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Ford Trucks Press Release / December 20, 2016 Today, Ford Otosan’s Ecotorq 330 horsepower 9.0- and 420/480 horsepower 12.7-liter engine offerings with high pressure 2,500 bar common rail fuel injection are Euro-6 rated and Euro-7 capable. To meet the strict emissions standards of today and tomorrow, Ford Otosan developed the “EGAS” exhaust after-treatment system shown in the video below. .

Kenworth Truck Company / December 22, 2016 Serving the food and beverage industry across 48 states, Navajo Express has a well-deserved reputation for excellent service and on-time deliveries. Based in Denver, this long-time Kenworth customer stresses that any success it has achieved rests on the hard work and day-to-day commitment of its drivers. “When our drivers succeed, we all succeed,” said Navajo Express President Don Digby Jr., whose father, Don Digby Sr., founded the company 36 years ago. “By giving drivers the right equipment that won’t break down, by giving them a quality cab and sleeper where they are comfortable driving and resting, they can have success.” To help recruit and retain top drivers, Navajo began purchasing Kenworth T680 76-inch sleepers in 2014. It now operates 437 T680s with the Paccar (DAF) MX-13 engine. “The T680 with PACCAR engine has been a very good truck for us with its aerodynamic fuel efficiency and, more importantly, the comfort it provides our drivers,” said Digby. “If you want the best drivers, you better have the best equipment. For us, Kenworth was a simple choice.” Today the Navajo fleet has grown to 831 trucks, including 700 Kenworths. Navajo driver Charlie Hamilton got his new T680 about nine months ago. “It’s a smooth ride, comfortable cab and one of the quieter trucks I’ve ever driven,” said Hamilton, now in his 17th year with Navajo. “Yesterday’s run I finished at 8.2 miles per gallon* hauling 33,000 lbs. So far I’ve put 124,000 miles on the truck and have had no issues, zero downtime.” On this particular day, Digby notes, 18 trucks are down system wide. “None of them are Kenworths,” he says. “The T680s and MX-13 engine are proven reliable.” So much so that Navajo will be purchasing up to 225 additional Kenworth T680s in 2017. Digby especially appreciates the power, performance, fuel efficiency and reliability of the MX-13 engine. “Our drivers prefer the MX-13 engine because it’s considerably quieter,” said Digby. “They’re standing in line waiting for the MX-13.” Navajo specs its T680s with many additional driver-friendly features like the Bendix Wingman Advanced system that delivers adaptive cruise control with braking features along with collision mitigation technology that can help drivers in collisions, potential rollovers, and loss-of-control situations. “We believe the T680 is the best truck on the road with features like the automatic-unlocking fifth wheel to limit the exposure of the driver’s rotator cuff,” said Digby. “These things are important to us and to our drivers.” When it comes time to spec new trucks, Navajo looks to its dealer, MHC Kenworth – Denver, for assistance. “We like to try new things, the latest and greatest in terms of driver comfort,” said Digby. “MHC is a true partner at bringing new ideas and new visions to the table. Plus, MHC Kenworth blankets the United States with coverage and is really able to help our drivers with any situation.” Hamilton added, “I haven’t been inside a dealer since I got my T680. It runs really well, smooth and quiet, and no downtime.” Kenworth is the driver’s truck for comfort and reliability. Concluded Digby, “We give our drivers the best piece of equipment on the road, to make sure they can achieve success. At the end of the day, they want to drive Kenworth.” .

