CNN: GM, Ford sales gains outpace Toyota
Major automakers all reported large gains in May sales, with industry totals helped greatly by a spike in sales to business customers rather than to individual consumers.
Overall U.S. auto sales increased 19% compared to the very weak sales of a year ago, according to sales tracker Autodata. That was a bit higher than even the most bullish forecasts.
The Age: Argentines face trial for Condor deaths
Six Argentine ex-military officials are facing trial after being accused of human rights abuses and the deaths of 65 people under a secret plan by several South American dictatorships in the 1970s.
Observers hope the trial will finally shed light on the shadowy Operation Condor to repress dissidents across the region.
And they are hoping to unlock the secrets of the infamous Automotores Orletti torture centre in Buenos Aires, one of several clandestine prisons used by the military dictatorship.
Boston Herald: Police: US lawyer held in Rwanda attempts suicide
A U.S. law professor jailed in Rwanda and charged with denying the country’s genocide tried to commit suicide by swallowing dozens of pills in his prison cell, Rwandan officials said Wednesday, but his daughter said his family doesn’t believe the claim.
Peter Erlinder, 62, a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, has long been a sharp critic of the central African nation’s president and even helped file a lawsuit accusing the one-time rebel leader of sparking the slaughter that erupted there in 1994.
The professor, who has a history of taking on unpopular causes, was arrested about a week after going to Rwanda to help with the legal defense of Victoire Ingabire, an opposition leader running against President Paul Kagame in Aug. 9 elections. Ingabire is accused of promoting genocidal ideology.
BBC: Gunman kills 12 people in Cumbria rampage
Twelve people were killed by a gunman who went on the rampage across Cumbria in north-west England.
Taxi driver Derrick Bird shot dead a colleague in the town of Whitehaven, before driving through the countryside apparently targeting people at random.
Eleven others were injured, three critically and five seriously.
Mr Bird's body was found in a wooded area in Boot in the Lake District, where a shotgun and a rifle fitted with a telescopic sight were recovered.
Telegraph: Eat less meat to save the planet - UN
The world needs to change to a more vegetarian diet to stand a chance of tackling climate change, according to a major new United Nations report.
The group of international scientists said the greatest cause of greenhouse gas emissions is food production and the use of fossil fuels.
But while the use of coal and oil could be gradually replaced by renewable energy sources like wind and solar, the world will always need to eat.
As the world population increases it is feared that the production of food will become the main cause of climate change and environmental degradation.
Excite News: BP will likely survive spill, but worth much less
BP is probably sturdy enough to survive the worst oil spill in U.S. history. But investors are shaving billions of dollars off its value with every day that crude gushes into the Gulf of Mexico.
On Tuesday alone, the first trading day since BP's latest attempt at a fix failed, and the day the government announced it had opened a criminal probe into the disaster, its stock took a hit of 15 percent.
The British oil giant is worth $75 billion less on the open market than it was when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six weeks ago. Other companies involved in the spill - Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron - have all lost at least 30 percent in value.
And as oil seeps unchecked into the Gulf, nearby states, businesses, environmental regulators and injured workers and cleanup crews are eyeing damages that could total billions more.
McClatchy: Obama orders oil companies to resubmit drilling plans similar to BP's
The Obama administration late Wednesday moved swiftly to plug a hole in its much touted six-month ban on new deepwater drilling when the Interior Department ordered oil companies to overhaul and resubmit dozens of exploration plans that had already been approved but were virtually identical to BP's and that called major spills and environmental damage "unlikely."
The action came after McClatchy informed the White House and Interior officials that it had reviewed 31 deepwater exploration and development plans approved for the Gulf under the Obama administration and found that all of them downplayed the threat of spills to marine life and fisheries.
The language scarcely varied from company to company, suggesting that the plans were pumped out like boilerplate. Of the 31 plans McClatchy reviewed, 14 were approved since the April 20 explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Washington Post: Obama hopes oil spill boosts support for climate bill
In a speech at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, Obama made one of his strongest pitches for comprehensive climate legislation, arguing that the case for breaking the nation's addiction to fossil fuels has been made clearer by the environmental catastrophe in the gulf.
The president vowed to gather votes for the climate bill in the "coming months" and repeated his intention to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks on big oil companies, to tap natural gas reserves as an alternative to coal, and to increase reliance on nuclear power -- although energy experts said that such a program would leave the country just as dependent on offshore oil.
"I will make the case for a clean-energy future wherever I can, and I will work with anyone from either party to get this done. But we will get this done," Obama said. "The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century."
Indianapolis Star: Carson calls for look into flotilla raid
Rep. Andre Carson is calling for a fact-finding investigation into an Israeli naval raid that killed nine pro-Palestinian activists sailing to Gaza.
The Muslim congressman says the international community must move quickly to gather the facts surrounding the tragedy and prevent heightened tensions from leading to more deaths.
Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to Gaza on Monday, and nine activists were killed.
Carson, a Democrat from Indianapolis, also says the incident underscores the need to address conditions in Gaza. Several thousand Gazans rushed toward Egypt to escape the blockaded territory Tuesday after Egypt announced it was opening its border.
San Francisco Chronicle: Obama extends benefits to gays
President Obama has signed an executive memorandum directing all federal agencies to extend fringe benefits to gay and lesbian employees, to the extent permitted by law. That law is the 1994 Defense of Marriage Act, which bans extension of federal benefits to anyone in a same-sex marriage. The word marriage turns out to be more limiting than the original authors may have intended.
Here's the statement from the White House.
(Click the above link to view the statement on the Chronicle website.)
Palm Beach Post: Ex-Florida GOP chair Greer leaves jail after being indicted for grand theft, money laundering
State agents and Seminole County deputies walked into ousted Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer's Oviedo mansion Wednesday morning while he was shaving and hauled him off to jail on corruption charges, alleging that he pocketed at least $125,000 in party funds.
A statewide grand jury indicted Greer, 47, of Oviedo, on six felony counts of grand theft, money laundering and running an organized scheme to defraud, charges that could carry a maximum of 75 years in prison.
According to state investigators, Greer devised a scheme to siphon off a cut of the donations from major Republican donors after he had fallen on hard financial times, despite a party salary of $130,000 a year.
Statewide Prosecutor William Shepherd said Greer used a company called Victory Strategies LLC to launder the money, pocketing a total of $125,161.50. Greer's hand-picked executive director and partner in Victory Strategies, Delmar Johnson, collected another $65,093, according to an affidavit that accompanied a search warrant sought by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Reuters: Ford to eliminate Mercury brand
Ford Motor Co will eliminate its Mercury brand which has seen sales and investment plunge in recent years, closing out a vehicle lineup created in the 1930s by Edsel Ford, the automaker said on Wednesday.
Ford declined to reveal the cost of eliminating the Mercury brand, but said it expected to shift those resources to expanding its Lincoln luxury brand and did not plan any job cuts. Ford plans to cease Mercury production in the fourth quarter.
Mercury, established to serve as a bridge between the mass-market Ford brand and Lincoln, has seen sales dwindle from a peak in the late 1970s. Its U.S. market share has been falling for several years and is now less than 1 percent.
MSNBC: Unemployment falls in most metro areas
Unemployment rates fell in April for more than 90 percent of the nation's 372 largest metro areas as hiring picked up around the country.
The Labor Department says the jobless rate dropped in 346 areas last month. It rose in only 12 and remained flat in 14.
That's much better than March, when unemployment fell in 257 areas and rose in 89.