Will These Cars Save the Auto Industry?

Peppier diesels, hybrids, even electric motors in wheels are among new fuel-savers

By Matt Vella

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Automakers could hardly have it worse. Slumping economies and credit-strapped buyers have ushered in the stormiest era for the industry considering the 1970s. U.S. auto sales in October were the worst per capita since World War II, throwing the future of General Motors (GM) and Chrysler in have doubts about. Carmakers are trying to move away from gasoline power and take up beforehand shifts in rightfully claim. Here are some of the offerings that elect join Toyota’s ™ Prius in American dealerships over the nearest pair years.

CHEVROLET VOLT General Motors is going everything in with its new Volt, an advanced plug-in cross-bred that can operate without using any gas on short trips. Year: 2010 Cost: $30,000-$40,000 est. Fuel Economy: 50-100 mpg est. The bet: The Volt will leapfrog Japanese technology. The risk: The vehicle’s compensation has crept into luxury quarter. GM’session iffy prospects don’familiarily hinder. The innovation: A 40-mile electric-only range means more commuters will never burn in any degree gas.

HONDA INSIGHT Honda is rebooting the Insight brand name. Honda’s smaller 1999 Insight hybrid was post-haste overshadowed and alienated outsold by the Toyota Prius. Year: 2009 Cost: Less than $20,000 Fuel Economy: 40-45 mpg est. The bet: A roomier, greater quantity powerful Insight will have more seek reference of the case. The risk: Without advanced features, the Insight could get lost in the flurry of new green cars. The innovation: Honda crowd along the course of manufacturing costs to suppose this hybrid the least expensive on the market.

JEEP EV Chrysler unexpectedly revealed a trio of electric vehicles early this fall, vowing to bring at minutest one to market by 2010. This Jeep EV uses technology similar to the Volt. Year: 2010 Cost: N/A Fuel Economy: 50 mpg est. The bet: Drivers will flock to vehicles similar to gas versions but by advanced hybrid technology. The risk: Chrysler might not have the coin to weather the current downturn and consols development. The innovation: Electric motors built into each wheel could allow the vehicle to venture off-road like other Jeeps.

VOLKSWAGEN JETTA TDI Europe has been hesitant to embrace hybrid technology, favoring diesel-sipping engines in lieu. VW now plans to promote its TDI clean-diesel technology in the U.S. Year: 2008 Cost: Base price,$21,990 Fuel Economy: 30-41 mpg The bet: Consumers will be swayed by the reliable, German-made diesel engines. The risk: Diesel fuel costs added than gasoline and isn’t as widely available. The innovation: Highly efficient, turbo-charged engines turn out peppier exhibition of character on the stage than most hybrids.

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Corruption Charges for China’s Richest Man

Known as the Best Buy of China, Gome has made millions on the growing midst class. Now its founder faces a legal battle

By Frederik Balfour

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A shop assistant in Gome chats to a buyer in a store in Beijing in succession November 24, 2008. PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images

There’s never a agreeable time for a company to have its chairman under investigation. But news that Chinese authorities have detained Huang Guangyu, the home’s wealthiest tycoon, could hardly have come at a worse moment for his company, consumer electronics retailer Gome Electrical Appliance Holdings. Known as the Best Buy (BBY) of China, Gome has on tap into the demand during household appliances by China’s burgeoning middle rank to become the country’s biggest retailer. Now, with the Chinese economy misery a dramatic slowdown because of the global financial crisis, Gome (pronounced guo-mei) cannot afford the distraction of a prolonged legal battle involving its founder.

What’s happening to its chairman corpse unclear. Trading in Gome shares was suspended on Nov. 24 in Hong Kong in the wake of Chinese media reports that Huang has been detained in connection with alleged stock manipulation of a company owned by his brother. In a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange, Gome said it was "not in a position to confirm the carefulness of the information in the newspaper articles."

A spokesman for society relations firm The Brunswick Group said the company was attempting to investigate the status of 39-year-old Huang and charges for him. The Brunswick prolocutor added that Gome executives had been unable to make way to Huang, who was reportedly detained on Nov. 19. Gome declined to annotate directly to BusinessWeek.

Rags-to-Riches Tale

According to Chinese media reports, Huang, whose net worth of $6.3 billion ranked him as China’s richest person in the 2008 occurring once a year Hurun Report on the rude’s most affluent, is under investigation over unusual price movements of Shanghai-listed pharmaceutical and medical equipment visitor Shandong Jintai Group. The company, controlled by Huang’s brother Huang Junqin, saw its shares surge more than 900% in the in the first place eight months of 2007 prior to they were suspended.

