By Amy Antenora

The Week in Review offers a snapshot of the most highly read stories of the week as seen on aftermarketNews. To access the complete stories, simply click on the highlighted links. If you missed reading one of our daily news emails, just click on the link that says "News Archives" at the bottom of the page to begin catching up on the latest industry news.

In what seems to be a rare occurrence these days, the most-viewed news items on AMN this week featured a lot of good news. Kicking it off is CARQUEST’s announcement that it is adding Akebono ceramic brakes to its CARQUEST Gold ceramic brake friction product line. In conjunction, CARQUEST is running a promotion that features a gold bar as the grand prize.

In light of the growing popularity of all things ‘green,’ Les Schwab Tire Centers announced this week that it will phase out the use of lead wheel weights for wheel balancing on passenger cars and light trucks in all stores throughout its seven states of operation. The company expects to eliminate all sales of lead-based wheel weights for these vehicles by mid-2009.

Also making it into our top news items this week was our Executive Interview with John Snowden, vice president of Integrated Supply Network. In the interview, Snowden talks about the changing dynamics of the tool and equipment distribution model and the role the Internet plays today.

On the manufacturing side, Delphi Corp., which has encountered many challenges in its attempt to emerge successfully from bankruptcy, finally caught a break this week. The judge presiding over Delphi’s Chapter 11 case has given the parts supplier permission to move forward with a lawsuit against Appaloosa Management, the hedge fund that in April unexpectedly pulled out of its $2.55 billion equity investment in the company. Loss of funding from Appaloosa caused a further delay in Delphi’s emergence from bankruptcy.

Rounding out our top stories this week is the appointment of Rick Homman as the new director of operations for Ken-Tool. Homman replaces Robert Dempsey, vice president of operations for the past 10 years, who recently retired. Prior to joining Ken-Tool, Homman was production manager of Kobe Aluminum Products in Bowling Green, Ky.

To view all of the news from the past week, simply click here to view our News Archives.