NY Times

STUTTGART, Germany, May 14 — DaimlerChrysler announced today that it will sell a controlling interest in its struggling Chrysler Group to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm that specializes in restructuring troubled companies, for $7.4 billion, mostly in the form of capital that Cerberus will put into Chrysler.The deal unwinds a 1998 merger that was meant to create a trans-Atlantic automotive powerhouse.

“We obviously overestimated the potential of synergies,” Dieter Zetsche, the chief executive of DaimlerChrysler, said at a news conference here. “I don’t know if any amount of due diligence could have given us a better estimation in that regard.”

The agreement will leave DaimlerChrysler, based in Stuttgart, with a 19.9 percent stake in Chrysler but will free it of a great amount of pension and health care liabilities. Cerberus will take an 80.1 percent stake in the new company, to be known as Chrysler Holding. Click here to read the rest of this article.

By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: April 25, 2007

DETROIT, April 24 — A quarter century ago, people in this city not only bashed the surging Japanese car companies with words, they also vented their frustration by swinging sledgehammers at Japanese cars, a way for some to raise money for charity (three swings for $1 at one event).

But on Tuesday, when the Toyota Motor Company officially took over bragging rights from General Motors as the world’s largest automaker, the sledgehammers were replaced by finger pointing — at Detroit itself, as well as Japan.

The prospect that Toyota might beat G.M. this year in global sales had been looming for some time, though the prospect still seemed very much in Detroit’s rearview mirror. Click here to read the rest of this article.

By MILT FREUDENHEIM

Published: April 16, 2007

Stephen M. Case wants to be America’s doctor, courtesy of the Web.

This week he plans to unveil his new company’s Web site for consumers, RevolutionHealth.com, which has built a growing audience since a test version went online in January.

The site, to be officially introduced on Thursday, is part of Mr. Case’s Revolution Health Group, a company he has bankrolled with a group of others who — like him — are famous for what they used to do for a living, including Carleton S. Fiorina and Colin L. Powell.

Revolution Health’s other medical ventures include a stake in the growing RediClinic chain of retail health clinics operating in some Wal-Marts, Walgreen’s and other stores around the country.

Mr. Case, the America Online founder who oversaw an ill-fated merger with Time Warner before he left in 2003, set up Revolution Health two years later. He says the time is ripe for a dominant health care brand — one that could be as powerful as Starbucks in latte or Nike in fitness. So far he has devoted more than $100 million of his money toward that goal with the RevolutionHealth.com Web site. Click here to read the rest of this article.

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: April 5, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 5 — The owner of an Ohio nuclear plant has asked its insurance company to pay for two years of lost production after a corrosion problem that it called “unexpected and unforeseeable,” even though it had resisted government pressure to inspect for acid leaks just before the problem was uncovered in 2002.

The corrosion in the lid of the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo ate nearly all the way through the steel, with a chunk of metal the size of a football missing and nothing holding in the cooling water that surrounded the radioactive core but a thin liner of stainless steel.

Before the power plant’s owner, the First Energy Nuclear Operating Company, discovered the problem during routine maintenance, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had ordered inspections of all reactors of that type to see if there was any damage around the vessel head. The company had petitioned for a delay, which the agency granted. Click here to read the rest of this article.

By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Published: April 6, 2007

The Tracinda Corporation, the investment arm of Kirk Kerkorian, the billionaire investor, offered today to pay $4.5 billion in cash to buy the Chrysler Group, 12 years to the month after an earlier attempt by Mr. Kerkorian to buy the company, which was instead acquired later by Daimler-Benz of Germany.

Mr. Kerkorian, who was once Chrysler’s biggest shareholder, disclosed his offer in a news release that came a day after Dieter Zetsche, the chief executive of DaimlerChrysler, acknowledged that the American carmaker it owns was for sale.

“Tracinda believes by taking a long-term approach to solving Chrysler’s problems, it can become a robust and lasting stand-alone entity,” the company said.

