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Owners of cars that were new or redesigned for the 2011 model year are reporting more quality problems, partly because of glitches with the navigation screens, voice-activated systems and other technology packed into their dashboards.

J.D. Power and Associates released its annual survey of new vehicle quality Thursday. Lexus, Honda and Acura were the top performers. Dodge was the worst-performing brand.

The survey questioned 78,000 people about the problems they had with 2011 model-year vehicles in the first 90 days of ownership. Owners reported an average of 107 problems per 100 vehicles. That jumped to 122 problems for cars that were new or redesigned in 2011, up 10 percent from 2010 model-year cars and trucks.

J.D. Power said new technology was partly to blame.

“Clearly, consumers are interested in having new technology in their vehicles, but automakers must ensure that the technology is ready for prime time,” David Sargent, J.D. Power’s vice president of global research said in a statement. “There is an understandable desire to bring these technologies to market quickly, but automakers must be careful to walk before they run.”

New technology was likely responsible for Ford’s declining quality Online payday loans. The brand dropped from fifth place in 2010 to 23rd this year.

Ford launched its My Ford Touch voice-activated dashboard system on the Ford Edge and the Ford Explorer in the 2011 model year. The system allows drivers to control climate, navigation, entertainment and other features by voice. Ford said earlier this week that 73 percent of owners with My Ford Touch say they’re satisfied with it, but the company has acknowledged it’s been difficult for some buyers to use. Ford says it has made some software updates to make the system easier to use and is now offering workshops at dealerships to help owners.

Toyota saw a big leap in quality, jumping 14 spots to seventh place. Toyota’s 2010 rankings were hurt by a series of safety recalls that year. Also, Toyota introduced few new products for 2011, so it didn’t experience the glitches other manufacturers did.

Cadillac and GMC, both General Motors Co. brands, and Mazda rose into the top ten performers this year, while Hyundai and Ford Motor Co.’s Lincoln luxury brand dropped out of the top tier.

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Wells Fargo & Co. has reached an agreement with the government to pay up to $16 million to settle complaints from customers who are deaf, hard of hearing or had speech defects.

The settlement involving Wells Fargo’s nearly 10,000 retail banking, brokerage and mortgage stores is designed to ensure equal access under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

According to the Justice Department, some disabled customers of Wells Fargo were referred to a device for text communication via a telephone line that told them to leave a message, which the government says went unanswered fast cash advance loan.

The Justice Department says the bank began addressing the customers’ concerns before the government began looking into the matter.

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Officials in Ivory Coast are drawing up a list of ministers, generals and journalists to be charged with blood crimes, corruption and hate speech, the justice minister responsible for human rights told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Top of the list is Charles Ble Goude, youth minister in the disgraced government of arrested former President Laurent Gbagbo, who organized a violent anti-French and anti-U.N. gang that has terrorized foreigners and ordinary civilians.

On Friday, a government spokesman said Ble Goude had been arrested. But Justice Minister Jeannot Ahoussou said that was a case of mistaken identity.

Ble Goude is known as the “street general” for organizing the violent gang that terrorized Ivory Coast’s foreign population between 2004 and 2005. More recently he incited his Young Patriots, a militia-like gang of thugs, to attack foreigners as well as supporters of democratically elected President Alassane Ouattara.

Hundreds of people have been killed since Gbagbo refused to accept his defeat at November elections and turned heavy weapons on civilians. Pro-Ouattara fighters captured him Monday after U.N. and French forces bombed the presidential residence where he had taken refuge in a fortified underground bunker.

“We are investigating every member of the Cabinet of Mr. Gbagbo for blood crimes, money crimes, buying guns and other arms,” Ahoussou told the AP in a telephone interview.

He said he also was investigating journalists who broadcast hate speech. Gbagbo had turned the state Radio Television Ivoirienne into a propaganda organ that broadcast statements inciting violence against tribes loyal to Ouattara.

Former rebel forces that fought to install Ouattara also are accused of atrocities, including the slaughter of hundreds of civilians in western Ivory Coast, a stronghold of Gbagbo’s Bete tribe and allied Guere people.

Ouattara said this week that Gbagbo will be tried by both national and international courts for his alleged crimes. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has said it is conducting a preliminary examination into crimes perpetrated by all sides in the conflict in this West African nation.

The telephone line broke as a journalist was asking the minister whether he also would be investigating pro-Ouattara forces that perpetrated crimes. Telephone communications are poor throughout the country including in Abidjan, the commercial capital and seat of the government.

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Loan relief granted to Greece last month may be inadequate to restore the country’s financial health, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said after European officials again ruled out debt restructuring.

