Link Collection

Five months *before* they started selling the 2002 Lexus ES, US engineers sent a test report to Toyota City in Japan about how it shifted gears so roughly that it was "not acceptable for production"! Toyota sold the Luxus anyway and sought to maximize profits by limiting the scope of repairs (NOT informing owners about the known problem, only providing fixes when a customer demanded them, even denying fixes to customers at first to see if they would give up). It is interesting to note that Toyota repeatedly tried to solve this sudden acceleration problem by modifying the car's computer software, rolling out software updates to cars brought in for the sudden acceleration problem...and NOT telling Lexus owners about the software update that could possibly fix their car:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lexus-20100523,0,278161,full.story

The $8 billion GPS upgrade should make GPS more reliable, more widespread and much more accurate. They are trying to go from a margin of error of 20 feet or more today to accuracy within an arm's length:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gps-20100523,0,3212238,full.story

Things have apparently "turned extremely testy" in the Tiger Woods divorce negotiations, with Elin Nordegren now asking for *$750 million* (the most every in a celebrity divorce) and changing from a joint custody bid to wanting to be the sole legal guardian of their two children. In addition, she is refusing to sign the lifetime "confidentiality clause" that he's asking her to sign:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/confidential/tiger-woods-wife-elin-nordegren-demands-750m-and-the-kids/story-e6frf96o-1225870014544

Russian man who was about to throw himself off a bridge noticed another woman who was about to kill herself by jumping from the same spot on the bridge...they talked things over and ended up falling in love. Now they are getting married:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2968392/Lovers-meet-at-suicide-spot.html

Subway apologized for demanding that a small, independent hot dog restaurant stop using the term "footlong". They said that they only want small, independent sandwich restaurants to stop using the term "footlong":
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/retail/subways-mistake-over-

Goldman Sachs traders made money every single day of the first quarter, something they never accomplished before:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aOaFVIcIkcNs&pid=20601087

Chinese man was stuck in river silt for 11 hours because he was too embarrassed to call for help. He had a cell phone with him but didn't call anyone for help because he was worried about losing face! Fisherman spotted him after he was stuck for 4 hours, but it took firefighters 7 hours to pull him out because he was too embarrassed to take his pants off. The silt had gotten int his long pants and made it hard to pull him out, but even though the firefighters took off their pants to try to rescue him, he refused to take off his pants:
http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Too_embarrassed_to_call_for_help

Julie Louis-Dreyfus is the first Seinfeld alum to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but just 4 hours before the official ceremony a CNN producer was walking to work and noticed as he passed by that they had written "Luis" instead of "Louis" and had left off the hyphen! The workers were able to make a temporary fix before the ceremony:
http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/04/welcome-to-the-hollywood-walk-of-oops/

Here is the photo of the rescuers wearing only shorts trying to pull him fully clothed man out of the mud:
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/825437-man-stuck-in-river-too-embarrassed-to-call-for-help