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Filed under: Detroit Auto Show, Coupe, Hybrid, Hatchback, Honda

After a few weeks worth of leaked images and brochure fluff, Honda has finally pulled the covers off its next new production hybrid hatchback. The Japanese automaker claims the CR-Z will bring back the kind of driving joy that hasn’t been felt since the CRX last left dealer lots in 1991, saying that owners will embrace this new mild hybrid with both their hearts and minds. We certainly hope they’re right.

While we’re really digging the looks of the CR-Z and the way it hearkens back to the classic CRX and even the original Insight hybrid, we’ve gotta admit that we’re a tad bit disappointed with the specifications. With 122 horsepower on tap and just 128 lb-ft of torque from the 1.5-liter VTEC four-cylinder with Integrated Motor Assist, shouldn’t we expect more than 36 miles per gallon in the city and 38 on the highway from the CR-Z?

Let’s just hope that the car’s driving dynamics live up to the lofty standards to which Honda is eluding – at least there’s an optional six-speed manual transmission to go along with the expected CVT automatic. We’ll know soon enough know how it goes down the road, as the 2011 CR-Z is slated to hit the ground running in the summer. In the meantime, check out our live images below and click past the break for the press release.

Live photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Follow our coverage of the 2010 Detroit Auto Show live all day on Twitter at http://twitter.com/therealautoblog

Continue reading Detroit 2010: Honda CR-Z promises to bring driving joy to the hybrid equation

Detroit 2010: Honda CR-Z promises to bring driving joy to the hybrid equation originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tony Halme was a big, bad man. That’s what Randy Couture remembers as he got set to fight the Finnish giant at his UFC debut in August, Ga. way back in 1997. Couture was a winner that night and the rest is history as he picked up multiple UFC title belts on his way to becoming a UFC Hall of Famer. Halme’s path was a little different. He was professional wrestling before the UFC, a television star after his MMA fight and eventually got involved with Finnish politics. His post-UFC story came to a sad close yesterday when he was discovered dead at his home at the age of 47.

"Scared [expletive] comes to mind," Couture said about the night he faced Halme. "I didn’t see the [prefight video interviews but] my Mom was watching actually watching it on television from Seattle and started crying when he started talking about how he was going to rip my arms off.He was a 300-pound man, I was like ‘what have I gotten myself into? It was pretty crazy"

Couture won that night via rear-naked choke. Halme was "Ludvig Borga" in the WWF. His poltical career involved a stint in the Finnish parliament in 2003. Soon after, Halme had issues with firearms and drugs during several arrests. Currently police are saying there was no foul play involved in Halme’s death.

Couture also spoke to Cagewriter about Ultimate Fight Night 20. Xtreme Couture camper Gray Maynard is in the main event.

"Obviously his hands have been the biggest thing he’s improved on working with gil Martinez. He specifically got a lot of time in with Neil [Melanson] for this fight working on his ground fighting. And coming up with submission defense because he doesn’t want to get caught with something like he did in the exhibition match [Ultimate Fighter 5 semifinals] against Nate." 

Couture has a lot of respect for the Diaz brothers, Nate and Nick. He also addressed the issue of teammates of not wanting to fight each other. He thinks if it came down to it, Maynard would fight Tyson Griffin if the reward is a title shot against B.J. Penn.

On Sunday, January 10, 2010,
at around 12:20 p.m. a Van Nuys community member called the Los Angeles
Police Department’s Communication Center to report that she saw man who
resembled a suspect whom she had seen on the television news the night
before. 

LAPD
Officers went to the location where the person reporting last saw the
suspect, a Laundromat in the 6800 block of Lennox Avenue.   Officers
found the man in the laundry mat dressed only in boxer shorts; his
clothes were in a washing machine. 

Officers
were able to link a Black Ford Explorer parked in the parking lot to
the suspect.  The vehicle had been taken in a carjacking the previous
day in West Valley Area.  He was taken into custody without incident.

The
suspect has been identified as Tyreese Basey, a 31-year-old male Black
whose last known address was in Los Angeles.  Basey is being booked
into Van Nuys jail for various charges including Robbery and Carjacking.

This
was an extraordinary example of the community, the media, and the LAPD
working together to take a violent and dangerous offender off the
streets of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles: 
Los Angeles Police Department is asking for the public’s help in
identifying a suspect who victimized a number of innocent people and
put the entire community at risk early this morning.