Euro-area leaders decided on March 11 to reduce interest rates on loans for Greece under its 110 billion-euro ($159 billion) rescue package and to extend their maturities. Greece also gained the right to sell bonds directly to the region’s rescue fund.

“Whether that is enough and how this continues will have to be monitored closely,” Schaeuble told reporters today after a meeting of European Union finance ministers and central bank chiefs in Godollo, Hungary.

The doubts about Greece’s finances emerged as EU officials said a planned aid package for Portugal would draw a line under the region’s debt crisis, which was triggered by Greece and engulfed Ireland four months ago, when that nation received an 85 billion-euro rescue. The funds for Portugal are projected by the EU to total around 80 billion euros.

In return for aid, the government of Prime Minister George Papandreou has pledged to bring Greece’s budget shortfall to within the EU’s 3 percent limit in 2014. The deficit soared to 15.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2009. Greece intends to return to the markets for financing next year at the latest.

Shrinking Economy

Greece’s economic contraction is projected at 3 percent in 2011 as austerity measures bite. The economy shrank 4.5 percent last year, more than forecast. The nation’s overall debt will peak at 159.4 percent of GDP in 2012, according to EU projections made Feb. 24.

“We do exclude restructuring,” EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told reporters in Hungary today. “We have a solid plan and we are working on the basis of that plan. And it is based on very careful analysis of debt sustainability.”

Appearing with Rehn, European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet stressed the importance of the Greek austerity plan. In February, Trichet said “that program does not comprehend” the concept of losses for bondholders.

At the meeting in Hungary, euro-area finance ministers ratified last month’s decisions to cut the average rate on loans to Greece by 1 percentage point, to around 3.5 percent, and to lengthen the maturities to 7 1/2 years from three.

German Division

“It’s known that Greece has a strong refinancing requirement in coming years,” Schaeuble said. “That’s one of the reasons why we agreed in principle to extend the maturities for aid to Greece. We can’t say for good today whether that’s enough.”

Lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition on April 7 didn’t rule out a restructuring of Greece’s debt, breaking with the official stance in Germany and in the EU.

As part of their March 11 accord, euro-area leaders also decided to let the European Financial Stability Facility, whose current role is to sell bonds to finance rescue loans, buy bonds directly from euro-area nations that are in an aid program.

Four days later, Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said this would offer an “exceptionally important” backstop in 2012 as Greece seeks to tap the markets for financing.

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China ordered banks to set aside more cash for the third time this year, judging that inflation remains a bigger threat to the world’s second-largest economy than Japan’s earthquake and nuclear crisis.

Reserve requirements will increase half a percentage point from March 25, the People’s Bank of China said on its website yesterday. The ratio will rise to 20 percent for the nation’s biggest banks, excluding any extra limits for individual lenders.

Premier Wen Jiabao has set taming inflation as the nation’s top economic priority this year, citing “exorbitant” house- price increases and risks to social stability. China followed India, which raised interest rates the previous day, in tightening monetary policy even after Japan’s crisis roiled global stock markets and threatened to disrupt supply chains across Asia.

The move “is another sign that the tragic events in Japan are unlikely to have a significant impact on policy decisions elsewhere in Asia,” said Brian Jackson, an emerging-markets strategist at Royal Bank of Canada in Hong Kong. “Uncomfortably strong inflation throughout the region suggests that more policy action is required.”

Crude oil pared gains and copper fell after the announcement. The move may lock up about 350 billion yuan ($53 billion), according to Australia & New Zealand Banking Group.

Reining in Credit

An interest-rate increase for China is “a couple of weeks away,” said Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. He said the reserve-ratio increase was to soak up money as central-bank bills matured. Shen estimated that annual inflation may accelerate to 6 percent this month, the fastest pace since July 2008.

The benchmark one-year lending rate stands at 6.06 percent after three increases since mid-October. The government is aiming to rein in credit growth after a record 17.5 trillion yuan ($2.7 trillion) of lending over 2009 and 2010.

“This is clear evidence that the tightening agenda is still alive in China and signals that when nerves have settled, we will get more interest rate hikes,” said Stephen Green, a Shanghai-based economist for Standard Chartered Plc.

Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, said this month that rates will be used to curb inflation, and played down the role of currency gains, which U.S. officials have encouraged China to use as a tool.

Consumer prices rose at an annual 4.9 percent pace in February and output increased 14 percent in the first two months of 2011, according to the statistics bureau. Producer prices jumped 7.2 percent last month, the most since September 2008.

