Face-off in Chinese City Over Censorship of Newspaper

Jonah M. Kessel for The New York Times

A free speech advocate outside of Southern Weekend newspaper in Guangzhou, China, on Tuesday.

GUANGZHOU, China — Protests over censorship at one of China’s most liberal newspapers descended into ideological confrontation on Tuesday, pitting advocates of free speech against supporters of Communist Party control who wielded red flags and portraits of Mao Zedong.

The face-off between liberals and leftists at the headquarters of a newspaper company in southern China came after disgruntled editors and reporters at Southern Weekend last week decried what they alleged was crude meddling by the head of party propaganda in Guangdong Province, which has long had a reputation as a bastion of a relatively free press.

The protesting journalists at Southern Weekend have called for the dismissal of Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong Province. They blame Mr. Tuo, a former journalist, for making a drastic change in a New Year’s editorial that had originally called for greater respect for constitutional rights. The revised editorial instead praised Communist Party policies.

A former editor with the Southern Daily group of newspapers, which includes Southern Weekend, said negotiations continued on Tuesday between representatives of the disgruntled journalists and newspaper managers and provincial propaganda officials.

The former editor, who asked that his name not be used for fear it could jeopardize his new job, said the talks focused on the protesting journalists’ demands that the paper’s managers rescind a statement that denied that Mr. Tuo was responsible for the New Year editorial and for an inquiry into the incident.

“They want that statement to be removed, and they also want assurances about relaxing controls on journalists — not removing party oversight, but making it more reasonable, allowing reporters to challenge officials,” he said. “The other main demand is for an impartial explanation of what happened, an accounting so it won’t happen again.”

The former editor said a continued standoff into Wednesday could jeopardize the newspaper’s usual publication on Thursday. “In effect, it’s a strike,” he said. “It looks unclear whether it can come out on Thursday.”

Senior Chinese officials have so far not commented publicly on the censorship dispute at the newspaper, which has tested how far the recently appointed Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping, will extend his vows of economic reform into a degree of political relaxation. But self-proclaimed defenders of Communist orthodoxy who turned up at the newspaper headquarters said on Tuesday that they were there to make the party’s case.

“We support the Communist Party, shut down the traitor newspaper,” said one of the cardboard signs held up by one of 10 or so protesters who came to defend the government.

“Southern Weekend is having an American dream,” said another of the signs. “We don’t want the American dream, we want the Chinese dream.”

Some of the group held up portraits of Mao, the late revolutionary leader who remains a symbol of communist zeal, while others waved the red flags of China and of the Communist Party. Most of the party supporters refused to give their names. They said they came on their own initiative, and not at the behest of officials.

The dueling protests outside the newspaper’s headquarters in this provincial capital reflected the political passions and tensions churned up by the quarrel over censorship, which has erupted while Mr. Xi is trying to win public favor and consolidate his authority.

Hundreds of bystanders watched and took photos on mobile phones as the leftists shouted at the 20 or more protesters who had gathered to denounce censorship, and shoving matches broke out between the demonstrators.

At one point, leftists were showered with 50-cent renminbi currency notes. The “Fifty Cent Party” has become a popular term for disparaging pro-party leftists, who are alleged by critics to be willing to take 50 cents in payment for each pro-party message they send onto the Internet.

“It’s the only newspaper in China that’s willing to tell the truth,” said Liang Taiping, 28, a poet from the southern city of Changsha who said he took the train to Guangzhou to show his support for Southern Weekend, which is widely read nationwide.

“What’s the point of living while you can’t even speak freely?” he said.

About 70 police officers and security guards stood nearby. They did not try to break up the protests, but officers recorded them with video cameras and occasionally stepped in to stop shoving and fisticuffs. Later, the rival protesters broke into separate camps concentrated on different sides of the gate to the newspaper headquarters.

The protests at Southern Weekend broke out while Mr. Xi, the party’s general secretary appointed in November, has been sending mixed signals about his intentions. He has repeatedly said he supports faster and bolder reform, but on Saturday he gave a speech defending the party’s history and Mao’s standing in it.

The Central Propaganda Department, which administers the censorship apparatus, issued instructions telling news media that the dispute at Southern Weekend was “due to the meddling of hostile outside forces,” according to China Digital Times, a group based in Berkeley, Calif., that monitors media and censorship issues.