Volvo Trucks USA / December 30, 2016 During a seven month project, Mammoet operates four transport units in tight rotation between Stewart, British Columbia and their customer in Redwater, Alberta. Additional trucks are brought in as required to support port operations and schedules. Mammoet is a specialized heavy lift and transport provider, operating globally with 5,000 employees. The company’s services focus on the petrochemical and mining industries, civil engineering, power generation and offshore projects. THE TRUCK AND TRAILER Truck: Heavy Haul. Model: Volvo VNX 630. Engine: Volvo D16 (600 hp) Transmission: Volvo I-Shift. Tractor: 8X6 (tri drive). Weight: 262,000 pounds (gross combination weight). Payload: 146,000 pounds. Length: 187 feet (overall combination). Wheels: 50. Fuel: Up to 300 gallons capacity. Features: 75 000 punds differentials. Low-bed ramps and wet kit to handle multiple trailer combinations. Headache rack for back of sleeper protection and chains and boomers. Pilot trucks for over-sized load. Trailer: 9 Axle Scheuerle ‘Canadian Highway’. Special trailer features: Extendable deck (61-100 ft); hydraulic suspension; kingpin or remote steerable axles. Pilot trucks: 7 escort vehicles for night travel. .

Volvo Trucks USA / December 30, 2016 Rod Stanley has been driving trucks through the winding mountain roads of western Canada for virtually his whole working life. “It is always a spectacular view, with all the wildlife that goes with it – elks, bears, goats, sheep,” say Stanley. “When I’m driving through here I’m thinking about how lucky I am to get paid to travel on such roads. It’s definitely one of the best privileges of being a truck driver.” .

Kenworth Truck Company / December 27, 2016 Kenworth’s factory-installed, battery based no-idle system is designed to help long-haul fleets in hot and cold climates to reduce idling time and fuel usage without compromising performance. .

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The issue that Mack distributor principals are talking about now is they no longer have a big engine offering. While their North American competition offers the superb DD15, and DD16, and Cummins has a revised ISX15 (i.e. X15), North American Mack (and Volvo dealers) now abruptly find themselves with the D13/MP8 as their largest engine option. Now they flat out do not compete in the 15/16-liter market segment. The Titan was a sales disaster, but the big news is the loss of the D16/MP10 in North America. Volvo and its incompetent Mack brand management flubbed the U.S. market Titan idea from day one. Looking back at the RW6 and RW7 product, we of course sold 10 RW6s for every one RW7. Although I supported the idea of the Mack brand having a RW7-like truck for severe service, it first should have relaunched a RW6 "Super-Liner" product where there is: 1) a greater need, 2) an opportunity to juice up the brand again, and 3) far greater volume. I also didn't like the way the US market Titan was always shown pimped with tacky looking chrome trim that the Australian version never had. And as has been noted, the cheap chrome trim didn't hold up. As has been mentioned, the design of the Titan was created to meet the needs of Australia. For the US market, it should have had more "adaption". In summary, Volvo should have introduced an on-road US market Super-Liner III.........before launching a low volume Titan. The failure of the US market Titan all goes back to the incompetent Mack brand management in Greensboro, none of whom have a background in the truck industry. As Volvo brand US market sales continue to rise while the Mack brand remains stagnant, the future of the latter is looking more and more bleak. Mack brand dealers nationwide are missing deals right and left because their quotes are $10,000 to $15,000 higher than competing makes. Volvo is pricing the Mack brand out of the market. One can't help but wonder if Volvo is purposely doing so.

Syrian refugee who asked ISIS for €180,000 for bombings in Europe arrested in Germany RT / January 2, 2017 A Syrian asylum seeker has been detained in Germany on suspicion of asking ISIS for money to buy and booby trap cars to kill a large number of "non-Muslim" people in “Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.” The 38-year old man was detained early Saturday by German special forces in his flat in the city of Saarbrucken in the Federal State of Saarland. He was arrested after Saarland police received a tip off from the Federal Criminal police. According to the Prosecutor’s office, the man in custody contacted Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group’s contact person in December “who he knew was in a position to obtain IS money for terror financing.” The asylum seeker apparently “asked him [IS contact person] to provide €180,000 so he [the suspect] can use the money to buy vehicles, which he planned to bobby trap with explosives,” a statement by the Prosecutor’s office reads. The Syrian asylum seeker planned to buy eight cars - €22,500 each - booby trap the vehicles and drive them into the crowds to “kill a large number of non-Muslim people.” He reportedly said 400 to 500 kilograms (882 to 1,100 pounds) of explosives would be placed in each car. According to a separate statement by police in Saarland, the suspect asked for the IS money to finance an “unspecified terrorist attack” in “Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.” Hugo Muller, Deputy Commissioner for the Saarland police said that the Syrian man planned to repaint the vehicles as police cars. "In his respective communications with contacts linked to IS, he [the suspect] offered or suggested to repaint cars to make them look similar to police cars, load them with explosives, position them in a crowd of people and then detonate them," Muller said. The 38-year old entered Germany in 2014 and after applying for asylum and was a granted a temporary residence permit.

