R E G I O N: Hindu mobs attack churches as India violence continues

* Hundreds flee homes
* Peace committees set up to initiate talks among community leaders

BHUBANESWAR: Hindu mobs ransacked a church and clashed with Christian villagers in eastern India on Thursday, as hundreds fled their homes.

Rampaging Hindu mobs ransacked a church and clashed with Christian villagers, police said, as authorities struggled to control spiralling religious violence in the region. Police deployed more than 3,000 personnel in the streets but they could not stop the ransacking of at least one church. Local media said as many as four churches were attacked. "Police are marching in several areas now," Orissa police chief Gopal Chandra Nanda told Reuters.

Television pictures showed mobs armed with rods putting up roadblocks on Thursday and others attacking churches. Other mobs armed with bows and arrows and axes have attacked Christian homes, dragging out women and children. Hundreds have fled to forests and nearby hills, officials said.

"Moments after we passed by a Christian village, people set it on fire and everything was over within minutes," a senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said from Kandhamal, the worst-hit district.

Peace committees: On Thursday, peace committees were set up in villages to bring community leaders together for talks, but Christians in many villages said attacks were worse than what the government has said.

Police said more than 100 people had been arrested after rioters torched nearly 500 houses as well as Christian prayer halls and vehicles in eastern Orissa state. "Over 300 people fled our village and have taken shelter in the forest," Kanu Chandra Nayek told the Indian Express newspaper after his village was attacked by a Hindu mob. "Here we have almost nothing to eat, there's a constant downpour, our children are sick," Nayek was quoted saying.

Indian police have been ordered to shoot on sight after the killing of a popular Hindu holy leader on Saturday sparked the riots, which have drawn the condemnation of the pope. Orissa authorities say nine people have died, but government officials speaking on condition of anonymity have put the toll at 16. "The situation is certainly tense but under control," local civil administrator Satyabrata Sahu told AFP.

Residents waited in a mile-long queue to buy essential supplies when the curfew was relaxed for a few hours in the worst-hit Kandhmal district. Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday "firmly condemned" the violence in Orissa, where Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons were burnt alive in 1999 - a crime for which a Hindu man is serving life in jail. agencies

Posted: 28 Aug 2008 04:19 PM CDT

Wounded veterans of the Iraq war face serious emotional and physical challenges upon returning home. The New York Times recently highlighted the efforts of BMW to make this transition just a little bit easier. The automaker donated instructors, the use of test cars, and time on its Performance Center track to the Injured Marine Semper Fi fund.

On the track in South Carolina, Marines who have lost limbs can learn how to drive using alternate controls in specially outfitted BMW vehicles, like the 2008 650i coupe, for example.

Drivers who have lost both legs can have their vehicles outfitted with a hand control that uses a push-pull system to accelerate and brake: Pull back and the car accelerates forward, push and the car brakes. The handle can be outfitted on either side of the steering wheel and typically costs no more than $1,000, which is less than some of the luxury automaker's high-end features.

Not only do the BMW lessons serve a practical purpose — training wounded veterans in driving skills — but the Marines at the BMW Performance Center reported that it served an important psychological role as well. As Cpl. Jordan Muck, 24, told the Times, "Getting to go on trips like this helped me cope with anxiety and just talk to people. Something just clicked."

Posted by: David Kiley on May 05

The Norwegian electric car producer Think has reached across the Atlantic and established TH!NK North America in partnership with the leading clean-tech investors RockPort Capital Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers.
"The TH!NK city is the world's only crash-tested and highway-certified electric vehicle and is ideal for markets such as California where we will initiate demonstration projects offering an exceptionally safe and fun car to drive," said Jan-Olaf Willums, CEO of Think Global. "We are proud to partner with the two pioneering investors in the clean tech field and to launch TH!NK city in North America with them."

TH!NK city is an environmental vehicle, emission free and 95 percent recyclable. It reaches a top speed of 100 km (65 miles) per hour and can drive up to 180 km (110 miles) on a single charge.

Ray Lane, a Kleiner Perkins Managing Partner and Chairman of TH!NK North America, said, "The transportation industry is undergoing its largest transformation since Henry Ford built the Model T. Today we are witnessing a seminal event – the first highway-capable electric vehicle intended for mass production, representing a big step toward a zero emission transportation industry."

Th!nk previously made its way into the U.S. around 2000-2001 when it was in a venture with Ford Motor Co. Even though Ford chairman Bill Ford is the one with "green" running through his veins, it was then CEO jac Nasser who cut the deal with Th!nk to provide neighborhood electric cars (the golf cart-like vhicles you see in gated resorts and the like) and eventually an electric city car. Ford dealers also briefly sold Th!nk bicycles with an electric battery assist at dealerships.