Both supporters and critics of Southern Weekend journalists have claimed that Mr. Xi would back their cause.

“I don’t believe that Xi is totally hypocritical when he talks about reform,” said Chen Min, a prominent former opinion writer for Southern Weekend who was forced out of the newspaper in 2011.

“The Southern Weekend journalists have said that they accept party control, but the question is what kind of control and how far should it go unchallenged,” Mr. Chen added.

Jonah Kessel reported from Guangzhou, China, and Chris Buckley from Hong Kong. Mia Li contributed reporting from Guangzhou, and Patrick Zuo from Beijing.

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Saban quickly turns to challenges of 2013 season

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — It's becoming a familiar January scene for Nick Saban.

The Alabama coach plastered a smile on his face for a series of posed photos next to the various trophies awarded to college football's national champions and then proceeded to talk about the challenges facing his team.

Maybe Saban let the Gatorade dry from the celebratory drenching before thinking about the 2013 season. Maybe.

"The team next year is 0-0," Saban, who is on a 61-7 run over the past five seasons, said Tuesday morning. "Even though I really appreciate what this team accomplished and am very, very proud of what they accomplished, we need to prepare for the challenges of the new season very quickly with the team we have coming back. "

It didn't take Saban long to refocus after Monday night's 42-14 demolition of Notre Dame that secured a second straight BCS title, the Crimson Tide's third in four seasons and the seventh straight for Southeastern Conference teams.

Shortly after the game, he was already talking about getting back to the office by Wednesday morning.

Alabama players, meanwhile, finally were able to voice the "D-word." Center Barrett Jones said he had a Sports Illustrated cover from a couple of years ago after his last college game.

"It says, 'Dynasty. Can anybody stop Alabama?' I'll never forget looking at that thing and wondering if we really could be a dynasty," said Jones, who mainly put it on the wall because he's featured. "I think three out of four, I'm no dynasty expert, but that seems like a dynasty to me. I guess I can say that now that I'm gone. Don't tell coach I said that."

The 2013 team will almost certainly be regarded among the preseason favorites to get back to the summit, even though three Tide stars — tailback Eddie Lacy, cornerback Dee Milliner and right tackle D.J. Fluker — could decide to skip their senior seasons and turn pro.

Saban also emphatically tried to end speculation that he might return to the NFL, where he spent two years with the Miami Dolphins before returning to the SEC.

It was a question that really made him bristle during the 30-plus minute news conference.

"How many times do you think I've been asked to put it to rest?" Saban said. "And I've put it to rest, and you continue to ask it. So I'm going to say it today, that — you know, I think somewhere along the line you've got to choose. You learn a lot from the experiences of what you've done in the past. I came to the Miami Dolphins, what, eight years ago for the best owner, the best person that I've ever had the opportunity to work for. And in the two years that I was here, I had a very, very difficult time thinking that I could impact the organization in the way that I wanted to or the way that I was able to in college, and it was very difficult for me."

He said that experience taught him that the college ranks "is where I belong, and I'm really happy and at peace with all that."

As for the players, All-America linebacker C.J. Mosley has already said he'll return. So has quarterback AJ McCarron, who had his second straight star turn in a BCS title game.

"We certainly have to build the team around him," Saban said, adding that a late-game spat with Jones showed the quarterback's competitive fire. "I've talked a lot about it's difficult to play quarterback when you don't have good players around you. I think we should have, God willing and everybody staying healthy, a pretty good receiver corps. We'll have to do some rebuilding in the offensive line. Regardless of what Eddie decides to do, we'll probably still have some pretty decent runners. But I think AJ can be a really good player, maybe the best quarterback in the country next year."

The biggest question mark is replacing three, maybe four, starters on an offensive line that paved the way.

Amari Cooper, who broke several of Julio Jones' Alabama freshman receiving marks, and fellow freshman running back T.J. Yeldon give McCarron and the Tide a couple of potent weapons, even if Lacy doesn't return.

"I am going to try to win three or four," said Cooper, who had 105 yards and two touchdowns in the title game. "This season was good, but I expected it to be even more. There is so much more that I can do."

Saban emphasized the difficulty of repeating and said he showed the players a video of NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan saying that the first title isn't the hardest — it's the ones after that.

That's because, Saban said, "you have to have the will to fight against yourself."

