DEARBORN, Michigan (AP) ― Ford’s ambitious plans to grow in Asia took a toll on its second-quarter profit, with higher costs to design and sell cars offsetting rising sales. The company’s net income fell 8 percent to $2.4 billion for the April-June period. Ford blamed higher prices for steel and other commodities, but also said that after years of restructuring, the company is strong enough to s...

SUNAN, North Korea (AP) ― It’s an unlikely sight: hundreds of ostriches, a bird native to sunny Africa, squatting and squabbling in the morning chill on a sprawling farm in North Korea. Even stranger: In winter, some wear quilted vests. Built on the heels of a 1990s famine, the ostrich farm was a bold, expensive investment that the state hoped would help feed its people and provide goods to expo...

Recently I debated a conservative Republican who insisted the best way to revive the American economy was to shrink the size of government. When I asked him to explain his logic, he said, simply, “Government is the source of all our problems.” When I noted government spending had brought the economy out of the previous eight economic downturns, including the Great Depression, he disagreed. “The D...

NEW HAVEN ― Economists like to talk about thresholds that, if crossed, spell trouble. Usually there is an element of truth in what they say. But the public often overreacts to such talk. Consider, for example, the debt-to-GDP ratio, much in the news nowadays in Europe and the United States. It is sometimes said, almost in the same breath, that Greece’s debt equals 153 percent of its annual GDP, ...

RABAT (AFP) ― A military transport plane slammed into a mountainside in bad weather in southern Morocco on Tuesday, killing all 80 people on board, hospital and military sources said. King Mohammed VI announced three days of national mourning following the crash, one of the deadliest in the country’s history. The army said 78 people were killed on the spot after the Hercules C-130 crashed on th...

PRISTINA (AP) ― Kosovo’s Prime Minister has defended an order for his special police to take control of two contested border crossings with Serbia, saying it was “the right decision” despite condemnation from the European Union. Hashim Thaci said the operation in which a member of the police unit died and four others were slightly injured was a “concrete step in establishing the rule of law” in ...

HAVANA (AFP) ― Perched on a wooden dais in front of 600 workers rolling Cuba’s legendary cigars, Grisel reads aloud ― poems, novels and even sex tips from the newspaper ― keeping workers entertained, their attention rapt, just the way it has been done for 150 years. Grisel, 55, a petite former teacher who wears reading glasses she adjusts frequently, may have a job that predates electricity. Bu...