A grand jury indicted the suspect in the Hanukkah attack with five more federal hate crimes charges. Grafton Thomas allegedly stabbed at least five Jewish worshipers who were celebrating Hanukkah at a rabbi’s house in Monsey last month. The grand jury in Rockland County had already indicted Thomas, 37, on six counts of attempted murder in the second degree, three counts of assault in the first degree, three counts of attempted assault in the first degree and two counts of burglary in the first degree in the mass slashing on Dec. 28.
The indictment charges Grafton Thomas with five counts each of attempting to kill victims based on their religion and obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs by attempting to kill with a dangerous weapon. He is being held without bail on the federal charges. “We now allege that he did this with the intention of targeting his victims because of their religion,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a news release. “Thomas faces life in prison for his alleged violent acts of prejudice and intolerance.”
Newly elected DA Thomas E. Walsh, who took office on New Year’s Day, announced the state charges at a brief press conference. “Thomas violently attacked numerous individuals inside the home, slashing at least six individuals, with the intent to cause their deaths,” he said. Initial reports said there were five injured in the attack, though there were no details on what injuries the newly-added victim suffered. Those charges carry a maximum of 25 years in state prison.
Thomas was arrested shortly after the attack with 2 bloodied weapons in his car. Police say he also had handwritten journals containing anti-Semitic references and recently used his phone to look up information on Hitler and the location of synagogues. The worst of the injured victims was clinging to life after suffering devastating machete blows to his head; the man, great-grandfather Josef Neumann, 72, remained comatose, partially paralyzed and on a respirator.
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A Wisconsin teenager, Crystul Kizer, is facing life in prison after she confessed to killing
34-year-old Randall Volar at his home last year after she says he raped her, according to her attorneys. The killing incident occurred in Kenosha, Wisconsin, about 40 miles south of Milwaukee, in June 2018. Kizer allegedly shot Volar twice in the head, set his home on fire and then stole his luxury vehicle. Randy Volar began sexually abusing Chrystul Kizer when she was 16 years old, filmed the abuse and allegedly trafficked her for sex.
Kizer says she connected with Volar through the now-defunct Backpage.com, which was shut down last year for its involvement in human trafficking. Kizer reportedly told Volar she was 19 at the time, but she was actually 16 when he allegedly began paying her for sex and eventually selling her to other men. She admits to initially lying about her age but says Volar knew she was a minor because they had celebrated her 17th birthday together. The teen said she eventually tried to distance herself from Volar, because she wanted to get more serious with her boyfriend, Delane Nelson, who is three years older than her. Volar allegedly threatened to kill Kizer when she told Volar about her decision. Kizer didn’t report the threats to police, as she was convinced they would not help her. In June 2018, Kizer said she had reached out to Volar after getting into a fight with Nelson.
The teen claims she was afraid her boyfriend would hurt her, so she asked Volar if she could come to his house until things cooled down. Months before his death, in February 2018, Volar was arrested on charges of child sexual assault. He was taken into custody shortly after a 15-year-old girl called the police from his house, claiming Volar had given her drugs and was going to kill her. In a search of his home, they confiscated computers and other electronics, along with women’s bikini bottoms and underwear.
Although police found evidence Volar was abusing dozens of underage girls, he was released without bail. At the time of his death he was suspected of human trafficking and child pornography — and Chrystul Kizer was among the girls police had footage of him having sex with. In June 2018, Chrystul killed him after she says he attacked her when she refused to have sex with him. At the time of his death he was suspected of human trafficking and child pornography — and Chrystul Kizer was among the girls police had footage of him having sex with.
When confronted by police, Kizer, who was 17 at the time, allegedly confessed to killing him because she was tired of him sexually assaulting her. She also alleged that he sold her to other men for sex, which is why her attorneys say she should be protected under sex trafficking victim laws. Kizer faces multiple felony charges, including first-degree intentional homicide, possession of a firearm and arson, court records show. She is currently being held on $1 million bail and faces life in prison if convicted.
