5 Fresh Car Concepts

Extreme concepts with an eye on the future.

By Matt DeLorenzo | Photos by John Lamm and Marc Urbano

Honda FC Sport Concept

Auto shows rely on concept cars to generate excitement and the Los Angeles show is no different — its loaded with fresh ideas ranging from futuristic sports cars to alternative takes on everyday transportation. Here are five top picks that someday may make it from show stand to showroom floor.

Honda FC Sport Concept

Showing that there will be a sporting life beyond internal combustion engines, the Honda FC Sport Concept is a design study that shows what a high-performance fuel-cell car may look like. This unique package seats three with the driver in the center, flanked on each side in back by a passenger. The fuel-cell powertrain components are packaged in the center of the vehicle for a low center of gravity and ideal weight distribution. While only a show car today, the FC Sport Concept is evidence that Honda believes fuel-cells will offer serious performance in the future.

Dodge EV concept

Chrysler's vision of the future has the electric car providing more than a modicum of performance. The Dodge EV show car takes a page from the Tesla playbook in calling on the expertise of British sports car maker Lotus as a chassis partner in its electric dreams. Dodge has modified the European-market Lotus Europa to take a lithium-ion battery pack and a 268-hp electric motor to provide 0–60 mph acceleration of less than 5 seconds.

Jeep Wrangler EV

Alternative power isn't just for the street, as the Jeep EV demonstrates. Based on the terrain-eating Wrangler, the EV is a range-extended electric vehicle that uses lithium-ion batteries that can provide up to 40 miles of pure electric range before a small gasoline engine takes over to drive the electric motor and extend the range to 400 miles. As in the Dodge EV, the electric motor has 268 horsepower, giving the EV a top speed of more than 90 mph.

2010 Mini E

2010 Mini E

BMW's Mini will further burnish its image as a hip urban car with the introduction of the Mini E, an electric version of its 3-door hatchback, which the company will deploy in a fleet of about 500 units for private use in daily traffic. The Mini E is powered by a 204-hp electric motor connected to a lithium-ion battery pack. Mini says the car has a range of 156 miles and will be demonstrated in selected markets in New York, New Jersey and California.

Toyota CNG Camry Hybrid

While pure electric vehicles are garnering a lot of attention, another fuel, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), is beginning to come to the fore as an alternative to traditional gasoline and diesel fuels, especially when used in combination with a hybrid powerplant. To explore that potential, the Toyota CNG Camry Hybrid relies on clean-burning CNG in a conventional internal combustion powerplant teamed with the company's hybrid synergy drive technology to provide yet another choice on the green car menu.

Link : http://autos.yahoo.com/auto-shows/la_auto_show_2008/759/5-fresh-car-concepts/1

Why mailmen give up...?

By Paul Collins

It's a discovery worthy of a murder mystery: In a parking lot in the mountains outside Santa Cruz, Calif., a truck is found abandoned, the keys still hanging in the door. Inside the police find … a note? A body?

Not quite. Try 13,000 pieces of undelivered mail.

The recent discovery in Bonny Doon, Calif., of a former mail carrier's old stash was not exactly unprecedented. There's also the recent arrest of a Detroit postal carrier who squirreled away 9,000 pieces of mail into a storage locker, a work dodge worthy of a Seinfeld plot. A week earlier, a postman was nailed for hoarding 27,000 letters in Leeds, England; the week before that revealed a postal hoarder with 20,000 letters in Frankfurt, Germany. ("[He] didn't deliver mail addressed to himself either," a police statement dryly noted.) And all of them were dwarfed by the North Carolina postman who admitted in August to filling his garage and burying in his backyard nearly a tractor trailer's worth of undelivered junk mail.

But the hoarding and abandonment of mail is a phenomenon that extends at least back to 1874, when Providence, R.I., postman Benjamin Salisbury was caught throwing mail into the ocean "to avoid the trouble of delivery." Some things don't change much; a Long Island postman used the same MO in 1954, when he blamed a bum leg from the war for forcing him to dump his mail off a local pier. The scheme kind of worked … until the tide came in.

In 2006, the last year the U.S. Postal Service released figures, there were 515 arrests and 466 convictions for "internal theft." That figure includes abandonment and hoarding cases, where the motive has remained constant since the days of penny postage: A worker gets overwhelmed or simply disinclined to finish his route. "It's not a huge issue," Agapi Doulaveris of the U.S. Office of the Inspector General told me. "We work on referrals."

And there's the rub: For a referral to happen, first someone has to notice.

The deliveries affected are often what the U.S. Postal Service now terms "standard mail"—and what the rest of us call "junk." With the railroad-driven growth in catalogs, postal abandonment stories were already common by the 1880s. The New York Times complained of mailmen burning their bundles and in 1883 ran the immortal headline "To Deliver His Letters Some Time" after the discovery of a mailman's old stash in the basement of an Upper East Side saloon.