Inflation has topped the government’s 4 percent target for this year for each of the past five months.

–Zheng Lifei, with assistance from Sophie Leung. Editors: Paul Panckhurst, Stephanie Phang.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Lifei Zheng in Beijing at +86-10-6649-7560 or lzheng32@bloomberg.net

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President Barack Obama says he won’t accept failure in the country’s education system, or listen to “naysayers” who argue that some schools are beyond repair.

Obama told high school students in Miami on Friday that companies hire where the talent is and that the single most important thing businesses are looking for are skilled, educated workers.

Giving a bipartisan boost to his education agenda, Obama appeared with Florida’s former GOP Gov. Jeb Bush at Miami Central Senior High School. The president said that the status quo on education is unacceptable. A good education equals a good job, Obama said, and warned his audience: “You can’t even think about dropping out.”

Miami Central is one of hundreds of low-performing schools across the nation that have received federal turnaround money, and Obama used it as an example of how a school can succeed.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

Bridging partisan divides, President Barack Obama sought Friday to lift up his education reform agenda in the politically crucial state of Florida. Touring a low-performing school that is undergoing a turnaround of academic achievement, Obama paired up with the state’s former Republican governor, Jeb Bush, the brother of Obama’s White House predecessor.

The president was greeted in Miami by the state’s ardently conservative governor, Rick Scott, who just rejected billions in federal dollars for the president’s cherished high-speed rail initiative. From there, Obama headed to Miami Central Senior High School for another unlikely political pairing, with Jeb Bush, Florida’s popular GOP ex-governor. Bush has championed education and has found common ground with Obama even though the current president blamed Bush’s brother, President George W. Bush, for overseeing disastrous economic times.

“Education and education reform are not Democratic issues, not Republican issues,” presidential spokesman Jay Carney told reporters flying with the president to Florida. A major element of Obama’s trip was to show the bipartisan imagery of appearing with Jeb Bush, part of a broader outreach effort after Obama’s party took a pounding in the midterm congressional elections.

At the school, Obama and Bush toured a classroom where students built robots. Several of the students said they wanted to be engineers, to which Obama said: “I can say this because I’m a lawyer: We need more engineers. Few lawyers and investment bankers and more engineers.”

Miami Central Senior High is one of hundreds of low-performing schools across the nation that has received money from the Education Department aimed at bringing turnarounds. Obama aides said Bush recommended the school as an example of how gains can be made through reform.

Scott met Obama on the tarmac after the president arrived in Air Force One, a greeting role state and local politicians often play when the president arrives in town. It was notable Friday because of Scott’s ideological tussle with Obama over $2.4 billion intended to build a high-speed rail route between Tampa and Orlando. High-speed rail is one of the priorities Obama promotes as part of an agenda designed to boost U.S. competitiveness, but Scott dismissed the project as a boondoggle that Florida taxpayers would end up saddled with.

Just Friday morning the Florida Supreme Court sided with Scott on the issue, saying the governor had the authority to kill the rail line. It was a defeat for federal officials who will now send the money to other states.

Nonetheless, Obama and Scott shook hands and smiled after Obama walked down the stairs in sunny Miami. It was a quick greeting but one with some symbolism for a president navigating the new realities of divided government following the Republican takeover of the House in the November elections.

Obama’s bipartisan overture comes as the president and Democrats are in the midst of partisan warfare with Republicans over budget cuts. Obama he will need at least some GOP support if he’s to resolve that divide and pass any substantial legislation, including education reform, in the second half of his term.

One of his education imperatives this year is to rewrite the No Child Left Behind Act, a signature initiative of former President George W. Bush.

Obama assailed the president during his own 2008 campaign and often refers to Bush’s eight years in office as a period of decline for middle-class Americans.

That frequent criticism didn’t sit well with Jeb Bush. In an interview last year, he said Obama’s tendency to blame his brother’s administration for problems, including the economic crisis, was “childish.”

“He apparently likes to act like he’s still campaigning, and he likes to blame George’s administration for everything,” he said at the time.

Education, however, is an area where Obama and Jeb Bush agree. Both support increasing the number of charter schools, tying teacher evaluations to student performance on standardized tests, and setting high standards and accountability. They also believe education is key to invigorating U.S. competitiveness.

Obama has called for fresh spending on education in the 2012 budget he unveiled last month, saying that improving America’s schools isn’t an area where the government can cut back, even as Congress looks for ways to reduce spending and bring down the nation’s mounting deficit.

The federal government has spent about $800,000 on Central Senior High School to help its efforts to turn itself around.

