The automaker, which makes the Accord sedan and Odyssey minivan, reports net profit for the July-September fiscal second quarter fell to $788 million.

Quarterly sales sank 16.3 percent from a year earlier to $24.6 billion, with sales in North America falling the most – 22.3 percent.

Honda Motor Co. said flooding in Thailand, where the automaker has parts suppliers and assembly lines, made it too difficult to forecast earnings for the full fiscal year through March 2012. A projection will be announced when it becomes available, the company said.

The Thai floods are the latest blow to Japanese manufacturers as they struggle to recover from the tsunami while also being pummeled by the yen’s record surge. Japanese automakers in particular use Thailand as a production base in Southeast Asia.

Earlier Monday, Japanese authorities intervened in the currency market to weaken the yen against the dollar and ease pressure on Japanese exporters. That caused the dollar to jump nearly 5 percent to above 79 yen after earlier touching a post World War II-low of 75.32 yen – a level that is excruciating for exporters such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Nintendo Co.

The strong yen, which erodes foreign earned income, took a bite out of Honda’s profits. The automaker estimated that if sales were calculated at the same exchange rate as last year, quarterly sales would have fallen a less severe 12.3 percent.

Revenue from nearly all regions declined. Domestic sales were down 13.2 percent, revenue from Europe sank 10.4 percent, and in Asia outside Japan sales fell 10 percent. Sales to South America, Africa and the Mideast inched up 0.8 percent from a year earlier, the company said.

Honda’s motorcycle business was one of its few bright spots in the quarter, with sales rising 14.2 percent to $4.6 billion.

Men and women get in some practice time on their horses at one of the indoor riding arenas at the Ohio Expo Center.

Kimberly Tillman from Maryland sits atop A Smart Chance – a three-year-old tan filly with a white mane. The first time Tillman came to the annual All American Quarter Horse Congress was in 1987. She’s been a regular for the last six years. This year, though, is a little different.

“I’ve only showed one at a time. I haven’t taken both horses to the horse shows,” she said. The change, Tillman said, is because of the down economy.

“As opposed to spending $1,500 at a horse show, I’m only spending $700 at a quarter horse show,” Tillman said.

Tillman adds she’ll dine out less during her time in Columbus to help curb spending.

And Tillman’s not the only one making cutbacks at the show this year.

Ronnie Wayne from Greenville, South Carolina has been to the Congress for the past decade.

“My wife and I just brought one customer horse and two of our horses to show this year. And how many would you have brought in the past? We’ve had as many as six here,” Wayne said.

And Wayne does not think there are as many participants at this year show.

“It appears to me since we’ve been here that it’s not quite as busy as it was. Like, before the recession it was wall-to-wall,” he said.

The Congress is the largest single-breed horse show in the world, and attracts attendees from all over the country. Tracy Bidwell is their spokesperson.

“Attendance as far as horse show entries is holding steady. We’ve been really lucky, in the past couple of years we have not seen a decline yet,” Bidwell said.

Bidwell said typically there are about 18,000 divisional entries each year. So far, for 2010, there are about 16,000. But Bidwell expects this number to increase as people register for additional shows.

The number of horses registered, though, appears to be down. The Congress said about 8,500 Quarter Horses sign up annually. This year, Bidwell said, 7,700 are registered.

Still, Bidwell, said the numbers are good. And she attributes that to the show’s size and prestige.

“If you’re hurting you skip other shows and you come to the Congress. So that’s why probably you guys haven’t seen numbers drop too much? I think so. And especially the horse industry here in Ohio is pretty strong. So I think that we pull a lot of local people,” Bidwell said.

The Congress will run for the next three weeks. It’s expected to draw about 650,000 people to the area, generating as much as $110 million for the local economy.

“Apparently she is here at the Congress and he broke in and she shot him,” Avery says. “Yeah. Go for it. I think it’s great. I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

Another attendee, Chicagoan Mary Jo McNamara says she’s been coming to the Congress for the past two decades. She says she’s seen a slow decline in some of the Columbus neighborhoods around the state fairgrounds.

“Over the last 20 years we’ve been coming back and forth but we’ve seen the restaurants close, the supermarkets close, it just seems that this area gets hit, when the economy goes down it gets hit extremely hard,” McNamara says.

The sprawling Quarter Horse Congress is heavily patrolled by state troopers. But outside the fairgrounds some people like Mary Jo McNamara worry about their personal safety.

“In the hotels you wonder. One year we had somebody go through our suitcases, and we had people in the parking lot that we were afraid of, so if I were a woman staying there by myself I wouldn’t be comfortable,” McNamara says.

But Floridian Jan Avery doesn’t believe crime is a problem unique to Columbus

“When you have as many people coming in for an event this big it always draws in the undesirables as well so I don’t think it’s anything bad about Columbus it’s just people know the amount of people that are here. We keep everything locked up. We always have at these big shows,” Avery says.

Ohio State University’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously to switch from an academic quarter system to a semester system. The university has taught on the quarter system for 87 years and attempts to convert to semesters were met with opposition during the past 3 decades. University president Gordon Gee:

“Change is difficult,” Gee said. “But this is a transformative moment for this institution because it does set us on a course not only to move to semesters but also to be able to, in so may ways, recalibrate the nature of our academic work and to, and I will use this word, modernize the university in ways that I think will be very helpful and set us in a leadership role nationally and for that I’m grateful.”

Undergraduate Student Government president Peter Koltak says he thinks the change will benefit both students and the university.

