Word: carly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Friday night police shot dead two militants, Aher Setiawan and Eko Joko Sarjono, in a Jakarta suburb. Police said the men, believed to be Top's accomplices, were making a car bomb with 500 kg of explosives to be used on the President's home in Cikeas, outside of Jakarta. Now, with Top's apparent death, Indonesians can hope that such terror plots will be the exception rather than the rule...
...Under the German program, which started in February, anyone who scraps a car that is at least nine years old can apply for a government subsidy of $3,600 toward the purchase of a new car. The German federal government has earmarked about $7 billion for the plan, which has been so popular that car sales in Germany could hit a 10-year high of 3.5 million vehicles this year...
...problem for the police is that German lawmakers were in such a hurry to approve the money to boost the car industry that they did not create sufficient controls to prevent abuse of the system. Dealers are supposed to scrap the cars, but if they don't, it's only considered a minor violation, not a criminal offense. "It just opens the door for abuse," says Ronald Schulze, an official at the Federation of German Detectives. "We can't charge them with fraud because lawmakers failed to define the crime." (See the 50 worst cars of all time...
...probably too late for Germany to do anything about its black market in clunkers. The abuse could have been prevented if lawmakers had also created a control system to track each car from the point of hand over to the scrap heap. And the police could have prosecuted dealers who sell the cars instead of scrapping them if lawmakers had made it a crime. Instead, the hands of the police are tied, and as Germany's cash-for-clunkers program runs its course - it's limited to 2 million cars - public interest in cases of abuse will likely fade...
...Soon, though, the debate will get back to the plans' central flaw. From Berlin to Baltimore, government subsidies to boost car manufacturers hit by the recession have been a huge short-term success. But where will the consumers come from when the government aid runs out? "These scrapping schemes bring forward sales that would have occurred later," says Tim Urquhart, automotive analyst at IHS Global Insight in London. "They are just deferring the pain...