Thank you my friend. It was very nice, but I'm glad to be back.

Automotive News / January 2, 2017 Ford Motor Co. is starting the new year with a new name for its commercial dealer network. The vehicle manufacturer's old Business Preferred Network -- roughly 650 dealerships nationwide that sell commercial trucks and vans -- are now known as Commercial Vehicle Centers. The rebranding effort also includes expanded service and enhanced training at dealerships. "We felt compelled to step back and analyze our dealer network program in this space," John Ruppert, Ford's general manager of commercial vehicle sales and marketing, told Automotive News, adding: "There was truly an opportunity to rebrand the network to be more descriptive of what this is all about." The enhanced training covers sales, service, parts and finance. It's meant to boost dealership staffers' knowledge of the commercial vehicle business. Participating dealers must meet requirements such as stocking a minimum number of commercial vehicles, subscribing to a commercial tools ordering system and providing a minimum number of service hours. Dealers are launching the program now, and are adding signage to their showrooms. In the first half of 2016, Ford's commercial business rose 9.6 percent from a year earlier and accounted for 30 percent of the overall commercial market, according to the most recent data by IHS Markit. This fall, Ford launched a redesigned Super Duty, following updates in recent years to its F-650 and F-750 medium-duty trucks and its Transit and Transit Connect vans. "It's the perfect time," said Tim Stoehr, Ford's general fleet marketing manager. "We've just finished a period of the largest investment we've ever made in our commercial products."

