AP: DETROIT — Honda Motor Co. is expanding a recall so it can check the driver's air bags on another 833,000 vehicles for a possible defect. The automaker said it's adding the vehicles to a previous recall because some may have had faulty air bags installed when they were fixed after a crash. Honda said in a statement Monday night that the air bags can inflate with too much force and a casing can break and cause injury or death. Vehicles being added to the recall include some 2001 and 2002 Accord and Civic, 2002 Odyssey, 2002 and 2003 CR-V, 2002 and 2003 Acura 3.2 TL and 2003 Acura 3.2 CL models.
Honda said 2,430 faulty air bags were installed after crashes, but it doesn't know which vehicles got them.
So the recall is being expanded to include 833,000 vehicles that might need inspection.
Honda originally announced the recall to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in November 2008, involving fewer than 4,000 2001 Accords and Civics.
In February 2010, Honda added more than 378,000 cars to the recall, bringing the number of affected vehicles to 822,000.
Honda said at the time it was aware of 12 incidents linked to the problem, with 11 injuries and one death.
Owners will be notified by mail in late May. If an owner is confident the air bag hasn't been replaced, they can notify the company. All others should have their vehicle checked by a dealer.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Think of the last 10 pieces of personal finance advice you've read. Do any of these sound familiar? • Cut back on lattes! • The world's top 10 coupons • Don't go on vacation this year! If you boil all the advice down, there are just two ways to improve your financial situation: earn more (talking about earning more, here is how you can make some extra bucks starting now. Click here to start earning and get some more money to pay off bills) or cut costs. So why don't more personal finance experts talk about earning more? Because most of them don't know how. And so we get lectures on frugality, giving us obscure advice like how to save on paper towels. With each tip, we get diminishing returns. And we start to believe that personal finance is about "No, No, No!" No, you can't spend money on lattes. No, you can't go on vacation. No, you can't buy those ans. It's no wonder that most Americans simply ignore their finances. We don't want someone constantly lecturing us on what we can't do. I believe personal finance should be about saying "Yes." Yes, you can afford that extravagant coat, or iPhone or even a trip to the Bahamas. In fact, I believe in conscious spending, or spending extravagantly on the things you love -- as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't. Once you've cut on the basics, the single best way to live a rich life is to earn more money. The Myth of Frugality Let's take a look at a typical person who tries to cut back to save money. Jack has to cut back on a lot of things in order to save significant amounts of money.
What he does
Monthly amount saved
Drink 1 less latte per week
$20
Buy groceries in bulk
$30
Go out 4 fewer nights per month
$200
Cancel cable
$50
Eat out five times a month instead of eight
$100
Total:
$400
Not bad. $400 saved. But at what cost? Each morning, Jack has to decide if can buy that latte. He has to consciously cancel his cable. He has to decide if he can afford that dinner out. On and on -- and he has to do this every month. Jill can focus on one thing to get the same result:
Action
Amount Earned Per Month
Finds an area she likes, spend five hours each weekend and charge $20/hour
$400
Total:
$400
Jill found something she was good at, turned it into a small side business, charged a reasonable amount and found a client willing to pay. Cutting back may be easier for the first month. But it's likely unsustainable. After all, there's a limit to how much you can save. But there's no limit to how much you can earn. Earning More: The Numbers Let's consider three goals for your personal finances. If you could charge $25/hour for your services and work enough hours each month to generate an extra $500/month after taxes, what could that additional money do for you? Let's say you're paying off a $10,000 credit card debt at 15 percent interest and want to add that $500 to your payment.
If your monthly payment is…
You'll pay this much interest
Over this time period
The minimum
$11,979
35 years and 4 months
The minimum + $500/month
$1,085
Only 16 months
That's over $10,000 in savings on interest alone. Invest the Extra Money When you earn more and invest the extra money, the results are incredibly powerful. Here's what extra income can do for your investments.
Additional income
Value if invested for 40 years with a 6 percent annual return
$100 / month
$156,122
$300 / month
$468,367
$1,000 / month
$1.5 million
Pay off a mortgage Putting even $100 extra per month toward your mortgage can dramatically decrease the amount of time it will take you to pay it off.