Hey, those ideas were hatched back when yahoo.com's stock was almost $500 per share and vendors I know were being paid with pets.com options.

http://www.ford.comBut when Ford unloaded all the stray businesses Nasser had accumulated, like Kwik-Fit auto repair and the auto recycling (junk yards) business, the Th!nk business went along with the rest of the bath water.

Given the push for higher fuel economy and alternative powertrains today, it seems a little, or maybe alot, short sighted to have jettisoned Th!nk.

It wasn't so much that Ford didn't see any future for electric cars, it was that it couldn't make a business out of working with the Norwegians. One former Ford/Th!nk team member says the business case called for the Neighborhood cars to cost around $2,500-$3,000. They would sell for maybe $4,000 and the profit looked good. A funny thing happened. The cost actually climbed to $9,000!!!, even with a nickel battery. Yikes. That would mean charging at least $10,000 for each one to make any money. At $10,000, you are talking about a sightly used Kia Rio. I think I'd rather have the Rio unless I was trying to really impress myself and my friends.

Also, says my source, the Norwegians were tough to do business with. They aparently had no concept of outfitting any vehicles for the U.S. market tastes. In that, they behaved like Germans telling Americans they don't need cup-holders bcause we shouldn't be drinking anything while driving in the first place.

In fact, I drove a City Th!nk back then. It felt like driving an Igloo cooler with seatbelts and windshield wipers. If the Norwegians thought that car was going to capture American dollars in any great number, they were nuts.

This from a Ford spokesperson: "Ford exited the battery electric vehicle business in January 2003 with the sale of the TH!NK name and production facility to KamKorp of Switzerland. Extensive research and marketing showed that the vehicles were not economically sustainable at that time as part of a large-scale vehicle solution to global environmental problems.

The battery technology was inadequate at the time and consumer demand low - It was a technology in development not mature, not cost effective, not ready for mass production."

The Ford Th!nk partnership, while it lasted, seems a lesson in how just buying an asset doesn't assure anything. There was no work chemistry between the two companies. And while Ford may look short-sighted for punting the business back to Oslo, it's doubtful much would have come from it so long as the two sides weren't true partners.

I haven't driven the new City Th!nk yet. But perhaps Kleiner Perkins will have better luck.

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ew Delhi Journal

Indians Hit the Road Amid Elephants

By SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI — A few weeks ago, the traditional Indian joint family household of Vineet Sharma, a fertilizer industry consultant, achieved a long deferred dream. Having ferried themselves on scooters all these years, the Sharmas bought a brand-new, silver-gray hatchback known as the Tata Indica.

Never mind that none of the six adult members of the household knew how to drive. No sooner had the car arrived than Mr. Sharma, 34, took it for a spin and knocked over a friend. His brother slammed into a motorcyclist, injuring no one but damaging the bumper. The brother was so scared that he no longer gets behind the wheel, except on Sundays, when the roads are empty.

"We bought it first, and then we thought about driving," Mr. Sharma confessed.

This week, as Tata Motors unveiled the world's cheapest car, the $2,500 Nano, and automakers from across the world came to New Delhi to peddle their wares to a bubbling Indian car market, Mr. Sharma began to think about his driving.

He enrolled in a weeklong driving course and dived headlong into the madness of the morning commute in a beat-up Maruti 800. Its odometer had long ago stopped working, and it carried on its roof a sign for the driving school, accompanied, improbably, by the smiling face of the animated movie character Shrek. He wasn't going very fast and said he was very nervous.

He had good reason, for his first real foray on four wheels revealed how many hurdles still hinder the new Indian romance with the road. Amid a cacophony of horns, a blood-red sport utility vehicle weaved between cars, passing Mr. Sharma within a razor's edge on the right. A school bus snuggled close up on his left. No one seemed to care about traffic lanes. Cars bounced in and out of crater-size potholes.

Indians are rushing headlong to get behind the wheel, as incomes rise, car loans proliferate, and the auto industry churns out low-cost cars to nudge them off their motorcycles. They bought 1.5 million cars last year. By some estimates India is expected to soar past China this year as the fastest-growing car market.

The capital was aflutter with car mania this week, as the biennial Auto Expo opened Thursday and carmakers, both Indian and foreign, began rolling out the first of 25 new models.

The greatest hype came from Tata Motors, which introduced the Nano as the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey" played loudly in the background.

There were also luxury sedans and sport utility vehicles being offered, as well as a variety of small cars, gadgets and car parts.

Not unexpectedly, Indian environmentalists have assailed the car craze, particularly because of the country's relatively relaxed emissions standards and the proliferation of diesel-powered cars.

Even the usually nonconfrontational chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra K. Pachauri, has sharply criticized the small car boom, questioning Tata Motors in particular for devoting itself to building cheap cars rather than efficient mass transportation. Greenpeace this week called for mandatory fuel efficiency standards, including information on carbon dioxide emissions.

