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GM will be out of the Olympics after Beijing. The General said Monday that it can no longer justify spending $1 billion on its expensive sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic team when there are other options that offer a better return. The global giant is said to be looking into non-traditional advertising outlets in an effort to keep ad dollars spent as efficiently as possible, so they have made the decision to let the Olympic contract lapse when it expires in 2008. They will continue their involvem

Michelle Pfeiffer was on Letterman last night. It's actually a repeat. She is promoting two movies, Hairspray , which already opened and Stardust. Stardust opens this Friday, August 10. She talked about her children, her donkey and her electric car. She drives an "all electric" which "she loves." She only started to drive it again recently because she could only charge it at "her house." She was afraid she would "run out of energy." Not "even AAA. No one could help" her. She talks about it 3 min

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That San Francisco is trying to use biodiesel in many city fleet vehicles is no secret (see links below). From emergency vehicles to buses, the city is looking to turn veggie oil into fuel all over the place, even in paintings. All SF's forward-thinking resulted in a little shout-out in a large mural (12 by 38 feet) by Mona Caron on a building at 300 Church Street and 15th Street. The mural was painted in 2004, and you can read all you'd ever wanted to know about it Sebastian Blanco

Chrysler is apparently a little worried that there might be a mass exodus of executives during the transition from DaimlerChrysler "partnership of equals" to Cerberus stewardship. Because of that, they have taken the bold step of advising current employees against applying for jobs at Daimler AG or Chrysler Financial.

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CleanAIR Systems has been selected to participate in a test program for clean diesel technology on heavy off-road equipment in New York City. They have installed their PERMIT particulate filter system on a pair front end loaders used for snow removal and load salt trucks. The test program is part of a three-year project to develop test methods for evaluating emissions reductions. The filters are expected to reduce particulate emissions by over 85 percent and carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emiss

It looks as if the (very) heavy pressure coming from Germany with regard to the EU's proposed legislation to limit fleetwide automaker CO2 emissions is having an effect. Earlier drafts set a 130 g/km ceiling, which would seriously impact German automakers like Porsche, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, all of which rely on the powerful vehicles in their product portfolios to make money. In new drafts, the flat limit has been replaced by a tiered approach favored by the Germans (Porsche specifically mentio