Huang’s is a typical rags-to-riches China tale. He and his brother began hawking radios and other electrical components from a roadside stall following he moved to Beijing as a teenager. He eventually built his business into the home’s largest retail manacle (BusinessWeek.com, 9/10/08), which he listed in Hong Kong in 2004. He is the company’s largest shareholder with 34%. Last October, Gome became the primitive Chinese retailer to team up with Dell (DELL) to betray the U.S. company’s computers in its stores.

The alleged arrest of Huang does not come as a complete surprise. The wildly and loose business methods by which several high-flying Chinese tycoons esteem amassed bulky fortunes can run afoul of the law. Earlier this year, Shanghai’s most successful property developer, Zhou Zhengyi, accepted a 16-year pass judgment upon in connection with a scam in which social security funds were channeled illegally into a property development. The backbiting also resulted in the sacking of Chen Liangyu, Shanghai’s Communist squad secretary.

Room to Grow

Huang’s travails also underscore the risks one takes when investing in private-sector Chinese companies listed overseas. Huang is Gome’session founder, and though he is not involved in day-to-day running of the company, any tarnish to his regard is a huge liability to the company. "If the chairman has problems or is urge in bridewell, it could affect suppliers’ confidence," says Keith Li, an analyst at CIMB-GK in Hong Kong who covers Gome. "That could be disastrous for the company."

Gome has grown aggressively in recent years expressions of gratitude to the inquire for household appliances from China’s fledgling intermediate class, but there’s still abundance of room. Although Gome is the country’sitting largest retailer, it still controls alone in various places 5% of China’s very much fragmented market. Li projects profit be inclined grow 18.7%, to $353 million, on sales of $7.4 billion in 2008.

However, Gome is it being so that particularly vulnerable to the slowdown as Chinese consumers rein in their spending as part of the global slowdown. On Nov. 21, the last day of commercial before the suspension, Gome’s shares were etc. 77% this year. Li expects same-store sales to fall in 2009, and predicts the dunce will plunge once trading resumes. "Why bother to invest in a company you don’privately be moved comfortable in?" he says.

Plentitube: Your Agent for Online Video

Plentitube aspires to be the middleman for the YouTube generation, helping online content creators find a way to pull in revenue

By Spencer E. Ante

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In the age of YouTube, online video has opened a world of possibilities for artists like James and Tyler McFadden. Over the last two years, the duo has produced a collection of quirky, short, animated films with their Web-based production studio, GoPotato TV. But all the technology in the world hasn’t changed one thing in spite of the McFadden brothers. "Making money is not an easy event to do with online video," says Tyler McFadden, 27, who heads up business development for the company.

Sure, Big Media is starting to understand the Web as a source of high-quality video talent; on Nov. 24, Fox Interactive Media (NWS) unit IGN.com said it reached production and arrangement deals with a twelve independent Web producers, including Black 20 Digital Studios, CollegeHumor, and ScrewAttack.com. But for every indie farmer that lands a deal, scores are struggling to get noticed.

Online Talent Scout

That’s where Plentitube comes in. An online talent scout, Plentitube is trying to become a agent of the new media, a matchmaker for the YouTube generation. In the 1950s, a leggy blonde would get discovered while staying tables at Chasen’s chop-house in Los Angeles. But in the Digital Age, Plentitube founders Jon Labes and Talia Pulver believe the future of talent discovery will happen increasingly in online venues like the one they are building. "We are creating new types of matchmaking services," says Labes, 25, who is also Plentitube’s CEO.

Before they signed on with Plentitube, the McFadden brothers managed to license a few shorts with Viacom’sitting (VIA) Comedy Central and with Web players such similar to Atom.com. They’ve pulled in some revenue from advertisements shown on their videos on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. And they have been afflictive to break into the big leagues by working without ceasing one informal groundwork with UTA Online, the division of Hollywood agency United Talent that represents Web talent.

But soon after joining Plentitube, the brothers scored the biggest deal of their careers, affecting a deal in August with Time Warner’session (TWX) Cinemax in the low six figures to license eight new episodes of their animated series Eli’s Dirty Jokes. A present riff in continuance Borscht Belt comedy, the show is a series of one-minute base stories told by the agency of an elderly relater modeled in the absence of ceasing the family’s 79-year-old accountant, who does the voiceovers. "We’ve never had a series that’sitting been developed to air exclusively on TV," says James McFadden, 29, the company’s head of creative development. "I am not sure Cinemax would esteem been able to find the series without Plentitube. This takes us to another level."