Now, the 'Bama coach has four titles, including one during his stop at LSU. Saban doesn't wear the championship rings but uses them for a different purpose.

"I just put them on the coffee table for the recruits to look at," he said, cracking up the room.

Saban has already lined up another highly rated recruiting class and has the next wave of young talents waiting in the wings.

After all, he talked about the sign mentor Bill Belichick hung in the football building during their NFL days together: "Do your job."

Saban jokingly acknowledged that while he prepares for everything, the one thing he has never been able to anticipate is the Gatorade bath. He drew heat for a scowl after the first one, following the title game win over Texas when he got dinged in the head. Monday night's dousing went better.

"It's cold, it's sticky, but I appreciated not getting hit in the head with the bucket," Saban said. "That was an improvement."

No program has had this kind of championship run since Tom Osborne's Nebraska teams won it all in 1994, 1995 and 1997.

Saban remembers that second team well. The Cornuskers stomped Michigan State 50-10 in Saban's first game as head coach.

"I'm thinking, we're never going to win a game," Saban said. "We'll never win a game here at Michigan State. I must have taken a bad job, wrong job, no players, something. I remember Coach Osborne when we shook hands after the game, he put his arm around me and whispered in my ear, 'You're not really as bad as you think.'"

So take heart, college football.

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Gaps Seen in Therapy for Suicidal Teenagers

Most adolescents who plan or attempt suicide have already gotten at least some mental health treatment, raising questions about the effectiveness of current approaches to helping troubled teenagers, according to the largest in-depth analysis to date of suicidal behaviors in American teenagers.

The study, posted online Tuesday by the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that 55 percent of suicidal teenagers had received some therapy before they thought about suicide, planned it or tried to kill themselves, contradicting the widely held belief that suicide is due in part to a lack of access to treatment.

The findings, based on interviews with a nationwide sample of more than 6,000 teenagers and at least one parent of each, linked suicidal behavior to complex combinations of mood disorders like depression and behavior problems that include attention-deficit and eating disorders, as well as alcohol and drug abuse.

The study found that about one in eight teenagers had persistent suicidal thoughts at some point, and about a third of them had made a suicide attempt, usually within a year of having the idea.

Previous studies have had similar findings, based on smaller, regional samples. But the new study is the first to suggest, in a large nationwide sample, that access to treatment does not make a big difference.

The study suggests that effective treatment for severely suicidal teenagers must address not just mood disorders, but also behavior problems that can lead to impulsive acts, experts said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,386 people between the ages of 13 and 18 committed suicide in 2010, the latest year for which numbers are available.

“I think one of the take-aways here is that treatment for depression may be necessary but not sufficient to prevent kids from attempting suicide,” said Dr. David Brent, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, who was not involved in the study. “We simply do not have empirically validated treatments for recurrent suicidal behavior.”

The report said nothing about whether the therapies given were state of the art, or carefully done, said Matt Nock, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the lead author; and it is possible that some of the treatments prevented suicide attempts. “But it’s telling us we’ve got a long way to go to do this right,” Dr. Nock said. His co-authors included Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard, and researchers from Boston University and Children’s Hospital Boston.

Margaret McConnell, a consultant in Alexandria, Va., said that her daughter Alice, who killed herself in 2006, at the age of 17, was getting treatment at the time. “I think there might have been some carelessness in the way the treatment was done,” Ms. McConnell said, “and I was trusting a 17-year-old to manage her own medication; we found out after we lost her that she wasn’t taking it regularly.”

In the study, researchers surveyed 6,483 adolescents from the ages of 13 to 18 and found that 9 percent of male teenagers and 15 percent of female teenagers experienced some stretch of having persistent suicidal thoughts. Among girls, 5 percent made suicide plans and 6 percent made at least one attempt (some were unplanned).

Among boys, 3 percent made plans and 2 percent carried out attempts – which tended to be more lethal than girls’ attempts.

(Suicidal thinking or behavior was virtually unheard-of before age 10.)

Over all, about one-third of teenagers with persistent suicidal thoughts went on to make an attempt to take their own lives.

Almost all of the suicidal adolescents in the study qualified for some psychiatric diagnosis, whether depression, phobias, or generalized anxiety disorder. Those with an added behavior problem – attention-deficit disorder, substance abuse, explosive anger – were more likely to act on thoughts of self-harm, the study found.

