World Business

Thanks to eco-image-consciousness and soaring pump prices, sales finally rev up—even in the U.S.

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To Daimler’s jocular surprise, most U.S. buyers are going for the upscale Smarts Matthew Roberts/ZUMA Press

by Jack Ewing

Stuttgart - For principally of its 10-year history, Daimler’s (DAI) Smart car division has had a reputation for structure fine cars that lose big money. In 2005 and 2006, Stuttgart-based Daimler recorded more than $3 billion in restructuring costs for the division that produced the diminutive two-seater. Frustrated execs at one trifling concern vowed to vend the division or kill the quirky vehicle whether or not they couldn’t fix the chronic money loser.

Turns out the Smart may simply have been ahead of its time. Suddenly, Smart sales are soaring, even in the U.S., where the brand has been use since January. Smart USA has sold more than 14,000 cars in the U.S.—about double what Daimler expected—and there is a yearlong waiting list. Worldwide, Smart sales are up 57% this year, to 81,300 vehicles, and Daimler has added shifts at its factory in Hambach, France. Daimler doesn’t disclose results for Smart singly, but analysts expect operating proceeds of about $75 million on sales of $1.5 billion. The 5% margin compares to about 8% for Mercedes cars in the manner that a whole.

Gas prices only provide a partial explanation for the Smart’s surge. True, the Smart, with a three-cylinder engine and colorful easily moulded visible form panels, gets excessive mileage. At 41 mpg onward the public road, the Smart is the in the greatest degree fuel-efficient nonhybrid gasoline car on American roads. A diesel version (not available in the U.S.) gets 71 mpg.

But Smart buyers aren’t your medium penny-pinchers. Many are feeder, design-conscious folks who have seen Smarts during trips to Europe and own at least one other car. To Daimler’s bewilder, only 5% of U.S. customers choose the $11,590 base model, instead ordering spiffier versions such as the $16,590 convertible. Though some drivers say the Smart feels like a mouse amidst elephants on the highway, Ron Moreau, a 74-year-old Williamsburg (Va.) resident, says his two Lexus models have hardly left the driveway since he bought a $16,800 Smart Passion in July. “You don’t want to be picking your nose while you’re driving the car, for the reason that everyone’s looking,” he says.

Along by BMW’s Mini, the Smart is proof that Americans last will and testament buy premium-priced small cars. The big change isn’t so much gas prices, yet a shift in attitudes. Status-conscious buyers now fear that an SUV brands them similar to contributors to global warming who help prop up petro-dictators. Drivers these days ask themselves, “Do you need to consume two liters of gas to buy one liter of milk?” says Anders Sundt Jensen, head of the Smart brand at Daimler.

Making money on small cars, even expensive ones, remains a exception. Smart’s turnaround is the result not only of strong sales but also of cost-cutting, such in the same proportion that discontinuing a slow-selling four-door model. In the U.S., Daimler outsourced sales to mega-dealer Penske Automotive (PAG) to avoid the cost of a dealer network, so Smart USA has only 25 employees. Smart has spent inferior than $10 million on marketing, mostly on publicity-generating events so as a convoy to 50 cities whither people could fond look and drive the cars.

Of course, there’s a risk that Smart sales last will and testament fade for the reason that the novelty wears right hand. And rivalry is heating up. Outside the U.S., Toyota ™ is poised to launch its stylish iQ, that is a foot longer and can seat three adults. Daimler, though, is betting that the two-seat Smart’s upright half face, that puts drivers at perforation level through full-sized cars, will give it an advantage over the lower-slung iQ. Says Marc-Rene Tonn, every analyst at bank M.M. Warburg in Hamburg: “The segment is growing thriftless enough that there’s room for everybody.”

DALLAS A body fix in a unconnected unrelated area was been identified as the clerk whose etc. from a store in a scanty North Texas town was recorded by security cameras, authorities said Sunday.

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Mindy Daffern, 46, had been missing from the time of Friday from the store her family owns in the city of Scotland, 130 miles northwest of Dallas. Surveillance camera videotape showed her being confronted at gunpoint by each unmasked man who walked her outside the store.

