Can free daily newspapers succeed in America?WHEN Metro International, a Swedish publisher, launched its free tabloid newspapers in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, it seemed a logical move. Metro's papers are, after all, popular in over 100 cities around the world. With small articles and big pictures, they are an easy read on the way to or from work. And they are free: Metro makes money from advertising.But things have not gone as planned. Henry Scott, a former publisher of Metro New York, says free daily papers generally become profitable in their third year of operation. After seven years Metro is still losing money in America: it lost $4.4m in the third quarter of 2007 alone. Now there are rumours that Metro plans to sell its American business. Mr Scott says the real question is not if Metro will sell, but when. ...

  Is this the most disruptive technology in business computing since the internet?HISTORY may not repeat itself, but it does sometimes rhyme. In 1980 when IBM asked Microsoft, then an unknown software firm, to provide the operating system for its personal computer (PC), it made the mistake of allowing its supplier to license the software, called DOS, to other hardware firms. DOS quickly became the dominant computing platform for the PC and the basis of Microsoft's might.Two decades later Microsoft may have made a similarly seminal mistake. In 2002 it balked at paying a high asking price for VMware, then also an unknown start-up. VMware was later acquired by EMC, a big data-storage supplier, but the Silicon Valley firm remained largely independent. This allowed it to develop software that may yet emerge as a dominant platform in its own right--not for single computers, but for the vast warehouses full of machines, known as data centres, where much computing will be done in future. ...

  Produce from cloned animals has won regulatory approval. Now companies must persuade consumers to buy it"IT IS beyond our imagination to even find a theory that would cause the food to be unsafe." With that ringing endorsement, Stephen Sundlof, the chief food-safety expert at America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA), this week declared food derived from the offspring of cloned cows, pigs and goats to be safe for human consumption. The decision came just days after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) publicly reached the same conclusion.At first blush this seems likely to lead to a repetition of the controversies that surrounded the arrival of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture more than a decade ago. Back then an over-zealous industry (led by Monsanto, an American GMO pioneer) touted the benefits of a novel food technology. Activist groups and parts of the media said GMOs were dangerous and unethical. Scientific bodies on both sides of the Atlantic agreed that GMOs could be used safely, but politics halted their advance in Europe. ...

  America's Supreme Court reduces companies' risk of being suedSIGHS of relief were audible in boardrooms across America this week at the Supreme Court's long-awaited decision in StoneRidge Investment Partners v Scientific Atlanta. At issue were the circumstances in which a company can be sued for "scheme liability". On January 15th the court ruled that a firm could not be held liable for a securities fraud merely because it was a business partner of a companythat committed the fraud.The ruling, regarded as the most important in years on corporate-securities law, related to a case brought by investors in Charter Communications, a cable-television firm. They had sued two companies, Scientific Atlanta and Motorola, arguing that they had helped Charter artificially boost its profits in 2000 through its accounting treatment of set-top boxes they had supplied to the cable firm. The court found that because neither Scientific Atlanta nor Motorola made any statements that had been relied on by the investors, they bore no scheme liability. ...

  At last, Larry Brilliant has set Google's philanthropy strategy. Now for the hard part"WHAT does a moral person do, given all the problems and suffering in the world? How do you focus?" Larry Brilliant illustrates how difficult this is by recalling a friend's struggle to decide how best to allocate a few rupees among the beggars waiting to die in the Hindu sacred city of Benares, in India. Such a place could hardly be more different from Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California--with its population of geeky 20-somethings, free food, volleyball courts and fake dinosaur--where Dr Brilliant and his 40-strong team have at last agreed a strategy for Google.org, the internet giant's philanthropic arm, which Dr Brilliant leads.The strategy, unveiled on January 17th, has been a long time coming. The announcement marks the end of the beginning of a mission that began before Google's initial public offering in 2004. As well as adopting the informal company motto, "Don't be evil", the internet search firm's co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, decided to commit Google to engage in serious philanthropy. Innovative as ever, they created a new sort of philanthropic entity, a division of the company that could pursue its mission through both for-profit investing and making charitable grants. This, they hoped, would one day "eclipse Google itself in overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world's problems." It would be funded with 1% of the firm's equity, annual profits and employees' time. ...

  Sales of books in Spanish are booming, and there is plenty of room for growthAT THE Feria Internacional del Libro (FIL), the largest Spanish-language publishing event, held a few weeks ago in Guadalajara, in Mexico, an eager teenager cadged your correspondent's badge at the exit. That young people might want to sneak into book fairs would be the stuff of dreams in many countries, where competition from other media is pushing books aside. But as FIL demonstrates with more than 500,000 visitors, up by 7% from 2006, Spanish-language publishers, and readers, have much to celebrate.The market for books in Spanish is thought to be the second-largest in the world. It is the biggest for books in translation, which account for about a fifth of the 120,000 Spanish titles published each year. With sales up by 7.5% in 2005--growth is strongest in Argentina, Mexico and Colombia--it is expanding faster than many other book markets. Since many of the world's 400m Spanish-speakers live in developing countries, it has great potential: literacy rates are high and incomes are rising. (Ibero-American publishing, which also includes books in Portuguese, is worth about $6 billion a year.) ...

