GM and German Government Still Wrangling Over Opel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s race to save automaker Opel — and the jobs of its 25,000 employees in Germany — is beginning to look like a high-speed pileup that could cost her at the polls. To get talks with Opel owners General Motors back on track, Merkel is reportedly ready to abandon her previous plan to force GM to sell a controlling stake in its European business to a consortium of Canadian-Austrian car-parts maker Magna International and Russia’s Sberbank

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Flight 447 mystery likely to cast shadow over Paris Air Show

The world’s premier air show takes place in Paris next week, with the recent loss of Air France flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean likely to cast a shadow over the event. The annual Paris Air Show at Le Bourget, which this year celebrates its 100th anniversary, gives the air transport industry the chance to promote the latest innovations in aerospace technology and attract buyers for both commercial and military aircraft. Manufacturing giants Boeing and Airbus are two of the most high-profile organizations at the show as a result of their stranglehold over the commercial airliner market

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Germany’s Solution to Big Auto’s Woes: Scrap That Clunker!

Amid the gruesome headlines generated by the world’s auto industry these days, it almost read like a typo: new car registrations in Germany rose 21% year-on-year in February, the country’s Association of the Automotive Industry announced March 3. This, though, was no error. The 278,000 cars put on the road, crowed Matthias Wissmann, VDA’s president, amounted to “the highest level of sales in the month of February for ten years.” Why the splurge German drivers have latched onto a juicy new deal

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