District Attorney Michael Graveley built a first-degree homicide case against her and wrangled with the public defenders about whether they had the right to review the case against Volar and the accompanying video, photographic, and financial evidence. Eventually Kizer’s lawyers were granted access to evidence that clearly showed Kizer had been trafficked. Federal law dictates that any child under the age of 18 who has been bought or sold for sex is a sex-trafficking victim, regardless of circumstance. Prosecutors say the law that protects those who are sex trafficked doesn’t apply wholly in this case. They said they do not believe she was engaged in prostitution at the time of the crime and they don’t believe her life was in danger at the moment. Prosecutors also said they have evidence, including communications with Kizer’s boyfriend and others, indicating that she plotted and planned the murder ahead of time
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In recent years, it’s become evident that oil giant Exxon was aware of the causes and consequences of climate change from at least the 1970s, but chose to deliberately mislead the public for decades. A newly resurfaced article now shows coal industry executives equally understood the science of catastrophic global warming as far back as 1966. According to a copy of the magazine Mining Congress Journal, leaders of the coal industry knew as early as the mid-1960s that burning fossil fuels causes climate change.
The head of a now defunct mining research company wrote that the combustion of fossil fuels was increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causing global temperature increases. The recently discovered article now provides evidence that both the coal and oil industries have known about catastrophic climate change for decades, yet worked to cover up the evidence in order to continue burning fossil fuels.
James Garvey, the then-president of Bituminous Coal Research Inc., which developed pollution control equipment, discussed the state of pollutants and their regulation in the coal industry at the time. While much of the paper is concerned with sulphur in coal, a small section early in the article is concerned with carbon dioxide (CO2) discharge. “There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” Garvey writes.
“If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the Earth will result. Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London.”
Garvey’s article isn’t the only one acknowledging the dangers of coal-produced pollution in the August 1966 issue. In a discussion piece following Garvey’s paper, combustion engineer James Jones from Peabody Coal (now called Peabody Energy, the largest private coal company in the world), does not address the global warming issue, but admits that air pollution standards to protect health have a place, saying the “Situation is Urgent”.
Jones wrote “We are in favor of cleaning up our air. We are, in effect, ‘buying time’. But we must use that time productively to find answers to the many unsolved problems.” In the decades to come, Peabody would become a huge industrial player in organized climate change denial. At the end of his article, Jones wondered: “What can an individual with a personal stake in the future of the coal industry do?” Among the answers he offered, “Be a ‘one-man’ public relations emissary for the coal industry,” Jones explained to his industry colleagues. “Tell your neighbours, friends, and the general public how important coal is to their every-day existence. Also tell them about the all-out cooperative efforts of the coal industry to reduce air pollution.”
The concerted effort to discredit the scientific consensus over man-made global warming has been continuing for two decades in the United States and shows no sign of weakening. It is often described as an attempt on the part of corporate America, most notably the fossil fuel industries, to hinder governmental regulations on their activities.
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The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by gun manufacturer Remington Arms, that argued it should be shielded by a 2005 federal law preventing most lawsuits against firearms manufacturers when their products are used in crimes. The decision has cleared the way for survivors and the families of the 26 victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting to pursue their lawsuit against the maker of the rifle used to kill 26 people.
The families are arguing that Remington violated Connecticut law when it marketed the Bushmaster rifle for assaults against human beings. The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case allows the lawsuit filed in Connecticut state court by a survivor and relatives of nine victims who died at the Newtown, Connecticut, school on Dec. 14, 2012, to go forward. The lawsuit says the Madison, North Carolina-based company should never have sold a weapon as dangerous as the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle to the public.
Gunman Adam Lanza used it to kill 20 children between the ages of 5 and 10 along with six educators, after killing his mother at the home they shared. The rifle used in the killings was legally owned by his mother. The lawsuit also alleges Remington targeted younger, at-risk males in marketing and product placement in violent video games. Lanza was 20 years old when he committed the mass shooting. Only two of the victims who were shot by Lanza—both teachers—survived the attack. Lanza killed himself as police arrived at the school.
