Expectations are high that Obama will nominate a woman. Though female jurisprudence is not much different from that of male judges, women tend to be more pro-women's rights and to tilt more toward plaintiffs in sex-discrimination cases.
President Obama described the investment of more billions of taxpayer dollars in G.M. as necessary to avert a calamity that could hurt millions of people.
The plants being closed include an engine factory in Ypsilanti, Mich., where workers built B-24 bombers during World War II, and the former Saturn assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tenn.
AP - President Barack Obama pushed a humbled General Motors Corp. into bankruptcy on Monday and said the federal government will act as "reluctant shareholder" when it assumes a 60 percent ownership of the smaller carmaker that emerges.
AP - A missing Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris ran into a towering wall of thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, officials said Monday, fearing that all aboard were lost.
AP - General Motors Corp. said Monday it will permanently close nine more plants and idle three others to trim production and labor costs under bankruptcy protection.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he has little hope of finding survivors from an Air France plane that vanished in a thunderstorm over the Atlantic. Sarkozy met with relatives of the 228 people on board. "I said the truth to them: The prospects of finding survivors are very low," he said.
Militants in a Taliban-held area of Pakistan are believed to have abducted more than 400 students and their relatives Monday after a ceremony marking the last day of school, a police official told CNN.
General Motors idled it Spring Hill, Tennessee, facility as part of its bankruptcy plan Monday, leaving hundreds of employees -- and thousands of residents who rely on the plant's economic thrust -- in limbo.
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