Car industry. Japan. Nissan

Japan parts shortage hits Nissan 

Nissan extends Easter closure in UK due to parts delays.

Carmaker Nissan is to suspend production in the UK for three days due to parts shortages caused by the Japan earthquake. 

The stoppage at its Sunderland plant is in addition to the planned Easter closure at the end of the month.
On Wednesday, Honda said that it would halve production at its Swindon plant from next week.
The car and the electronics industries are expected to be most affected by last month's disaster in Japan.
Temporary stoppage Nissan said it would try to minimise the impact on production and on its 5,000 staff at the plant, by substituting non-production days that had already been planned for later in the year.
"Demand for all Sunderland-produced models remains high, and once the normal delivery of components has been re-established, the plant will work to recover any lost volume as quickly as possible," said the manufacturer.
In its latest earthquake update, Nissan said it was able to resume normal operations at all of its Japanese plants except for the Iwaki Engine Plant, which will only restart in mid-April.
However, the previous interruption of production still leaves the company short of some inventories, which is affecting car assembly.


bbc.co

Pay no Taxes. How?

Eleven shelters, dodges, and rolls—all perfectly legal—used by America's wealthiest people

By Jesse Drucker
For the well-off, this could be the best tax day since the early 1930s: Top tax rates on ordinary income, dividends, estates, and gifts will remain at or near historically low levels for at least the next two years. That's thanks in part to legislation passed in December 2010 by the 111th Congress and signed by President Barack Obama.
"This is clearly far and away the most generous tax situation that's existed," says Gregory D. Singer, a national managing director of the wealth management group at AllianceBernstein (AB) in New York. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

 For the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the effective federal income tax rate—what they actually pay—fell from almost 30 percent in 1995 to just under 17 percent in 2007, according to the IRS. And for the approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1 percent of taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29 percent to 23 percent in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true, but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600 or so.
That's not just good luck. It's often the result of hard work, as suggested by some of the strategies in the following pages. Much of the top 400's income is from dividends and capital gains, generated by everything from appreciated real estate—yes, there is some left—to stocks and the sale of family businesses. As Warren Buffett likes to point out, since most of his income is from dividends, his tax rate is less than that of the people who clean his office.
The true effective rate for multimillionaires is actually far lower than that indicated by official government statistics. That's because those figures fail to include the additional income that's generated by many sophisticated tax-avoidance strategies. Several of those techniques involve some variation of complicated borrowings that never get repaid, netting the beneficiaries hundreds of millions in tax-free cash. From 2003 to 2008, for example, Los Angeles Dodgers owner and real estate developer Frank H. McCourt Jr. paid no federal or state regular income taxes, as stated in court records dug up by the Los Angeles Times. Developers such as McCourt, according to a declaration in his divorce proceeding, "typically fund their lifestyle through lines of credit and loan proceeds secured by their assets while paying little or no personal income taxes." A spokesman for McCourt said he availed himself of a tax code provision at the time that permitted purchasers of sports franchises to defer income taxes.
For those who can afford a shrewd accountant or attorney, our era is rife with opportunity to avoid, or at least defer, tax bills, according to tax specialists and public records. It's limited only by the boundaries of taste, creativity, and the ability to understand some very complex shelters.

Jennifer Daniel



businessweek

Smoke rises from the centre of Abidjan

 Ivory Coast: Rival forces battle for control of Abidjan

Heavy fighting is taking place in Ivory Coast's main city, Abidjan, for a third day as rival forces battle for power.

Fighters loyal to internationally-recognised president Alassane Ouattara battled for control of the presidential palace and barracks still loyal to incumbent Laurent Gbagbo.
Mr Gbagbo's whereabouts are unknown.
In the country's west, at least 800 people are reported to have been killed earlier this week in Duekoue as a result of inter-communal violence.
The battle for Abidjan remains fierce, with heavy fighting reported on Saturday around the Agban military base in the centre of the city.
But the situation inside the city is unclear, with some reports that soldiers defending the base were fighting amongst themselves.
State television station RTI, appears to be back under the control of Gbagbo supporters after being briefly seized by their rivals.
One soldier, accompanied by a dozen members of Mr Gbagbo's Defence and Security Forces (FDS), read a statement on the channel calling for the mobilisation of troops to protect state institutions.
"The FDS, wishing to reaffirm their determination, to ensure their sovereign duty to protect people, property and institutions of the Republic of Ivory Coast" calls for "all the staff of the armed forces" to join five units located in Abidjan.

Residents of Abidjan say they are too afraid to leave their homes as the fighting continues. Many report running out of food, with all shops closed and widespread looting.

