GM to close 5 plants

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors will cut up to 14,000 workers in North America and put five plants up for closure as it abandons many of its car models and restructures to focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles, the automaker announced Monday.

The reductions could amount to as much as 8 percent of GM’s global workforce of 180,000 employees.

The restructuring reflects changing North American auto markets as manufacturers continue to shift away from cars toward SUVs and trucks. In October, almost 65 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. were trucks or SUVs. That figure was about 50 percent cars just five years ago.

Hours after the announcement, President Donald Trump said his administration was exerting “a lot of pressure” on GM. He said he told the company that the U.S. has done a lot for GM and that if its cars aren’t selling, the company needs to produce ones that will.

Trump, who has made bringing back auto jobs a big part of his appeal to Ohio and other Great Lakes states that are crucial to his re-election, also said he was being tough on General Motors CEO Mary Barra.

At a rally near GM’s Lordstown, Ohio, plant last summer, Trump told people not to sell their homes because the jobs are “all coming back.”

The layoffs come amid the backdrop of a trade war between the U.S., China and Europe that likely will lead to higher prices for imported vehicles and those exported from the U.S. Barra said the company faces challenges from tariffs but she did not directly link the layoffs to them.

The planned reduction includes about 8,000 white-collar employees, or 15 percent of GM’s North American white-collar workforce. Some will take buyouts while others will be laid off.

At the factories, around 3,300 blue-collar workers could lose jobs in the U.S. and another 2,600 in Canada, but some U.S. workers could transfer to truck or SUV factories that are increasing production. The cuts mark GM’s first major downsizing since shedding thousands of jobs in the Great Recession.

The company also said it will stop operating two additional factories outside North America by the end of next year, in addition to a previously announced plant closure in Gunsan, South Korea.

General Motors Co.’s pre-emptive strike to get leaner before the next downturn likely will be followed by Ford Motor Co., which has said it is restructuring and will lay off an unspecified number of white-collar workers. Toyota Motor Corp. also has discussed cutting costs, even though it’s building a new assembly plant in Alabama.

GM isn’t the first to abandon much of the car market. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles got out of small and midsize cars two years ago, while Ford announced plans to shed all cars but the Mustang sports car in the U.S. in the coming years.

Barra told reporters that GM doesn’t foresee an economic downturn and is making the cuts “to get in front of it while the company is strong and while the economy is strong.”

Factories that could be closed include assembly plants in Detroit and Oshawa, Ontario, and Lordstown, Ohio, as well as transmission plants in Warren, Michigan, and near Baltimore.

The announcement worried GM workers who could lose their jobs.

“I don’t know how I’m going to feed my family,” Matt Smith, a worker at the Ontario factory, said Monday outside the plant’s south gate, where workers blocked trucks from entering or leaving. “It’s hard. It’s horrible.” Smith’s wife also works at the plant. The couple has an 11-month-old at home.

Workers at the Ontario plant walked off the job Monday but were expected to return Tuesday.

After the morning announcement, Barra was to head for Washington to speak with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow in what was described as a previously scheduled meeting, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly.

Most of the factories to be affected by GM’s restructuring build cars that will not be sold in the U.S. after next year. They could close or they could get different vehicles to build. Their futures will be part of contract talks with the United Auto Workers union next year.

The Detroit-based union has already condemned GM’s actions and threatened to fight them “through every legal, contractual and collective bargaining avenue open to our membership.”

Bobbi Marsh, who has worked assembling the Chevrolet Cruze compact car at the Ohio plant since 2008, said she can’t understand why the factory might close given the strong economy.

“I can’t believe our president would allow this to happen,” she said Monday.

She now faces an uncertain future, not knowing whether the plant will close for good or if there’s a chance it could find another use.

“Everything is up in the air,” she said. “I don’t want to give up hope for this facility and these people. I spend more time around them than my own family. It would be like breaking up a family.”

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said the move will be disastrous for the region around Youngstown, Ohio, east of Cleveland, where GM is one of the area’s few remaining industrial anchors.

“GM received record tax breaks as a result of the GOP’s tax bill last year, and has eliminated jobs instead of using that tax windfall to invest in American workers,” he said in a statement.