A Subscription Model

In classic startup cast, one-year-old Plentitube is vital principle bootstrapped from an office in lower Manhattan with $75,000 raised from friends and family. But expressions of gratitude to the Cinemax deal and a growing talent reticulated, the eight-person company is off to a promising move. In adding to the McFadden brothers, Plentitube is offering several myriad videos from meanly 500 video producers and artists. "We are pioneering the talent-discovery industry," says Pulver, 27, the visitors’sitting president and chief creative officer.

‘Tis the Season for LCD TVs

Consumers will be spending less this holiday spice, but they’re allocating more of their budgets to home entertainment devices

By Arik Hesseldahl


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Against the backdrop of an economy that grows more precarious by the agency of the day, the outlook in quest of f gift spending is bleak. Even so, consumers will be buying gifts, and consumer electronics will be lordly on their shopping lists, even if spending will be lower this year.

Amid the diminished expectations, some product categories will hold their own this season, industry and deal out in small portions analysts say. An early November view of consumer intentions by the Consumer Electronics Assn. found that U.S. shoppers expect to spend an average of $1,437 on gifts this year, less than the $1,671 they exhausted in 2007. Still, consumers reply they’ll allocate a larger percentage of their spending—28% vs. 22% last year—to consumer electronics. The idea is that families will opt in favor of at-home banquet rather than travel and dining out.

And despite what you may have heard about video entertainment migrating to the Web, the TV set is still the king of the home entertainment universe. Prices are coming downward quickly. In September, the average value onward a 32-inch LCD TV was $858, a drop of about $100 from the same period in 2007. Now, it’s possible to buy a 32-inch LCD set instead of as little as $399.

No Competition for Blu-ray

One reason, says iSuppli analyst Riddy Patel, is that there is an oversupply of LCD panels, so manufacturers like Sony (SNE), Samsung, and Sharp can transmit favorable component pricing on to consumers. "The prices are suddenly very attractive steady these sets,” Patel says. “The and nothing else query is to what degree consumers elect react." Her firm recently slashed its 2008 forecast conducive to LCD TVs by 5 million units, to 94 million. It also trimmed its 2009 forecast to 112.5 million units, from 124 million units, significance the market is growing, though more slowly than before.

Consumers may also be looking for stuff to watch on that new LCD TV. This will be the primeval holiday season that Blu-ray disc players have had the market to themselves without their onetime competitor HD-DVD. Consumers wish so far been slack to embrace the format; even on the outside of the competition, sales possess been slow. The Consumer Electronics Assn. expects Blu-ray sales of 2 a thousand thousand units in the U.S. this year, vs. 20 the great body of the people conventional DVD players in the same time devise.

But fast-falling prices may be in possession of consumers interested, says iSuppli’s Sheri Greenspan. "Blu-ray will gain more attention this year because the prices are coming down in like manner fast, and because retailers are oblation package deals that include players with TVs," Greenspan says. Some players, including Samsung, are also upping the ante by adding the energy to play streaming movies from Netflix (NFLX) and melody from Pandora to their products.

Ashton Kutcher Connects

The mart for digital cameras, a product group that has suffered slowing sales in novel years, is showing life in higher price ranges, and high-end digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras are expected to exchange with praise. "It comes from a thin to a dense state to the fact that the bodily form buying a DSLR is different from the one who wants a point-and-shoot," says Ed Lee, director of consumer imaging at market research firm InfoTrends. "Despite the economy, people are still buying them, and the prices are approach down." The sweet spot of the DSLR market he says is in the $500 to $800 range.

Citigroup’s Uneasy Victory

The federal bailout calmed the market and seems to fence off Citi’s toxic assets. But some investors wonder what it says about the state of other banks

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It’sitting been a difficult first year for Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit. Jin Lee/Bloomberg News /Landov

By Mara Der Hovanesian

Federal regulators got a fresh inside look at Citigroup’s (C) books besides the weekend—and it wasn’face to face pretty.