The case is being watched by gun control advocates, gun rights supporters and gun manufacturers across the country, as it has the potential to provide a roadmap for victims of other mass shootings to circumvent the federal law and sue the makers of firearm. The National Rifle Association, 10 mainly Republican-led states and 22 Republicans in Congress were among those urging the court to jump into the case and end the lawsuit against Remington.
The Connecticut Supreme Court had earlier ruled 4-3 that the lawsuit could proceed for now, citing an exemption in the federal law. The decision overturned a ruling by a trial court judge who dismissed the lawsuit based on the 2005 federal law, named the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
The federal law has been criticized by gun control advocates as being too favorable to gun-makers. It has been cited by other courts that rejected lawsuits against gun-makers and dealers in other high-profile shooting attacks, including the 2012 Colorado movie theater shooting and the Washington, D.C., sniper shootings in 2002.
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The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in the case of slain Mexican teenager killed by a US Border Patrol agent. The court heard arguments in the family’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling dismissing their case against the agent, Jesus Mesa, who had fired across a concrete spillway into Mexico from the Texas side of the border during the 2010 incident, striking 15-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca in the face.
The incident took place in June 2010 on the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. The Border Patrol said at the time Hernandez was pelting U.S. agents with rocks from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande when he was shot. Witnesses say Sergio and his friends were playing a game of chicken where they would run up the embankment, touch the barbed-wire fence on the U.S. side, and then sprint back. As they were playing, smugglers were nearby, throwing rocks at U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. At some point, Agent Jesus Mesa, Jr. showed up on a bicycle and detained one of Sergio’s friends. Sergio ran back into Mexican territory and hid behind a bridge pillar. Standing on U.S. soil, Agent Mesa fired at least two shots across the border at Sergio, striking him in the face and killing him.
Following Sergio’s death, his parents, Jesus Hernandez and Maria Bentacour, sued the United States government, Agent Mesa, and Mesa’s supervisors. Their attorneys argue that Sergio—despite being a Mexican national—was nevertheless protected by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, since he was killed by a federal officer who fired from American soil. The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the shooting but decided in 2012 it was “a reasonable use of force or would constitute an act of self-defense.” Federal prosecutors refused to indict Mesa. The Mexican government, on the other hand, charged Mesa with murder, but the United States won’t extradite Mesa so he can face trial.
With criminal prosecution off the table, Sergio’s family sought justice through a civil lawsuit. During arguments, liberal justices expressed concerns over providing no legal relief to the families of people who have been killed in cross -border shootings by U.S. agents, essentially allowing federal officers on American soil to act unlawfully with impunity. During the arguments, conservative justices appeared to lean toward the administration’s concerns while liberal justices voiced worry about leaving individuals with no way to hold federal officers accountable for unlawful conduct. The court has a 5-4 conservative majority.
The dispute hinges on whether the family, despite Hernandez having died on Mexican soil, can seek monetary damages against what they call a “rogue” agent for violating for the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which bars unjustified deadly force as well as Hernandez’s right to due process under the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. For the family’s lawsuit to move forward, the Supreme Court would have to widen the scope of its 1971 decision allowing certain suits against federal officials. That case, referred to as the Bivens action, involved a domestic search.
The high court previously considered Hernandez’s case in 2017 but did not decide the central legal question, instead directing the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider its ruling that had barred the lawsuit. The 5th Circuit last year again ruled against the family, prompting a second trip to the Supreme Court where they will again decide if the Bivens act should be extended and Mesa held accountable.
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Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg testified before a pair of congressional committees for the first time since two deadly crashes of 737 MAX airliners, which killed a combined 346 people. His testimony follows a report in the Washington Post that top Boeing executives failed to intervene after two top pilots at the company identified problems with automated flight control software that would lead to the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The Justice Department is also conducting criminal investigation against Boeing. Muilenburg admitted Boeing failed to provide pilots with additional key safety system information.