Additional monthly mortgage payment
Mortgage will be reduced by…
$100 / month
3 years, 8 months
$300 / month
8 years, 8 months
$1,000 / month
16 years, 11 months
*Based on a 5 percent, $300,000, 30-year fixed rate mortgage. How to Earn More Money The simplest way to earn money on the side is to turn your existing skills into side income. Nearly everyone has skills that others would pay for. Can you play an instrument? Consider being a music instructor. Are you obsessed with personal organizing? Hire your services out as a personal organizer. Do you have expertise in Excel, Web analytics or even free-lance writing? Many employers would love to hire you as a free-lancer. This is a new way of thinking, and it makes many people uncomfortable. "That's ridiculous," they say. "Nobody would pay me $25 per hour." To them, I say two things: 1. You already pay service providers for things you could do yourself. Have you ever eaten at a restaurant? Changed oil? Gotten your hair cut? We all pay others for their services. Now, I want you to flip this around and charge for your own services. People will pay -- as you already pay others. 2. You don't know if your offer of services will work until you test it. Twelve months ago, I declared it the year of earning more money and wrote a series of postson the topic. I then launched an online course on earning money, in which I took hundreds of people from around the world and taught them how to turn their skills into side income. Dean Soto was one of them. He has a wife, two children and a demanding full-time job. How could he find enough time to earn money on the side? Dean went through several exercises to determine which of his skills would be profitable. He realized that the information technology skills he used at his day job could also earn him money on the side -- if he found the right clients. But his side income needed to be worth giving up his scarce time with his family. Once he figured out a potential idea, he used his network to meet people and ask what their needs were. He found his first client by accident. When he heard Dean's asking rate -- $30/hour -- he scoffed and insisted Dean charge more. To account for his busy schedule, Dean used a clever retainer technique, which lets him work flexibly as long as he gets the work done. "I come home from work around 5 p.m.," he said. "Then I spend time with my family until about 9 p.m. and spend about an hour a day on my side work." "I never thought I could do something like this," he said. "Now I'm like a boxer, looking to take little jabs and see where there's an opening." Last year, Dean earned $22,700 on the side. He raised his hourly rate from $30 to $60 and then $150 per hour. The best part? "My wife loves it," he said. "She's able to stay home, which is her dream, and my kids have their mother all day." There's nothing unique about Dean. But he is remarkable for taking action instead of being blinded by the frugality brigade that so permeates personal finance. Frugality is important -- to a point. But after we cut back to a reasonable level, our biggest win will come from earning more money.
Intense: President Obama watches the mission unfold at the White House along with (left) Vice President Joe Biden, (right) Defence Secretary Robert Gates, and (second right) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, alongside other Security staff, including (back left) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, (back without a tie) National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, and (back right, white shirt) Counter-Terrorism chief John Brennan
DailyMail: President Obama was watching on a TV screen as a commando gunned down Osama bin Laden. Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a U.S. Navy Seal, the leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.
Keen President
The Seal then carried out what is known in the military as a ‘double tap’ – shooting him again, probably in the chest, to make certain he was dead.
The footage of the battle in Bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout – which played out like an episode of 24 – is said to show one of his wives acting as a human shield to protect him as he blasted away with an AK47 assault rifle. She stood between him and U.S. Navy SEALs as the world's most-wanted terrorist was gunned down in an airborne assault on the al-Qaida leader's safehouse deep in Pakistan. He was holed up less than a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the country's military academy and not far from the capital of Islamabad. She however died, along with three other men, including one of Bin Laden’s sons. Within hours, the Al Qaeda leader’s body was buried at sea.
Standing Ova for the man of the moment
Despite President Obama claiming the master terrorist’s death made the world a ‘safer, better place’, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency declared that terrorists would ‘almost certainly’ respond.
The warning came on a day when: ■ Relations between Pakistan and the West were under intense strain amid disbelief that intelligence chiefs in Islamabad had no idea Bin Laden was living in a compound only 800 yards from the country’s leading military academy.
■ U.S. officials sought to justify the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay by claiming it provided the crucial breakthrough in hunting down Bin Laden.
■ It emerged that a terror operative captured in Pakistan in 2004 said Al Qaeda would detonate a nuclear bomb in the U.S. if Bin Laden were killed or captured.
David Cameron said Bin Laden’s death would be ‘welcomed right across our country’.
But security was stepped up as he warned: ‘It does not mark the end of the threat we face from extremist terrorism. Indeed, we will have to be particularly vigilant in the weeks ahead.’
Last night the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the Government’s emergency planning committee Cobra to assess the implications for the UK. Security sources have been told of specific threats against targets in North Africa and Europe.
Officials in Britain fear a ‘lone wolf’ – currently off the security services’ radar – could be inspired to take revenge.
There is no specific intelligence pointing to any attack in response to Bin Laden’s death, but it is ‘common sense’ to be on guard, Whitehall officials say.
Possible targets include popular tourist and business locations including the Houses of Parliament, Canary Wharf and the London Eye, say security experts.