Many of those who will lose jobs are now working on conventional cars with internal combustion engines. Barra said the industry is changing rapidly and moving toward electric propulsion, autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing, and GM must adjust.

She said GM is still hiring people with expertise in software and electric and autonomous vehicles.

GM will stop producing cars and transmissions at the plants through 2019. In all, six car models were scrapped, leaving the company with nine remaining car models.

The automaker said it was ending Chevrolet Volt production because the vehicle was meant to be a bridge to fully electric cars when it was introduced about a decade ago. The Volt has a small battery that can take it about 50 miles, then it switches to a small gasoline engine.

Since it was introduced, battery technology has improved dramatically. Now the full-electric Chevrolet Bolt can go up to 238 miles on a single charge.

GM builds full-size Chevrolet and GMC pickups in Mexico, and it recently announced that a new Chevrolet Blazer SUV will be built there. Also, GM imports the Buick Envision midsize SUV from China.

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HOLIDAY FUN

Throngs of Humboldt residents descended upon downtown Humboldt Friday for the Bicycle Around Humboldt’s Holiday Celebration.

Additional photos available here.

Winter concert season begins

A busy holiday concert schedule kicks off Tuesday at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center, with the Iola High School and Iola Middle School choirs to perform at 7 p.m. Admission is free.

On Saturday, Miss Chelsea’s Dance Academy will present “Grinchmas” at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at the dance studio at 217 South St.

The Allen Community College Music Department is hosting its annual Tuba Christmas performance at 3 p.m. Sunday. Attendance is free. Performers who wish to take part with their brass musical talents should arrive at 12:30, with rehearsals beginning at 1 o’clock.

Other holiday events: Jefferson Elementary program, 7 p.m. Dec. 4; McKinley Elementary program, 7 p.m. Dec. 6; IHS/IMS strings concert, 7 p.m. Dec. 7; Lincoln Elementary winter program, 7 p.m. Dec. 11, IMS band concert, 7 p.m. Dec. 13, IHS band concert, 7 p.m. Dec. 17.

Storm hits Kansas

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A winter snowstorm has closed several universities and school districts in Kansas as crews work to clear the roads.

The National Weather Service says the storm dumped from 2 to 14 inches from late Saturday through Sunday across a large swath of the state. As the storm hit, Gov. Jeff Colyer declared a state of emergency.

The Kansas Department of Transportation was reporting several road closures today, mostly in the extreme northeast corner of the state. But crews managed to clear Interstate 70 enough to reopen the east-west route.

Several schools and government offices opened late today. Several schools called off classes entirely.

Tear gas fired at border migrants

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — U.S. border agents fired tear gas on hundreds of migrants protesting near the border with Mexico on Sunday after some of them attempted to get through the fencing and wire separating the two countries, and American authorities shut down the nation’s busiest border crossing from the city where thousands are waiting to apply for asylum.

The situation devolved after the group began a peaceful march to appeal for the U.S. to speed processing of asylum claims for Central American migrants marooned in Tijuana.

Mexican police had kept them from walking over a bridge leading to the Mexican port of entry, but the migrants pushed past officers to walk across the Tijuana River below the bridge. More police carrying plastic riot shields were on the other side, but migrants walked along the river to an area where only an earthen levee and concertina wire separated them from U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Some saw an opportunity to breach the crossing.

An Associated Press reporter saw U.S. agents shoot several rounds of tear gas after some migrants attempted to penetrate several points along the border. Mexico’s Milenio TV showed images of migrants climbing over fences and peeling back metal sheeting to enter.

Honduran Ana Zuniga, 23, also said she saw migrants opening a small hole in concertina wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee, at which point U.S. agents fired tear gas at them.

Children screamed and coughed. Fumes were carried by the wind toward people who were hundreds of feet away.

“We ran, but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more,” Zuniga told the AP while cradling her 3-year-old daughter Valery in her arms.

Mexico’s Interior Ministry said around 500 migrants tried to “violently” enter the U.S.

The ministry said in a statement it would immediately deport those people and would reinforce security.

As the chaos unfolded, shoppers just yards away on the U.S. side streamed in and out of an outlet mall, which eventually closed.