During the hearing, Muilenburg acknowledged for the first time that he had been briefed, prior to the second crash, of messages from a test pilot who had raised safety concerns about the 737 Max. Boeing said it gave those messages to the Department of Justice in early 2019, but only alerted the Federal Aviation Administration and Congress to the existence of those messages in the past few weeks.
The House Transportation Committee released a redacted copy of a 2015 email in which a Boeing expert questioned making the flight system called MCAS depend on just one sensor to measure the plane’s pitch — its “angle of attack,” or AOA. Boeing went ahead with the single-sensor design, with no backup to prevent MCAS from pushing the plane into a dive. Investigators believe faulty readings from a single sensor triggered nose-down commands before both crashes. Muilenburg explained changes Boeing is making to the Max and other steps it is taking to improve safety. He conceded that the company “made some mistakes” in designing MCAS and telling regulators and pilots about the system.
Members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure also focused on why Boeing decided to only have one sensor on the outside of the plane, with no back-up, to alert pilots when the angle of the aircraft was off. They also asked why the plane’s safety system only gave pilots four seconds to react to take back control of the plane if a malfunction occurred. While acknowledging that Boeing planned to make fixes to the craft, some lawmakers also questioned why the company took so long to come to that conclusion. “We would do it differently if we knew what we know today,” Muilenburg said.
Several committee members pressed the CEO to make more changes in the aftermath of the crash, including giving up some of the $15 million in pay and bonus he received last year, out of $23 million in total compensation for 2018. Boeing successfully lobbied regulators to keep any explanation of the system, called MCAS, from pilot manuals and training. After the crashes, the company tried to blame the pilots, said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat from Connecticut. “Those pilots never had a chance,” Blumenthal said. Passengers “never had a chance. They were in flying coffins as a result of Boeing deciding that it was going to conceal MCAS from the pilots.”
Representative Albio Sires also read a worker email sent to the head of Boeing’s 737 production team in mid-2018 that claimed high production goals were straining workers and increased the potential for mistakes. “For the first time in my history with Boeing I would be hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane,” wrote the veteran Boeing employee. Muilenburg said he only became aware of the worker’s concerns after the Lion Air 737 Max crash October 29. He said the 737 production line was working at a “high rate” at the time and the issues raised by the now-retired employee had been investigated and addressed. Boeing, in fact, never cut back the production of the planes, despite the concerns. 
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After a 40-day strike, a new four-year deal between the United Auto Workers and General Motors was approved. The contract was supported by 57% of the labor union. It includes an $11,000 bonus per member, annual raises and more affordable healthcare. General Motors still plans to close three factories in the United States.
The United Auto Workers union emerged with substantial wage increases of 3 percent in the second and fourth years and 4 percent lump sum payments in the first and third years, similar to what the union obtained in 2015. Even larger gains are in store for those in a category called “in progression,” the lower scale of a two-tier wage system negotiated in 2007 when the Detroit automakers were financially reeling.
Workers hired after that date, about a third of the overall work force, started at about half the pay of veteran employees and had no prospect of reaching the top wage, currently $31 an hour. Over the course of the new contract, the disparity will be phased out, and those with four years’ experience will rise along with more senior workers to the new top level of $32 an hour. In addition to pay increases, G.M. workers will get bonuses of $11,000 for ratifying the contract. They will continue to pay 3 percent of their cost of health care, well below the percentage that G.M.’s salaried workers contribute.
There were also rewards for temporary workers, about 7 percent of G.M.’s union work force, who will have a path to permanent employment after three years. About 900 of them will become full employees in January, the union said, and 2,000 more by 2021.
It also won commitments to new G.M. investments in United States factories. As part of the new contract, the company pledged to invest $7.7 billion in its United States plants, and another $1.3 billion in ventures with partners, providing a measure of job security. G.M. will put $3 billion toward overhauling the Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which had been scheduled to close in January. Three-quarters of the 700 workers there voted in favor of the contract.