President Obama announced Bin Laden’s death in a televised statement shortly after 4am British time yesterday
He recalled the images from the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 which were ‘seared into our national memory’.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed – including 67 Britons – when four jets hijacked by Al Qaeda extremists crashed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. The attack left ‘a gaping hole in our hearts’, said the President.
Last night pictures were released of Mr Obama and his security team – including Hillary Clinton – watching the mission to kill Bin Laden in the White House’s Situation Room –relayed to the White House by satellite– which played out like an episode of TV show 24 featuring fictional counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer *and by the way, we have never got our hands or seen season 9 of 24! Anybody?*
As we previously reported, it has now been confirmed - France's first lady is now pregnant with twins at age 43. Here is the report. Telegraph: The former supermodel has been at the centre of frenzied media speculation this week that she is expecting her first child with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Now glossy showbiz magazine Voici claims that she is expecting twins in October.
The claims come after Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy – who is also said to have given up smoking – herself hinted she and her 56-year-old husband were expecting a baby.
When asked directly if she was pregnant in an interview on Monday, she replied teasingly that she would "remain tight-lipped about that to protect something".
Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy was asked by one of six readers of Le Parisien newspaper invited to the Elysee Palace to interview her: "Are you expecting a baby?"
She answered: "If you'll allow me, I'd rather not answer these questions about my family. "I'd love to talk to you woman to woman about my family life, my personal dreams – and I'm really a very chatty person. "But on this subject, I'm going to keep quiet. Not through arrogance or because I like keeping secrets. "I am remaining tight-lipped about that to protect something." She went on: "I would really like to to talk about it, but then it would take over everything else. "And besides, it also involves people, so I'm not answering." The first claims of a pregnancy emerged in France's Closer magazine last week. News magazine VSD then said the claims had been confirmed in off-the-record remarks by a senior aide to President Sarkozy. If the rumours are true, then the French media agree the birth is ideally timed to happen well before Sarkozy begins campaigning for the presidential elections in May 2012. The president's communication chief at the Elysee Palace Elysee, Franck Louvrier, has refused to officially confirm the latest rumours. He would only comment: "This is a subject that is none of my business."
DailyMail: The new Duchess of Cambridge will not become a full-time working royal for up to two years – because she wants to concentrate on being a housewife. Despite a surge of public interest in the Royal Family following Friday’s wedding, Kate is refusing to conduct any public engagements without her husband for the foreseeable future. There are only two or three joint events pencilled in over the next couple of months and aides admit the new bride intends to spend most of her time with her husband on Anglesey. Well-placed sources have told the Mail that Kate wants to model herself on the Duchess of Cornwall, who insisted on only a ‘supporting role’ following her 2005 marriage to Prince Charles. The new duchess has told friends she wants to enjoy life for as long as she can as an ‘ordinary RAF wife’ in the rented farmhouse the couple share in North Wales. Her approach has the support of her husband who is keen not to throw Kate into the ‘bear-pit’ of public life and has cautioned aides to keep her commitments to a minimum. The only definite dates in her diary following her return from honeymoon are watching Prince William play in a couple of polo matches and key-note events next month including Trooping The Colour and the Duke of Edinburgh’s 90th birthday. There are no plans for her to attend Royal Ascot with the Queen or join the rest of the royals at this summer’s palace garden parties. Aides insist she ‘will not be idle’ and say that when William, who works as a search and rescue pilot at RAF Valley on Anglesey, is on duty she will be ‘pursuing other interests’. They also stressed that she has a two-week inaugural tour of Canada coming up at the beginning of July. But her approach is likely to disappoint those who were hoping to use the couple’s post-wedding popularity to boost the Royal Family’s profile. It also provides ammunition for critics who have already accused her of being ‘work-shy’. Other than working for her family’s party supplies business, Kate has had only one part-time job since she graduated from university in 2005, as an accessories buyer for the High Street firm Jigsaw. Last year the Queen conducted 444 engagements while Prince Charles carried out 585 and Camilla 243. Prince William undertook 73. The source said: ‘The couple will do things as a pair after their marriage and for the foreseeable future. Catherine will not be conducting any solo engagements. The number of engagements she does with William will remain pretty level. ‘Prince William has a full-time job he has to work round and that is his priority. He is committed to it for at least another two years so nothing much will change in the immediate future, apart from the fact that he and Catherine will take part in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations next year. ‘He is already committed to a number of charitable patronages and Catherine will, initially at least, support him in that as his wife. ‘She will, in time, become associated with her own charities but this won’t happen immediately as she wants to explore the fields that interest her first.’
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