Mr. Kerkorian joins three other bidders for Chrysler that are said to include two private investment groups as well as Magna International, a Canadian parts supplier. None of those bidders have made their offers public, however. Click here to read the rest of this article.

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Published: April 3, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 2 — In one of its most important environmental decisions in years, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions. The court further ruled that the agency could not sidestep its authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change unless it could provide a scientific basis for its refusal.

The 5-to-4 decision was a strong rebuke to the Bush administration, which has maintained that it does not have the right to regulate carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act, and that even if it did, it would not use the authority. The ruling does not force the environmental agency to regulate auto emissions, but it would almost certainly face further legal action if it failed to do so. Click here to read the rest of this article.

By IAN URBINA and RON NIXON

Published: March 30, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 29 — Lapses in using a digital medical record system for tracking wounded soldiers have led to medical mistakes and delays in care, and have kept thousands of injured troops from getting benefits, according to former defense and military medical officials.

The Defense Department’s inability to get all hospitals to use the system has routinely forced thousands of wounded soldiers to endure long waits for treatment, the officials said, and exposed others to needless testing. Click here to read the rest of this article.

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: March 29, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 28 — The chairman of the Federal Reserve acknowledged today that “uncertainties” about the economic outlook have “increased somewhat in recent weeks” and that “turmoil” in the market for subprime home mortgages has created “severe financial problems for many individuals and families.”

But Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, reiterated in testimony before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress his broadly sanguine view that the United States economy was likely to expand at a moderate pace this year and that inflation was likely to slightly decline.

“The uncertainties around the outlook have increased somewhat in recent weeks,” Mr. Bernanke said. But in his prepared testimony, Mr. Bernanke offered little indication that he wanted to clamp down more tightly on subprime mortgage lenders, which lend money to people with poor credit, or on what a growing number of Democrats view as predatory mortgage lending practices. Click here to read the rest of this post.

By LYNNLEY BROWNING

Published: March 23, 2007

Edward N. Jones, a former NASA engineer for the Apollo and Skylab missions, looked at low-income home buyers nearly a decade ago and saw an unexplored frontier.

Through his private software company in Austin, Tex., Mr. Jones and his son, Michael, designed a program that used the Internet to screen borrowers with weak credit histories in seconds. The software was among the first of its kind. By early 1999, his company, Arc Systems, had its first big customer: First Franklin Financial, one of the biggest lenders to home buyers with weak, or subprime, credit.

The old way of processing mortgages involved a loan officer or broker collecting reams of income statements and ordering credit histories, typically over several weeks. But by retrieving real-time credit reports online, then using algorithms to gauge the risks of default, Mr. Jones’s software allowed subprime lenders like First Franklin to grow at warp speed. Click here to read the rest of this post.

By TIM MCKEOUGH

Published: March 22, 2007

Q. Our dining table doubles as a home-office desk. How can we keep clutter in check?

A. Keeping a small apartment with a home office tidy is a never-ending battle. Each day’s mail delivery can seem like an assault, bringing letters, bills and catalogs that take up precious space. Add a laptop, pens and notepads, and a clutter crisis can arise.

But there are ways to keep your affairs in order while preserving the serenity of the dining table.

One of the easiest remedies is a small rolling cabinet with drawers for paper and supplies. When you are working at the table, you can roll the cabinet to where you are sitting. When it is time for dinner, close the drawers, stow the laptop on top and roll the cabinet to the wall.

There are many sizes and models; the Mobil cart ($764 with two drawers, $999 with three) from Kartell (39 Greene Street, 212-966-6665, www.kartell.it) will do the job in style.

If you have a fairly deep bookcase near your dining table, you can use storage boxes instead. CB2 sells handsome linen-covered boxes called Folio ($14.95 to $44.95, cb2.com), which come in sizes big enough to hold files and small enough to hold odds and ends. Click here to read the rest of this article.