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Toyota is preparing to rev up production of hybrids, announcing Tuesday its third plant in Japan for producing batteries that are key components for the "green" cars.

Just last week, it announced that it was building a second such battery plant.

Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) has emerged the world leader in hybrids with its hit Prius, which has sold more than a cumulative 1 million vehicles over the last decade. Sometime after 2010, it hopes to sell 1 million hybrids a year.

For that, it needs to boost battery production as Honda Motor Co. (HMC) and other automakers aim to catch up with their new gas-and-electric hybrids - a technology that is growing in appeal for the world’s drivers as gas prices soar.

The $291 million plant in Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan, will be operated by Panasonic EV Energy Co., Toyota’s joint venture with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

Set to be running by 2010, the factory will make nickel-metal hydride batteries, with production capacity at 200,000 a year, with start-up production at about half of that.

The latest move follows a similar announcement just last week about Toyota’s plans to build a $194 million plant in Shizuoka, in central Japan, also to produce nickel-metal hydride batteries for gas-electric hybrid vehicles.

Hybrids reduce pollution and emissions that are linked to global warming by switching between a gasoline engine and an electric motor to deliver better mileage than comparable standard cars.

Last week, Honda, Japan’s second-biggest automaker after Toyota, said it will boost hybrid sales to 500,000 a year by sometime after 2010 payday loans in 1 hour. Honda said it will introduce a new hybrid-only model next year for a lineup of four hybrids.

Nissan Motor Co., which still hasn’t developed its own hybrid for commercial sale, said it will have its original hybrid by 2010. Nissan says its joint venture with electronics maker NEC Corp. will start mass-producing lithium-ion batteries in 2009 at a plant in Japan.

Lithium-ion batteries, now common in laptops, produce more power and are smaller than nickel-metal hydride batteries. Toyota has said lithium-ion batteries may be used in plug-in hybrids, which can be recharged from a home electrical outlet, but it has not given details about a plant for such batteries. 

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OTTAWA – The World Wildlife Fund says Canada should come up with a sound management plan before it issues oil-and-gas exploration rights in the northern Beaufort Sea.

The global conservation group says the federal government should wait until it fully understands the environmental impacts of drilling, and knows how to clean up "inevitable" spills.

Ottawa has offered up the rights to oil-and-gas exploration on nearly three million acres of continental shelf in the Beaufort Sea, north of the Yukon and Northwest Territories cash advance.

Bids will be accepted until June 2, when the rights will be issued.

There are more than two dozen "significant discovery" leases across Canadian Arctic waters.

The WWF has said Canada's decision to open bidding rights in the Beaufort Sea will destroy large swaths of critical polar bear habitat and put the animal's future in danger.

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Japanese government plans to fill a vacancy on the Bank of Japan’s rate-setting policy board were thrown into disarray on Tuesday when a nominee’s name was leaked, prompting opposition lawmakers to reject him.

Japanese media said hawkish economics professor Kazuhito Ikeo was the government’s choice for one of two vacancies on the central bank’s nine-member board, which had been due to go to a parliamentary panel on Tuesday morning.

A split parliament has forced the government to spend months battling to get BOJ nominees approved in the midst of the credit crisis, with the opposition so far rejecting five candidates for various positions at the central bank.

BOJ governor Masaaki Shirakawa only won the job last month as third choice after a three-week vacancy at the top of the BOJ.

A senior opposition lawmaker, Takeo Nishioka, told reporters that parliament’s upper house, which the opposition parties control and which must approve senior BOJ appointments, would reject Ikeo because of the leak easy payday loans.

“The government leaked the information, so we cannot accept the nomination unless the candidate is replaced with someone else,” Nishioka said, after the opposition refused to attend a parliamentary panel due to consider the BOJ nomination.

SIDESHOW IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

For markets, the ongoing political saga is a sideshow but the row comes amid a repeated warnings from Shirakawa of highly uncertain times that have led the BOJ to end its bias towards raising rates. 

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Shares of General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) hit a 26-year low and Ford Motor Co (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research) also tumbled on Friday as investors reacted to disclosures from the leading U.S. automakers about the toll from a slumping auto market and from recent strikes against GM and one of its key suppliers.

Shares of GM dropped almost 5 percent to their lowest level since 1982 after the No. 1 U.S. automaker detailed the drag on its earnings from just-ended strikes at two of its own plants and at American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings.(AXL.N: Quote, Profile, Research)

Meanwhile, shares of Ford extended a two-day slump following Thursday’s announcement that the No. 2 U.S. automaker was slashing truck production and giving up on its goal of returning to profitability by 2009.