Without Pearl Harbor, a different world? By Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick / December 9, 2016 On the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we've been asked to reflect on what might have happened if Japan had not launched an attack on the US fleet on December 7, 1941. The question is both interesting and relevant at a time when Japan experiences a military resurgence and America's provocative Asia "pivot" is being rethought by the incoming and often unpredictable Trump administration. Trump's rash statements about China, Japan, and South Korea have already roiled the waters throughout the region. A pretext for US to enter WWII The assault on Pearl Harbor was not only foolhardy, it was ultimately suicidal. Naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison dismissed it as "strategic imbecility." Many in Japan -- including most of the nine former prime ministers whom Japanese Emperor Hirohito met with a week prior to the attack -- had opposed it. Yet Gen. Hideki Tojo's government authorized the attack with the objective of destroying the US Pacific Fleet, which potentially could have blocked Japan's access to the resources of Southeast Asia. The Pearl Harbor attack, however, was only partly successful. Though Japanese forces caused significant damage to the US Fleet and killed 2,335 US troops and 68 civilians, their attack was not fatal. The Fleet's three aircraft carriers weren't in Pearl Harbor when the attack occurred and many of the damaged ships and planes were able to be repaired. This would come back to haunt Japan the next June, when US forces, including two of those carriers, took out four Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway and turned the Pacific war in the US favor. The Japanese attack had given President Roosevelt the pretext he sought to bring the US into the war. Americans may have overwhelmingly favored the Allies over the despised Nazis and sympathized with the plight of Chinese being brutalized by Japan, but few wanted to get drawn into another war. World War I had left a bitter taste in their mouths. Not only had it not been "the war to end all wars" or the war to make the world "safe for democracy," it had enriched the greedy bankers and arms manufacturers -- the "merchants of death" as they were then known -- and done nothing to end colonial exploitation. By 1941, Roosevelt surreptitiously maneuvered the US into confrontations with both Germany, which had conquered much of Europe, and Japan, which had seized Manchuria and Indochina and was waging a vicious war against China. At Newfoundland in August 1941, Roosevelt told Churchill that he "would wage war, but not declare it" and do everything he could to "force an 'incident' that could lead to war." His overt support for Britain against Germany and decision to halt desperately needed exports of oil, metal, and other resources to Japan proved sufficient. One day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt addressed Congress, which approved his war resolution with one dissenting vote. Three days later, Germany and Italy, Japan's allies, declared war against the United States. The world would never be the same. But here's how it could've been different. US and Japan on a collision course for years The attack on Pearl Harbor has loomed large in the American imagination for several reasons. Americans considered it a cowardly "sneak" attack because the Japanese had not declared war against the US. It occurred on American territory -- the US had forcibly annexed [stolen] Hawaii in 1898 -- and revealed a stunning failure of US intelligence, heightening fears of US vulnerability in a dangerous world. It also triggered ugly discrimination against Japanese-American citizens and Japanese immigrants alike inside the United States. Almost 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were rounded up and put into internment camps until the end of the war. But had the Japanese not attacked Pearl Harbor, the Pacific War would largely have evolved along similar lines. The US and Japan had been on a collision course for months if not years. With or without the attack on Pearl Harbor, the two countries were heading for war. What most Americans forget is that it was not only Pearl Harbor that Japan attacked on December 7, 1941. As Roosevelt told Congress on December 8, Japan had also attacked the British colonies of Hong Kong and Malaya, the US colony in the Philippines, and US holdings in Guam, Wake Island, and Midway Island. The attack on Malaya actually preceded the assault on Pearl Harbor by more than an hour. In addition, though not mentioned by Roosevelt, Japan invaded Thailand. It also attacked Singapore, which was then part of British Malaya. US officials had broken Japanese diplomatic codes in August 1940, enabling them to monitor Japan's war planning. They knew an attack was coming. They just didn't think it was coming at Pearl Harbor. The most likely targets in their minds were the oil-rich Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Malaya, and the Philippines. Japan's attack on US bases in the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, and Midway Island would have been more than sufficient provocation for a US president eager to get the US into the war. In the Philippines alone, the cost of the American defeat was staggering, resulting in the death or capture of 23,000 American and perhaps 100,000 Filipino military personnel. Soviets deserve lion's share of the credit for victory in Europe While US involvement was absolutely crucial to Allied victory in the Pacific War, it was less so in the defeat of the European Axis powers. In fact, had the US not entered the European war, the outcome would have been the same. By the time the US and Britain finally initiated their promised second front in France a year and a half after Roosevelt publicly announced it would begin, the Russians had already turned the tide and German forces were in full retreat across Europe. Up to that point, the US and British had been confronting some 10 German divisions combined while the Soviets were confronting nearly 200 by themselves. Forcing Germany to fight on two fronts certainly expedited the end of the war, but it didn't change the outcome. Contrary to American mythology, the Soviets deserve the lion's share of the credit for victory in Europe. And they suffered immensely in bringing this about. In quantitative terms, the 27 million Soviets who died at the hands of Germany is the equivalent of one 9/11 a day every day for 27 years. It is the equivalent of one Pearl Harbor a day every day for 30 years. Despite Churchill's hatred of Bolshevism, the British owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Soviets, without whom they might be speaking German today. They also owe a huge debt to the Americans without whom they might be speaking Russian. It is interesting to contemplate how the face of Europe would have been different if the US had remained the "arsenal" of the Allied powers without actually joining the war. It was fortuitous that Germany and Italy declared war against the US on December 11, 1941 without which Roosevelt would have had to