In his first driving lesson, Mr. Sharma had more immediate worries in mind. Sharing the road with him were a bicyclist with three cooking-gas cylinders strapped to the back of his bike, a pushcart vendor plying guavas, a cycle rickshaw loaded with a photocopy machine (rickshaws often being the preferred mode of delivery for modern appliances).

There were also a great many pedestrians, either leaping into traffic in the absence of crosswalks or marching in thick rows on the sides of the road in the absence of sidewalks. At one point, a car careered down the wrong side of the road. Then a three-wheeled scooter-rickshaw came straight at Mr. Sharma, only to duck swiftly down a side street. At least this morning there was no elephant chewing bamboo in the fast lane, as there sometimes is.

Dinner party chatter here is usually rife with theories on road management. It is said that Indians drive as though they are still on two wheels, or that snaking in and out of lanes is the only way so many cars can survive on narrow, ill-kept roads. Mr. Sharma's theory was simpler.

"We have a knack for breaking laws," he muttered.

The city's top police official in charge of traffic shared that sentiment. He was vexed by all this talk of new low-cost cars.

"My concern is not with cars. My concern is with drivers," said Suvashish Choudhary, the deputy commissioner of police. "Every new car will bring new drivers who are not trained for good city driving."

With a population of nearly 16.5 million, New Delhi now adds 650 vehicles to its roads each day. At last count, there were 5.4 million vehicles in all, a more than fivefold increase in 20 years; scooters and motorbikes still outnumber cars two to one.

Mr. Choudhary was reminded of the remarkable fact that the sharp rise in the number of cars in New Delhi had not been accompanied by a sharp rise in traffic accidents. He scoffed, and went on to list his grievances: no one gives way, everyone jostles to be the first to move when the traffic light turns green, and a lack of crosswalks prompts pedestrians to frequently jump out into traffic. He called it "a lack of driving culture."

Pity the walker in the city. Half of all fatal road accident victims are pedestrians, according to the police. Every now and then, a homeless person sleeping on the street is run over. Last week, a speeding car banged into a policeman standing at a traffic checkpoint and didn't bother to stop; the officer was critically injured.

New Delhi issued more than 300,000 driver's licenses last year, which could be seen as either a feat of bureaucratic efficiency or Indian ingenuity. At one city licensing office this week, the test, which took about a minute, consisted of turning on the ignition and driving in a wide circle.

A chauffeur named Ramfali said he had obtained a license even though he cannot read. Mr. Sharma paid about $40, or five times the official fee, to an independent broker who fetched him a license in half an hour.

Car mania has also spawned a new industry in driver training classes. On early mornings, one can see student drivers crawling along the roads and veterans honking madly behind them.

Next in line for a lesson, after Mr. Sharma took a two-hour turn at the wheel, came Anita Vashisht, 40, a police station secretary who took her first lesson on the off chance that one day she could afford a car.

Aisha Arif, 20, was learning to drive so she could better badger her father to buy her a set of wheels. Rajender Kumar, a chauffeur, was teaching a friend named Yogesh to drive, so that he, too, could look for work as a chauffeur.

As for Mr. Sharma, by the end of his first class, he had decided that four wheels, while desirable, were not always practical. His scooter, he pointed out, was cheaper and faster.

His instructor, Amit Yadav, who trains an average of 11 new motorists a day, agreed. He said he commuted to work on his motorcycle. "The traffic is so bad it's not worth driving in Delhi," he reasoned.

But if you must, he went on, you have to be confident. "Get rid of your fear," he told Mr. Sharma. He attributed his own fearlessness to the passion of his youth. He said he was once a champion bicyclist.

Hari Kumar and Saher Mahmood contributed reporting.

Nano costs could leave Tata out of pocket

Rhys Blakely in Bombay

The Nano, the world's cheapest car, is threatening to be a commercial flop as surging raw material costs scramble its low-cost business model, according to industry insiders.

Analysts and rival manufacturers expect Tata, the conglomerate behind the Nano, to suffer heavy losses on the car as its promise to sell a basic model for only 100,000 rupees (£1,250) - a price calculated to tempt India's middle classes away from their motorcycles - proves unexpectedly costly.

Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata, has admitted that he faces a dilemma. "If we pass on all costs to the consumer, it will affect demand, and if we don't, it will affect margins," he told investors recently.

The economics underpinning the Nano, which is due to go on sale this autumn, make it especially vulnerable to commodity market moves. Since Tata began to develop the Nano in 2003, raw material costs have risen from about 13 per cent to about 23 per cent of its price before taxes, according to an estimate by Global Insight, the consultancy. By contrast, the cost of raw materials account for about 7 per cent of the average American car - or about $1,600 (£815), up from about $800 five years ago.