Doctors have tested a range of therapies to prevent or reduce recurrent suicidal behaviors, with mixed success. Medications can ease depression, but in some cases can increase suicidal thinking. Talk therapy can contain some behavior problems, but not all.

One approach, called dialectical behavior therapy, has proved effective in reducing hospitalizations and attempts in people with so-called borderline personality disorder, who are highly prone to self-harm, among others.

But suicidal teenagers who have a mixture of mood and behavior issues are difficult to reach. In one 2011 study, researchers at George Mason University reduced suicide attempts, hospitalizations, drinking and drug use among suicidal adolescent substance abusers. The study found that a combination of intensive treatments – talk therapy for mood problems, family-based therapy for behavior issues and patient-led reduction in drug use – was more effective that regular therapies.

“But that’s just one study, and it’s small,” Dr. Brent said. “We can treat components of the overall problem, but that’s about all.”

Ms. McConnell said that her daughter’s depression seemed mild and that there was no warning that she would take her life. “I think therapy does help a lot of people, if it’s handled right,” she said.

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Wall Street Closes Lower as Earnings Reports Begin

Stocks trading on Wall Street ticked lower on Tuesday as an earnings season that is expected to show sluggish corporate growth got under way.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index closed 0.3 percent lower, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 0.4 percent and the Nasdaq composite index fell 0.2 percent.

Over the next couple of weeks, reports on fourth-quarter profits are expected to come in above the previous quarter’s lackluster results, but analysts’ current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October. Quarterly earnings are expected to grow by 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

German data showed industrial orders fell more than forecast in November because of a sharp drop in demand from abroad, reinforcing concerns that Europe’s largest economy may have contracted in the fourth quarter of 2012.

“I’m surprised futures are holding up, given the relative disappointment that German data showed, but I think all eyes are on the beginning of earnings season,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

European shares ended mixed after the German report, with the DAX index in Frankfurt down 0.5 percent and the CAC 40 in Paris up slightly.

Monsanto shares rose 2 percent after the world’s largest seed company raised its earnings outlook for fiscal 2013 and posted strong first-quarter results.

Shares of the restaurant-chain operator Yum Brands fell 4.2 percent. On Monday, the company, which owns KFC, warned that sales in China, its largest market, shrank more than expected in the fourth quarter.

Vodafone shares rose 2 percent in London after its American partner in the joint venture Verizon Wireless said it would be “feasible” to buy out the British group.

Sears Holdings shares were 6.4 percent lower a day after the company said its chief executive would step down for family health reasons.

GameStop shares fell 6.3 percent after it reported sales for the holiday season and cut its guidance.

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Mark Zuckerberg faces fine in Germany over Facebook privacy violations

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Klemens von Klemperer Dies at 96; Wrote of Nazi Era

Klemens von Klemperer, a refugee from Nazi Germany who wrote what is widely considered the seminal history of the movement among the country’s conservative elite to overthrow Hitler, died on Dec. 23 at his home in Easthampton, Mass. He was 96.

His death was confirmed by his son, James.

Dr. von Klemperer, an emeritus professor of history at Smith College, was one of a generation of refugee historians who helped lay the groundwork for modern German and European studies in the United States, a group that also included Hajo Holborn, Fritz Stern and Peter Gay.

A privileged child who came from a family of German bankers and industrialists, he had taken a leading role in demonstrations against Hitler as a student in Vienna before fleeing to the United States in 1938.

Dr. von Klemperer, the author of seven books, was best known for his 1992 work, “German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945.”

On July 20, 1944, in the signature moment for the movement, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a German Army colonel, placed a briefcase containing a bomb under the map table at Wolfsschanze, Hitler’s headquarters in a bunker in East Prussia. Hitler survived the ensuing blast, proclaiming divine providence, and set off a wave of executions of conspirators.

Dr. von Klemperer’s book explored the broader aims of the resistance movement and how its leaders — among them the aristocrat Helmuth James von Moltke and the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as diplomats and high-ranking military men — had made many contacts seeking support from the Western Allies.

“He really charted the foreign contacts of that group; that’s the importance of von Klemperer’s work,” Catherine Epstein, chairwoman of the history department at Amherst College and an expert on German history, said in an interview. “These were very nationalistic resisters. They wanted to have an independent Germany, did not want to be occupied by the Allies.”