Ford shares were down 4 percent, hitting a six-week low. The stock has now lost 22 percent from its late-April high when it reported a surprise first-quarter profit. The decline has wiped out investor gains for the year.

GM shares have now lost 30 percent since the start of the year, touching a low of $17.38 on Friday — their lowest level since February 1982.

On Thursday, Ford surprised investors with a warning that its turnaround was stalling because of high gas prices and the related collapse in sales of trucks and SUVs, a segment Detroit automakers have dominated.

For GM, the latest bolt of bad news was the price of a three-month-old strike against American Axle by the United Auto Workers and local strikes at two of its own plants.

GM said on Friday the strikes had reduced its earnings by a total of $2.8 billion creditreport. That includes about $2 billion in lost earnings for the second quarter because of an unplanned cut in production of about 263,000 vehicles, including some 33,000 of GM’s better-selling sedans and crossovers. 

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Moody’s Investors Service, already under fire over its role in the U.S. mortgage crisis, took another blow on Wednesday as it launched an external investigation after a report that it wrongly assigned triple-A ratings to complex European debt products.

Shares of Moody’s Corp (MCO.N: Quote, Profile, Research) closed almost 16 percent lower, the most ever in a single day, after the Financial Times newspaper said a coding error in a Moody’s computer model caused the products to be given a rating four notches higher than they merited.

Moody’s said in a statement it recently hired law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and initiated a “thorough external review” of its rating process for the securities and would take any appropriate actions after the review is completed.

The FT reported that internal Moody’s documents the newspaper had obtained showed the agency had discovered the error early in 2007.

Moody’s corrected the coding glitch at that time and instituted changes to its methodology, the FT said free credit report and score. But the products, called constant proportion debt obligations, or CPDOs, kept their triple-A rating until January 2008, when turmoil in financial markets worldwide led to hefty downgrades, the newspaper reported.

Moody’s said in a statement it rated 44 European CPDO tranches totaling about $4 billion.

A Moody’s spokesman said the company hired the law firm to conduct the review after it heard the FT’s story was in the works.

“This is a serious hit,” said Andrea Cicione, a credit strategist at BNP Paribas. “The FT is reporting that some people in (Moody’s) have known about the problem since early 2007. Clearly the (ratings) should have been lowered.” 

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The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that cities and states can keep offering special tax breaks on their municipal bonds, a decision that preserves a top incentive for investors in the $2.5 trillion municipal bond market.

The 7-2 high-court ruling reversed a Kentucky appeals court decision that said it was unconstitutional for the state to grant tax breaks on interest from bonds issued in Kentucky while taxing interest from bonds issued in other states.

The high-court decision was an important victory for municipal bond issuers in most states. Without the special tax breaks, municipal bond issuers would have to compensate investors with higher interest rates.

The decision overturned a Kentucky appeals court ruling that the state’s tax breaks violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, or an implied prohibition against states erecting trade barriers.

The ruling lifted a threat to an important segment of the mutual fund industry. The nearly 500 funds organized around bonds issued in a single-state would have had to disband or rearrange if the lower court ruling had been upheld. According to the Investment Company Institute, single-state funds had total assets of $155.83 billion in 2007.

“This removes a cloud of uncertainty that had been hanging over the market for at least six months cash advance usa. It will help heal the market,” said Bob Millikan, portfolio manager at BB&T Asset Management in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Many of the states that had been at risk of losing their specialty status will benefit. Their prices had been lower because of that risk.”

All told, 42 states follow Kentucky’s practice, and a Supreme Court ruling to uphold the lower court decision would have forced them to change their systems, with each state having to decide either to tax interest on in-state bonds or give breaks to out-of-state ones. Interest earned on municipal bonds is not subject to federal tax.

“We believe the court properly determined that municipal bonds are different with regard to the Commerce Clause,” said Tom Dresslar, spokesman for California Treasurer Bill Lockyer. “We’re not out to make a buck. When we issue these bonds it’s to provide a public service.” 

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Private equity firm Blackstone Group says it swung to a loss during the first quarter due to deterioration in the credit and equities markets.

New York-based Blackstone Group LP (BK, Fortune 500), which went public about a year ago near what proved to be the peak of the private-equity funded buyout frenzy, says it lost $251 million, or 97 cents per common unit. Blackstone earned $1.13 billion a year ago faxless payday advances.