For a mail-sack slacker, there's a dark allure to hoarding junk. Think about it: If someone's first-class mail with paychecks or credit card bills doesn't show up, they're liable to complain. But if the umpteenth Eddie Bauer catalog doesn't arrive, well … who's gonna notice?

Link

Road detour for Depp movie shoot costs county

By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press Writer Scott Bauer, Associated Press Writer

MADISON, Wis. – County officials in Wisconsin are holding the bag following a movie shoot involving Johnny Depp as famed bank robber John Dillinger.

During filming of "Public Enemies" — Wisconsin's first film under the governor's new movie incentives — state highway traffic was diverted away from the center of Columbus, 70 miles northwest of Milwaukee. The detour road couldn't stand the load — and collapsed.

Dodge County was left with a $116,000 repair. It's filed a claim against the city of Columbus that could lead to a lawsuit.

But Columbus Mayor Nancy Osterhaus says talks are ongoing between the city, county and film studio NBC Universal, with hopes that they might split the bill for the March mishap.

"Public Enemies" is out July 2, 2009

Link

Cholera outbreak strikes Zimbabwe

Nearly 300 people have died in Zimbabwe in recent weeks in a cholera outbreak which has hit about 6,000 people, the World Health Organization reports.

The UN body predicted the water-borne disease would continue to spread because of poor sanitation in the impoverished country's urban areas.

Many hospitals have shut down and most towns suffer from poor water supply, broken sewers and uncollected waste.

An outbreak of cholera on this scale is rare in Zimbabwe, correspondents say.

The outbreak is likely to continue as the water and sanitation situation is worsening WHO statement Harare's hospitals die

While the disease is endemic in Zimbabwe, it seems this will be the worst outbreak since 2000, Michel Van Herp of the aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) told the BBC.

The WHO said that tackling the problem would be difficult because of the local shortage of drugs, medical supplies and health professionals, and the start of the rainy season was "also of concern".

"The outbreak is likely to continue as the water and sanitation situation is worsening, with severe shortages of potable water, sewage and waste disposal problems reported in most of the populated areas," a WHO statement said.

In Geneva, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs specified that cholera had spread to all of Zimbabwe's provinces.

It and the WHO put the total number of suspected cholera as of 18 November at 6,072 with 294 deaths.

'Unprecedented'

Zimbabwe's own government has reported fewer deaths, putting the figure at 90, but Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said this week that his ministry was "battling to control unprecedented... outbreaks".

CHOLERA An intestinal infection caused by bacteria Is often linked to contaminated supplies of drinking water Can spread quickly in areas where there is poor sanitation Rarely spread by person-to-person contact Most people infected do not actually get ill

He identified Budiriro, a suburb of the capital Harare, as "the epicentre of the disease", adding that the current wave of cholera had begun in September in Chitungwiza, a satellite town south of Harare.

Admitting the situation in government hospitals was "bad", he told the Herald newspaper he hoped food would soon be made available under the Reserve Bank's programme to ensure Zimbabweans had basic commodities.

The country's Association of Doctors for Human Rights highlighted the dire state of a health service once widely admired in Africa.

"Our health delivery system, previously the envy of many developing countries, is now teetering on the verge of virtual collapse," it said.

"Sick people in need of medical attention are being turned away from Zimbabwe's hospitals and clinics."

The usually busy reception at Harare Central is deserted

Harare's Central Hospital officially closed down last week and now hardly a doctor or nurse is in sight, Zimbabwean journalist Brian Hungwe reports from the city.

Cholera-sufferers would be "coming to hospital to die because there is nobody to care for anyone", said Dr Malvern Nyamutora, vice-chairman of the Junior Doctors' Association.

"Cholera is treatable, just fluids and tetracycline [an anti-biotic] is enough, but if you get people dying of this diarrhoea - that explains the state of the health crisis," he added.

Link

European online library crashes

A new digital library launched by the European Union has crashed within hours of opening - forcing its closure.

The Europeana website was attracting more than 10 million hits an hour - more than double the number which had been anticipated.

The site includes paintings, photos, films, books, maps and manuscripts from 1,000 museums, national libraries and archives across Europe.

It is expected to reopen in December after technological improvements.

Users clicking on Europeana.eu currently find a message saying the site is "temporarily not accessible due to overwhelming interest after its launch".

It adds: "We're doing our utmost to reopen Europeana in a more robust version as soon as possible. We'll be back by mid-December."

It confirms it's worth doing, European culture is more popular than we had anticipated in our wildest dreams Spokesman, EU Commission

"Thousands of users were searching for the words 'Mona Lisa' at the same time", explained a spokesman for the European Commission.

"It confirms it's worth doing, European culture is more popular than we had anticipated in our wildest dreams," he said.

After a massive surge just before Europeana's launch, the system's creators doubled the number of servers from three to six and got it working again for a short time.

However they will now perform more tests to ensure the digital library can stay open at peak times.

On Thursday, most hits came from Germany, followed by France and Spain.

However, 4% of online requests about Europe's cultural heritage came from the United States.

Link