Toyota To Post First-Ever Operating Loss
Toyota Motor Corp. slashed its earnings forecast again Monday and now expects it will barely break even for the year through March with a net profit of just $50 billion yen ($555 million).
That's a tiny fraction of the 1.7 trillion yen Japan's top automaker earned last fiscal year.
Toyota also said it is expects to post an operating loss of 150 billion yen ($1.66 billion) for the fiscal year through March 2009 - the first such loss since Toyota began reporting such numbers in 1941. Operating income reflects a company's core business performance and does not reflect income taxes and certain other expenses included in net profit. Last fiscal year, Toyota had an operating profit of 2.27 trillion yen.
"The change that has hit the world economy is of a critical scale that comes once in a hundred years," President Katsuaki Watanabe said at the company's Nagoya office. The drop in vehicle sales over the last month was "far faster, wider and deeper than expected."
Sinking sales in the U.S. in the wake of the financial crisis have dealt a heavy blow to Japanese automakers. But Watanabe said that emerging markets, which had held up in the beginning, were also slowing down now.
Midwest Endures Wind-Whipped Chill
Midwesterners on Monday were enduring a day of bone-chilling, subzero cold.
The big freeze was expected to last through Monday morning, the first full day of the official winter season, when wind chill advisories for the region were to expire.
"It's so cold, it feels like needles are pricking my eyes," grumbled 19-year-old Ashley Sarpong of Chicago, a fur-lined hood pulled around her face Sunday as she crossed a wind-swept bridge that crossed the Chicago River. "This is the coldest I've felt all year."
Snowfall was scant after a frigid air mass rolled in, but ice and high winds whipped up snow along roadways and made driving hazardous for holiday travelers.
But the worst danger was from the cold, made worse by gusts up to 30 mph that drove wind chills to 25 degrees below zero, according to the National Weather Service.
Investigators Examine Denver Air Crash Wreckage
National Transportation Safety Board investigators on Monday were to examine the burned out fuselage of passenger jet that veered off a runway in Denver and caught fire over the weekend.
The twin-engine Boeing 737-500 was left in a shallow, snow-covered ravine where it came to rest after its aborted take-off Saturday at Denver International Airport.
The accident forced the 115 passengers and crew aboard Continental Airlines' Flight 1404 to flee through emergency exits as the plane burned.
The jet had shed its left engine and most of its landing gears, and caught fire. The entire right side of the jet was burned, and melted plastic from overhead compartments dripped onto the seats
Flight data and cockpit voice recorders were recovered and sent for examination to Washington, D.C. It appeared both were in good condition, the NTSB said Sunday.
Mexican Anti-Drug Soldiers Found Beheaded
Mexican police have found nine decapitated bodies, most of them soldiers who had been battling powerful drug gangs in the southern state of Guerrero.
The bodies showed signs of torture and were left along the side of a road. The heads, stuffed in a plastic bag, were found outside a shopping center about an hour north of the tourist resort of Acapulco, state police said.
Mexico's President Feline Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of troops and police since 2006 to take on drug cartels. The defense ministry vowed not to back down despite its latest losses.
"They are trying to scare the military. Regardless, the ministry promises to continue fighting," it said in a statement.
The ministry released the names of eight decapitated soldiers but said one of them was recovered on Dec. 9.
