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Talk of the day: Airlines want to provide fast planes to china

By TIMES WIRES
Published July 18, 2007

DALLAS

Several U.S. airlines want federal regulators to grant the right to operate new nonstop flights between the United States and China beginning in March, 2009. American, the largest U.S. carrier, said it applied Monday for a route from Chicago's O'Hare Airport to Beijing. Continental Airlines Inc. applied Monday to fly between Newark, N.J., and Shanghai. US Airways Group Inc. said it is seeking to offer nonstop service between its Philadelphia hub and Beijing. Delta Air Lines Inc. asked to fly from Atlanta to Beijing and Shanghai. And Northwest Airlines Corp. filed to offer service between Detroit and the same two Chinese cities. UAL Corp.'s United Airlines proposed to fly between San Francisco and Guangzhou starting in 2008, and between Los Angeles and Shanghai in 2009. Air service between China and the U.S. is restricted by agreements between the two governments.

Reston, VA.

Check the phone, find your friends

Sprint Nextel Corp., the third-largest U.S. mobile-phone company, will offer a service by startup Loopt Inc. that lets subscribers monitor the whereabouts of their friends. Using the Loopt mapping feature, customers with one of 25 compatible phones can share their location with selected contacts, the companies said Tuesday. Sprint will charge $2.99 a month for the service, in addition to its standard rates for data use.

DETROIT

Not a great time for a great big car

Chrysler said Tuesday it has pulled the plug on production of what would have been its largest and heaviest luxury car because of expected increases in U.S. fuel efficiency standards. David Elshoff, a spokesman for DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group, said legislation passed in the Senate that would require the auto industry to meet a combined vehicle standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. "There was no way we could do that," he said.

WASHINGTON

White House aims to squeeze terror

The Bush administration announced a new tool Tuesday aimed at putting a financial bind on people who run networks that recruit and send would-be terrorists into Iraq. President Bush unveiled an executive order that allows the administration to block bank accounts and any other financial assets that might be found in this country belonging to people, companies or groups that the United States deems are working to threaten stability in Iraq. No person, company or group was designated under the order on Tuesday.

SEATTLE, wash.

Microsoft reacts to new hack attack

Microsoft Corp. is once again on the defensive against hackers after the launch of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock copy-protected digital music and movies. The latest version of the FairUse4M program, which can crack Microsoft's digital rights management system for Windows Media audio and video files, was published online late Friday. In the past year, Microsoft plugged holes exploited by two earlier versions of the program and filed a federal lawsuit against its anonymous authors. Microsoft dropped the lawsuit after failing to identify them.

[Last modified July 18, 2007, 01:12:18]