Their outreach was thwarted by the Allies’ goal of unconditional German surrender and by a lack of trust in the resistance movement. Yet, for Dr. von Klemperer, their efforts achieved a higher goal.

“He attempted to show that there were indeed good Germans, and that they were deeply, morally offended by the Nazis,” said Allan Mitchell, who profiled Dr. von Klemperer in his 2011 book “Fleeing Nazi Germany: Five Historians Migrate to America.” “That’s what was most important to him.”

In “German Resistance Against Hitler,” Dr. von Klemperer wrote, “The determination of the German Resistance to reach the ‘greater world’ stands as an example for the many dissidents and freedom movements who in our day, still plagued by oppression, are appealing to the conscience of the world.”

Klemens Wilhelm von Klemperer was born in Berlin on Nov. 2, 1916, into what had been a Jewish family until his grandfather, Gustav, the director of one of Germany’s largest banks, converted to Protestantism.

Klemens’s father, Herbert, was the president of a company that manufactured locomotives, submarines and torpedoes for the German military.

That status and the family’s conversion mattered less and less after anti-Jewish laws were passed in 1933. In 1935, young Klemens joined his mother’s family in Vienna.

He studied history at the University of Vienna and, after Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938, took part in student street protests. But by November, with his family’s property seized, he had fled to the United States. Eventually, members of his family were killed at Auschwitz.

He enrolled at Harvard under a program for refugee scholars, but his studies were interrupted by his service as an intelligence officer in the United States Army. After returning to Harvard, he received his doctorate in history in 1949 and soon joined the faculty at Smith, where he taught for 37 years.

Among Dr. von Klemperer’s other books are “A Noble Combat: The Letters of Shiela Grant Duff and Adam von Trott zu Solz, 1932-1938” (1988), about the romantic relationship of a British woman and a German diplomat as they struggled with their concerns about the Nazi regime, and “Ignaz Seipel: Christian Statesman in a Time of Crisis” (1972), a biography of an Austrian priest who became chancellor in the 1920s.

Besides his son, Dr. von Klemperer is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Elizabeth Gallaher; a daughter, Catharine Utzschneider; and four grandchildren.

Three years ago, Dr. von Klemperer’s memoir, “Voyage Through the 20th Century,” was published.

“I was not an extraordinary person, but I did live in extraordinary times,” he wrote, “and my small mission was somehow to make sense of it all.”

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Redskins' RG3 to have more tests on ACL

ASHBURN, Va. (AP) — Robert Griffin III will get more tests on his injured right knee after an MRI proved inconclusive because of a previous ACL tear.

Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan said Monday that the rookie quarterback will travel Tuesday to see orthopedist James Andrews for more examinations.

Griffin tore his ACL while playing at Baylor in 2009, and Shanahan said sometimes an old injury can cloud the results of an MRI.

If Griffin has torn the ACL again, he would likely require a rehabilitation period of nine to 12 months, putting his status for next season in jeopardy.

Griffin reinjured his knee twice in Sunday's playoff loss to Seattle.

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Massachusetts Plans Stricter Control of Compounding Pharmacies

BOSTON — New laws to strengthen state control of compounding pharmacies were proposed on Friday by Gov. Deval Patrick, in hopes of preventing another public health disaster like the current outbreak of meningitis caused by a contaminated drug made in Massachusetts.

The laws will be among the strongest in the country, said Kevin Outterson, a law professor at Boston University and a member of the expert panel that advised the state on how to curb abuses by companies like the New England Compounding Center, the Framingham pharmacy that made the tainted drug responsible for the nationwide meningitis outbreak.

The legislation would establish strict licensing requirements for compounding sterile drugs; let the state assess fines against pharmacies that break its rules; protect whistle-blowers who work in compounding pharmacies; and reorganize the state pharmacy board to include more members who are independent of the industry and fewer who are part of it.

Alec Loftus, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Health and Human Services, said that Mr. Patrick expected the new legislation to be passed quickly.

Daniel Carpenter, a professor of government at Harvard, said the proposed laws seemed sound and comprehensive. But he warned that if other states did not take similar steps, compounding pharmacies engaging in shoddy practices would just move to places with the weakest laws and the least oversight.

“The remaining question is not what Massachusetts is doing or will do, but will there be a minimum level of regulation like this in the rest of the states?” Professor Carpenter said.