At around 5:15 a.m., a suspect attempted to steal a car that was parked
on Calhoun Street.  He failed in that attempt.  Thirty minutes later at
around 5:45 a.m. the same suspect carjacked a vehicle by simulating to
a victim that he had a weapon in his waistband.  This occurred at a
nearby donut shop located in the 13300 block of Victory Boulevard.  

Thirty-five minutes later at around 6:20 a.m. the suspect had a
rollover single-car traffic accident at Sepulveda Boulevard and
Skirball Center Drive; the car collided with a tree causing the airbag
to deploy.  The suspect got out of the vehicle by climbing through the
sunroof.  

At
around 6:40 a.m., the suspect entered a residence in the 3300 block of
Redrose Drive and demanded car keys from a 90-year-old couple.  The
elderly couple managed to push the suspect away and lock the door. 
Then at around 6:45 a.m., the suspect was seen in a rear yard at a
house a short distance away.  That home owner chased the suspect away.

One hour and thirty minutes after that, and one-half mile away, at
about 8:15 a.m., the same suspect stole a black Eddie Bauer version of
a Ford Explorer, license plate 4WVP668.   

The suspect is described as a male black, black hair in dreadlocks or
corn rows, 6’-6’1” in height, weighing 170-180 pounds, 30-35 years old.
He was last seen wearing black pants, tan shirt and has a beard.  

Investigators believe that the suspect may have sustained some injuries from the rollover collision or airbag deployment.

Investigators believe that because the one-man crime spree was so
unusual, there may have been some precipitating incident or personal
crisis.  Captain Egan said, “He was not just a criminal, but a
desperate and reckless criminal.”  Egan added, “If you witnessed
anything unusual this morning or know of someone fitting this
description with unexplained injuries, please come forward.”

Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to call West
Valley Area Detectives at 818-374-7730.  During non-business hours or
on weekends calls should be directed to 1-877-LAPD-24-7.  Anyone
wishing to remain anonymous should call Crimestoppers at 800-222-TIPS
(800-222-8477).  Tipsters may also contact Crimestoppers by texting to
phone number 274637 (C-R-I-M-E-S on most keypads) with a cell phone.
All text messages should begin with the letters “LAPD.” Tipsters may
also go to LAPDOnline.org, click on "webtips" and follow the prompts.

Drooling over the Android-powered Lenovo Lephone? Bask in it while it lasts, friends – as far as we know, these brand new press shots (and our fantastic hands-on with the device) are about as close as any of us outside of China are going to get with it any time soon.

If you’re not drooling yet, you might want to get those ol’ salivary glands checked. With a detachable keyboard and a downright gorgeous reskinning of Android, this is one handset we certainly wouldn’t mind seeing come stateside.

[Via SlashGear]

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Eric Eldon at InsideFacebook reports that the social network has begun experimenting with a new option for users to report the senders of friend requests as someone they don’t actually know. The prompt appears after you click to ignore a friend request.

Actually knowing a person isn’t a requirement to be their friend on Facebook (unlike LinkedIn, for example), so this is an odd choice of words, but presumably the vast majority of the site’s users do only want to be friends with people they’ve met. Facebook has strict limits on the number of messages and friend requests a person can send, but apparently that hasn’t worked well enough.

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Dealing with information overload and spam are key steps in creating and maintaining a user experience that keeps people coming back to non-essential websites like social networks – as opposed to email, which you’ll keep using anyway because you have to.

According to Eldon, Facebook hasn’t determined yet what it will do with these reports when filed. We regularly hear about people claiming abuse by the Facebook anti-spam team but every time we call Facebook about one of those complaints, the company’s response seems quite reasonable. People do a lot of obnoxious things on Facebook. I don’t know any of those people, though, and plan on clicking a button that says so when the opportunity arises.

Discuss

At a pre-Detroit Auto Show industry dinner last night, GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz announced that GM has definitely green-lighted the virally popular Cadillac Converj EREV. The car, which is based on Volt technology, made its debut as a concept car at last year’s Detroit Auto Show.

Read more of this story »

Desperate times calls for desperate measures and it sounds like The Peacock could use a life preserver. Barbara Walters says NBC News tried to hire her back last June, but she decided to stay at ABC.