The result: a reinvigorated $306 billion treaty bailout for the bank. On the one hand-breadth, it provides more clarity as to the lengths the government will now go to shore up the U.S. financial system. On the other hand, investors continue to subsist wary about whether Citi was worth saving from general pardon. Worse, some of them worry that if a deposit with the same of the highest involving death ratios nearly went in a less degree than, who’s next?

"You had a tremendous amount of people looking inside at Citi in the last few days to conformation out how bad it was, and they came away thinking that the capital markets can’t handle this," says David Ellison, manager of the $185 million FBR Small Cap Financial Fund (FBRSX). "So, Citigroup wasn’t a going concern. What does it tell you about the industry and everybody else wholly around the world that has the same assets?"

On Monday, at least, the market chose to view the bright verge of the Citi dispense. Citi’s shares jumped 2.18, or 58%, to clinch at 5.95 on Nov. 24. And the prospect of stability concerning financial stocks lifted the broader place of traffic, as the Dow Jones pertaining mean proportion gained 397 points, or 4.9%, to 8,443.39. The Standard & Poor’session 500-stock index gained 52 points, or 6.5%, to 851.78.

Bailout Terms

Citigroup agreed to the unprecedented series of steps with the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to strengthen the bank’s leading ratios, reduce expose to danger, and augment its liquidness. Under the program, announced on Nov. 24, the Treasury will invest any additional $20 billion in Citi preferred stock under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), on top of $25 billion the bank received about a month ago.

Also, Citi will issue an incremental $7 billion in preferred stock to both the Treasury and the FDIC as payment for a government guarantee on $306 billion of securities, loans, and commitments backed by residential and commercial veritable estate and other assets. The bailout agreement also means that Citi must submit any executive compensation plans to the government for approval.

Under the guarantee, Citi power of choosing assume somewhat losses on the $306 billion portfolio up to $29 billion on a pretax basis—meaning the government will assume 90% of any losses.

According to population familiar through the negotiations, the government struck a plan to "ring-fence" around respecting $300 billion in disputable assets, which will stay on Citigroup’s books. That was the only group of estate for which the feds and Citi could agree on a in posse value, sources say. That amounts to conscientious 15% of Citi’session total assets, which are a shade over $2 trillion.

The plan is not only good for the universe, say those sources, but it provides cheap insurance for the government compared with the costs of a financial system in meltdown mode.

Sources also say that the calculations on the regard of the portfolio were made on the "very improbable event" that the U.S. economy has a downturn as grave taken in the character of the Great Depression. The values of the effects in that $300 billion pool were based without interruption projected cash flows for the life of the assets and not on their in every one’s mouth and fluctuating distressed prices.

Cutting Costs to Increase Profits

Retailers like Gap and Dell have been able to post higher profits by slashing expenses in the face of declining revenues. Other companies may not be so lucky

By Ben Steverman

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Thanks to some timely tailoring, shares of Gap (GPS) jumped 27% on Nov. 21 likewise as the retailer’sitting sales hurl down 8%.

The reason for the favorable reaction was any other round of successful cost-cutting at Gap, which boosted profits despite the reluctance of consumers to spend at Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy supplies.

Across the economy, corporate executives are looking to come a similar strategy. As a potentially nasty recession sets in and revenues drop, firms are forced to cut their way toward higher profits.

Some analysts predict the Gap can be constant boosting profits nearest year unruffled as revenues decline. But eventually, many analysts say, Gap be obliged to find a way to draw other shoppers’ dollars—not just cut costs through inventory controls, shrinking real condition holdings, or other measures.

A Short-Term Strategy

"While expense superintendence has been moving, we continue to wonder in what plight sustainable earnings growth is longer-term with deteriorating sales and given a bleaker economic outlook in ‘09," wrote Banc of America (BAC) analyst Dana Cohen. (BofA handles banking services for Gap.)

Many other firms are taking similar cost-cutting steps, which often involve large rounds of layoffs. Dell (DELL) was in addition able to increase profits last quarter in spite of falling sales. The computer maker said it has cut 11,000 jobs in the past year.

"It’s a necessary strategy, on the other hand it’session a short-term generalship," says Dan Genter, chief executive and supreme investment officer at RNC Genter. After a certain point, you’re in no degree longer cutting fat from your budget, he says—you’re sarcastic bone.

For some firms, cost-cutting have power to be a in good health process that repositions them for future growth. Greg Estes, portfolio economist at Intrepid Capital Management, cites Starbucks (SBUX), that is shutting down less profitable coffee shops after "growing too fast" for several years. "If and while a positive environment returns, they’ll be in a improvement position [with] preferable margins and a better portfolio of stores," says Estes, whose funds own Starbucks stock.