Throughout the day, U.S. Customs and Border Protection helicopters flew overhead, while U.S. agents held vigil on foot beyond the wire fence in California. The Border Patrol office in San Diego said via Twitter that pedestrian crossings were suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry at both the East and West facilities. All northbound and southbound traffic was halted for several hours. Every day more than 100,000 people enter the U.S. there.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement that U.S. authorities will continue to have a “robust” presence along the Southwest border and that they will prosecute anyone who damages federal property or violates U.S. sovereignty.

“DHS will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public safety reasons,” she said.

More than 5,000 migrants have been camped in and around a sports complex in Tijuana after making their way through Mexico in recent weeks via caravan. Many hope to apply for asylum in the U.S., but agents at the San Ysidro entry point are processing fewer than 100 asylum petitions a day.

Irineo Mujica, who has accompanied the migrants for weeks as part of the aid group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said the aim of Sunday’s march toward the U.S. border was to make the migrants’ plight more visible to the governments of Mexico and the U.S.

“We can’t have all these people here,” Mujica told The Associated Press.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum on Friday declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city of 1.6 million, which he says is struggling to accommodate the crush of migrants.

U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter Sunday to express his displeasure with the caravans in Mexico.

“Would be very SMART if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form (it is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S. No longer),” he wrote.

Mexico’s Interior Ministry said Sunday the country has sent 11,000 Central Americans back to their countries of origin since Oct. 19, when the first caravan entered the country. It said that 1,906 of those who have returned were members of the recent caravans.

Mexico is on track to send a total of around 100,000 Central Americans back home by the end of this year.

Yvonne Settlemyer

Yvonne Ione Settlemyer, age 84, of Colony, passed away on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018, at Olathe Health Hospice House. She was born on Oct. 26, 1934, in LeRoy, to Tom Hensley and Mary Elizabeth (Strauch) Hensley.

She met and married Richard Settlemyer on July 9, 1950, in LeRoy. Yvonne and her husband farmed together in the Colony/Geneva area.

Yvonne and Richard enjoyed wintering in Arizona. She enjoyed farming, watching her crops grow, and looking after her cattle. She loved to play cards with family and friends. Yvonne liked traveling with her family, visiting nearly all the states.

Yvonne was preceded in death by her husband; one son, David Settlemyer; her parents; one brother, Roland Hensley; one sister, Lorraine Rexroad.

Yvonne is survived by two sons, Richard L. Settlemyer and wife, Carol, Colony, and Gerald D. Settlemyer, Colony; six grandchildren; numerous great-grandchildren; several great-great-grandchildren; one brother, Tom Hensley and wife, Roberta, Topeka; one sister, Sue Eck, of Arizona; and numerous other relatives.

A visitation with refreshments will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday in The Venue at Feuerborn Family Funeral Service, Iola. A funeral service will follow the visitation at 1 p.m. on Saturday in the Feuerborn Family Funeral Service Chapel, Iola. Burial will follow in the Geneva Cemetery, Colony,.

Memorials are suggested to the American Diabetes Association, and may be left with Feuerborn Family Funeral Service, Iola, Kansas.

Condolences for the family may be left at www.feuerbornfuneral.com.

Ukraine demands Russia release vessels

MOSCOW (AP) — Ukraine’s president demanded today that Russia immediately release Ukrainian sailors and vessels seized in a standoff around Crimea that sharply escalated tensions between the two countries and drew international concern.

The two neighbors have been locked in a tense tug-of-war since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, but the incident late Sunday, in which Russian coast guard ships fired on Ukrainian navy vessels near the Kerch Strait, directly pitted the two militaries against each other, placing them on the verge of an open conflict.

The Ukrainian navy said six of its seamen were wounded when Russian coast guards opened fire on three Ukrainian ships near the Kerch Strait and then seized them. Russia said that three Ukrainian sailors were lightly injured and given medical assistance.

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, chaired an emergency meeting of his Cabinet early today and asked parliament to introduce martial law for two months in response to what he described as Russian aggression.