Walters — who spent 13 years on The TODAY Show before leaving the network in the late ’70s — says she met with NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker and other officials.

“Last June, NBC came to me — NBC was my home for so many years before I came to ABC. And to my amazement, they made me an offer to come back to NBC News. At my age, it was a very flattering offer. … The fact that they would make an offer to someone of my age and consider that I still had years ahead was something that I think says something about them…” the 80-year-old journalist said Monday on The View.

NBC was even going to allow her to stay on The View, but ultimately chose not to go because she’s happy at ABC.

“It was a very flattering offer,” she adds. “So I just want to say that in spite of the fact it is young, young, they did make me this offer and now I can publicly thank them.”

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Apple Financial

It’s that time again. Apple will be live streaming their Q1 financial conference call on Monday, January 25, 2010 at 2pm PDT/5pm EDT. To follow along (Quicktime required), visit this page on the 25th.

Of course, TUAW will be live-blogging the event with commentary, so feel free to join us for all the announcements plus a lively discussion. If the analyst’s predictions are accurate, we should anticipate a blockbuster report. For example, Brian Marshall at Broadpoint.AmTech has estimated that Apple sold 3.3 million Macs during the last quarter, which would be an all-time single-quarter sales record.

Meanwhile, estimates of iPhone sales during the same time period range from 11.30 million units sold (according to Brian Marshall at Broadpoint AmTech) to 8.17 million units (according to Mark Moskowitz, J.P. Morgan). The interesting thing is that the low estimate, 8.17 million iPhones sold, would represent a 10.8% increase from the last September’s record of 7.37 million if true.

We’ll have all the facts in a few days.

TUAWApple announces Q1 financial conference call originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An early-morning decision by the U.S. Supreme court has blocked cameras from a California court room, reversing last week’s decision to allow the delayed broadcast of the controversial trial on YouTube. The court is examining the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban that was voted into law last year.

The trial was set to be the first of its kind, with its proceedings broadcast on a delay over YouTube. The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the ban on its rebroadcast will be in place until at least Wednesday, to give the justices more time to consider the matter. The trial began this morning at 9 a.m. in San Francisco.

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Prop 8 supporters, the side that opposes gay marriage, have been pushing to stop the trial’s broadcasting altogether, saying that it might discourage witnesses from testifying. At the moment, it looks like their effort has been successful.

The SFist quoted a motion by William Tam, one of the defendants, who said that he feared for the safety of himself and his family were the trial to be broadcast.

“The first reason is because I am fearful for my personal safety and the safety of my family,” Tam wrote in the motion. “In the past I have received threats on my life, had my property vandalized and am recognized on the streets due to my association with Proposition 8. Now that the subject lawsuit is going to trial, I fear that I will get more publicity, be more recognizable and that the risk of harm to me and my family will increase.”

The order to block the cameras from the court room came just hours before the trial was set to begin.

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To be blunt: in our view the jobs data were plainly miserable and disappointing.

Like many of our readers, I listened to the debate on CNBC and read numerous analyses. We will set aside the perennial optimists who find positive outcomes in any data set. Simply put: a 10% unemployment rate and a 17.3% underemployment rate are two extremely serious numbers.

They help explain the market’s immediate reaction, which was a Treasury bond price rally and a drop in the 2-year note yield to an intraday low of 0.936%. The 2-year note yield under 1% is a very important figure for market watchers. It is a key market-based pricing of expectations for the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate policy. This reaction essentially suggests that the Fed will maintain the policy-setting Federal Funds interest rate range of 0.0% to 0.25% for at least the first half of 2010.

That has been Cumberland’s expectation for some time. The assumption of a very low US interest-rate policy continues to drive our investment decisions as we conduct stewardship over portfolios through these extraordinary times. Talk about an imminent exit strategy by the Fed is just talk. It is quite possible that the Fed will maintain the zero-bound rate for the entire year. Maybe, they will firm the rate to 0.25% instead of a range this summer. Our longer-term estimate is that we will not see the Fed Funds Rate above 1% until 2011 at the earliest.

Read more at The Big Picture >>

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See Also:

• Fed President Bullard: Near-Zero Interest Rates Until 2012
• EXPLAINER: Bernanke’s Secret Plan To Raise Rates Too Late
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