DANVILLE, VA-The Swedish-based furniture maker IKEA will soon open its first factory in the United States. MORE

DETROIT-Two months into their bitter strike, UAW employees at American Axle can't avoid the fact that high-quality manufacturing is increasingly being done more cheaply in places like Mexico and India. MORE

LOUISVILLE, KY-Dozens of Teamsters are protesting the loss of $22 per hour jobs loading Ford Motor Co. Super Duty trucks and Explorers for rail shipment out of Louisville. A new contractor is hiring at rates of $10 to $12 an hour for the same work. MORE

DETROIT-General Motors Corp. lost $3.3 billion in the first quarter of 2008, in large part because of plunging demand for its products. MORE

TOULOUSE, France-The aircraft manufacturer Airbus is performing a comprehensive review of its troubled A380 program, but insists no additional delays are in the offing. MORE

SHANGHAI, China-The Chinese government is investigating whether hundreds or perhaps thousands of children from poor areas in the southwest part of the country were sold to work as slave laborers in booming coastal factory cities. MORE

EVERETT, WA-Boeing has transferred its first 787 Dreamliner to an on-site test rig to begin performing a series of structural tests on the airplane’s cutting-edge composite airframe. MORE

DETROIT-General Motors Corp. says the nation's economic woes, not the strike at key supplier American Axle & Manufacturing Inc., have forced it to cut production of full-size pickups and SUVs by 143,000 units. MORE

MINNEAPOLIS-3M Co. is building a $200 million film-coatings plant in Singapore to eliminate up to $1 billion in freight, supply and tax costs from its overseas operations. MORE

TORONTO-Uunwillingness to hear bad news is not a new flaw, or a strictly corporate one. Stalin's refusal to heed reports of German troops massing at the border before the 1941 invasion of Russia is one example in which the boss literally shot the messenger. MORE