DETROIT — Americans are buying record numbers of hybrid and electric cars as gas prices climb and new models arrive in showrooms, giving the vehicles their greatest share yet of the U.S. auto market.
Consumers bought a record 52,000 gas-electric hybrids and all-electric cars in March, up from 34,000 during the same month last year.
The two categories combined made up 3.64 percent of total U.S. sales, their highest monthly market share ever, according to Ward’s AutoInfoBank. The previous high was 3.56 percent in July 2009, when the Cash for Clunkers program encouraged people to trade in old gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient cars.
And while their share of the market remains small, it’s a big leap from the start of the year, when hybrids and electrics made up 2.38 percent of new car sales.
Buyers were drawn by new models like the Toyota Prius C subcompact, the Prius V wagon and Camry hybrid. Gas prices near or above $4 per gallon added to the cars’ attraction.
Prosecutors don’t find racial slur
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Despite what some people think they heard, prosecutors say George Zimmerman did not utter a racial slur in his call to 911 on the night he shot Trayvon Martin.
The disputed words on the recording turned out to be “these f——— punks,” prosecutors said in an affidavit filed Thursday in support of the murder charges brought against the neighborhood watch volunteer in the Feb. 26 slaying of the unarmed black teenager.
In yet another passage in the affidavit that caught the attention of those watching the racially charged case, prosecutors said Zimmerman “profiled” Martin just before the shooting. The document did not elaborate, and a spokeswoman for special prosecutor Angela Corey on Friday refused to explain it.
But legal experts warned that “profiling” does not necessarily mean “racial profiling.”
Obama pays 20.5 percent tax rate
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pressuring Mitt Romney on taxes, President Barack Obama’s campaign re-released more than a decade of tax records Friday, a political maneuver designed to pressure the Republican presidential candidate to divulge tax records beyond two years and to stop “hiding” details of his huge personal wealth.
Obama’s own tax return for last year showed that he and his wife paid $162,074 in federal taxes on $789,674 in adjusted gross income, an effective tax rate of 20.5 percent.
Their income plunged from $1.7 million in 2010, with declining sales of the president’s books. In 2009, the Obamas reported income of $5.5 million, fueled by the best-selling books.
Romney’s campaign has projected he will pay more than $6.2 million in taxes on $45 million in income in 2010 and 2011 but has not released tax information prior to the past two years.
Romney is expected to pay 15.4 percent in federal taxes for 2011 on income mostly derived from investments, based on his tax estimate for the year.
Romney on Friday asked for an extension for the actual filing of his 2011 return, as he has in the past, and his campaign said he would file and release that return before the November election.
Sexual assaults rise in military
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Friday the number of reported sexual assaults in the U.S. military rose slightly last year, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta promised new steps to prevent assaults and to hold perpetrators accountable.
In its report to Congress on sexual assaults, the Pentagon there were 3,192 reports of sexual assault involving service members as either victims or perpetrators in the 2011 budget year ended Sept. 30. That’s a 1 percent increase over the 3,158 assaults reported a year earlier and 3,230 reported the year before that.
The Pentagon has estimated that 86 percent of assaults go unreported.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., called the latest report “regrettably, more of the same.”
Titanic sinking commemorated
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — With remembrances and exhibits planned from San Diego to Singapore, places with few or little-noted connections to the Titanic are showing the power the tragedy holds worldwide 100 years after the vessel sank April 15, 1912, and took more than 1,500 people to their deaths.
Venues in Las Vegas, San Diego, Houston and even Singapore are hosting Titanic exhibitions that include artifacts recovered from the site of the sinking. Among them: bottles of perfume, porcelain dishes, even a 17-foot piece of hull.