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Ian Fletcher, of Global Insight, said: "I can't see the 100,000 rupee price being maintained for more than three months, largely to let Ratan Tata keep his price promise, before the company raises it."

Potential Indian buyers are also facing interest-rate rises, which have made financing packages dearer, and increases in fuel costs, making motorbike mileage figures more attractive than the Nano's 50 miles per gallon.

Poor Nano sales may force a rethink across the industry. With oil prices at historic highs, carmakers have drawn up plans to follow Tata's lead by targeting developing markets with a new generation of cheap runabouts. Within eight years, 100million households in countries such as India and China will be able to afford cars priced under £3,000, according to Boston Consulting Group.

Whether manufacturers will be able to reap sufficient profits from ultra-cheap cars is in doubt. Hyundai Motor, the South Korean company, said last month that it had scrapped plans for a $5,000 saloon in China because the model would not be profitable. Renault-Nissan said in May that it had joined forces with Bajaj Auto, an Indian motorbike manufacturer, to sell an "ultra-low-cost" car at the Nano's price-point in India. Now, both sides are understood to doubt the project's viability.

To mitigate losses, rivals are suggesting that Tata will limit sales of the basic version of the Nano and seek to make money back by pushing upgraded models. Protests over the ownership of the land on which the Nano factory is being built have also raised doubts over whether the car will be ready on time in the volumes that Tata had planned.

Indian analysts forecast that Tata will need to produce nearly 400,000 Nanos a year to make a profit, above a planned initial capacity of 250,000.

Tata has not commented on the margins that it expects to make on the Nano, saying only that the car will be profitable over the long term.

AUTOMOBILES

Ford to make new Fiestas in Rayong

Ford Motor Co has confirmed plans to build its new Fiesta subcompact cars at its Rayong plant in Thailand next year, following the start of production of the models at its plant in Germany last week.

The Rayong plant is under construction to increase domestic production by at least 100,000 cars per year for export. In addition to the Fiesta, the first of a generation of new global small Ford cars, the subcompact Mazda 2 will be built at the plant.

Ford, in partnership with Mazda, is investing more than US$500 million to expand the Rayong plant.

The two companies plan to export the small cars to Asean, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in addition to selling them in the domestic market.

The all-new Fiesta was conceived by the European arm of Ford's global product development team to meet the expectations of customers around the world, according to Ford Motor.

It is also the blueprint for future Ford global development, bringing together Europe, the Americas and Asia. The new Fiesta will be tailored for each region and will go on sale progressively between now and 2010, starting with Europe.

The plant in Cologne, Germany is the first Ford assembly facility in the world to build the new car. It will be followed in January 2009 by another Ford plant in Valencia, Spain.

In addition to Rayong, production sites for the new Fiesta outside of Europe will be Nanjing in China and Cuautitln in Mexico. They will begin to make the cars for their respective regions from late 2008 through early 2010.

For this year, Ford plans to manufacture 148,000 new Fiestas in Cologne. When operating at full capacity, it will make more than 1,900 cars every day.

Since the very first Fiesta was launched in 1976, more than 12 million have been sold, with more than 400,000 customers in 2007 proving the enduring popularity of the model.

GM set to bring Volt electric car to Europe

By Bernard Simon in Toronto

Published: August 17 2008 19:18 | Last updated: August 17 2008 19:18

General Motors is planning to rebadge its Chevrolet Volt electric car as an Opel and bring it to Europe as part of the US carmaker's plans to expand the model range of its highly anticipated new vehicle.

GM is sufficiently encouraged by the development of the Volt that it has begun work on several other similar vehicles.

EDITOR'S CHOICE

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Upbeat GM chief says group past worst - Aug-11

US economy slams brakes on carmakers - Aug-01

Video: Liam Denning on General Motors - Aug-01

A not so happy birthday for General Motors - Aug-02

Bob Boniface, the Volt's design director, said more than two other models were at the scale-model stage of development. The Volt design studio, which employs close to 50 people, is being expanded to cope with the increased work.

One of the follow-up models will be an Opel for sale mainly in Europe. GM is also looking at producing different types of vehicles to the Volt, a mid-sized sedan.

The Detroit carmaker has staked its reputation on the Volt, heavily promoting each stage of the car's development since a concept version was displayed last year. The redesigned production version is due to roll off the assembly line in late 2010.

The Volt and its derivatives will share many components, including a five-foot-long 400lb battery, enabling GM to achieve economies of scale.

Over the past decade carmakers have increasingly used a single platform as the basis for a variety of vehicles as a way of speeding up development and holding down costs.

GM promises that the Volt's lithium-ion battery will have a range of at least 40 miles with a minimum life of 10 years.