At the same time, the agreement allows G.M. to close three idled factories permanently, including one in Lordstown, Ohio, eliminating excess manufacturing capacity at a time when auto sales are slowing. It also puts the company in a more stable position if the economy goes into a recession. The closing of the Lordstown plant was one of the main sticking points for some workers voting against the contract. “We did everything that G.M. ever asked of us at times of concessions,” said Bill Goodchild, a member of Local 1112 in Lordstown. “We feel we deserve a product.”
About 48,000 United Auto workers walked off the job over one month ago, making it the longest national strike at GM by United Auto Workers in nearly 50 years. The contract finally ends a strike that many estimate has cost GM $1.75 billion in losses. “We delivered a contract that recognizes our employees for the important contributions they make to the overall success of the company,” G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, said in a statement.
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Britain police launched one of the largest murder investigations in decades after the bodies of 39 people were discovered in the back of a tractor-trailer at an industrial park east of London. Emergency services were called to an industrial park in the town of Grays in Essex, 20 miles east of London, at around 1:40 a.m. local time when the vehicle was discovered to have people inside. Thirty-nine people were pronounced dead at the scene.
The victims were found in the refrigerator unit inside the truck. Police confirmed that there were 8 women and 31 men inside the truck. The Essex police department said it was not immediately clear if the victims froze to death or suffocated. A police spokesperson said the truck had a Bulgarian license plate and entered the U.K. in Holyhead, Wales on October 19th. Holyhead is one of the busiest ferry ports in the area with primary service to Ireland. Authorities called such a route into the U.K. “unusual.”
Investigators believe the refrigerated trailer started its deadly journey in Zeebrugge, Belgium to Purfleet, England, where it arrived early Wednesday. Police believe it the tractor traveled from Northern Ireland to Dublin, where it took a ferry to Holyhead in Wales before picking up the trailer at the dockside in England. They have also suggested that two different trucks pulled the semitrailer at different times though it is not clear when the 39 people entered the refrigerated trailer.
Soon after, UK police have charged a 25 year old truck driver with 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people in connection with 39 deaths in the back of the truck he was driving in southeastern England. Police say Maurice Robinson, 25, of Craigavon, Northern Ireland. He was the first of five people arrested in what is seen as one of the U.K.’s biggest cases of human trafficking.
U.K. police are struggling to identify the victims and said that very few documents were found inside the truck. Authorities said the task is likely to be difficult since human traffickers normally take the passports of their passengers to obscure their identities, stripping them of their names and giving them new documents when they arrive at their destinations. The victims are believed to have come from Asia and autopsies are being performed.
U.K. police say they’ve been in contact with Vietnamese authorities, even though they are not yet certain of the identities of those found dead in the refrigerated truck. The Vietnamese Embassy in London has set up a hotline for families to call about missing family members. The Vietnamese government has also announced its own investigation into the deaths. “The Embassy has sent a team led by the minister-counsellor in charge of consular affairs to Essex, England. They have met with the local police in an effort to verify the identity of the deceased, whose nationality still cannot be confirmed,” according to a statement from an embassy spokesperson.
Each year thousands of migrants die attempting to cross into Europe. Many sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea without a trace. Others die on land and mountain routes. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 4,503 people are known to have died worldwide in 2018, with the highest number perishing in the Mediterranean Sea.
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In Maryland, a self-described white nationalist Coast Guard lieutenant pleaded guilty to four federal weapons and drugs charges, after investigators uncovered his plot to kill high-profile liberal figures, including Democratic lawmakers, media personalities and judges. Fifty-year-old Christopher Hasson was arrested with a stockpile of 15 guns and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, after he used his work computer at the Coast Guard to read the manifestos of mass killers and to research sniper attacks.
Hasson worked as an acquisitions officer and was arrested at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington in February. Investigators said they found 15 firearms, two homemade silencers and more 1,000 rounds of ammunition in his Maryland home, as well as at least 100 pills of the painkiller Tramadol and more than 30 bottles of purported human growth hormone. Two of the four counts in Hasson’s indictment charged him with illegally possessing unregistered and unserialized silencers. He also was charged with possession of a firearm by an unlawful user or addict of a controlled substance, and illegal possession of tramadol, an opioid painkiller.