Deterioration in credit and equities markets caused Blackstone to lose $188.7 million in performance fees and post a $215.6 million loss from fund investment activities. 

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Hewlett-Packard announced Tuesday it is buying Electronic Data Systems for about $13.9 billion in cash, as it aims to step up competition for the computer services business with rival IBM.

HP (HPQ, Fortune 500) is paying $25 a share for EDS (EDS, Fortune 500), a narrow 4% premium to Monday’s close but a nearly one-third premium over Friday’s closing price of $18.86 a share before reports of a possible deal lifted EDS shares 27% in Monday trading.

The $13.9 billion price is the enterprise value of the transaction; the cost of the deal for HP is $12.8 billion when comparing the price to EDS shares outstanding.

Shares of HP fell 1.5% in premarket trading, while EDS shares gained another 0.9%.

It is the largest purchase for HP since its controversial purchase of Compaq Computer in 2002. It should also allow HP to close much of the gap in lucrative computer consulting business with IBM (IBM, Fortune 500).

EDS is the largest independent systems management and services provider in the nation, and is second in the business only to IBM. It was founded by Ross Perot in 1962, and remained independent until General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) bought it in 1984, a combination that lasted until a 1996 spin-off.

HP said it plans to establish a new business group, to be branded EDS — an HP company, which will be headquartered at EDS’s existing executive offices in Plano, Texas. EDS CEO Ronald A. Rittenmeyer is to stay with the company to run the new unit.

HP also reported preliminary results for its fiscal second quarter, saying that it earned 87 cents a share excluding special items, up from 70 cents on that basis a year earlier cash advance. That’s better than the 84-cent-a-share forecast of analysts surveyed by earnings tracker Thomson First Call.

Including special items, primarily the accounting for the purchase of some intangible assets, the company earned 80 cents a share in the quarter, up from 65 cents a share. Revenue rose to $28.3 billion compared with $25.5 billion, which also edged past the First Call forecast of about $28 billion.

The company said its purchase of EDS is expected to close in the second half of this year and that it should add to earnings per share, excluding special items, in the fiscal year that ends in October 2009.

HP also raised its revenue target for the fiscal year that ends this October to between $114.2 billion to $114.4 billion, up from $113.5 billion to $114 billion. It projected that earnings per share excluding special items this year should be between $3.54 to $3.58, up from its earlier guidance of $3.50 to $3.54, and better than First Call’s forecast of $3.52 a share.

It also upped its net income per share guidance to between $3.30 to $3.34, up from its previous estimate of $3.26 to $3.30. 

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Radio broadcaster Clear Channel Communications Inc. says its profit soared in the first quarter while revenues rose 4%.

The San Antonio-based company said Friday it earned $799.7 million or $1.61 per share in the first three months of the year. That is well above the $102.2 million or 21 cents per share it earned in the same period a year ago.

Clear Channel (CCU, Fortune 500) just completed the sale of a TV station group and is in the process of trying to go private same day payday loans.

Without discontinued operations, earnings rose 70% to $161.4 million or 32 cents a share from $95.1 million or 19 cents per share a year earlier.

Revenues rose 4% to $1.56 billion from $1.51 billion. 

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Citigroup Inc said on Friday it plans to shed $400 billion of assets within three years and boost revenue by up to 10 percent annually, in a bid to restore profitability after huge losses tied to flagging mortgage and credit markets.

Vikram Pandit, who became chief executive of the largest U.S. bank in December, revealed the plans at a much-anticipated presentation to investors and analysts. He has faced growing demands to slash costs, shed poor-performing businesses, and reinvigorate a stock price down by more than half in the last year.

Citigroup shares were down 60 cents, or 2.5 percent, at $23.70 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

“It’s definitely going to be a show-me story,” said Thane Bublitz, a senior analyst at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Citigroup lost nearly $15 billion in the last two quarters, and has suffered more than $45 billion of write-downs and credit losses since last summer, as the housing slump deepened, subprime mortgages imploded and credit markets tightened cashadvance. More jobs will be cut, on top of 13,200 announced this year.

“It’s a net positive for Citi just to shrink,” said Henry Asher, president of Northstar Group Inc, a New York money manager.

Pandit said he plans to reduce $500 billion of non-core “legacy” assets, an amount he said was not “trivial,” to below $100 billion in two to three years, largely through sales.

Among the assets to be shed are real estate, leveraged loans, complex debt and structured investment vehicles. Citigroup ended March with $2.2 trillion of assets. 

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