? |
| JAPAN: Police Raid Mitsubishi Motors Business Recorder August 28th, 2000 Japanese police investigators raided the offices of Mitsubishi Motors Corp on Sunday on suspicion of concealing customer complaints and recalls from government inspectors for decades, Kyodo news agency reported. |
| GERMANY: DaimlerChrysler Facing SEC Investigation by David Mchugh, National Post (Canada) Automaking giant DaimlerChrysler AG said Thursday that it was under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after a fired employee told labour officials he was dismissed for complaining that the company was using secret bank accounts to bribe government officials. |