Word: auto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cars have been around for almost 170 years, but it's not just the limitations of battery power that have thwarted their more widespread use. Since Scottish businessman Robert Anderson pioneered the first electric carriage in the 1830s, most electric vehicles have lacked one of the key markers of auto success: good looks. Just take a look at La Jamais Contente, designed by Belgian Camille Jénatzy in 1899, or Billard and Zarpe's space-age oddity, the Elektra King (1961). Even today's models - the REVA, or Zap!'s Xebra - are proof that the best adjective to describe...
...Louisiana bordello; the title promises and delivers burlesque. But burlesque in the older sense of parody, travesty, impudent fun. There is humid sexuality at the start of the two-hour extravaganza (topless acrobat on a phallic pole, Madonna easing a whip past her crotch, dancers gyrating in auto-massage), but it soon gives way to simpler, sunnier images. For Rain, Madonna dons demure black; the look says, ''Listen to the sad ballad, the sweet harmonies.'' For Express Yourself, she's dolled up in royal blue bell-bottoms and a frizz wig, to pay homage to the gaudy innocence...
...years. To critics, however, these seemingly encouraging figures conceal a worrisome ''hollowing out'' of U.S. manufacturing companies. As they see it, many American firms, while contributing their share to the GNP, have become reassembly plants for foreign parts and products. Nowhere is hollowing out more controversial than in the auto industry. Today some 15% of the parts in U.S.-built cars, ranging from engines to transmissions, are made abroad, and a United Auto Workers' study projects that the percentage will rise to 28% by 1995. Robert Reich, a political economist at Harvard and author of The Next American Frontier...
...list of new cuts included the elimination of the dividend on common stock, all executive bonuses and, with the apparent approval of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, health-care coverage for salaried retirees over the age of 65. In addition, GM plans to launch a new wave of buyouts among its 32,000 salaried employees while freezing their salaries for the remainder of 2008 and 2009. The benefit cuts and early retirements are expected to reduce GM's salary costs by 20%, saving the company $1.5 billion by the end of 2009, GM executives said...
...benefits of the auto restrictions come from not just taking polluting cars off the streets. Beijing's notorious traffic jams mean that even newer, efficient cars pollute more than if they were traveling in free-flowing traffic, says Hao Jiming, a professor of environmental science at Tsinghua University. "Driver speeds will increase, especially in urban areas. The high speed makes emissions lower," Hao says. He estimates that simply removing cars will cut pollutants by 40%, and the higher speeds of the remaining vehicles will mean an additional 10% reduction in pollutants. Beijing has added subway lines and increased its number...