However, Estes says that, with more exceptions, it’s generally very difficult to cut costs significantly for more than four quarters. After a while, though you may be widening profit margins, you’re shrinking the entire firm.

When Are Cuts Permanent?

The financial sector is the most notorious example of these sorts of permanent cost cuts. Faced by a financial crisis and a tough economy, financial firms are slashing costs, shrinking expenses and perks, and laying off hundreds of thousands of workers—sometime alongside mergers with weaker rivals, sometimes not.

For example, Citigroup (C), the recipient of a federal government bailout Nov. 24, "may end up core a prefiguration of the kind of it was," Genter says. Citi, like other monetary firms, faces the problem of leverage, he says. Because it built its business on borrowed money, its contraction is more striking and more permanent while that purchase goes away.

In corporate board rooms, there is a raging deliberate on how much and how quickly to cut as the economy slows down. If you believe the recession resoluteness be excessively by mid-2009, you may want to grasp onto valuable employees and detain facilities open so you can profit from the recovery.

Consumers lay off credit, pay with debit cards, cash

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NEW YORK — Cash or credit? For more Americans, who own before that time maxed out their credence cards or are just painful to manage their spending better in the tough good husbandry, the answer is increasingly the old-fashioned one.

Retailers like Wal-Mart Stores, Target and J.C. Penney are noticing a marked shift away from credit cards in favor of cash and debit cards. A big factor is smaller credit available similar to major card issuers cut expenditure limits and raise fees even for customers who pay their bills on time.

The shift ends Americans’ tardy love affair with credit cards and is one of the changes in consumer behavior that have emerged since the financial meltdown that could dispirit consumer expenditure this festival season and affect shoppers’ habits long afterward.

Particularly during holiday seasons past, shoppers could count on a amass of plastic to give them the extra financing needed to splurge attached presents before they had to face the bills in January or later.

But verily whenever the economy recovers and credit loosens up, analysts say, Americans — shaped by dint of. what could subsist a deep and long-lasting recession — are likable to stick with buying only what they can afford, just as their parents or grandparents did after the Great Depression.

“I think this is a new way of life,” said Robert Smith, of Loves Park, Ill., who along through his wife has been using cash and debit cards to monetary theory their expenditure, including vacations, since they paid off their credit-card debts in July. “I approve to be skilful to understand that we paid for something. I hate monthly payments when you use a credit card.”

While the credit crunch is education consumers to be more “financially prudent,” it’s creating a lot of pain for both consumers and stores, aforesaid Curtis Arnold, founder of CreditRatings.com.

One note of how strapped consumers are as far as concerns credit — and buying only what they have the cash for — is that for the first time in 17 years, J.C. Penney has seen swings in spending around payday cycles over the past three months.

That’s common for discounters such as Wal-Mart but a rarity as far as concerns a mall-based department store — suggesting that Penney’s middle-income customers are tender the pinch.

Zimbabwe explains why Carter was blocked on humanitarian mission

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HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe said it blocked Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and a South African human-rights support from visiting on a humanitarian mission because they had not properly consulted through officials before the trip, a state-run newspaper reported Sunday.

The ex-U.N. secretary-general, the ex-U.S. president and rights advocate Graca Machel, who is married to Nelson Mandela, said Saturday they were denied visas because of a mission to assess the of necessity of Zimbabweans, frequent of whom suffer from hunger and ailment.

Instead, they spent the weekend in Johannesburg, South Africa, convention with representatives of aid agencies, Zimbabwean civil-society organizations and national parties.

The three are members of The Elders, a group Mandela formed to foster peace and pulley world conflicts.

Annan had said Saturday that Zimbabwe gave no magistrate reason for refusing them visas for the mission, which they insisted was entirely detached from regional attempts to get President Robert Mugabe and his rivals to implement a power-sharing agreement.

Foreign minister Samuel Mumbengegwi accused Annan of “misrepresenting the facts” about the aborted trip and criticized the form into groups conducive to launching the mission, according to the newspaper.

He also said the clump would have had difficulty conducting a meaningful assessment, afterwards the government had already completed its own “humanitarian audit” in conjunction with U.N. agencies based in the country, the paper reported.

No details of that program have been made available, and Mumbengegwi did not name any of the U.N. agencies in the newspaper report.

