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GM' second largest market is China where it sold more than a million cars in 2007 and sales growth was 21%. Brazil is the third largest market. Russia is the fastest growing market with sales growing 75%, and it has a favorable pricing environment in Russia with growing class of more affluent buyers as Russian economy grows quickly. And India is a market that GM is trying to buildup sales with the introduction of GM's Spark car. Overall this should enable GM to maintain momentum even as sales in N. America declined 6%. Toyota's N. American sales declined 4% so it is seeing a slowdown there also. But compared to GM which has 65% of revenues from N. America, Toyota has 40% of revenues from N. America and 30% of global profit.

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China to introduce local-content requirements for alternative fuel and hybrid cars to qualify for expected subsidies. This is aimed at Toyota which imports parts from japan for the Prius and assembles it in China. National Development and Reform Commission is drafting new rules for the automobile sector. GM's solution to keeping its own technology within the company is to establish its own research center in China. Previously it had a setup research center with its partner Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation which has 1300 employees. The new research center in Shanghai will be devoted to hybrid and other advanced technologies. The way the Chinese market is growing and becoming a key part of GM's global market GM now sees this as a good investment especially in the light of the new local content rules and the fact that with its own research center the technology will not be able to be copied. Note that Honda, Ford and VW also have announced plans for their own research centers....

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Schumacher of DW.com provides insights into the referendum in Italy in which the "no" vote has a lead. Some aspects of the constitutional reforms are not positive and reduce representation, Renzi's failure to guage public frustration especially after the failure of Mayor Marino in Italy to improve services and infrastructure, the coalescing of different strands of public opinion from right to left in a referendum such as in Brexit especially with a failure to improve economic conditions for the middle class, make a "no' vote likely.

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Only 16% of developers say they are 'very interested' in developing software for Blackberry smartphones.

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RIM CEO Thorsten Hein's plans to win over the corporat technology market with the new Blackberry 10 model due to come out Jan 30, 2013.

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Aubrey McClendon, was one of the pioneers of the shale oil boom in the U.S. His penchant for taking excessive risk caused severe setbacks in 2008 with the global financial crisis, and in 2015 with the collapse of oil prices. In 2016 he was indicted by a grand jury in Oklahoma for illegal practices, and he died shortly thereafter in a car crash.