find another justification for American entry. Where would the line between the Soviets and the West have been drawn if the US had not entered the European war? How might the Soviet economy have developed if Soviet leaders had access to the greater potential wealth of West Germany and France? Might socialism have appeared a more viable option in the postwar world if the US was not in a position to help rebuild the depression- and war-shattered capitalist economies? What if Roosevelt had kept Henry Wallace as vice president? There are some other interesting counterfactuals that can be explored regarding the Second World War, some of which we do look at in our documentary film and book series The Untold History of the United States. What would have happened if Roosevelt had retained his visionary and controversial vice president Henry Wallace on the ticket in 1944 instead of the much smaller minded Harry Truman? Despite the opposition of the conservative Democratic Party bosses, Roosevelt had the moral authority and political muscle to insist upon Wallace remaining on the ticket as his wife and children and the majority of Americans desired. The Gallup Poll -- a US public opinion survey -- released on July 20, 1944, the first day of the Democratic Party convention in Chicago, reported that 65 percent of potential Democratic voters wanted the enormously popular Wallace back on the ticket as vice president. Two percent wanted Truman. The internal machinations that resulted in Truman's selection are a sordid tale with which few Americans are familiar. Had Wallace become president upon Roosevelt's death in April 1945 instead of Truman, there would have been no atomic bombings of Japan and possibly no Cold War. Wallace envisioned friendship between the Americans and the Soviets and a healthy competition between the two systems in which each would strive to show that it was better suited to serve the needs of humanity. He would have delivered on the $10 billion credit that Roosevelt had dangled before the Soviets to help them rebuild from a war that had turned much of the country into a wasteland. The positive repercussions that might have had in Soviet-occupied Europe are incalculable. It is also worth noting that Wallace was a fierce opponent of colonialism, who openly deplored the British and French empires, leading Churchill and the French to pressure Roosevelt to replace him on the ticket. Roosevelt largely shared Wallace's views regarding empire. He condemned British rule in Gambia, calling it "the most horrible thing I have ever seen in my life." He felt similarly about Dutch exploitation of the East Indies and French rule in Indochina, insisting he would not let the French back in after the war. On some level, he understood that the Pacific War was rooted in imperial rivalries, commenting privately, "Don't think for a minute that Americans would be dying in the Pacific...if it hadn't been for the short-sighted greed of the French and the British and the Dutch." He promised "immediate" independence for the Philippines once Japanese troops were ousted shortly before his death. Roosevelt often wavered on this issue, but Wallace never did. He was steadfast in his hatred of colonial exploitation and the racism that justified it. Think of the lives that could have been saved and the misery that could have been avoided if colonialism had been ended peacefully in the immediate aftermath of the war. The world without the atomic bombings A second counterfactual is what would have happened if World War II had ended without the atomic bombs being used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan? American mythology holds that the two bombs ended the war and, by obviating the American invasion of Japan, humanely saved millions of American and Japanese lives. According to defenders of the atomic bombing, the cost, by 1950, of 200,000 dead in Hiroshima and 140,000 dead in Nagasaki was a small price to pay. The evidence is overwhelming, as we show in Untold History, that it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, South Sakhalin, the Kurile Islands, and Korea, which began at midnight on August 8, 1945 that precipitated the Japanese surrender and not the atomic bombs. US intelligence had been forecasting such an outcome for months and Truman acknowledged that the Soviet entry would be decisive. At Potsdam on July 17, he wrote in his diary, Stalin "will be in the Jap war on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about." He characterized the intercepted July 18 cable as "the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace." He knew the end was near and the bombs weren't necessary. If the bombs had not been used in the war, might the US and the USSR have avoided the nuclear arms race that the atomic bombings set in motion? Soviet leaders, knowing full well that the bombs weren't needed to defeat Japan, interpreted their use as a warning of the devastation that the US would wreak on the Soviets if they interfered with US postwar plans. We've lived with the threat of the extinction of life on this planet ever since. Japan's fate was sealed when the Soviets invaded as the official US Navy Museum in Washington, DC acknowledges. The Japanese hurried to surrender to the Americans while they still had the chance, knowing that a Soviet takeover would spell the end of not only the emperor system but of the capitalism that supported it. At first, the US occupation was relatively benign and in some ways even enlightened. The US imposed Japan's peace constitution, which disavowed the sovereign right of war and disallowed the retention of offensive military forces. It is those forward-thinking principles that the Shinzo Abe administration is presently trying to eviscerate. If the Soviets had had a greater hand in the occupation, Japan might have become a Cold War battleground as Korea did. Would the Russians have been torn between the conflicting pressures to rebuild Japan and to loot it that they faced in Germany? The animosity they felt toward the Japanese paled in comparison to their hatred and mistrust of the Germans, who had so much Soviet blood on their hands. As we know, the US quickly abandoned its progressive vision for postwar Japan and sought to rebuild it as the military and economic outpost of Western capitalist interests in the volatile Asia-Pacific region. Either way, Japanese cars, electronics, and sushi were fated to transport, connect, and feed the planet. The world would be better off, however, if the rise of Japanese militarism could have been thwarted or further delayed. World War II with its vast bloodletting, incredible toll of human life, deployment of technology to maximize killing and destruction, and prominent display of the ugly side of human nature, replete with racism, xenophobia, and ethnic and religious bigotry, serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when we unleash the forces of fear, hatred, and nationalism. Some of those same forces are rampant in the world today. Pearl Harbor should serve as a reminder. But we must be careful to draw the right lessons to avoid a repeat of the horrors that engulfed the planet more than 75 years ago.

