Meriva sales begin in May.(News)(Brief Article)

Byline: Dorothee Ostle

Opel's product-led turnaround will get another boost when the new Meriva arrives in dealerships on May 7.

Order books opened in March and the [euro]14,000 small minivan is already attracting interest from customers, said Opel Chairman Carl-Peter Forster.

The Meriva is the first example of Opel's new component strategy - as opposed to platform strategy. Only 20 percent of the parts used for the Meriva are common with other Opel vehicles. But those common components are the most expensive to develop, such as engines, drivetrain, axles and electronic architecture.

Opel is aiming the Meriva at female buyers and families …

Saudi Radio hosts talk show on education.

Byline: Hussam Al-Mayman

(Category: Kingdom)

RIYADH: Saudi Radio hosted yesterday members of the US Embassy's Education Advising Office to speak on topics and programs to be discussed during International Education Week 2008, which begins tomorrow.

Karen Bauer, education adviser, and Hannah Draper, vice consul for education, were invited on the show to discuss the resources and services they provide. They also provided listeners with details of scheduled events for the week.

The week, a joint initiative of the US departments of State and Education, is part of the US efforts to promote programs that prepare Americans for a global …

COULD FRED LEBRUN DEFINE CRUEL, INHUMANE?(MAIN)

Byline: NICK PASCUCCI Kinderhook

Who is this Fred LeBrun? This person who states ``there is nothing wrong with trapping, not morally or otherwise. Properly practiced, it is neither cruel nor inhumane.'' What moral and ethical …

No registration required.(Inside Politics)

North Dakota is the only state that does not require voter registration. And folks there see no reason to change that, thank you very much.

"What we have presently works quite well," said Secretary of State Al Jaeger (R). "Nobody's ever been prosecuted for voter fraud that I know of. There's still a level of familiarity at the polls when you come in."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

That's not hard to believe in North Dakota, a Great Plains state with 640,000 inhabitants--the fourth smallest population in the country. Workers at the 666 polling sites could indeed know or at least recognize the voters coming in. The only time trouble arises, Jaeger said, is …

Edwards Presses on With 2008 Campaign

WASHINGTON - Democrat John Edwards said Thursday that his presidential campaign "goes on strongly" in the face of a repeat cancer diagnosis for his wife, Elizabeth, a somber development that thrust his White House bid into uncharted territory.

The couple revealed that Elizabeth Edwards' breast cancer had spread to her bone during a news conference designed to reassure the public about the prognosis for her health and his candidacy.

"The bottom line is, her cancer is back," said John Edwards, the 2004 vice presidential nominee and former senator, at a news conference in their hometown of Chapel Hill, N.C. "We are very optimistic about this, because having been through some …

German Federal Press Office deploys Dimetis BOSS STREAM Recorder.(Brief article)

The German Federal Press Office has deployed the Dimetis BOSS STREAM Recorder for the documentation of regular news, political magazines and other politically relevant television programs.

Broadcast signals can be recorded continuously and retrieved on demand as ASI/IP stream, data or DVD. ETSI TR 101 …

HUGE INCOME GAP IS BAD FOR AMERICA BY STEVEN RATTNER.(MAIN)

The litany of well-founded complaints about the latest tax legislation seems endless. More complications for a tax code both parties profess to want to simplify. New frontiers in using gimmickry to hide the legislation's true cost. Questionable usefulness in sparking our economy. And another enormous hit to our horrifying long-term fiscal outlook.

Add to this list one more pernicious aspect of the U.S. economy now made worse: the huge gap in income among Americans, the widest of any major country and not getting noticeably better.

According to a Federal Reserve study this year, pretax family incomes of the top 10 percent grew by 19.3 percent between 1998 and 2001 after inflation, compared with 11.9 percent for the rest of Americans. Last fall the Census Bureau found that by any of five sophisticated measures, the gap in incomes has continued to widen.

Most discussions of income …