Wednesday, May 06th
Last update08:21:04 AM GMT
Special Interest Glance
General Motors has issued a recall for 1.41 million vehicles, some dating to 1997, to fix a defect that has caused more than 1,300 engine fires.
The recall will be the third attempt to correct a problem in which motor oil leaks onto hot exhaust manifolds during what GM terms "hard braking." The problem can cause fires to break out after the engine ignition is shut off.
Toyota has recalled 6.5 million vehicles, including 2 million in the U.S., because of a faulty power window switch.
The company announced on Wednesday the recall of vehicles released between the 2006 and 2011 model years that were found to have an insufficient amount of lubrication on power window switches.
The faulty switches were found to short circuit and overheat in certain cases, according to the company.
Ken Taylor, Canada’s ambassador to Iran who sheltered Americans at his residence during the 1979 hostage crisis, has died. He was 81.
Taylor’s wife, Pat, said Ken died today after a two-month battle with colon cancer.
Taylor kept the Americans hidden at his residence and at the home of his deputy, John Sheardown, in Tehran for three months. Taylor facilitated their escape by arranging plane tickets and persuading the Ottawa government to issue fake passports.
The family of a crew member presumed drowned in the sinking of the El Faro cargo ship have sued the owners of the vessel for $100 million.
The family believes the ship should not have been sent from Jacksonville, Fla. on Sept. 29 to San Juan, Puerto Rico, into the path of Hurricane Joaquin, a Category 4 storm.
The ship disappeared two days into the voyage. The U.S. Coast Guard concluded it likely sank after the captain radioed tat the ship had lost power near Crooked Island, Bahamas. A five-day search of the area, yielded debris and one victim who was aboard the El Faro. The search was suspended Oct. 7.
John McCone came to the CIA as an outsider. An industrialist and an engineer by training, he replaced veteran spymaster Allen Dulles as director of central intelligence in November 1961, after John F. Kennedy had forced Dulles out following the CIA’s bungled operation to oust Fidel Castro by invading Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.
McCone had one overriding mission: restore order at the besieged CIA. Kennedy hoped his management skills might prevent a future debacle, even if the Californian—mostly a stranger to the clubby, blue-blooded world of the men like Dulles who had always run the spy agency—faced a steep learning curve.
Hillary Clinton says she opposes building the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president, made the announcement Tuesday after years of pressure from environmentalists to oppose the project.
“I think it is imperative that we look at the Keystone pipeline, as what I think it is, as a distraction to the important work we have to do on climate change,” Clinton said Tuesday at a campaign event in Iowa. "And unfortunately, from my perspective, on that interferes with our ability to move forward with all the other issues."
The US conducted most of its early nuclear tests in the Pacific, but they became too costly to continue so in 1950, the US government began to look for a safe place to test nuclear weapons on its mainland.
The Nevada Test Site was established a few years after the end of the second world war, against the fear of an all-out nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. As the Cold War took hold, America needed a convenient place to design and build its nuclear arsenal.
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