UAW, automakers work on historic agreements

DETROIT -- United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said Saturday the union had reached no agreements yet with any of Detroit's Big Three automakers, whose contracts expire at midnight today.

Gettelfinger, speaking at the AFL-CIO-sponsored LaborFest, would not speculate when new agreements would be reached.

Sources familiar with the talks have said that a historic simultaneous resolution is likely before the four-year pacts expire.

Representatives of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group declined to discuss the talks substantively on Saturday.

The union and Big Three automakers have never reached simultaneous contract agreements. The union typically chooses one carmaker as the lead negotiator and uses that pact as a model for the other two. This year, the union has been bargaining with all three automakers at once.

AFL-CIO head, union workers arrested at Yale NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- AFL-CIO President John Sweeney was arrested with at least 100 demonstrators Saturday for blocking traffic as they marched through city streets in support of two striking Yale University unions.

Sweeney and hundreds of demonstrators had planned to be arrested during the rally and march, which drew a crowd that police estimated at more than 10,000. The march jammed downtown traffic for blocks and drew lengthy honks from supporters and aggravated drivers alike.

Sweeney's hands were bound with plastic ties as he boarded a bus and yelled, "Anything for the workers!"

Thousands of members of Northeast unions converged on New Haven for the demonstration in support of two unions representing about 4,000 clerical, technical and maintenance workers at Yale. The unions went on strike three weeks ago.

Texas voters backing limited lawsuit awards

AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas voters backed a proposition to allow limits on some civil lawsuit awards in an election Saturday to decide 22 constitutional amendments, according to early returns.

With about one-third of the vote counted, 56.5 percent of voters cast ballots to approve the measure, which would permit caps on non-economic damages such as pain and suffering. About 43.5 percent voted against it.

With only the 22 proposed amendments at stake Saturday, Texas Secretary of State Geoffrey Connor predicted the turnout would be only about 9 percent of about 12 million registered voters.

The lawsuit amendment, Proposition 12, would set a $750,000 cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits and would empower lawmakers to enact caps in all types of lawsuits beginning in 2005.

Small publishers lose street-corner space

PHILADELPHIA -- In Philadelphia, the latest turf battle involves street corners -- and who gets to distribute newspapers there.

Under a three-year-old law the city plans to start enforcing Monday, papers that don't publish at least once a week will have to move their boxes to a mid-block location.

"That's a far inferior location for any paper. The foot traffic is a lot lower. People aren't really stopping and pausing," said Mattathias Schwartz, 24, who last year started The Philadelphia Independent, a quirky, monthly broadsheet whose design conveys an 18th-century feel.

Some people question the timing of the crackdown.

Democratic Mayor John F. Street, whose administration ordered the news box crackdown, remains in a tough re-election fight with less than eight weeks to go in the race.

"When anything happens this close to election time, and when the main victims are going to be the smaller, infrequent publishers, the independents, one gets kind of suspicious as to why," said Councilman David Cohen.

-- From wire reports