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• Hundreds of Normandy residents and other onlookers applauded the veterans, then began forming a human chain on the beach.
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How GM employees didn't view 'switch from hell' as a safety issue despite decade of clues
• DETROIT (AP) -- Inside General Motors, they called it "the switch from hell."
• The ignition switch on the steering column of the Chevrolet Cobalt and other small cars was so poorly designed that it easily slipped out of the run position, causing engines to stall. Engineers knew it; as early as 2004, a Cobalt stalled on a GM test track when the driver's knee grazed the key fob. By GM's admission, the defective switches caused over 50 crashes and at least 13 deaths.
• Yet inside the auto giant, no one saw it as a safety problem. For 11 years.
• A 315-page report by an outside attorney found that the severity of the switch problem was downplayed from the start. Even as dozens of drivers were losing control of their vehicles in terrifying crashes, GM engineers, safety investigators and lawyers considered the switches a "customer satisfaction" problem, incorrectly believing that people could still steer the cars even though the power steering went out when the engines stalled. In safety meetings, people gave what was known as the "GM nod," agreeing on a plan of action but doing nothing.
• "The decision not to categorize the problem as a safety issue directly impacted the level of urgency with which the problem was addressed and the effort to resolve it," wrote Anton Valukas, the former federal prosecutor hired by GM to produce the report.
• ___
Texas Republican Party moves closer to endorsing psychological treatment for gays in platform
• FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- The Texas Republican Party would endorse psychological treatment that seeks to turn gay people straight under a new platform partly aimed at rebuking laws in California and New Jersey that ban so-called "reparative therapy" on minors.
• A push to include the new anti-gay language survived a key vote late Thursday in Fort Worth at the Texas Republican Convention where, across the street, tea party star U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz fired up attendees at a rally to defend marriage as between a man and a woman.
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