The meningitis outbreak, first detected in September, was caused by contaminated batches of a steroid, methylprednisolone acetate, made by the New England Compounding Center. The drug was injected into about 14,000 people’s spinal area to treat back and neck pain.

As of Dec. 28, 656 people in 19 states had become ill with meningitis or other infections, like severe internal abscesses in the area where the drug was injected. Some have had both meningitis and spinal infections. The case count is expected to keep rising. Thirty-nine have died.

The New England Compounding Center was shut down, and inspections found extensive contamination. Investigations uncovered a long history of questionable practices that had drawn warnings from the state and the Food and Drug Administration.

On Dec. 21, the company announced that it had filed for bankruptcy. Numerous lawsuits have been filed against it.

At the heart of the problem have been gaps in regulation that have allowed such companies to avoid both state and federal controls. The company called itself a pharmacy, and pharmacies are generally regulated by states, while large drug companies are regulated federally, by the Food and Drug Administration.

Compounding pharmacies mix their own drug preparations, like skin creams and cough syrups, supposedly for individual patients with special needs. But the New England Compounding Center began to act like a manufacturer, making and shipping large amounts of injectable drugs, for which sterility is essential. No state law required it to obtain a license for this type of large-scale compounding, to follow good manufacturing processes or to let the state know it was shipping all over the country.

Dr. Lauren Smith, interim commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said the company “was a manufacturer in pharmacy clothing.”

Governor Patrick said, “The tragic meningitis outbreak has shown us all that the board’s governing authority has not kept up with an industry that has evolved from corner drugstores to the types of large manufacturers that have been at the center of so much harm.”

Dr. Smith said she thought the most important part of the new legislation was the requirement of a license for sterile compounding. “Now we are going to have the ability to develop specialty licenses that will allow us to track and identify those pharmacies that are engaged in different practices that could potentially put higher numbers of individuals at risk, such as those who engage in sterile compounding,” she said.

Professor Carpenter said a particularly powerful part of the proposal is that it requires licensure for out-of-state pharmacies that ship medication to Massachusetts. The state, he said, is a huge market for injectable drugs.

“Basically, if you think about the large hospitals, the amount of medical care that goes on in the state, it’s in a sense using the purchasing power of the state of Massachusetts to induce changes elsewhere,” he said.

The state has also taken other steps recently to rein in compounding, apart from the new legislation. It began conducting surprise inspections, and has required compounding pharmacies to report how much medication they are shipping and where, so that it can keep tabs on those that begin acting like manufacturers. It also requires the pharmacies to report when they become subjects of regulatory actions by other states or the federal government.

Abby Goodnough reported from Boston, and Denise Grady from New York.

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Avis and Hertz Expand, Raising Questions Over Future Rates

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Hertz acquired Dollar Thrifty last November, but it was barred from controlling about 30 sites at airports.

In the short term, industry analysts do not think so. They are less certain about what will happen in the long term.

With the Hertz deal, the number of major car rental companies is dropping to three, from four, but there are still enough brands to keep prices stable, analysts said. Prices, they added, tend to be driven by supply and demand in regional markets.

With the Avis deal, analysts said, Zipcar users may actually gain options.

Zipcar, founded in 2000, works on a car-sharing business model and has a fleet of just 12,000 cars worldwide, compared with about 1.7 million rental cars in the United States alone. Its acquisition by Avis gives members “more alternatives and the potential of having more options,” said Neil Abrams, the founder of the Abrams Consulting Group, a car rental consulting and travel market research organization in Purchase, N.Y.

Zipcar members can rent by the hour or by the day, which is appealing to people who drive infrequently. “Why pay for something you don’t need?” Mr. Abrams said. “It’s a very cost-effective system if used properly.” On the other hand, he said, if you pay by the hour and need the car for a whole day, a Zipcar can cost more, depending on the model, than a traditional rental car.

Zipcars are not typically located in airports, where competition is greater. The company serves a different market, including drivers younger than 25, who may not be able to rent from traditional companies. It also serves large urban areas like New York, Los Angeles, Washington, London and Barcelona, Spain, where people do not want to own a car but want quick access to one for short periods.

Analysts say Zipcar can raise its hourly rate only so much before it will drive away customers.

“Prices can only go so high,” said Chris Brown, executive editor of Auto Rental News, based in Torrance, Calif. “If prices go too high, consumers won’t rent. They will use other types of transportation. They’ll borrow a friend’s car, use public transportation or take a train.”