“Converting to a semester calendar will make Ohio State students more competitive for internships and in the job market after they leave school,” Koltak said. “If we’re getting out of school in May, the same time everyone else is, instead of June, it doesn’t set us a month behind in the job hunt.

“Academically I think this is an opportunity for Ohio State to reinvent itself,” Koltak said. “Every course at this university will have to be restructured. It’s really going to be a breath of fresh air for this university.”

But Koltak thinks a number of students, especially undergraduates, will not be happy with the change. Koltak says students are leery about the conversion’s price tag — somewhere between nearly $9 million and $11 million – and about their chances for graduating on time.

“They really are nervous about the cost of the transition and that being passed along to students,” Koltak said. “As well as, If I start on quarters and end on semesters will I still be able to graduate in four years?’ And I think that the university has so far given a pretty emphatic ‘yes.’ It’s going to be on the students, though, to keep the pressure on and make sure that happens.

When the conversion occurs in the fall of 2012, Ohio State will join the ranks of 12 other four-year public institutions on the semester system.

Courses at Ohio State University have been taught on the quarter system since 1922. Two attempts during the last two decades to change to semesters failed. The change has been a contentious issue among faculty. During the meeting OSU Professor Rich Hart spoke in favor of maintaining the quarter system:

“Having smaller time periods encourages more diversity and a wider range of courses,” Hart said. “The breadth of offerings in a quarter system simply cannot be matched by a semester system. Whereas the depth of coverage offered by quarters is at least as good or better than semesters.”

Professor Richard Gunther took the opposing position. He reminded the Senate that the other 12 public universities in the University System of Ohio either use the semester system or they’re in the process of changing to semesters

“We are now an integral part of the University System of Ohio,” Gunther said. “And one of the prime goals of the governor and the chancellor for higher education is to enhance accessibility by improving the transferability of our courses.”

After more than an hour of discussion members of the Senate cast their ballots. OSU President Gordon Gee announced the results:

“Ladies and gentlemen I have before me the vote,” Gee said. “The vote is 91 in favor, 19 against, so our committee will continue to do its good work and thank you very much “

If the board of trustees approves, the change to semesters would occur in 2012. That’s when Ohio University, Wright State University and the University of Cincinnati will also change from quarters to semesters.

Most of Ohio’s public colleges and universities are on the semester system already. But Ohio State University, Ohio University, Wright State University and the University of Cincinnati are still on the quarter system. Aligning the academic calendars of all public institutions would be part of a restructured organization known as the University System of Ohio. Eric Fingerhut is Chancellor of the Board of Regents.

“We’re trying to build a University System of Ohio that’s a world-class system and that means it has to be high quality, affordable and accessible to all the students in our state,” Fingerhut says. “The ability of students to move within the system, to begin at one school and continue at another, as their interests develop, as they move to higher levels of educational attainment, is critical.”

To the president of the largest University in the United States, the conversion from quarter to semester is a massive undertaking. This is Ohio State University’s president Gordon Gee on WOSU’s Open Line.

” “It’s like planning the Normandy invasion,” Gee says. “But the issue itself is the fact that the world has changed; there are very few major universities that are on the quarter system; either we’re right and everyone else is wrong or else we need to try to realign ourselves in a way that gives us a more consistent ability to be able to compete in the world and that’s what this is about.”

The conversion at Ohio State would take years of study and millions of dollars according to political science professor Richard Gunther, who’s chair of the Faculty Council of the University Senate. He’s long been an opponent of a semester-based system, but recently he appointed an ad hoc committee to study the conversion.

“There are over 11,000 courses on the books, and between a quarter and a third of those will probably have to be eliminated,” Gunther says. “All of those courses that remain would have to be completely restructured to accommodate a different time frame. There are about 170 different academic degrees on this campus that are issued by this university; every one of those will have to be restructured. All majors and minor programs will have to be restructured. So in terms of faculty time this is going to be an enormous amount of work that we’re looking at.

But according to Chancellor Fingerhut the conversion process will help update the institution’s offerings.

“When you convert from quarters to semesters it forces you to go through the process of taking all those old course goals and attainments that have been established and revising them and modernizing them and updating them so I think that it is an incredibly important element of building our world-class system both in terms of the flexibility and ease of students moving through the system and the opportunity for us to take a fresh look at what we’re doing.”

Central State University in Wilberforce completed its transition from quarter to semester in 2005. Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Terrence Glass oversaw the process.

“We wanted to have longer terms so that faculty and students could go into more depth in the course material,” Glass says. “Semesters are a little more forgiving if students need time to master a subject that’s difficult. Semesters also are administratively good because they reduce the registration and financial aid activity from three times to two times during the academic year. We predicted or we thought that we would lose fewer students during the year and that did prove true.”

At Ohio State a few students like Cameron Bodenschatz think the semester idea is a practical move.

“I think it would be a little bit more convenient for people who would want to transfer in and out,” Bodenschatz says. “Just being able to transfer for their credits and stuff that they already have for classes that they’ve taken.”

But others like Chelsea Primmer, Ethan Ross and Alexandra Bowden are die-hard quarters fans.

“I like quarters,” Primmer says. “I don’t want to spend that much time I can get more in and I can get my degree done faster so I prefer quarters.”

“I like quarters,” Ross says. “I don’t like starting so late but I like having shorter length of classes and taking less classes at a time. I think it’s mentally better than semesters.”

“I personally prefer the quarter system,” Bowden says. “Only because I feel like I can get so much more done in a year.”The faculty committee At Ohio State may make a recommendation on the issue sometime during the winter quarter.