The car will be recharged either by plugging it into a normal power socket or, when it is in motion, by a four-cylinder internal combustion engine. Petrol consumption is estimated at about 150 miles per gallon.

Toyota also plans to unveil a plug-in car in 2010. Unlike the Volt, it will be driven both by the battery and the petrol engine. Toyota has said its design will cost far less while delivering almost the same performance.

GM said last week that it would choose the Volt's battery supplier before the end of the year. Two groups led by South Korea's LG Chem and A123Systems of Boston are vying for the contract.

Frank Weber, who heads the Volt project, said the batteries would have enough power. The biggest challenge is maintaining the cells' stability. "Batteries are like human beings, they like room temperature," he said.

GM has yet to disclose the retail price of the Volt but is lobbying for some form of government subsidy to bring the car within reach of the average Chevrolet customer.

Electric vehicles are ex-pected to have limited mass-market appeal in their early years. Robert Bosch, the world's biggest automotive parts supplier, estimates 3m petrol-electric hybrids and between 300,000 and 500,000 electric vehicles will be in operation worldwide by 2015.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Film reveals inventor's fight over wiper design

By JOHN FLESHER
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 14, 2008; 1:13 PM

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- For two decades, Robert Kearns waged an obsessive crusade against the auto industry, which he accused of stealing his invention. It destroyed his marriage, brought on a mental breakdown and may have cost him millions.

All because of a dispute over a humble piece of equipment: the intermittent windshield wiper.

Not exactly the stuff of Hollywood drama, you say? Veteran film producer Marc Abraham would beg to differ. He found Kearns' story so captivating that instead of hiring a director to bring it to the screen, he did the job himself.

"There was something about this story that I felt so personally committed to," said Abraham, who makes his directorial debut with "Flash of Genius," starring Greg Kinnear as Kearns. The movie, distributed by Universal Pictures, was shown during the recent Traverse City Film Festival and opens in theaters Oct. 17.

"I've always had a lot of respect for average working people," said Abraham, a Kentucky native who drove a beer truck, waited tables and sold baby pictures door-to-door while trying to break into show business. "Bob wasn't an ordinary man; he was probably a genius. But as a person, his lifestyle, his family scale, he was just an average guy. So I felt like I understood that."

Kearns died of cancer in 2005 at age 77, four decades after perfecting the intermittent wiper design in his basement workroom. The one-time engineering instructor at Wayne State University in Detroit received numerous patents for his mechanism.

The idea came to him from the irregular blinking of his left eye, which eventually went blind after being struck by a champagne cork on his wedding night.

Kearns took his gadget to Ford Motor Co., which initially showed interest; its engineers had been trying to develop a similar system. But he never reached a licensing agreement with Ford or other automakers, partly because he insisted on forming his own company to manufacture the wipers.

Ford began turning out cars with intermittent wipers in 1969, and competitors soon did likewise. Kearns sued Ford in 1978, claiming patent infringement, and took on Chrysler Corp. four years later.

He ultimately filed lawsuits against 26 companies, including General Motors Corp. Most were tossed out of court, although he won judgments against Ford and Chrysler that ultimately brought him more than $30 million.

Most of the money paid attorneys' fees and other costs of the legal battle, which in the Chrysler case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices refused to overturn the verdict against the company.

Kearns insisted his primary motive wasn't money, but principle _ a point his character makes repeatedly in the film. He turned down settlement offers more lucrative than what he won from juries. To the end, Kearns wanted the automakers to admit they pilfered his design and stop making the wipers so he could do it _ a concession he never received.

"What they did was downright wrong," his character tells jurors in the movie version of the Ford trial, during which Kearns represented himself. "They used another man's work as their own."

Kearns had a nervous breakdown and was committed to a psychiatric ward in the 1970s after discovering Mercedes-Benz was using an intermittent wiper with an electric circuit similar to his. A few years later, his wife left him, saying his single-mindedness had driven them apart.

Abraham, whose credits as a producer include three-time Oscar nominee "Children of Men," "Air Force One," "Spy Game" and "The Emperor's Club," said it took nine years to make the film _ largely because selling the concept to the necessary backers wasn't easy. The intermittent wiper just wasn't as sexy as, say, a factory polluting someone's water and giving children cancer.

"It's not something that's going to change humanity," he said.

Even so, Abraham added, the themes of putting principle before expediency and the courageous loner battling the system are time-honored winners in literature and the cinema.

"Whether you are Bob Kearns or ... Ghandi or Martin Luther King, if you go up against the forces, you will pay."

Despite his sympathy and respect for Kearns, Abraham said he didn't want "Flash of Genius" to caricature him as a spotless, larger-than-life hero _ or Ford as an evil, thieving corporation. The truth, he said, is more nuanced.