WLOX / December 24, 2016 Kyandrea Thomas, 34, was arrested Saturday, December 24 by the New Roads Police Department after throwing her newborn infant into a bathroom trash can at the Walmart in New Roads. Thomas was also arrested in 2009 in connection with the hot car death of a toddler. Thomas gave birth to a baby girl in the store’s bathroom before throwing her in the trash and leaving the store. Pointe Coupee Chief Deputy Coroner Joe Gannon said had police not arrived when they did, the baby would be dead. Police say it is not the first time Thomas has been arrested. "I think as the story unfolds, you'll be surprised at what you find," Gannon said. Thomas was linked to another horrible crime in 2009. Thomas and another woman, Michelle Veals, were both indicted on negligent homicides charges in connection with the death of Damiyn McElveen, 3. Criminal charges for the owner of the daycare, Wanda Connor, were dropped in 2012. Thomas and Veals were both sentenced to five years of probation and 10,000 hours of community service after pleading guilty in the case. The two women were employed at a daycare called Wanda's Kids World in Baton Rouge. The young girl was found dead in a van on July 1, 2009 after being left inside for six hours with temperatures outside of 98 degrees. The daycare was closed following McElveen's death. Thomas faces attempted second degree murder charges for abandoning her newborn in Walmart.

Associated Press / December 24, 2016 An infant died in her bassinet of dehydration and starvation three or four days after her parents died, also at home, from drug overdoses. Jason Chambers, 27, Chelsea Cardaro, 19, and 5-month-old Summer Chambers were found dead Thursday in Kernville, about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. Cambria County coroner Jeffrey Lees said that the parents had been dead for about a week when the discovery was made. The infant died three or four days after them, he said. Jason Chambers was found on the first floor, and Cardaro in a second-floor bathroom. The infant died in her bassinet in a second-floor bedroom. Heroin overdoses are suspected and there was evidence of drugs at the scene. Johnstown police Capt. Chad Miller said emergency responders had been called to the home in November to treat the man after an overdose.

The Washington Post / December 23, 2016 Federal ethics experts for former Democratic and Republican administrations warned Thursday that President-elect Donald Trump is creating a major conflict of interest by allowing his Virginia vineyard to seek special temporary visas for foreign workers. Trump, who is president of the Charlottesville vineyard that applied this month for H2 visas for six foreign workers, will soon run the U.S. government, which determines whether to grant those visas. Trump Vineyard Estates LLC filed a request Dec. 2 with the Labor Department for six H2 visas, which permit U.S. employers to hire foreigners for seasonal jobs. The request was posted online by the Labor Department on Wednesday. The workers are needed to prune the vines on the estate, the Labor application said, and they would be paid $10.72 per hour for a 40-hour, six-day week. The jobs are anticipated to last from January to June. During the presidential campaign, Trump consistently argued that the federal government should limit immigration to protect American jobs. The Trump vineyard applied for 19 temporary visas for foreign workers in 2014, 2015 and this year, before the most recent request, according to federal records. In addition, Trump has sought to hire 513 foreign workers since 2013 for some of his other businesses, including for his Palm Beach home, Mar-a-Lago Club. Kerry Woolard, the Trump Winery’s senior manager who signed the Labor request, refused to comment. Although Trump, during a campaign event in May said of the winery, “I own it 100 percent, no mortgage, no debt,” the winery’s website says it is a registered trade name of Eric Trump Wine Manufacturing LLC and is “not owned, managed or affiliated with Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their affiliates.” The winery is on land owned by Trump Vineyard Estates LLC. Trump reported in his campaign’s federally required financial disclosure statement in May 2016 that he was president of that entity.