“We consider it as an act of aggression against our state and a very serious threat,” the president said. “Unfortunately, there are no ‘red lines’ for the Russian Federation.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told reporters later that Kiev believes that what happened near the Kerch Strait was no accident but “deliberately planned hostilities.”

If adopted by lawmakers, the emergency measures proposed by Poroshenko will include a partial mobilization and strengthening the country’s air defense. They also include a plethora of vaguely worded steps such as the “strengthening” of anti-terrorism measures and “information security.”

The fate of the Ukrainian seamen was not immediately clear. Klimkin insisted that they should be treated as prisoners of war while Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not say what legal status they have.

An emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council was also called for today. The European Union and NATO called for restraint from both sides.

Poroshenko had a phone call today with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to discuss the situation. NATO later said that at Poroshenko’s request, its ambassadors and Ukraine’s envoy will hold emergency talks in Brussels later today.

NATO said Stoltenberg expressed the U.S.-led military alliance’s “full support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, including its full navigational rights in its territorial waters under international law.”

Poroshenko said at a meeting of Ukraine’s national security council today that “we demand that (the ships and crews) are urgently turned over to the Ukrainian side” and called for a “de-escalation” of the crisis around Crimea.

Russia and Ukraine have traded blame over the incident that further escalated tensions that have soared since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine with clandestine dispatches of troops and weapons.

Ukraine said its vessels were heading to the Sea of Azov in line with international maritime rules, while Russia charged that they had failed to obtain permission to pass through the Kerch Strait separating Crimea from the Russian mainland.

The narrow strait is the only passage between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. It’s spanned by a 11.8-mile bridge that Russia completed this year. While a 2003 treaty designates the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov as shared territorial waters, Russia has sought to assert greater control over the passage since the annexation of Crimea.

“There is no doubt that it was done by blessing or, perhaps, even a direct order from the top,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “While planning that provocation, Ukraine had undoubtedly hoped to get additional benefits from the situation, expecting the U.S. and Europe to blindly take the provocateurs’ side.”

He urged the West to “calm down those in Ukraine who are trying to unleash a military hysteria to get political gains in connection with the planned elections” — a reference to Ukraine’s presidential vote in March.

A motion to introduce martial law requires a simple majority of votes in the 450-seat parliament, which Poroshenko’s party controls. If martial law is introduced as proposed for 60 days, it will derail the presidential election campaign, which was expected to start on Dec. 30 with the vote in March.

Some lawmakers lashed out at Poroshenko’s move as an attempt to influence the vote. Polls show Poroshenko trailing far behind arch-rival Yulia Tymoshenko.

“Martial law in Ukraine would present a wonderful chance to manipulate the presidential elections,” said Oksana Syroid, a deputy speaker of parliament who is a member of the Samopomich faction.

She noted that martial law was not introduced in 2014 or 2015 despite large-scale fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in the east.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Peskov, said that Poroshenko’s initiative to introduce martial law “clearly smacks of electoral intrigues.”

“We believe that it’s wrong and dangerous to solve electoral tasks by waving a flag of war,” he said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters from far-right party National Corps waved flares in the snowy streets outside the Ukrainian parliament Monday. They brandished yellow-and-blue flags with the Ukrainian national symbol, the trident, and a huge white banner reading ‘Don’t back down!”

 

Sculpture captures Greensburg’s heart

GREENSBURG, Kan. (AP) — A southcentral Kansas town that was nearly wiped out by a massive tornado in May 2007 has added a new sculpture to a park that stands on the grounds of its leveled city hall.

The 5-foot-tall spiral of stainless steel shaped around an elegant blue glass form is the third sculpture to be installed at Starlight Park in Greensburg, The Hutchinson News reports. Called “Aurora,” it’s a joint project of glassblower Rollin Karg and metal sculptor Jeff Garrelts. Karg described the hue of blue as “a show-stopper.”

Erica Goodman, who runs an antique store on Main Street, likes the latest addition to the park. “The spiral reminds me of a tornado and the glass is us rising out of that event,” Goodman said.

Greensburg was hit with an EF5 tornado that was nearly two miles wide at one point and had winds topping 200 mph. Eleven people were killed and most of the town’s buildings were leveled, including the city hall.