Avis has indicated that it intends to increase the size of the Zipcar fleet. “We expect to apply Avis Budget’s experience and efficiencies of fleet management with Zipcar’s proven, customer-friendly technology to accelerate the growth of the Zipcar brand and to provide more options for Zipsters in more places,” Ronald L. Nelson, chairman and chief executive of Avis, said in a statement.

In the Hertz deal, the Federal Trade Commission has played a major role in preserving competition in airport car rental markets by requiring Hertz to sell its Advantage Rent a Car business and the rights to operate about 30 Dollar Thrifty locations in airports throughout the United States.

A proposed agreement was open to public comment through Dec. 17, and the F.T.C. will determine soon whether to make it final.

The commission complained that Hertz’s original plans for acquiring Dollar Thrifty would be anticompetitive. It contended that by reducing the number of major competitors to three, the acquisition would create “substantially more concentration in 72 airport rental car markets nationwide” and “eliminate head-to-head competition between Hertz and Dollar Thrifty” at several airports, including Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Kennedy Airport in New York.

The F.T.C. said the deal, as originally proposed, would have harmed competition by reducing the number of competitors and enabling Hertz to raise rental car prices.

Precisely because the commission has stepped into the acquisition, prices are likely to remain stable, industry analysts said.

“Better pricing, higher pricing, may be the case, but not in the near future,” Mr. Brown of Auto Rental News said of the Hertz-Dollar Thrifty deal.

He and other analysts described four tiers of rental cars: the premium brands of Avis, Hertz and National; the midprice brands of Budget and Alamo; the value brands of Dollar, Thrifty and Enterprise; and the deep discount brands of Advantage, Payless and Fox, an emerging player.

A deep discount brand like Fox or Sixt, based in Europe, is likely to step into the markets where the F.T.C. requires Hertz to sell its Advantage business and Dollar Thrifty locations, Mr. Brown said, because premium brands are already in those markets.

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Riches in niches: U.S. cops, in-flight movies may be model for Panasonic survival

TOKYO (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp’s answer to the brutal onslaught on its TV sales may be in a product the Japanese firm launched 17 years ago and which is a must-have for U.S. police cars.

Two thirds of the 420,000 patrol cars in the United States are equipped with the company’s rugged Toughbook computers, and Panasonic chief Kazuhiro Tsuga sees the niche product as a model for how the sprawling conglomerate can make money beyond a gadget mass market increasingly dominated by Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc.

“What we need are businesses that earn, and they don’t necessarily have to have big sales,” Tsuga told reporters after his appointment as company president was approved in June.

Tsuga also sees avionics – Panasonic is the world’s leading maker of in-flight entertainment systems – automated production machinery, and lighting as profit earners as income from TVs and other consumer electronics dwindles.

Panasonic, Sony Corp and Sharp Corp have been hit hard by South Korean-made TVs, Blu-ray players and mobiles and Apple tablets that threaten to wipe out Japan as a global consumer electronics hub. The Toughbook, sold only to businesses and governments, was conceived as a response to the type of profit sapping competition that is now roiling TVs.

“At the time, we were losing in personal computers to Compaq and IBM,” said Hide Harada, who heads the Toughbook unit from the group’s headquarters in Osaka, western Japan. IBM later sold its laptop business to China’s Lenovo Group and Compaq was absorbed by Hewlett Packard.

“It was a guerilla strategy,” Harada said, recalling the Toughbook’s launch in 1996. Panasonic’s promotion campaign included driving jeeps over its computers, dropping them on the ground and dousing them with coffee on morning TV shows.

At rival Sony, too, signs of a niche strategy are emerging in a battle with Apple and South Korean brands that are making gains from a weaker won currency. Combining technologies from several divisions – from projectors to video cameras and headphones – Sony’s 3D Viewer head-mounted visor gives users the feel they are sitting in the middle of a 500-seat movie theater.

The target audience, says product manager Hideki Mori, are those consumers looking to immerse themselves in computer graphics and high quality movies. “Demand has been greater than anticipated,” he said, declining to give specific sales numbers.

LOSING GROUND

The two Japanese firms will show off their wares at this week’s annual CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, an event usually dominated by prototypes for next-generation TV technology. Tsuga is due to deliver the event’s keynote speech.

