NATIONWIDE

The United Auto Workers set a strike deadline of 8 a.m. PDT today if a new contract isn’t reached with General Motors Corp., union officials said, threatening a walkout by 73,000 GM factory workers.

The two sides have been in talks for 20 straight days, and GM spokesman Dan Flores said they were continuing late into the night. The deadline raised the stakes in the closely watched labor talks after a weekend of marathon bargaining that had appeared to bring the two sides close on a historic cost-cutting deal for the top U.S. automaker.

NEW YORK N.Y. Times says it violated ad policy

After two weeks of denials, the New York Times acknowledged that it should not have given a discount to MoveOn.org for a full-page ad assailing Army Gen. David H. Petraeus.

The liberal group MoveOn should have paid $142,000, not $65,000, for the ad that referred to the U.S. commander in Iraq as “General Betray Us,” wrote Clark Hoyt, the newspaper’s public editor. Hoyt said the group was not entitled to the rate for ads that can run any day of the week because the Times promised it would run the day Petraeus began his congressional testimony. MoveOn said it would send the newspaper $77,000. Hoyt said the Times also violated its ad policy, which bars “attacks of a personal nature.”

AND FINALLY… Cub fans have their Fields day

His parents say he can go by his middle name, Alexander, when he’s old enough to decide, but for now the newborn will be known by his first name: Wrigley.

And his last name: Fields.

His parents are Paul and Teri Fields of Michigan City, Ind. They are, as one might suspect, fans of the Chicago Cubs, the team that has played at Wrigley Field since 1916.

A Cubs spokeswoman said the team had no record of other children named Wrigley.

From Times Wire Reports