Like his on-screen character, the real Kearns could be maddeningly stubborn and even paranoid. When Abraham first telephoned to propose the film after reading about the case in a New Yorker magazine article, Kearns suspected he might be a Ford spy.

"You think to yourself, 'What's wrong with this guy?'" Abraham said. "He's an addict in some ways. He wants to give it up, but he can't."

Meanwhile, Ford insiders are portrayed as acting more out of frustration with Kearns' quirkiness and the need to meet corporate deadlines than a blatant intent to defraud.

"I think they had a leg to stand on, in a certain way," Abraham said. "I think they thought, 'We would have come up with this anyway, based on the amount of time and energy and research and people we had on it.'

"But I don't think they had come up with it yet. And what Bob Kearns came up with _ whether or not it was the most revolutionary idea anyone ever had _ was Bob's idea. They were denying him his dignity."

Other characters are shown with strengths and weaknesses, including Kearns' wife Phyllis (Lauren Graham), a business partner who eventually deserts him, (Dermot Mulroney), and Kearns' attorney (Alan Alda).

Despite its warts-and-all depiction, Abraham said he believes Kearns would have liked "Flash of Genius" and wishes he had lived long enough to see it.

The inventor's son, Dennis Kearns, who helped his father prepare for the Ford trial, gave the film a thumbs-up.

"It's a huge victory," said Kearns, 53, of Waterford, Mich. "It shows that there is justice in the world, that you can't steal something and get away with it."

Ford and Chrysler spokesmen said they hadn't seen the film and could not comment.

"We're not going to reopen the case," said Wes Sherwood of Ford. "We're clearly focused on moving Ford forward and tomorrow's innovations."

___

How the Blue Jeans Business Works in the Global Economy

From Belgium

Preamble

In the last section we took an overview of the workings of the global economy. Here we will look at the micro effects of globalisation and talk about the daily routine of a Chinese sweat shop worker. We will then appreciate the true cost in human terms of those cheap imports. Much of this is taken from the documentary film China Blue. Then we will go on to see how household brand names in the blue jeans sector operate their businesses.

An Individual Case – The Life of a Chinese Worker in the Global Economy

At sixteen years of age, Jasmine was a tad older than many when she left her village to become one of China's' 110 million internal economic migrants. After two days and two nights train journey she arrived in the city of Canton, part of China's industrial south with 100 Yuan given by her father and all of her world contained in a back pack and a green plastic bucket. Pride filled her heart when she found work at a blue jeans factory in a nearby town. Now she had left her childhood behind and could help to support her aging parents. Her duties were as a loose thread cutter and lint remover and right at the beginning it was explained that she would be working seven on seven and there would be overtime. It was shortly afterwards that the reality of her situation began to set in. Mainly because of the level of overtime required it was necessary for her to live on the premises. Her dormitory on the third level, was shared with twelve other girls whose age ranged between 14 (2 years below China's legal limit) and 19. Her bed was a mattress inside a concrete crate structure with a pull back curtain on the open side. All personal washing and washing of clothes was done in this room and all water had to be brought up by hand in buckets. Living expenses and meals provided from a canteen were deducted from her meagre pay. Work began at 0800 sharp and after learning the job it was straight into production and gruelling overtime. It was here that Jasmine learned that she must work a month in hand and if at any future time she left for any reason the boss didn't like this would probably be forfeited. Still all was not so bad, if the overtime went past midnight, which was common, the boss would provide them with a free meal. The pace was gruelling and the mountain of jeans in front of her never went down. After several weeks the constant workload began to tell on her. Because she could be fined for falling asleep on the job, she slipped out of the factory gate one night to buy a high energy drink to keep her going, got caught on her return and was fined two days pay as an example to the others. Colleagues resorted to clipping their eyelids open with clothes pegs. Sometimes to provide continuity of work, the boss would take orders at close to cost price and then would resort to cutting the workers hourly rate. If the girls ever missed a deadline the boss would become angry and cancel a days pay for the whole factory. On a wall on a bend in the stairs to the dorm stood a notice which read "If you don't work hard today you will work hard tomorrow looking for another job". For all of this Jasmine accepted her lot with youthful cheerfulness. Three things kept her going, the good camaraderie with the girls in her dorm; memories of her family and village life and her diary in which she wrote endless pages of half fairy story, half super hero comic strip tales, thereby exposing her youth to view. It gave her pride to send her father his 100 Yuan back. At one US dollar per pair of jeans allocated to the workforce of between 25 – 30 people, her hourly rate amounted to about six US cents. With overtime this left her with about a dollar a day. The only time Jasmine's cheerful facade cracked was at the New Year holiday when she was the only one who could not afford the train fare back to her village.