In the past, the Japanese have showcased ultra high-definition 4K televisions, while Samsung and LG Electronics Inc have displayed their ultra-thin OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens. But, at a price tag likely 10 times that of conventional LCD screens, consumers will take a while to make the generational leap.

Meanwhile, losses at Panasonic, Sony and Sharp mount up. Panasonic has predicted a net loss of $ 8.9 billion in the year to end-March, while Sharp, which has been bailed out by banks, expects an annual loss of $ 5.24 billion. Helped by asset sales, Sony should eke out a small profit.

Japan’s share of the flat panel TV market has shrunk by around a quarter in the past two years, to around 31 percent, according to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association. Amid a prolonged strong yen squeeze, the industry lobby expects Japan’s share of the DVD and Blu-ray disc player market to have dropped to around half last year from nearly two-thirds in 2010. Just 8 of every 100 mobile phones sold globally are now Japanese. Manufacturers have shifted TV production overseas, with output in Japan now less than a tenth of what it was two years ago.

Tsuga, who acknowledges Panasonic is a “loser” in consumer electronics, has warned his business units they will be closed or sold if they fail to match Toughbook’s success, giving each two years to deliver at least a 5 percent operating margin.

Any niche-winning strategy that takes his company away from mass market products means Tsuga will need fewer workers, investors say. Panasonic is Japan’s biggest commercial employer with a workforce of more than 300,000. It plans to axe 10,000 jobs in the year to March on top of the 36,000 that were cut in the previous year. More big cuts in Japan, where major lay-offs are uncommon and severance packages expensive, won’t be easy, said Yuuki Sakurai, CEO at Fukoku Capital Management in Tokyo, which manages assets worth $ 18.4 billion, but doesn’t own Panasonic stock.

“It’s like trying to chase the course of a battleship. If they want to become a light cruiser or destroyer, they’ll have to lose employees,” Sakurai said.

GLOBAL STANDARD

Workers Panasonic will likely keep are those in Kobe in western Japan who build the Toughbook PCs – a category defined by a U.S. military quality benchmark that serves as a de facto global standard. Its market share is on a par with Apple’s in tablets, with most U.S. police departments willing to pay as much as $ 3,000 for the rugged laptops which can withstand bumpy high-speed chases and other rigors of street policing.

“They have been near bullet-proof. We had a patrol car catch fire and after all the heat, smoke and water dissipated the computer continued to function,” said Bill Richards, logistics commander for the Tucson police in Arizona, whose force owns close to 650 Toughbooks that connect patrol cars with dispatchers, license records and other police databases.

Other customers include the New York Police Department, California Highway Patrol, Brazilian Military Police and British and U.S. military, which use them on unmanned aerial drones.

“Panasonic is the bellwether, the most recognized brand. The Toughbook is almost synonymous with rugged notebooks,” said David Krebs, a vice president at VDC Research.

While margins in the global PC market are getting slimmer – research firm IHS iSuppli sees annual sales growth of around 7 percent over the next four years from about 216 million PCs last year – the premium-price, fatter margin, rugged PC niche is seen growing by around 10 percent a year to nearly 1.2 million computers by 2016, according to VDC Research.

ANALOG EDGE, DIGITAL SAMENESS

At the Kobe factory, Toughbooks are put through their paces: hosed down to test water resistance, baked to 50 degrees Celsius, chilled to minus 20 degrees and dropped on their tops, bottoms, sides and corners.

Harada describes it as an analog edge in digital products.

“Whoever makes them, the insides of a computer are pretty much the same. It’s the mechanical side that makes us different,” he explained.

The creators of Sony’s 3D Viewer, too, are looking for mechanical appeal as much as electronic prowess. A second, redesigned model, which is now on sale in Japan, is 25 percent lighter at 330 grams, has a better grip and gives users the option of headphones or earplugs, said Mori. “We want to make it lighter,” he added, noting engineers are looking to slim down the heaviest component, the lenses.

While Sony keeps chasing consumers, Panasonic is pursuing a business-to-business niche market model that Tsuga has put at the heart of his revival plan. High on Harada’s target list for the Toughbook are Japanese police forces, which don’t yet buy the computers.

There are no plans, he said, to make cheaper mass market models – which could protect some jobs in the group.

“We aren’t going to put it in Best Buy or Walmart. I don’t think it would turn out well.”

($ 1 = 85.9250 Japanese yen)

(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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