EPA Certifies Bi-Fuel CNG System for GM, Isuzu Cabovers Heavy Duty Trucking / December 21, 2016 AGA Systems has received EPA certification of its EcoSync HD Bi-Fuel CNG alternative-fuel system for the 2017 General Motors Vortec 6.0L engine that's used in the Isuzu NPR and Chevrolet Low Cab Forward trucks. AGA Systems is awaiting EPA approval of its EcoSync HD dedicated CNG alternative-fuel system, which is expected in January. Both systems are in production, and the company is taking and orders. Advanced EcoSync technology utilizes the factory electronic control module with advanced safety and diagnostics capabilities and eliminates the need for a last-generation slave-ECU for CNG operation.

Scania Group Press Release / December 22, 2016 "V-8s.......That's why we buy Scania" Harry Nilsen, Sørum Transport (Click on the "CC" button for English subtitles) .

The Washington Post / December 22, 2016 When Anis Amri washed up on European shores in a migrant boat in April 2011, he landed on the windswept Italian island of Lampedusa already a fugitive. Sought in his native Tunisia for hijacking a van with a gang of thieves, the frustrated Italians would jail him for arson and violent assault at his migrant reception center for minors on the isle of Sicily. There, his family says, the boy who once drank alcohol — and never went to mosque — suddenly got religion. He began to pray, asking his family to send him religious books. The Italian Bureau of Prisons submitted a report to a government ­anti-terrorism commission on Amri’s rapid radicalization, warning that he was embracing dangerous ideas of Islamist ­extremism and had threatened Christian inmates. The Italians tried to deport Amri but couldn’t. They sent his fingerprints and photo to the Tunisian consulate, but the authorities there refused to recognize Amri as a citizen. The Italians could not even establish his true identity. Italy’s solution: After four years in jail, they released him anyway — giving him seven days to leave the country. On Monday, Amri, now 24 and with previously known links to Islamist extremists, drove a truck into a crowded Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 and wounding dozens. Germany had tried to deport Amri, too, though Tunisia long refused to take him back. His case suggests two critical realities of modern terrorism that present major new challenges, especially in Europe. The cumbersome and flawed system of deportation and asylum — mixed with open borders — has made it exceedingly easy for radicalized Islamists to operate on the continent. Yet Amri is also the latest suspect to have emerged from a disconcerting counterterrorism gap in both Europe and the United States. In case after case — including that of the German Christmas market attack — authorities have come forward after the fact to say that they had enough cause to place the suspect under surveillance well before the violence. But never enough to move in for an arrest. This has been true of the majority of lone-wolf terrorism plots over the past several years. The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, had been under FBI investigation for 10 months. The bureau had also tracked but had been unable to build a case against the Boston Marathon bombers or the plotters who targeted a contest to draw cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The same was true with Amri. Several months ago, during a surveillance operation monitoring radical Islamic preachers, German authorities intercepted a communication, which, in retrospect, appeared to forecast Amri’s violent intent. They would not disclose the precise wording, but German officials said the intercept was not straightforward enough to directly indicate an imminent threat. “He never made such a clear statement during this interaction, which could have led to the conclusion that he would become a martyr,” an official said. Amri fell into a dangerous gray zone — he was on the U.S. no-fly list a month ago, and Germans had linked him to a radical network led by Abu ­Walaa, a 32-year-old of Iraqi descent arrested in November on charges of recruiting and sending fighters from Germany to the Islamic State. Amri had also been under police surveillance for several months until September of this year, because he was suspected of planning a burglary in Berlin to finance the purchase of weapons. The suspicion wasn’t confirmed, however, and authorities found him guilty only of being a small-time drug dealer. “This kind of super-low-tech, improvised thing is hard,” said Rafael Bossong, research associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “The guy didn’t buy any weapons. He didn’t give off absolutely clear signals. The question is, how do you definitely prevent that?” Amri appears to have attempted to manipulate the German asylum system — an inundated bureaucracy clogged with a backlog of more than 400,000 cases following the arrival of 1.2 million asylum seekers over the course of the past two years. Amri claimed to be Egyptian and to have suffered persecution there when applying for asylum in Germany in April. When officials questioned him, he could not answer basic questions about his alleged home country. They checked their data system and found that he had been registered under several aliases and birthdays. By July, his asylum request was rejected. And yet, they could not deport him, because Tunisia initially refused to take him — issuing him a passport only last Monday, the same day as the attack. The way the system is designed, even had Amri fully cooperated, however, the Germans would not have had access to his criminal record in Italy. The computer databases used in Europe to vet migrants in the first instance does not include such data.

