Another Transgender Tragedy, please read

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/16/transgender.slaying.trial/index.html

From CNN's Alexander Mooney and Shannan Butler

Filed under: White House

Wendy Richards Before EastEnders, she was best known as Miss Shirley Brahms...... As EastEnders' downtrodden Pauline Fowler with her beige cardigan, laundry bags and bottle-blonded efforts at glamour, Wendy Richard, who has died aged 65, was one of Britain's most recognisable actresses. Ruling over her family with a will of iron and occasionally kitchen utensils, Pauline was, until 2006, one of only two characters to remain in the series from the very first episode in 1985. .. .. .. Wendy Richard won millions of fans as Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served? .. Ian Beale, played by Adam Woodyatt, was the other. During nearly two decades in the soap, Wendy Richard's character buried her husband, mother and brother, supported her daughter's teenage pregnancy, and coped with her son's HIV-positive condition. Such episodes were no more traumatic than events in Wendy Richard's own life. Her parents ran a pub where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, used to drink. Richard's father committed suicide when she was 11, and her mother died 17 years later. Left without any family, Richard also suffered three divorces, blaming her stressful career for the third. Comedy credits Born Wendy Emerton in Middlesbrough but raised in London, she was educated at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth. Richard had originally wanted to be an archaeologist. She left school at 15, though, and worked in the fashion department of luxury Piccadilly store Fortnum and Mason. She left to study drama at the Italia Conti Stage Academy in London and decided to change her surname to Richard because "it was short and neat". .. .. .. Richard teamed up with Bill Treacher for EastEnders in 1985 .. Her leggy, blonde looks soon secured her a role in the Albert Finney film Gumshoe, and on television she appeared in The Likely Lads, Dad's Army and Please Sir. Other credits included Bless This House, Help and On the Buses. And she carried on with Sid James and his team in the hit films Carry On Girls and Carry On Matron. Richard also enjoyed chart success in 1962. She went to number one with Mike Sarne, who continually pleaded with her to Come Outside. She was having none of his charm, though, famously telling him to "give over". Before EastEnders, she was best known as Miss Shirley Brahms, the glamorous but dippy shop assistant, in the long-running BBC sitcom Are You Being Served? Downtrodden doyenne From 1973 to 1985, Richard was the resident sexpot of Grace Bros department store and comic foil to the indomitable Mrs Slocombe, played by Mollie Sugden. .. .. .. Richard left EastEnders in 2006 .. The cast reunited for the 1990s sequel Grace and Favour, and Richard even called her own dog Miss Brahms. But it was as the damaged but undefeated Pauline Fowler that she will be best remembered. She took no prisoners with her sharp tongue and even resorted to the frying pan when she discovered her husband Arthur's infidelity. Like the best matriarchs of soap tradition, Pauline's hot temper belied a warm, loyal heart. For nearly 20 years, she was brought to life by Wendy Richard, who said of herself, "I am not a hard person. I cry very easily and my feelings get hurt." For her contribution to entertainment, she was awarded an MBE in the Millennium Honours List. ..

(CNN) -- With the top U.S. automakers in economic survival mode, "Buy American" is a frequent cry among those trying to save jobs at home.

How you define an American car is one of the great conundrums of this world," said Dutch Mandel, the editor and associate publisher of AutoWeek.

Fewer than half of the parts on some Big Three vehicles are made in the U.S.

Looking at a Ford Fusion? It is assembled in Mexico. The Chrysler 300C is assembled in Canada, but its transmission is from Indiana; the brand's V-8 engine is made in Mexico. Engines in the Chevrolet Equinox sport utility vehicle are from China.

On the other hand, Toyota's Camry is comprised 80 percent of parts made in the United States, and 56 percent of Toyota's vehicles sold in the U.S. also are made here, according to Toyota spokeswoman Sona Iliffe-Moon.

The Toyota Sienna and Tundra also have 80 percent of their parts manufactured in the U.S.

"When you have manufacturers from around the world building cars in the U.S. with 85 percent domestic content -- engine, transmission, assembly -- is that an American car?" Mandel asked. Or, he asks, is it considered foreign because the profits go back to a foreign country?

"It's truly a global industry," said Thomas Klier, a Chicago, Illinois, economist who co-authored "Who Really Made Your Car?" an encyclopedic analysis of the auto industry melting pot.

To get that information, read a vehicle's window sticker. U.S. automakers are legally required to detail the origin of a car's parts and its final assembly point.

"Unfortunately, there are few people who know about the sticker or even bother to look at it," said Bernard Swiecki, a senior project manager at the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Michigan, which follows trends in the industry.

The sticker's details were news to Douglas Sullivan, 43, a truck driver from Snellville, Georgia. Though he prefers foreign brands, believing them to be of higher quality, he said he used to favor U.S. brands because he wanted to support American workers.

"I wanted to keep the jobs right here," Sullivan said.

Swiecki said many people think about image of a brand, rather than the way that brand has evolved over decades as the market has grown more diverse and competitive.

"They will think, 'I'm buying a GM, I'm getting an American car,' " Swiecki said.

Foreign car manufacturers generate billions of dollars in jobs and community infrastructure in the U.S., but there is a difference between Detroit's economic footprint and that of its foreign rivals.

The Center for Automotive Research says Detroit's Big Three employed almost 240,000 people in the U.S. at the end of 2007. Foreign makers had about 113,00 U.S. employees at the time. Watch UAW leader's take on bailout's failure in Senate »

The key difference in how the Big Three and foreign brands support jobs in the U.S. comes outside the factories, according to a 2006 study by the Level Field Institute, a group formed by Big Three retirees in Washington.

"What's driving the difference in jobs ... is investment in research, design, engineering and management," Level Field President Jim Doyle said in a statement on the 2006 study.

The Center for Automotive Research said the Big Three had 24,000 engineers on U.S. payrolls in 2007. The Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association said its member companies had 3,500 U.S. research and development employees in 2007.

Level Field found that every 1,000 vehicles sold by Detroit's Big Three in the U.S. support more than twice as many jobs as 1,000 vehicles sold by foreign nameplates.

Most Americans consumers understand that the industry is global, Swiecki said, and they are more savvy than ever in purchasing vehicles.

"For the most part, gone are the days of people going to a car lot and paying a buck to take a swing of a hammer at a foreign-made car," Swiecki said.

But there are exceptions.

A Savannah, Georgia, Ford dealer sold 15 cars last weekend after he ran a radio ad blaming Japan for Detroit's financial funk.

While 15 was substantially better than weekends before the ad, dealer O.C. Welch said, it was still about half of the business he did a year ago.

"All you people that buy all your Toyotas and send that money to Japan, you know, when you don't have a job to make your Toyota car payment, don't come crying to me," Welch says in the ad. "All those cars are rice ready. They're not road ready."

Sullivan, who was at an Atlanta, Georgia, dealership Thursday to pick up his American brand minivan from the service department, said he has had a different experience.

He said the vehicle has given him trouble, and whenever he replaces it, he'll probably go with a foreign brand, regardless of whether any of the parts were made in the United States.

"What I look for is good gas mileage, and when I pay it off in four or five years, it's still running," said Sullivan, who has owned several American and foreign brands. "It seems I get better quality with a foreign car."

CNN's Jason Hanna and Brad Lendon contributed to this report.