Inspired by the manifesto of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, Hasson spent hours researching the tactics of domestic terrorists, prosecutors said. “I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on earth,” he wrote on his computer, saying he would “have to take serious look at appropriate individual targets, to bring the greatest impact.” Among the targets on a list found on Hasson’s computer were Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes and Democratic Senator Kamala Harris. Hasson also targeted two Supreme Court justices and two social media company executives and searched online for their home addresses in March 2018, within minutes of searching firearm sales websites, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors wrote that the former Marine considered them “traitors.”
In a 2017 letter he sent to himself as a draft and apparently wrote to a neo-Nazi leader, Hasson identified himself as a white nationalist for over 30 years and “advocated for ‘focused violence’ in order to establish a white homeland,” prosecutors said. He researched how to make homemade bombs and mortars, studied sniper training and used his government computer to search for information about Nazis and Adolf Hitler, prosecutors said.
Federal prosecutors did not file terrorism charges against Hasson. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom indicated the government may seek the maximum sentence of up to 31 years in prison at the sentencing hearing scheduled for January 31, 2020. Hasson’s attorney, Elizabeth Oyer, said she intends to seek a 3.5-year sentence for her client. Oyer said Hasson “was not plotting a terrorist attack or any of the abhorrent acts that the prosecution has repeatedly speculated about but never actually charged. Mr. Hasson never meant any harm to anyone. He deeply regrets the pain and embarrassment that he has caused his family and the U.S. Coast Guard”. Oyer has said prosecutors found no evidence to back up terrorism allegations. She accused them of seeking to punish Hasson for “private thoughts” he never shared.
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On September 15th, nearly 50,000 members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) launched a strike, walking out of over 50 General Motors facilities. Workers say GM continues to deny employees’ demands for fair conditions and compensation despite leading the company to record profits following bankruptcy and a federal bailout. The nearly 50,000 full-time and temporary workers represented by the UAW make up about half of its workforce.GM workers say they are pushing for a more equitable contract that will guarantee better wages for new hires, stronger health-care benefits and more job security. Workers are forgoing their paychecks during the strike, though the UAW will pay them $250 a week from its strike fund.
GM has made over $30 billion in the past six years, since recovering from its 2009 bankruptcy. Although they received profit-sharing checks that totaled $52,500 for the same period, workers want pay raises that will show up year after year. They gave up cost-of-living pay raises and made other concessions to keep the company afloat during its 2009 bankruptcy, and now they want to be repaid. Longtime workers have received only two raises since 2010. Workers hired after 2007 still make less than older workers, and the union wants to erase that gap.
The company is facing a global auto sales slowdown and also says health care costs are too high, and it wants to cut labor costs so they are closer to U.S. factories owned by foreign competitors. Senior GM workers now make around $30 per hour, but with benefits, it adds up to $63 per hour. Total labor costs run an average of $50 per hour at the foreign plants. The car giant has moved to close a handful of production facilities in the United States in recent years despite strong profitability margins. GM made $8.1 billion in profit after taxes last year but announced the closure of four factories, scuttling thousands of jobs. GM says it has offered to make $7 billion in investments and create 5,400 jobs, including introducing electric trucks, opening a battery cell manufacturing site and investing in eight existing facilities.
The strike has effectively halted GM’s production in the US and just a day after the strike, GM responded with a letter announcing they had cut off health insurance for the nearly 50,000 people on picket lines across the country. GM spokesman David Barnas said the decision to cut workers’ health care was a standard practice during stoppages, likening it to the cessation of worker paychecks. A spokesperson for the UAW stated that they would cover the striker’s health-care fees under COBRA in the interim from the pool of money it keeps for strikes. Employee dental and vision plans will not be covered during the strike.
The effects of the strike have been felt quickly, when GM dismissed 1,200 workers from an assembly plant in Ontario, Canada just three days after the strike started. GM has said the temporary layoffs were the result of parts shortages in the United States because of the strike. The factory had produced full-size pickup trucks. Analysts say GM could be losing as much as $50 million to $100 million a day from the stoppage. 
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