A man suspected in the abduction led investigators to the body Saturday and Texas Rangers confirmed it was Daffern, Archer County Sheriff Ed Daniels said Sunday.

Wallace Bowman Jr., 30, of Bowie, was being held on charges of aggravated spoliation and kidnapping and Daniels said he is expected to subsist charged through capital homicide. His security was regulate at $3 million.

Bowman did not yet have each attorney to speak for him, Daniels said.

Daffern’s body was found in a abstracted circuit near the town of Sunset in neighboring Montague County. Investigators were awaiting on an autopsy report, Daniels before-mentioned.

“She was just a down to terraqueous orb, good bodily substance,” he said. They’re a very close-knit family and of course it’s just completely devastated the family.”

Video from some store camera showed a man casually walking into the store and handing Daffern a cup, then pulling out a handgun and pointing it at her confront.

A second camera showed the gunman walking her out of the store. Daffern was seen handing the cupping-glass back to the map, who sipped from it while holding the fire-arm on her with his other hand. Daffern had her hands up and appeared to plead with the man. Video from a third camera showed a sport utility carriage leaving store parking lot.

On the video, the gunman showed no apparent concern about appearing on camera and his face was clearly visible.

“I’m not sure he realized those were cameras, I put on’t know,” Daniels said. “I haven’t talked to him, I don’t know what he was thinking at that point.”

Bowie police began searching for Bowman after recognizing him on the video. On Saturday, police found an SUV matching the instrument without ceasing the video at a motel about 40 miles away, Daniels said.

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Cash in continuance hand and a debt-free balance sheet position the company to buy back more shares, and seven of the 25 analysts who safeguard the once-hot stock are now bullish about its prospects, making the stock an attractive bargain for investors, Barron's reported. The stock has abandoned 60 percent of its relative length transversely the past 19 months.

"With estimated year-end cash of $856 million, or $4.10 a share, and no debt, we believe AEO offers a compelling risk-reward profile for long-term investors," Susquehanna algebraist Thomas Filandro told Barron's.

American Eagle shares closed at $14.25 Friday attached the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Sarah Coffey, editing by Maureen Bavdek)

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"Hell — otherwise known as Congress — has officially frozen from one side of to the other."

Harumph! Yes, it was flippant, rude, beneath the dignity of one of the world’s great newspapers — but that idiomatic sentence did its job. It dragged us in. The piece went downhill thereafter, but it got off to a great start.

The Journal’s lead paragraph is of interest for one more reason. It continued: "For the first time since the 1950s, members will skip borough today in quest of the August recess without either chamber having passed a individual appropriations charges."

What ho! Wasn’t that a duck-billed gerund that conscientious flew through? Let me invoke the beloved name of my first incorporated town editor, Charles Henry Hamilton. He taught me 65 years ago that the form demands an apostrophe-"s," i.e, "either chamber’s having passed."

This curious bird turned up again after all the rest month in a file through Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. He was writing about Ingrid Betancourt, produce free after six years of subjection in Colombia. Her free was so well-executed that the captors were overpowered "without a shot being fired."

I believe my old boss would have insisted upon "without a young hog.’s being fired." Let me appeal to all you language mavens out in that place: Has the construction become extinct? O tempora! O mores! Oh, dear.

Under the heading of Words That Are New to Me, give permission to me offer "majuscule." It bobbed up two weeks ago in Bill Safire’s "On Language" column in The New York Times. Guest columnist Caroline Winter was writing about the first-person at right angles, the capitalized "capital letter I." She was so taken by "majuscule" that she embraced it again just two paragraphs later.

We live and learn. The qualifying word dates from 1720. It defines a document "written in capital letters or uncials." Written in what? Uncial writing is writing that has "a curved or rounded shape and was used chiefly in Greek and Latin manuscripts from about the 3rd to 9th century."

Now that your vocabulary has been enlarged by a Jabberwocky word, obstacle us attend to further semantic instruction from the good gray Times. Its lead editorial on Aug. 2 dealt with world trade. We learned: "A strong World Trade Organization will be needed to arbiter trade disputes as the world economy slows …"

To arbiter? The verbing of nouns is an ancient linguistic mechanism, but "to arbiter" provides no service not already served by "to arbitrate." Fie, fie!

