LE BOURGET, France — Airbus is trouncing Boeing in the race to be the world’s biggest plane maker, claiming over $72 billion dollars worth of orders and commitments at the Paris Air Show, where the popularity of its new fuel-efficient jets twice broke records for the largest order ever.

Airbus’ success cast a long shadow over Chicago-based Boeing, which recorded only $22 billion in orders and commitments, and raised questions over the U.S. planemaker’s ability to compete in a market dominated by concerns over high fuel prices.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Members of a House of Representatives subcommittee on Wednesday accused the Obama administration of making politically motivated decisions in picking the winners and losers in the General Motors and Chrysler bankruptcies.

Subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan, a Republican from the Urbana area, said the intervention in GM’s bankruptcy established a dangerous precedent. He juxtaposed the success of GM’s Lordstown plant, which remained open, with the closure of a GM facility in his district in Mansfield to illustrate his point that the government decided who would endure the restructuring.

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Oil prices breached the $100-a-barrel mark Wednesday after OPEC said it could not reach an agreement about raising crude production.

U.S. crude jumped $1.65, or 1.7%, to settle at $100.74 a barrel. Oil prices were trading down about $1 just before the OPEC announcement. The price of brent crude – the European benchmark – rose 1.1% to $118.07 a barrel.

OPEC’s quarterly meeting was widely watched by analysts. The cartel had been under intense pressure to raise production as oil prices approached $120 a barrel last month.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The Chevrolet Volt earned a top five-star rating in thee federal government’s new, tougher crash test rating system.

Under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s new rating system, all vehicles are given a single rating of one to five stars encompassing front and side impact safety as well as resistance to rollovers.

The Volt earned four stars for occupant protection in front-end crashes, five stars for side crash protection and five stars for resistance to rolling over.

The Volt is an electrically powered plug-in car. It can go about 35 miles on a charge, according to EPA estimates, before needing to turn on its gasoline engine to generate power.

Madrid, Spain (CNN) — Police in Madrid seized what they called the “largest and most sophisticated cocaine laboratory” in Europe known to date, and arrested 25 people, Spain’s national police said in a statement on Tuesday.

Anti-drug agents confiscated 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of cocaine ready for distribution, 2 million euros ($2.6 million) in cash, 470 mobile phones, weapons and luxury cars.

The suspected laboratory was located in a farm on the outskirts of Madrid and police took it over “just before it was to begin operations,” the statement said.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Ford Motor announced Monday it will add 7,000 new hourly and salaried jobs in the United States by the end of 2012.

The announcement, made on the opening day of the Detroit auto show, said Ford (F, Fortune 500) is adding nearly 4,000 hourly jobs at several of its U.S. plants this year, including 1,800 at the Louisville Assembly Plant, where it plans to start building the new design of the Ford Escape crossover SUV later in the year.

DETROIT — General Motors Co. said on Friday it is recalling nearly 98,000 Chevy Equinox, GMC Terrain and Cadillac SRX 2011 models because the anchor to the seat belt buckle may fail, which could lead to injury in a crash.

Dealers will start notifying owners of the vehicles involved in January, GM said. GM will pay for the work done by dealers.

LOS ANGELES – Drinking glasses depicting comic book and movie characters such as Superman, Wonder Woman and the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz” exceed federal limits for lead in children’s products by up to 1,000 times, according to laboratory testing commissioned by The Associated Press.

The decorative enamel on the superhero and Oz sets — made in China and purchased at a Warner Brothers Studios store in Burbank — contained between 16 percent and 30.2 percent lead. The federal limit on children’s products is 0.03 percent.

Watch out, Ken – Barbie’s got a spy cam. The new “Video Girl” Barbie from Mattel ($49.99) is embedded with a working video camera capable of taking 30-minute videos, cleverly hidden in the doll’s necklace (Barbie always did know how to accessorize).

One Australian psychologist is calling for a boycott, warning the Barbie cam will make it too easy for adults to exploit children and for children to upload inappropriate videos to the Internet.