Manufacturing

Ford Motor Co. declining sales of sport-utility vehicles may result to a failure of returning to profit in North America by 2008.

Japanese Automobile manufacturer, Honda Motor Co. Ltd. said on Wednesday it would recall and repair a combined 484,626 units of the Odyssey (sold as the Shuttle in some European markets), CR-V and Step Wagon (not generally sold in Europe), models in Japan and China to fix a faulty ignition switch that could cause the engine to stop.

LAS VEGAS -- Ron Gettelfinger, head of the United Auto Workers, debated yesterday that the shrinking union is facing the toughest challenges in its history and for it the members must adjust to the economic realities of the beleaguered U.S. auto industry and embrace innovative solutions.

The global communication company - Motorola has announced plans to build a $ 100m (£53.8m) factory in India.

The H. J. Heinz Company, commonly known as just Heinz, said Thursday that its quarterly profit dropped 19 percent and that it would cut 2,700 jobs or about 8% of its workforce worldwide and exit 15 plants as part of a move to cut costs and increase profit.

Heinz, one of the world's largest food companies, said approximately 600 of the job losses would come from shutting four factories in Europe, however, it did not identify which plants had been earmarked for closure.

Airbus said on Sunday it had interrupted an evacuation test for its new A380 super jumbo jet after an incident in which several people were injured as an evacuation slide failed.

Intel on Monday announced the delay in launch of its newest Itanium processor until the middle of 2006. The processor, code named Montecito was scheduled to be launched in early 2006.