William L. King Jr., of Vestavia Hills, Ala., was irked last month by the same errant word in a dispatch from The Associated Press about swimmer Dara Torres. The 41-year-old combatant has a physical structure "that would make somewhat 20-year-old solicitous."

Jealous? No! Her physique would be productive of any 20-year-old ENVIOUS. There’s a difference price preserving. We are jealous of what is ours; we are envious of the sort of is yours. The distinction crops up in the King James Bible taken in the character of early as Exodus 20:5. The faithful must obey the familiar Commandments "because I the Lord thy God am a jealous God."

For the vestige: Bartlett’s lists 27 citations for "suspiciously vigilant" and "jealousy," 33 citations in spite of "envy" and "envious." The only cite that leaps instantly to mind is from Antony’s oration at the funeral of Caesar: "See what a rent the envious Casca made!" You desideratum the whole thing? Friends, Romans, countrymen, grant me et cetera, et cetera. You could look it up!

(Readers are invited to send dated citations of usage to Mr. Kilpatrick in care of this newspaper. His e-mail discourse is kilpatjj@aol.com.)

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In recently morning European trading, the FTSE 100 index of pinnacle companies stood at 5,513.30 points, a gain of 0.29 percent.

Frankfurt's DAX 30 won 0.61 percent to 6,481.50 points and the Paris CAC 40 advanced through 0.94 percent to stand at 4,462.44 nearing the half-way mark.

Paris trading volumes were down, still, owing to a public festival taking fortress in France on Friday.

The Euro Stoxx 50 index of leading eurozone shares climbed by 0.57 percent to 3,375.90 points.

In foreign exchange trade, the euro stood at 1.4716 dollars after slumping earlier Friday to 1.4698 dollars, the lowest quip since February 20.

World oil prices meanwhile fell further on Friday, fault below 113 dollars a barrel in London, in succession the prospect of reduced efficacy demand put on this account that Europe's chief economies are shrinking, dealers said.

Europe's greater stock markets had risen on Thursday, brushing off news of shrinking European economic growth and disappointing US inflation data.

The eurozone economy contracted for the first time evermore, during the second quarter, with outrageous domestic product (GDP) falling 0.2 percent as German growth succumbed to global strains, official premises had showed onward Thursday.

Stock market traders were meanwhile awaiting the publication attached Friday of key economic data in the United States, comprising the University Of Michigan consumer confidence survey and the latest reading on industrial production.

US share prices had closed higher on Thursday as investors showed a fresh appetite for battered financial stocks and as retail titan Wal-Mart announced a big jump in quarterly profits, dealers said.

Investors embarked in succession a shopping spree despite disappointing economic reports that showed inflationary pressures continuing to buffet consumers and a rising trend in claims in the place of unemployment benefits.

European stock markets had slid mid-week being of the kind which the euro tumbled to near six-month lows to match the dollar and on renewed jitters about the health of the world's rise to the top of banks amid slowing economic growth.

Global banking groups JPMorgan Chase and Swiss rival UBS both reported losses owing to their exposure to the crumbling US mortgage market.

The week had begun well for European equities, however, as oil prices slumped.

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Questions and answers on how consumers can make secure they are getting any honest appraisal when buying or selling a home, refinancing an existing mortgage or seizure thoroughly a home equity loan or short letter of credit:

Q: Who orders one appraisal?

A: Most appraisals are ordered by lenders, who use the information to determine the subordinate value of a home when deciding whether approve a mortgage loan. But consumers can also order an appraisal, and might choose to achieve so for a number of reasons. Among the most common is to help them come to a conclusion on a fair price for a home they wish to corrupt or sell.

Q: What should I seem for when I secure for pay an appraiser?

A: First, look for an appraiser who is licensed and certified by dint of. your predicament. Most states have an appraisal board that should be able to provide an appraiser’s qualifications, as will the Web site of the federal Appraisal Subcommittee: http://www.asc.gov/

Q: Will that Web site tell me that which I need to have being assured of?