“America can no longer afford a collective shrug when disadvantaged students are trapped in inferior schools and cheated of a quality education for years on end,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote in an opinion piece in the Miami Herald that previewed Friday’s trip.

Despite sharing the spotlight with Republicans early in the day, Obama will wrap up his trip to Miami on a partisan note. He’ll headline two fundraisers for Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

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A 5-month-old boy was laid to rest Monday at the first funeral for the victims of New Zealand’s devastating earthquake, as the confirmed death toll rose to 148 and the government considered a nationwide levy to help pay for reconstruction.

Dozens of family and friends gathered at a small chapel in the stricken city of Christchurch for Baxtor Gowland, who was sleeping peacefully at home when he was struck by masonry shaken loose by the magnitude 6.3 quake last Tuesday. He died in a hospital, the family said in a statement read to The Associated Press by the child’s great-uncle, Peter Croft.

Inside the chapel, a slideshow of the smiling infant’s photographs flashed on a screen, as Sarah McLachlan’s song “Angel” echoed throughout the room.

“We have all been thankful of the support and good wishes expressed from New Zealand and around the world,” Croft said, his voice shaking with emotion as he read the statement. “However, we would like to think that today is for family and friends so that we can farewell Baxtor with peace and dignity.”

Authorities have named just eight victims of last week’s disaster _ Gowland and another infant among them.

Superintendent David Cliff said Monday that the death toll had reached 148, based on the number of bodies recovered from the rubble. Officials say the task of identifying the dead is slow and difficult, and that unidentified bodies are included on a list of people considered missing, which currently numbers around 200.

Cliff said “grave fears” are held for about 50 of those counted as missing, signaling the final death toll could be around 200.

The multinational team of more than 600 rescuers scrabbling through wrecked buildings in the decimated central area of the city last pulled a survivor from the ruins at mid-afternoon Wednesday, making it six days without finding anyone alive.

Police have said up to 120 people may have been killed in the downtown CTV building, where dozens of foreign students, mostly Japanese and Chinese, from an international language school were believed trapped. And up to 22 people may be buried in rubble at Christchurch Cathedral, most of them believed to be tourists climbing the bell tower for its panoramic views of the southern New Zealand city.

Prime Minister John Key was meeting with his Cabinet on Monday to discuss an aid package for an estimated 50,000 people who will be out of work for months due to the closure of downtown.

Key said measures being considered include an extra levy on all householders under New Zealand’s compulsory quake insurance system to raise the estimated $4 billion needed to cover an insurance shortfall.

The package, to be announced later Monday, would also likely include wage subsidies and cash grants to Christchurch residents to ensure businesses have cash flow and can continue to operate.

Engineers and planners say the city’s decimated central area may be completely unusable for months to come and that at least a third of the buildings must be razed and rebuilt. The government has said that virtually all services conducted in the downtown area will have to operate from elsewhere during the rebuilding period.

Officials estimated that one in three of the central business district’s buildings were severely damaged in the quake and will have to be demolished.

“It’s quite clear that a lot of buildings are going to have to come out of the CBD, so where a building is condemned it will need to be taken down,” Key told TV One on Monday.

He said he expected much higher building code standards for new buildings so they will be able to withstand very strong earthquakes.

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Major uranium miner Cameco Corp., which signed two supply contracts last year with Chinese utilities, said Monday it would like to expand its relationship with the growing Asian market.

Chief executive Jerry Grandey says there were the 65 new uranium-powered reactors under construction worldwide at the beginning of the year and more than 25 of those are in China.

McDonald’s is reporting a 5.3 percent rise in January sales at locations open more than a year, giving credit to its McCafe hot chocolate, Chicken McNuggets and the addition of oatmeal to the menu.

U.S. sales growth was weaker than the rest of the world. U.S. sales rose 3.1 percent, Europe 7 percent and Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa 5.2 percent.

Sales at locations open at least a year is an important gauge because it measures revenue from the company’s existing restaurants rather than growth that came from opening new locations.

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Swedish truck maker AB Volvo reports a profit for the fourth quarter, bouncing back mainly from a jump in sales.

Friday’s report showed a net profit of 3.2 billion kronor ($500 million) in the quarter, compared with a previous loss of almost 2 billion kronor in the same three months a year ago.

Sales soared for the Goteborg-headquartered group in the period, reaching 73.4 billion kronor, up sharply from 59 instant payday loan.8 billion kronor a year earlier.

Volvo has around 90,000 full-time staff and also makes buses, engines and construction equipment. It sold its car division to U.S.-based Ford Motor Co. in 1999, which in turn sold it to China’s Geely Holding Group last year.

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