More US economic gloom

More evidence of the impact of the economic slowdown in the United States has come with the announcement of big job losses in the car industry.

The world's biggest manufacturer of car parts, Delphi Automotive, is cutting eleven-and-a-half-thousand jobs -- some five percent of its global workforce -- and closing nine factories in the United States, Brazil and Europe. The announcement comes against a background of a sharp decline in car sales in the US, where the big motor manufacturers have scaled back production. Meanwhile, the US Commerce Department has published figures showing that the economy in the final quarter of least year grew at its slowest rate for five-and-a-half years. The GDP figure was one per cent.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service