A: Yes and no. The Appraisal Subcommittee’s Web site will feature information about an appraiser’s qualifications. But it decree solely list disciplinary action that is current. Suspensions and other past disciplinary actions won’t be listed.

Q: Can’t I get that information from my state’s appraisal board?

A: Not really. State appraiser boards are generally disinclined to release any information about an appraiser’s disciplinary history. That includes how many complaints have been filed against an appraiser.

Q: So, how can I make certainly I’m getting a fair appraisal?

A: That’s a tough question. To fit, make sure your appraiser is independent - put on’t allow a lender to pick the appraiser. Also, use a commonsense ground of admission. If the home next door just sold for $150,000 and the appraiser values the home in your deal at $200,000, you esteem intellect to be suspicious. You be able to also hire another appraiser for a support opinion.

Q: If I have a complaint, whom should I contact?

A: Every state has an appraisal board or mediation that accepts and investigates complaints, holds hearings and disciplines appraisers. Some states, still, do not take . anonymous complaints, and disputes can take years to exist resolved.

POSTVILLE, Iowa —

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A vague unease whispered through this tiny town in northeastern Iowa, where the rolling hills are a study in vivid standard - red barns, white clapboard houses, and vibrant green cornfields plowed by almost architectural nicety.

It drifted through Postville’s downtown, where restaurants serving tamales share three short blocks with El Vaquero clothing store, a kosher food market and the Spice-N-Ice Liquor and Redemption store.

It nagged at Irma Rucal that Monday morning hind Mother’s Day weekend, as the Guatemalan immigrant worked her regular chicane salting chickens at Agriprocessors, the world’s largest kosher meatpacking plant and Postville’s biggest employer.

Then, just after 10 a.m., that insistent murmur burst to the surface with a frantic shout: “La Migra! Salvese el que pueda!” Immigration! Save yourself if you can.

The bulk of the plant’s 900 workers - mostly Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants - dashed out doors, from one side hallways and into corners, trying to escape federal agents conducting what would be the largest immigration inroad in U.S. history.

Outside the plant, Postville Mayor Robert Penrod, alerted candid before the raid, gasped at the sight of helicopters, buses, vans and armed immigration agents.

“Oh my God, we have a big moot point here,” Penrod purpose, then banned softly to himself.

A few blocks away, at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, the sanctuary quickly overflowed through the terrified children and spouses of detained workers. They lined the simple wooden pews, and prayed at an altar decorated with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron holy person.

For years, likewise decades, these Mexican and Guatemalan families had called Postville home. Here, in a order of importance first settled by German and Norwegian Lutherans and Irish Catholics more than 150 years gone, Hispanic immigrants were raising children, buying houses, pile businesses.

Like the Hasidic Jews who came to the town in 1987 to open the meatpacking plant, and the Eastern Europeans who made up the first band of workers there, the influx of Guatemalans and Mexicans had both buffeted and bolstered this quiet community - till it reached a new cultural equilibrium.

In time, the newcomers became part of the fabric of Postville, what one. proudly bills itself as “Hometown to the World.” Now, they were clustered in hiding or being herded away in handcuffs by immigration agents.

Officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement declared they should not be faulted instead of carrying out the statute and guarding against identity thievery. And yet Sister Mary McCauley, the pastoral administrator at St. Bridget’s, said the lament of one longtime sojourner, surveying the chaos unleashed by the inroad, summed up the thoughts of many:

HOPE MILLS, N.C. —

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After 25 years as a doorman on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Carl Petrone was fitted to retire from the cold winters and his daily exchange.

Petrone and his wife, Marie, wanted a hearth someplace warm, and build it in North Carolina - a red-brick tri-level attached a quiet, tree-lined street. It was bigger than their tiny place in New York and came with the right price.

The home was appraised at $114,500. The real possessions agents dropped the price by $6,000 to make the sale. “We thought it was a steal,” Marie Petrone remembers.

It was a steal - a steal from the Petrones.

