News Wrap: UAW expands strike on 40th day to GM SUV plant in Texas

Geoff Bennett:

In the day's other headlines: The United Auto Workers expanded its 40-day-old strike again.

The latest addition is a GM plant in Arlington, Texas, with 5,000 workers. It makes highly profitable large SUVs, including the Chevy Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade. This morning, a handful of workers there began manning picket lines after the company announced a quarterly profit of $3 billion. In all, some 46,000 UAW members are now on strike.

Crews in Louisiana spent much of the day clearing wreckage after a so-called super fog triggered sweeping highway pileups. Seven people died Monday in crashes involving 158 vehicles near New Orleans. Cell phone video shows cars, trucks and trailers crushed and, in some cases, burned. Officials blamed marsh fire smoke combined with dense fog that sharply cut visibility.

In China, the government today removed General Li Shangfu as defense minister. State media announced it, but gave no explanation. Li had been on the job since March, but disappeared from public view almost two months ago. It follows the ouster of Qin Gang as foreign minister back in July.

Thousands of women across Iceland, including the prime minister, staged a one-day strike today to protest gender inequality. They took to the streets to speak out against pay disparities and violence against women. Organizers said today's action is in the tradition of a similar walkout nearly half-a-century ago.

Svandís Svavarsdóttir, Icelandic Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries: It is about gender equality. We have been fighting for it for decades, and this day is very special for us, for women in Iceland, because we all skipped work 48 years ago, and we are doing it again today, because the gap is still there, and we are fighting against it.

Geoff Bennett:

Businesses, schools, and banks across Iceland also closed in solidarity with the strikers.

And on Wall Street, stocks got back in the win column, held by solid helped by solid corporate earnings reports. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 205 points to close at 33141. The Nasdaq rose 121 points. The S&P 500 added 30 points.