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Lawyer for Ghosn slams bail condition as human rights violation

TOKYO (AP) — The lawyer for Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn on Saturday criticized a bail condition that prevents his client from seeing his wife, as Ghosn awaits trial on financial misconduct charges. A judge has forbidden Ghosn from seeing his wife, Carole, including in the presence of lawyers, or talking to her on the phone. Prosecutors say the restriction is needed to prevent evidence tampering. "This is unfair," Takashi Takano, the lawyer, said in a phone interview, calling it a human rights violation. "It's cruel and unusual." His earlier appeal of the ban, rejected by district and appeals courts, went to the Supreme Court, which turned it down last month. The Supreme Court decision cannot be appealed, but Takano vowed to keep filing new petitions, stressing that the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the constitutionality or the human rights aspects. The next one will be filed within two or three weeks, he said. Ghosn's lawyers recently filed a second petition with the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, arguing that the restrictions on seeing his wife amount to a deprivation of fundamental human rights. Takano acknowledged that the situation looks dismal, as Japan's Supreme Court is not easily influenced by other governments' views or by public opinion. "Even the strongest man in the world can be stressed, psychologically damaged. That's very natural as a human being," said Takano, noting that Ghosn was holding up well compared to other clients he has had. Ghosn has been aggressively taking part in meetings with his defense team, according to Takano. The case has entered the stage known as "pre-trial sessions," during which both sides hand in evidence. A trial date has not been set. In Japan, preparations for trials routinely take months. Ghosn, who led Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co. for two decades, was arrested in November and charged with falsifying financial documents in reporting retirement compensation, and with breach of trust in diverting Nissan money toward personal investment losses and a company effectively run by him. Ghosn, 65, a Brazilian-born Frenchman of Lebanese ancestry, has repeatedly said he is innocent, accusing some at Nissan of plotting against him and opposing a plan to merge Nissan with French alliance partner Renault. Renault is set to vote Tuesday on a possible merger with Fiat Chrysler.

Survey says $25k barrier is a problem for EVs

The majority of consumers are more or less priced out of the market.
Electric cars are gaining popularity with the general public, but are they still too expensive? According to a survey 1,084 consumers by Navigant Research, a consulting firm located in Boulder, CO, 71 percent want their next car to cost under $25,000, while 41 percent won't go a cent above $20K. Looks like people are even thriftier than we'd originally thought.

Roller coaster or racecar, which pulls more Gs?

Looking for a thrill? You're not the only one. You'll find kindred spirits at airfields going up for a skydive, atop bridges and towers with bungees attached to their feet and standing in line for roller coasters at the local amusement park. But you'll also find them in the paddock at the racing circuit.
So what's the commonality? G-force. It's like gravity, only in each of these cases, it's experienced by human invention. But which activity subjects your body to the greatest amount of g-force? That's what Nissan set to find out.
Before putting them back in the cockpit, Nismo sent out two of its young hot-shoes - Jann Mardenborough and Mark Shulzhitskiy - to an amusement park in the UK with a camera and a g-force meter to find out if any of the coasters could produce as much lateral gravitational force as an LMP2 racing car. See what they found in the pair of videos, below.