As the couple would discover, they were the unwitting victims of an unscrupulous appraiser and - as uncovered by the agency of a six-month Associated Press investigation - a poorly designed system unable to keep up with such dishonesty.

Only a month after the Petrones bought their house with a conventional mortgage, Carl Petrone was diagnosed with cancer. He and Marie decided to move back to New York to bear being with family, and listed the home at $118,500. There were a couple early offers, all for much less.

“We thought: ‘This is crazy,’” Marie Petrone said. “The appraiser uttered the house was worth $114,500, so wherefore would we sell it for $100,000?”

A reinvigorated appraiser concluded their hotel was worth only $98,000 and said the Petrones had been duped in 1999: The home hadn’t irreclaimable value. It was just never cost the reward they paid.

An angry Marie Petrone filed a complaint with the North Carolina Appraisal Board, alleging the original appraiser, Ed Britt, conspired by the real estate agents - who also owned the home - to inflate its value.

“I called regularly to ask for updates. But greatest part of the time they never returned my calls. Finally, I just gave up,” Marie Petrone said.

Board director Philip Humphries declared his agency should have contacted the Petrones. But he defended the board’s overall performance in regulating the state’s 3,500 appraisers.

“The mere fact that a number of complaints have been filed in opposition to a person doesn’t narrow that all of the complaints reach the direct of whither there needs to be disciplinary feat taken,” he declared.

NEW YORK A federal appeals court has overturned the conviction of a man dubbed the “S&M Svengali” and ordered a retrial in a sensational case that involved mutilation and humiliation.

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Glenn Marcus, 55, was convicted of breaking a principle that wasn’t in city when some of the offenses happened, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a decision issued Thursday.

A three-judge panel before-mentioned Marcus’ March 2007 conviction in federal court in Brooklyn violated the Constitution. The New York man was sentenced to nine years in penitentiary beneficial to abusing a woman he photographed for his Web site, which reveled in sadomasochism. She was identified excepting that as “Jodi.”

Authorities used the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act to prosecute Marcus in spite of incidents spanning from 1999 to 2001. Marcus’ attorneys argued that the law was applied retroactively, and the appeals pay court to agreed.

Prosecutors claimed Marcus crossed the boundaries of both civilized society and the S&M common through holding his sufferer against her will.

The woman met Marcus in 1998 and agreed to be one of his “slaves.” He carved the word “slave” into her abdomen with a knife, shaved her head and systematically punished her, according to the appellate decision. He also forced her to write for the Web site while he kept every penny it earned through advertising and membership fees.

During their last encounter, he beat and whipped her while hanging her from a piece of timber, then forced her to write about it on the Web position, the firmness said.

At his trial, the woman said she felt like she was in hell.

The defense argued that Marcus and the woman had a “covenant” to pledge in a master-slave relationship. While potentially offensive to the commander-in-chief public, it was consensual and even pleasurable to the participants, the defense said.

Marcus’ appellate limb of the law, Herald Price Fahringer, told Newsday his client was “elated” by the latest ruling.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled out of every environmental discourse Saturday to have his knee examined after injuring himself under which circumstances exercising.

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The governor had been scheduled to co-host a meteorological character make different summit in South Lake Tahoe, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the mob Saturday morning that Schwarzenegger had called her to say he couldn’t make it.

He injured his knee while working out and it has been bothering him all week, Schwarzenegger prolocutor Matt David said. A doctor was expected to examine Schwarzenegger’s knee conducive to a possibly torn meniscus at the governor’s home in Los Angeles.

The 61-year-old bodybuilder-turned-actor-turned politician has suffered numerous physical injuries over the years, most newly when he shattered his femur for the period of a skiing accident in 2006.

The seven-time Mr. Olympia also has had a hip and a heart valve replaced, and had rotator cuff surgery in 2003. He also suffered several broken ribs in a 2001 motorcycle crash and had to have 15 stitches after another such crash in 2006.

Saturday’s event was attended by officials from California, Nevada and the federal government.

(This version CORRECTS that the governor will be examined at home, not a hospital, for Schwarzenegger prolocutor.)