AP Executive Morning Briefing

The top business news from The Associated Press for the morning of Monday, July 23, 2007:

UAW to Hold Talks With Ford, GM

DETROIT (AP) _ Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. have more at stake than usual as they begin their traditional talks with United Auto Workers: cutting labor costs may be key to their survival. The traditional handshake ceremonies with the union were to begin Monday with GM in Detroit and Ford in Dearborn, although talks already have been under way for months. The union formally opened negotiations with Chrysler Group on Friday, and the national contracts with all three expire Sept. 14.

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Barclays Raises Bid for ABN Amro

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) _ Barclays PLC said Monday it would increase its offer for ABN Amro Holding NV to $93.2 billion with the help of Asian financial partners. Barclays' new offer is $58.9 billion in shares and $34.2 billion in cash, or $49.32 per ABN Amro share.

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U.S. Autoworker Faces Changed Industry

WAYNE, Mich. (AP) _ As he walks along a row of partially built sport utility vehicles, Curtis Giles is watching the overhead signs, hoping for green but looking for red letters that could spell trouble. He's a union guy with what could be a management job, helping production workers at Ford Motor Co.'s Michigan Truck plant solve problems and keep quality as high as possible as Lincoln Navigators and Ford Expeditions slowly move down the assembly line.

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Japan Autoworker Offers Skilled Labor

KAMINOKAWA-MACHI, Japan (AP) _ Masakazu Kanazawa takes pride in his work as a 31-year veteran at a Nissan plant, fighting seconds to ever so perfectly and delicately put in axle parts. Japan is much like other industrialized nations in viewing an office job requiring a college degree as more desirable than blue-collar assembly line work.

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Global Market Affects German Auto Worker

BERLIN (AP) _ When Thomas Haebich started working on the assembly line at Daimler-Benz AG two decades ago, he thought he had a job for life. But he no longer feels he can count on it. On the contrary, today the 40-year-old auto worker often fears that he might lose his job at the car plant in the southern German town of Sindelfingen. He is convinced that on the long run German companies will not be able to compete with the emerging automobile industry in Asia.

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Wall Street Eyes Home Sales Reports

NEW YORK (AP) _ Wall Street faces home sales data and more earnings reports this week, as it decides whether growth is strong enough to justify pushing the Dow Jones industrial average back above 14,000. Although most major companies have been meeting or exceeding Street expectations in their quarterly earnings reports, a few misses and warnings about future performance have rattled investors. This week, six of the 30 companies that make up the Dow release financial results, as do a slew of homebuilders. More troubling earnings surprises could give the market a jolt.

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Heirs to Dow Jones Are a Diverse Group

NEW YORK (AP) _ When the Bancroft family meets Monday to consider Rupert Murdoch's $5 billion bid for Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., relatively few of them will actually be named Bancroft. There will be a Hill, a Steele, the family's lead trustee, who is named Elefante, and yes, at least one Bancroft, first name Christopher. Other family members have last names that include Cox, Robes and MacElree.

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Netflix to Lower Online DVD Rental Fees

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ Online DVD rental pioneer Netflix Inc. is lowering the price of its two most popular subscription plans by a $1 per month, relinquishing millions of dollars in revenue in an attempt to regain the upper hand in a cutthroat battle with rival Blockbuster Inc. With the reductions announced Sunday, Netflix will charge $16.99 per month for a plan that allows subscribers to keep up to three DVDs at a time with no limit on how frequently the discs can be mailed back in return for another movie. The price for a similar plan that lets customers keep one DVD at a time will fall to $8.99 per month.

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Big Subsidies for Big Phone Companies

WASHINGTON (AP) _ A decade-old telephone tax intended to help bring affordable service to rural areas has instead turned into something quite different: a bottomless and politically protected well of cash for cell phone companies that do big business in rural America. Over the past four years, there has been nearly a tenfold increase in government-ordered subsidies paid to a few "competitive" providers _ cellular phone companies paid by the fund to offer service in rural areas where an existing carrier already receives a subsidy.

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Kung Fu Fighters Replace Hobbits in N.Z.

HONG KONG (AP) _ The Hobbits defeated savage Orcs to protect Middle-earth from the evil Sauron. Now kung fu fighters and samurai warriors have taken their place. Or to put it another way, "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy revitalized New Zealand's cinema industry, but now that the huge production is over, the country's filmmakers are looking to Asia to keep their business growing.

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Gold Prices

HONG KONG (AP) _ Gold closed higher in Hong Kong Monday at $682.95 an ounce, up $6.60 an ounce from Friday's close of $676.35.

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Japan Markets

TOKYO (AP) _ Japanese stocks dropped Monday after a two-day advance, as exporters led the decline following Wall Street's sharp retreat on Friday.

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Dollar-Yen

TOKYO (AP) _The dollar hit a record low versus the euro and a six-week low against the yen in Asia Monday, hurt by lingering speculation that problems in the U.S. subprime loan market could damage the broader economy.

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