GM says marketing chief has resigned

GM says marketing chief has resigned

DETROIT

General Motors Co. says that its global chief marketing officer, Joel Ewanick, has resigned from the Detroit automaker. The announcement comes after several major changes to the company’s advertising approach and just ahead of its second-quarter earnings report Thursday.

GM said Sunday that Ewanick had elected to resign, and his decision is effective immediately. The 52-year old executive joined the company in 2010 to oversee marketing for the company’s North American unit and was promoted within months to head its global marketing business.

Impeachment referendum invalid

BUCHAREST, Romania

Romanian election officials declared late Sunday that a referendum to impeach the nation’s president on grounds that he overstepped his authority had failed because of low voter turnout.

The Central Election Bureau put the voter turnout in Sunday’s referendum on President Traian Basescu at 45.92 percent, with a 3 percent margin of error. By law, such referendums are invalid if less than half the electorate cast ballots. The bureau did not immediately give the outcome of the vote, but two exit polls showed more than 80 percent favored impeaching Basescu.

Biden: Education not Romney priority

DETROIT

Vice President Joe Biden, in a speech Sunday to the nation’s second-largest teachers unions, said Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney doesn’t treat public education as a priority and distrusts the hard-working teachers who struggle to create opportunity for the nation’s young people.

Biden addressed 2,500 delegates at the American Federation of Teachers national convention in Detroit on Sunday.

Biden painted Romney as planning to gut education funding to finance tax breaks for the wealthy.

A spokesman for Romney’s campaign accused Biden — and President Barack Obama — of kowtowing to teachers unions.

7 die in head-on crash near Phoenix

PHOENIX

Seven people have died in a crash on Interstate 10 near Phoenix after a semitrailer truck crossed the highway’s median and struck a van head-on.

Carrick Cook, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, says the victims were all inside the van when the crash happened Sunday about 60 miles west of Phoenix.

Cook says the driver of the semitrailer truck and his wife were taken to a hospital.

Cook says the vehicles caught fire after the force of the crash pushed them into a culvert.

Eagle Scouts return medals in protest

CHICAGO

A suburban Chicago man is among the Eagle Scouts returning their medals to the Boy Scouts of America in protest of the organization’s recent decision to continue its ban of homosexual Scouts and leaders.

Rob Breymaier, executive director of the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, said he has long opposed the anti-gay policy, but he wanted to send back the medal because he has lost hope that the 102-year-old organization would “do the right thing.”

Eagle Scout is the highest Boy Scout rank. Among the stringent requirements, a Scout must earn 21 merit badges, serve six months in a leadership position and successfully complete a board of review, according to the Boy Scouts website.

Combined dispatches