The BBC's Valerie Bony in Abidjan says: "In all districts of Abidjan there is sporadic gunfire. There is a lot of looting going in the city, for example on Boulevard Valery Giscard d'Estaing, where shops and houses have been looted by youths who are taking advantage of the situation."
She also says young, pro-Gbagbo supporters in several districts of Abdidjan have been armed by pro-Gbagbo supporters, according to witnesses.
Mr Ouattara was internationally recognised as president after winning a run-off vote in November, but Mr Gbagbo also claimed victory and refused to leave office.
Duekoue 'massacre'

Tens of thousands of women, men and children have fled fighting in Duekoue since Monday

Staff of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who visited the western city of Duekoue, said the scale and brutality of the killings were shocking.
The city was captured by fighters supporting Mr Ouattara this week and has seen fierce fighting.
Aid agencies have warned repeatedly that civilians were being subjected to major violence.
The ICRC said delegates and volunteers from the Ivorian Red Cross had visited the city on Thursday and Friday to gather evidence of the killings, which are believed to have taken place on Tuesday.
Tens of thousands of women, men and children had fled fighting in Duekoue since Monday, they said.
It is not clear whether Mr Ouattara's forces were involved in the killings.
The United Nations human rights office says it has received reports of major human rights violations committed by both sides in the conflict.
West Africa's second biggest economy has been brought to its knees by the conflict, which has sent global cocoa prices spiralling upwards. Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producer.

Are you in the Ivory Coast? Have you been caught up in events? Send us your comments using the form below:

 

Nigeria Delays Parliamentary Vote, Electoral Commission Says

By Elisha Bala-Gbogbo and Dulue Mbachu

(Updates with comment by election monitor in fifth paragraph.)

April 2 (Bloomberg) -- Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer, delayed legislative elections scheduled to start today until April 4 due to the late arrival of voting materials, the head of the electoral commission said.

“There’s insufficient time for voting materials to reach all the polling centers,” Attahiru Jega, head of the Independent National Electoral Commission, told reporters today in Abuja, the capital. Because the ballot stations that had opened were still accrediting voters, “the stoppage hasn’t affected voting.”

At stake in the national legislative vote in Africa’s top oil producer are 109 senate seats and 360 seats in the House of Representatives. The main opposition parties, Action Congress of Nigeria and the Congress for Progressive Change, aim to cut the majority the People’s Democratic Party won in both houses four years ago by saying it failed to reduce poverty, corruption and violence.

“In the circumstances it was best to postpone,” Clement Nwankwo, executive director of the Abuja-based Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, which is monitoring the electoral process, said in a phone interview today from Abuja. “It would’ve been more grievous if the elections had gone on because it would’ve been inconclusive.”

More than 50 people have died in election-related violence since July, according to Amnesty International, while sectarian clashes in the north have claimed the lives of at least 200 since Dec. 24. In a March 3 attack, at least 10 people died when explosives were hurled at a rally of President Goodluck Jonathan’s PDP in the town of Suleja.

Oil Exporter

Nigeria is the fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports. Hague-based Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. of San Ramon, California, Total SA of France and Italy’s Eni SpA run joint ventures with the state- owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. that pump more than 90 percent of the West African nation’s oil.

Since Nigeria’s return to civilian government in 1999 after 15 years of military rule, the PDP has presided over the spending of more than $300 billion in oil export revenue. During that time income disparities have widened, with 54 percent of the population living on less than a dollar a day, about 22 million citizens, illiterate, and maternal mortality of 800 per 100,000 live births, a rate among the highest in the world, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

The vote is a prelude to the presidential contest next weekthat pits Jonathan against 18 rivals, including former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari and the ex-head of the anti- graft agency, Nuhu Ribadu, who is the candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria. A week after that, voters choose the governors and legislatures of Nigeria’s 36 states.

Violence

The concern about sectarian and election-related violence has sparked domestic demand for foreign currency, central bank Governor Lamido Sanusi said in a March 15 interview in Abuja. That has weakened the naira, which reached an 18-month low against the dollar on March 17.

“People want to see a smooth transition, a free and fair election before they bring back the money,” he said.

While an armed insurgency in the Niger River delta that cut more than 28 percent of the nation’s oil output from 2006 to 2009 remains relatively quiet, parts of the north have been hit by a mounting campaign of violence by Islamic militants inspired by Afghanistan’s Taliban movement.

Elections in 2003 and 2007 were marred by violence, voter intimidation and the stuffing of ballot boxes.

Jonathan pledged a more transparent vote this year and won plaudits by appointing Jega, a respected academic, to head the electoral commission.

businessweek