Factories

A hodgepodge crowd gathers here twice a week for handouts just steps from City Hall and an empty kosher deli. Outside the local food pantry snakes a line of Guatemalans wearing court-ordered ankle monitors, imported workers from the Pacific island of Palau and unemployed town natives -- almost all there because of a dramatic raid that has left a deep mark in the way the U.S. views and deals with illegal immigration.

Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. has bought 53 acres in Victorville, where it will build a large-scale bottling plant and distribution center, the company said Wednesday. The Texas-based soft-drink maker will start work shortly on a $120-million facility to produce such beverages as 7UP, A&W root beer, Sunkist orange soda and Hawaiian Punch for customers in the Southwest. After the plant opens in spring 2010, it is expected to pump out as many as 40 million cases of drinks a year.

U.S. health officials evaluated the wrong factory when assessing the safety of a Chinese-made drug ingredient that may be a source of problems with a blood thinner, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday. Baxter International Inc.'s heparin has been linked to four deaths and hundreds of reports of allergic reactions. An investigation will take FDA inspectors to China this week.

The "Made in Italy" label conjures images of little old men and women in aprons and spectacles, stooped over wooden tables, cutting leather and sewing by hand in workshops that dot the hills of Tuscany. It certainly doesn't make you picture Chinese immigrants toiling long hours in ramshackle, poorly illuminated sheds, and then sleeping in small rooms behind thin plywood right there in the factories.

Liu Keli couldn't tell you much about South Carolina, not even where it is in the United States. It's as obscure to him as his home region, Shanxi province, is to most Americans. But Liu is investing $10 million in the Palmetto State, building a printing-plate factory that will open this fall and hire 120 workers. His main aim is to tap the large American market, but when his finance staff penciled out the costs, he was stunned to learn how they compared with those in China.

Next month in Britain, Ford Motor Co. will begin selling a diesel hatchback that gets 64 miles per gallon. Across the channel, Parisians can buy a new gas-powered compact made by General Motors Corp. that gets a nifty 47 mpg. On these shores, neither carmaker sells anything that thrifty. Yet with Americans clamoring for fuel-efficient cars and Detroit automakers on the ropes thanks to crashing sales of gas-guzzling trucks, the question is, why aren't these vehicles here now?

Plans to produce the Prius hybrid in the United States have been put on hold indefinitely, Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday. Reports surfaced in Japan last month that the automaker was delaying the start of Prius production at its plant near Tupelo, Miss., until 2011 at the earliest. Plans had called for the gas-sipping cars to start rolling off the line in 2010.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said Wednesday that it would spend about $2.4 billion to build the world's largest plasma TV display panel plant amid expectations of a surge in demand for flat-panel televisions. The Osaka-based maker of Panasonic-brand electronics said it aimed for annual sales of 10 trillion yen ($84 billion) by the end of March 2010, up from an estimated 8.95 trillion yen in fiscal 2006. Matsushita dominates in plasma display flat-panel TVs with its Viera line.

Toyota Motor Corp. wants to build more of its cars and trucks in North America, fearful of a backlash as its booming sales erode American automakers' share of the U.S. market. Although the Japanese automaker often proclaims that it wants to build where it sells, nearly half of the 2.5 million vehicles Toyota sold in the U.S. last year were imported from overseas factories. The company reportedly is close to announcing a site in the Southern U.S.

FOR more than 10 years, Wu Hong Fang's days have been filled with the same gentle sound, the quick chafe of sandpaper on spruce and maple. Working briskly, methodically, her hands a dusty blur, she sands violins all day, six days a week. There is a rhythm to what she does, but you wouldn't call it music. Wu laughs when she's asked whether she feels any connection to the melodies these violins will one day produce. "Basically," she says, "it's a living."