The factory owner allowed clandestine filming of China Blue within his factory for two reasons. Firstly he was led to believe that the film was about him as one of the new breed of Chinese entrepreneurs, and secondly he was proud of his factory and considered himself to be very advanced and fair minded towards his employees compared to other factory owners in the area.

The Blue Jeans Business as an Example of the Global Economy in Practice

Are you wearing blue jeans today? Is the brand a household name? If it is then the chances are that they were made in a sweat shop in China, Indonesia, Mexico or another third world country. They could even have been made with sweat shop labour in Los Angeles with a "Made in America" tag sewn in and you wouldn't even be aware of it. Whether you paid $20 or $200 for them, they all cost around $5 at the factory gates, out of which the total workforce gets a $1.00 share. The rest of the money goes towards advertising, distribution and store costs and the back pockets of the executives. Price alone is not an indication of quality or a garment made with social morality. It is not even the factory bosses who are taking the icing off the cake; multinational purchasing and procurement departments play one factory owner against another with all the subtlety of a Bronx mugger, sometimes beating him down to cost price or less. Have a look through this short list and see if you can find your favourite brand here.

The Limited Inc

Price range $59.50 - $98.00

Buys from sweat shops around the world where young girls live in cramped dorms and work up to 70 hours a week.

TLI washed its hands of the whole business by saying "Limited Brands holds its employees, suppliers and vendors strictly accountable for compliance with all applicable laws and our own business policies, including those relating to labour standards". In 2003 The Limited Inc settled a lawsuit which accused it and other multinational brands of forcing thousands of garment workers in Saipan to work more than 12 hour days, seven days a week, in a "racketeering conspiracy" that required workers to sign contracts waving their rights. By settling The Limited did not admit any wrongdoing.

The Limited owns the following brands: The Limited; Express; Bath and Body works; Victoria's Secret, Structure; Lane Bryant and Abercrombie and Fitch.

Tommy Hilfiger

Price range $62.50 – 125.00

Mexican workers reported working in slave labour conditions earning $40 / week for 10 h + days. Workers who tried to unionise were fired. In response, a statement from Tommy Hilfiger said,"I think it is absurd people make clothes in places in the world that are not of US standards".

When the Tarrant factory in Mexico got itself into a wrangle over unjustly firing workers, Tommy Hilfiger responded by quitting Mexico in a classic cut and run exercise to relocate in other parts of Latin America and Asia where sweat shops abound.

Tommy Hilfiger pays its factory floor workers an hourly rate of between 23 cents and $1.75. CEO Tommy Hilfiger's hourly wage is $10,769

Guess?

Price range $79 - $168

"Guess?" ran an estimated 80 sweat shops in Los Angeles employing mostly Latina and Asian women. It paid workers less than the minimum wage for 10 – 12 hour days.

In response to criticisms, the company did not improve conditions but instead ran full page ads in major American newspapers proclaiming "Guaranteed 100% free of sweat shop labour" and it even sewed "Sweatshop Free" labels into its garments.

In 1992 "Guess?" contractors were accused of not paying their employees the minimum wage or overtime. "Guess?" recompensed the workers but was again soon busted for operating illegal sweatshops. In 1996 when workers tried to organise "Guess?" cut and ran to Mexico and Latin America to avoid labour abuse citations. The company still advertises itself as "All American".

Levi Strauss & Co

Price range $14.98 - $192.00

Saipan is a US commonwealth exempt from American labour laws. Companies who operate are legally entitled to sew "Made in America" tags into their garments. Sweat shop workers there were forced to pay recruitment fees of thousands of dollars. To work off the debt they were kept in indentured servitude. In 2002, 26 of Americas' largest clothing retailers including Gap, Target and Lane Bryant were found guilty of sweat shop abuses, Levi Strauss was the only company that refused to settle. Linda Butler for Levi Strauss responded "We believe we can operate profitably and with principles at the same time. We've done that for many years. A business needs to be profitable. The question is how does one implement tough business decisions with compassion, while avoiding decisions that that have a negative impact on stakeholders?" How indeed!

In 1992 the Washington Post exposed the company of sidestepping the sweatshop issue altogether by having their jeans made by Chinese prison labour. Ten years later the famous all American brand quit America in favour of China and the third world.

In 2001 its workers in Saipan enjoyed an hourly rate of $3.00. Levi Strauss's CEO Philip Marineau had a yearly income of $25.1 million, amounting to $11,971 / hour.

Wal-Mart

Price range $8.00 – 19.94

20% of Wal-Mart's business is conducted in 48 Third World countries outside China. If Wal-Mart was a country it would be China's fifth biggest export market ahead of Britain and Germany.