On the 10th anniversary of the disaster, the town dedicated the first of three sculptures on the former city hall site. The first piece, called “The Beacon,” features etchings on its textured metal. A kinetic piece, called “Triple Eclipse,” was added next. It has three wheels with stained glass stars that reflect light as they spin.

A committee began planning the art project in December 2015.

GM to close Canadian plant, but that’s just the beginning

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is closing a Canadian plant at the cost of about 2,500 jobs, but that is apparently just a piece of a much broader, company-wide restructuring that will be announced as early as today.

(Update: GM has announced it will close five plants and two factories, laying off up to 14,000 workers in the United States and Canada.)

A person briefed on the matter told The Associated Press that the plant being shuttered in Canada is just the beginning as GM prepares for the next economic downturn, shifting trade agreements under the Trump administration, and potential tariffs on imported automobiles.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement hasn’t been made public.

In the fall, the Detroit automaker offered buyouts to 18,000 white collar workers, but it has yet to say how many accepted, or if it’s close to meeting the staff reduction goals it set to better withstand leaner times.

Today’s closure of GM’s plant in Oshawa, Ontario, was confirmed late Sunday by an official familiar with the decision. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly ahead of the announcement.

GM needs to reshape the company as it shifts its focus to lower emitting hybrid vehicles, technology that is not at the forefront at the Canadian plant.

Too many GM factories are devoted to making slow-selling cars and the company can no longer afford to keep them all operating without making some tough decisions. But the political atmosphere might limit realistic choices for the Detroit automaker.

‘Misinformation’ chosen as 2018’s word of the year

NEW YORK (AP) — Misinformation, as opposed to disinformation, was chosen Monday as Dictionary.com’s word of the year on the tattered coattails of “toxic,” picked earlier this month for the same honor by Oxford Dictionaries in these tumultuous times.

Jane Solomon, a linguist-in-residence at Dictionary, said in a recent interview that her site’s choice of “mis” over “dis” was deliberate, intended to serve as a “call to action” to be vigilant in the battle against fake news, flat earthers and anti-vaxxers, among other conduits.

It’s the idea of intent, whether to inadvertently mislead or to do it on purpose, that the Oakland, California-based company wanted to highlight. The company decided it would go high when others have spent much of 2018 going low.

“The rampant spread of misinformation is really providing new challenges for navigating life in 2018,” Solomon told The Associated Press ahead of the word of the year announcement. “Misinformation has been around for a long time, but over the last decade or so the rise of social media has really, really changed how information is shared. We believe that understanding the concept of misinformation is vital to identifying misinformation as we encounter it in the wild, and that could ultimately help curb its impact.”

In studying lookups on the site that trended this year, Dictionary noticed “our relationship with truth is something that came up again and again,” she said.

For example, the word “mainstream” popped up a lot, spiking in January as the term “mainstream media,” or MSM, grew to gargantuan proportions, wielded as an insult by some on the political right. Other words swirling around the same problem included a lookup surge in February for “white lie” after Hope Hicks, then White House communications director, admitted to telling a few for President Donald Trump.

Dictionary.com chose “complicit” as last year’s word of the year. In 2016, it was “xenophobia.”

The word “Orwellian” surfaced in heavy lookups in May, after a statement attributed to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused the Chinese government of “Orwellian nonsense” in trying to impose its views on American citizens and private companies when it declared that United Airlines, American Airlines and other foreign carriers should refer to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as part of China in public-facing materials, such as their websites.

Misinformation, Solomon said, “frames what we’ve all been through in the last 12 months.” The company’s runners-up for the top honor include “representation,” driven by the popularity of the movies “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” along with wins during the U.S. midterm elections for Muslim women, Native Americans and LGBTQ candidates.

But the rise of misinformation, Solomon said, stretches well beyond U.S. borders and Facebook’s role in disseminating fake news and propaganda in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The use of Facebook and other social media to incite violence and conflict was documented around the globe in 2018, she said.

“Hate speech and rumors posted to Facebook facilitated violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, riots started in Sri Lanka after false news set the country’s Buddhist majority against Muslims, and false rumors about child kidnappers on WhatsApp led to mob violence in India,” Solomon said.