“GM will soon present its restructuring plan to Germany and other governments and hopes for its favorable consideration,” said Fritz Henderson, president and CEO. “We understand the complexity and length of this issue has been draining for all involved. However, from the outset, our goal has been to secure the best long term solution for our customers, employee, suppliers, and dealers, which is reflected in the decision reached today. This was deemed to be the most stable and least costly approach for securing Opel/Vauxhall’s long-term future.”

On a preliminary basis, the GM plan entails total restructuring expenses of about € 3 billion, significantly lower than all bids submitted as part of the investor solicitation. GM will work with all European labor unions to develop a plan for meaningful contributions to Opel’s restructuring. While Opel continues to outperform against its viability plan assumptions and immediate liquidity is stable, time is of the essence.

The holiest day of the year is ripe for matchmaking because it draws big crowds to synagogue, including young people who don't often attend. 'Every year the skirts are getting shorter,' a woman says.
Yom Kippur, the holiest and most somber day of the Jewish calendar, is a time for repentance, traditionally reserved for fasting and intense prayer. But scores of Iranian American Jews in Los Angeles, many of whom congregate in just a handful of synagogues across the city, aren't just looking for forgiveness on the Day of Atonement.

They're looking for love.

Facing enormous pressure from their families to marry within the community, many of these young people -- and their matchmaking relatives -- say they use the day to scope out potential romantic interests and tap into vast social networks to get the scoop on prospective candidates.

The irritability and less-than-fresh breath that can accompany the 25-hour fast don't seem to stop many of them from dressing up and synagogue-hopping from the San Fernando Valley to the Westside in search of a soul mate.

It seems as if people are having trouble deciding if having the CARS program blowing through a billion dollars in a week is a good thing or a bad thing. We wanted to look at what has happened from an environmental standpoint.

Because the specifics of all of the cars traded and sold are obviously out of our reach at the moment (as well as the government’s, it seems), let’s just calculate the absolute minimal environmental difference the $1 billion made. Because consumers could take advantage of the CARS program as long as they traded in a car that got a combined fuel economy of less than 18 mpg for one that got an EPA rating of 4 mpg more than the trade-in, we’ll use only that example.

This may be shocking to some people but the corporate media has continued to assist the Republican Party in their obfuscation tactics. Why else would so many angry white men blathering on about nothing get so much air time? Except theirs is a concentrated effort at spreading misinformation and telling lies to an audience of people who've been battered and are on the brink. It's why some will claim they're just "commentators" as if that was a harmless thing. They act as if they were being accused of high treason from reading the weather report instead of disseminating a carefully constructed message with code words that activate cell members to engage in their planned destruction. It goes far beyond dog-whistle catch words related to appealing to certain voters - though we saw it in action during the Presidential race last year.

We send our condolences to the family members and relatives of this latest tragedy. Air France has confirmed that the missing plane has crashed.
Air France confirms the plane crash
An Air France plane feared to have crashed in the Atlantic with 228 people aboard reported electrical problems in stormy weather before it lost contact, the airline said Monday, describing the loss as a “catastrophe.”
Officials said the Airbus A330-200 sent automated messages of electrical failure and pressure loss as it hit turbulence, vanishing from the radar early in its flight from Rio de Janeiro to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
Brazil and France have scrambled search and rescue aircraft on both sides of the Atlantic, but with a vast area to scour, there were dwindling hopes of finding survivors.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said most of the passengers are Brazilian, and about 40 are French.
“It doesn’t change anything; they’re all victims,” he told reporters at Charles de Gaulle, where he had arrived to meet with relatives of the missing.