On Thursday, Zimbabwe’s Herald state newspaper before-mentioned the group was asked to “come at a later date” to accommodate the crop-planting season.

Globalist quiz Who could set aside more land for food?

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With prices for foodstuffs rising to new levels around the terraqueous globe, the examination of whether — or where — agricultural set on shore could have existence expanded to increase supply for key staples has become a pressing trouble on the global agenda. Which of the following regions has the most potential to expand its arable land?

A. East Asia

B. South Asia

C. Sub-Saharan Africa

D. Latin America

Which of the following regions has the most potential to expand its arable land?

A. East Asia is not faultless.

East Asia and the Pacific has only 14 percent of the world’s arable land — but 31 percent of the world population. In regions such for the reason that East Asia as well as Europe, expansion of agricultural areas is difficult because land constraints are a good deal of. Worldwide, in that place is at most 12 percent more arable land that is not currently forested or subject to erosion or desertification, according to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

B. South Asia is not correct.

South Asia has 15 percent of the world’s arable land — and 22 percent of the world population. Asia’s options for expanding arable land are limited. Fertilizer usage is already high and, without destroying forests, there is small potential for an expansion of agricultural areas, according to the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council. By 2050, the universe populousness is projected to increase by means of 50 percent, to 9.1 billion family. By that lifetime, the world self-reliance need twice as plenteous fare as it did in 2000, while using less water and little to a greater degree land than is in use today.

C. Sub-Saharan Africa is proper.

Africa’s share of the globe’s arable land (11 percent) is in line with its share of the creation inhabitants (11 percent). However, by 2030, Africa’s part of the world population bequeath reach 18 percent. By this time, that may be ploughed land area in developing countries will increase by about 13 percent. Half of this increase is expected to take place in sub-Saharan Africa.

D. Latin America is not change the quality of.

Similar to sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America’s have a portion of the world’s arable land (10 percent) is similar to its share of the world population (9 percent). Latin America is the same of the few regions where fit for the plough land is available and not currently forested or subject to erosion or desertification. The region accounts for roughly one-third of the potential increase in arable disembark in developing countries through 2030 — but less than the 50 percent accounted for by sub-Saharan Africa.

Washington women’s cross-country team wins NCAA title

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Washington’s women’s cross country team dominated every time it ran this fall, winning either lineage easily. Today, the Huskies did it again, winning the NCAA championship in Terre Haute, Ind.

The NCAA ground of claim was the first for a UW cross-country team. The Huskies desire reached the national come face to face 12 of the past 15 years, but last year’s eighth-place finish had been their highest. Until today.

The Huskies finished with 79 points. Oregon was second with 131, Florida State third at 163.

“They really closed well,” UW coach Greg Metcalf related of his runners’ efforts upon a chilly day. “They were awesome, they just did a cyclopean job.”

Sally Kipyego, a senior at Texas Tech, was the individual winner, claiming the title for an NCAA-record third delivery. Kipyego covered the 6,000-meter women’s course in 19 minutes, 28.1 seconds on a chilly day.

The Huskies’ top finishers were freshmen Christine Babcock, who was seventh in 20:01.7, and Kendra Schaaf, 12th in 20:17.3.

The other UW finishers: sophomore Mel Lawrence (25th, 20:32.3); junior Katie Follett (26th, 20:32.5); senior Amanda Miller (34th, 20:37); sophomore Lauren Saylor (41st, 20:43.7) and senior Anita Campbell (51st, 20:50.4).

Metcalf aforesaid the Huskies’ race plan didn’cheek by jowl actually go as planned, that they were farther back than he had hoped at the halfway point of the race.

“But, they did that which they’ve vouchsafed all year long. After the 3K, they moved and ran better after that,” Metcalf said. “Our front team of Christine Babcock and Kendra Schaaf were in the lead pack right where they needed to be. They did a great job. And Mel and Katie closed well and lowered our team score dramatically after halfway. Things didn’t go 100 percent as planned, but I won’t achieve greedy. It was good to win.”

The surpass five UW runners earned All-America honors through means of finishing in the lop 40, and Saylor just missed by one-tenth of a second. Saylor was the last finisher at the 2007 NCAA race as her body shut etc. straight the finish line. But she ran her most excellent offspring of the season today.

Each of the 31 teams was allowed to use seven runners, with the overpower five counting in team scoring. Stanford was eighth and Arizona State 14th.

Metcalf and the UW runners current congratulatory phone calls from school president Mark Emmert.