A Nicaraguan jeans inspector for Wal-Mart inspected 20,000 jeans each week for an hourly wage of 40 cents. Other workers in the Philippines were forced to work 24 hours straight for the No Boundaries brand. In Bangladesh, children aged between nine and twelve have been found working in Wal-Mart sweatshops. In Honduras children worked up to 13 hours a day for 25 cents an hour sewing jeans which sold for $20.00 in the USA.

Wal-Mart's official statement on sweatshops states "Wal-Mart strives to do business only with factories run legally and ethically". Obviously they are not striving hard enough.

Workers who make Wal-Mart products regularly experience health problems and labour violations. Including overtime without pay and wage rates up to 30% below the countries minimum. Wal-Mart will not terminate its contract with any factory even if it is found to have violated Wal-Mart's own code of conduct. It is only if that particular company fails inspections three times in a row that the contract will not be renewed. With annual revenue of $250 billion Wal-Mart is the world's largest corporation making up 2% of USA's GDP.

Are There Any Ethical Companies in the Business?

All of the above has probably left you asking just that question. Two of the following three companies are reported to be American, the other is Canadian; they are fully unionised and genuinely sweat shop free. They are not major brands, in fact you may not have heard of them. As one CEO put it "If we give it to the workers then we cannot spend it on advertising."

Diamond Gusset Jeans

Union Jean Company

No Sweat

Sources

China Blue from PBS Independent Lens:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/film.html

Guess?:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/guess.html

Levi Strauss & Co:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/levis.html

The Limited Inc:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/limited.html

Tommy Hilfiger:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/hilfiger.html

Wal-Mart:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/walmart.html

Sweatshop Alternatives:

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/more.html

SMALL CARS

Ford's Italian bloodline

The second generation Ka shares the same mechanicals as the Fiat 500 but it is totally different in looks

Ka's interior looks more striking than the 500's.

These are the first official pictures of Ford's new Ka succeeding the first-generation model, which has been on the European market for 12 years. Ford's new three-door baby will make its world premiere at the Paris Motor Show in October.

- The Ka uses the same platform as the Fiat 500, but is vastly different on the skin inside and outside the car. Mazda is rumoured to stake in the deal with its version likely to be called 1 and could be showcased in a concept also in Paris.

- No technical details were released, although the running gear is expected to be that of the 500: 1.2- and 1.4-litre petrol engines, plus a 1.3-litre turbo-diesel. Expect an ST version in the future to match the 500 Abarth.

- Manual gearboxes is expected to make up for most sales, although an automatic version in the guise of twin-clutch Powershift is possible. The 500 currently sticks to the lighter but less smooth robotised manual 'box.

- While the 500 has been tuned for comfort-style commuting, expect Ford to stick to its usual virtues of sportiness. This could include a re-tuned steering system and tauter suspension setting.

- Like before, the Ka is unlikely to come to Thailand as Ford will have to build it in this region to enjoy competitive prices of under B500,000. Plans for a five-door is not likely, further reducing its appeal in the country, unless the prices are attractive.

ANOTHER THING : Earlier this year, the Thai government has cajoled Fiat into taking part in the Eco-car project, theoretically making it possible for Ford (and Mazda) to join hands with the Italians.

Mitsubishi electric car to get U.S. market test by PG & E, Edison

A handful of MiEV cars will be sent to the utilities, which will evaluate whether there's a mass market for them here.

By Ken Bensinger

9:40 AM PDT, August 7, 2008

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will bring electric cars to the U.S. starting this fall in test programs announced today with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison.

The Japanese automaker will deliver fewer than a dozen of its tiny MiEV electric cars to the utilities, but the company said it plans to use the programs to determine whether the U.S. is a viable mass market for such vehicles.

"It's an important market and we want to evaluate if electric cars are feasible as a commercial technology," said David Patterson, Mitsubishi's senior manager for regulatory affairs and certification.

Currently, only one company sells electric cars in the U.S., San Carlos, Calif.-based Tesla, which began delivering its $100,000 Roadster in April. Electric cars made by General Motors, Toyota and other major carmakers were available on limited lease terms in California in the late 1990s, but most of those cars were recalled and the lease programs were discontinued.

Now, with gasoline prices roughly triple their 1990s prices, interest in electric cars has risen significantly and a number of automakers are considering the technology, including Nissan and General Motors, which plans to release its electric Volt in late 2010.

Mitsubishi will begin selling the MiEV in Japan starting in August 2009 for between $45,000 and $50,000, not including government incentives of more than $15,000. A non-electric version of the car retails in Japan for around $20,000.

The largest component in the price, said Patterson, is the car's advanced lithium ion battery, produced by Lithium Energy Japan. Battery technology is considered the main obstacle to widespread adoption of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

The battery, which can be charged in five to seven hours using 220-volt current, gives the MiEV a 75-mile range and a top speed of 81 mph. It can hold three passengers and the driver.

ken.bensinger@latimes.com