The Washington Post / December 23, 2016 A routine request for ID papers outside a deserted train station in Milan at 3 a.m. Friday led to a police shootout that killed the Tunisian fugitive radical Islamist wanted in the deadly Christmas market attack in Berlin. Amri traveled from Germany through France and into Italy after Monday night’s truck rampage in Berlin, and at least some of his journey was by rail. French officials refused to comment on his passage through France, which has increased surveillance on trains after recent attacks in France and Germany. Amri was caught seemingly by chance after eluding police for more than three days. “He was a ghost,” Milan police chief Antoio de Iesu said, adding that Amri was stopped because of basic police work, intensified surveillance “and a little luck.” Like other cities, Milan has been on heightened alert, with increased surveillance and police patrols. The two young officers who stopped Amri didn’t suspect he was the Berlin attacker, but rather grew suspicious because he was a North African man, alone outside a deserted train station in the dead of night. Amri, who had spent time in prison in Italy, was confronted by the officers in the Sesto San Giovanni neighborhood of Milan. He pulled a gun from his backpack after being asked to show his ID and was killed in an ensuing shootout. One of the officers, Christian Movio, 35, was shot in the right shoulder. His 29-year-old partner, Luca Scata, fatally shot Amri in the chest and is now a national hero. Amri had no ID or cellphone and carried only a pocket knife and the loaded .22-caliber pistol he used to shoot Movio. He was identified with fingerprints supplied by Germany. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Washington Post / December 23, 2016 On a drab, graffiti-sprayed square on the outskirts of Milan, two Italian police officers — one of them a trainee — spotted a suspicious young man with a backpack. It was 3:15 a.m. Friday. A thief? Possibly. They pulled him aside for an identity check. The officers did not know that the man had already fled hundreds of miles across the heart of Europe, evading an international dragnet. They confronted the 24-year old, who — using street slang Italian picked up in Sicilian jails — insisted that he was a traveler from Italy’s deep south. They told him to empty his backpack. Instead, Italian officials say, he pulled a gun. Anis Amri, a self-proclaimed ISIS soldier, rapidly shot one officer in the shoulder before ducking behind a car. “Poliziotti bastardi!” — police bastards! — Amri shouted. The second patrolman — trainee Luca Scatà, now an instant national hero — fired back, killing the suspect. Hours after the shootout, the Islamic State’s Amaq news agency released a video of Amri that was tauntingly filmed only 1.5 miles from the German Chancellery in Berlin. He seemed calm, yet certain in a black-hooded windbreaker on an iron bridge as he called on Muslims in Europe to rise up and strike at “crusaders.” “God willing, we will slaughter you like pigs,” he said in the video. He added: “To my brothers everywhere, fight for the sake of Allah. Protect our religion. Everyone can do this in their own way. People who can fight should fight, even in Europe.”

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