  Errant Japanese firms are sometimes required to suspend their operationsUNTIL January 13th visitors to certain parts of the website of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries received an odd message in Japanese and English. It explained that "for actions in violation of the Anti-monopoly Act of Japan", the company had been ordered to suspend part of its domestic construction business. "As operation of the company website is considered one aspect of those activities, sections of the website have been closed."Regulators round the world sometimes find it difficult holding businesses to account for their infractions. Firms that fall foul of regulators can be fined, though they can then launch legal appeals that last for years. Forcing a company to shutter its operations for a while is rare in the West. But in Japan it is a popular form of punishment. In recent months it has been imposed upon several food companies and financial-services firms, among others. On January 11th the labour ministry ordered one of Japan's biggest temporary-staffing agencies, Goodwill, to close its branches for two months for placing workers in jobs they were not legally allowed to do, such as building and cargo-handling. Some branches must close for four months. ...

  Cremona's violin-makers lead the world once againBIRTH, growth, decline, death: it is the usual cycle for people, companies and industries. But the story of violin-making in Cremona in northern Italy, which flourished under such master craftsmen as Andrea Amati, Giuseppe Guarneri and Antonio Stradivari from the mid-16th century to the early 18th, suggests that, for industries at least, there may be life after death.Violin-making in Cremona struggled through the 19th century in the hands of a few carpenters who turned out low-quality instruments. By the 1950s it had died out, says Gio Batta Morassi, a 73-year-old maestro liutaio (master violin-maker). Yet today, in workshops overlooking the city's cobbled streets, more than 100 craftsmen cut and plane maple and spruce to make string instruments--more than in any other European city. Cremona is once again the capital of hand-crafted instruments. ...

  Tata unveils its 21st-century Indian version of the "people's car"RATAN TATA, chairman of the Tata group of companies, has a cerebral and cordial manner. But the "one-lakh car", which Tata Motors unveiled in Delhi to a rapt public on January 10th, is a product of impatience and chutzpah. Instead of waiting for the great swell of prosperity in India and elsewhere to create millions of customers for his company's products, Mr Tata has decided to wade out--further than any one has gone before--to bring a car to them.In India one lakh means 100,000, and Tata will sell the most basic version of its new car at 100,000 rupees, or $2,500 (not including taxes and the cost of transporting it to the showrooms). This is roughly half the price of its nearest rival, and little more than the cost of a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw. But the "NANO", as the car is called, is no rickshaw. Apart from the fourth wheel and the doors, it has a 623cc engine that will muster 33 brake horsepower. The car should eke out 50 miles to the gallon, Mr Tata says. It complies with the "Euro III" pollution standards that prevail in India and should meet the tougher Euro IV standards with a bit of tweaking. ...

  Hopes that the carmaker would flourish on its own now look misplaced A MORE fearful background to the annual Detroit motor show, which opens on January 13th, would be hard to imagine. Last year was one Detroit's "Big Three" would like to forget. Sales of cars and light trucks in America fell by 2.5%, to 16.1m, foreign brands grabbed more than half the home market for the first time in the second half of the year and Ford was overtaken by Toyota. Few doubt, however, that 2008 will be worse. With high oil prices and no end in sight to America's housing crisis, the consensus is that sales will fall to 15.5m. Both General Motors (GM) and Ford will struggle to keep their halting recoveries on track. And for Chrysler, the smallest of the Big Three, the next year could well determine whether it survives in its current form at all.Five months after Cerberus Capital Management was handed the company (for nothing, in effect) by Chrysler's former parent, Daimler, there are growing fears that the acquisitive private-equity group may have bitten off more than it can chew. At a closed meeting with some Chrysler engineers last month, Bob Nardelli, the controversial former boss of Home Depot who has been appointed by Cerberus to turn the carmaker around, asked rhetorically whether the firm was bankrupt. The answer, he said, was "technically, no, but operationally, yes." He added: "The only thing that keeps us from going into bankruptcy is the $10 billion investors have entrusted us with." ...

  Starbucks ousts its boss and brings back its founder as a new threat emergesHOWARD SCHULTZ once said that he finds it painful when people compare his firm, Starbucks, to McDonald's. The founder of the world's biggest chain of coffee shops thinks a visit to Starbucks should involve "romance and theatre", a far cry from the pit-stop-like experience of eating a meal at the world's biggest fast-food chain. Yet in its efforts to expand and attract less affluent customers over the past couple of years, Starbucks has started to become more like McDonald's--even as McDonald's, for its part, has been moving upmarket to become more like Starbucks.Starbucks is now struggling with the most serious crisis in its history--much as McDonald's did at the beginning of the decade. Last year Starbucks' share-price fell by 42%, making it one of the worst performers on the NASDAQ exchange. In the last quarter of 2007 Starbucks recorded its first ever year-on-year decline in customer visits in America, easily its biggest market. When analysts at Bear Stearns, an investment bank, downgraded the firm's shares on January 2nd, they plunged by another 12%. This sealed the fate of Jim Donald, the chief executive since 2005. On January 7th the company said it would replace him with Mr Schultz, who stepped aside in 2000 to become chairman. ...

  The carmaker's chairman and former boss makes a star appearanceKLAUS VOLKERT and Klaus-Joachim Gebauer, the two defendants in Germany's biggest corporate trial in years, are no longer its focus. They have already admitted their part in a scandal that provided leisure travel, prostitutes, jobs for girlfriends and other perks at the expense of Volkswagen (VW), where they were employed respectively as head of the workers' council and a personnel manager.The true focus of the trial, since it began on November 15th, has been Ferdinand Piech, chief executive of VW from 1993 until 2002 and now its chairman. How much did he know of the goings on, which were being funded from an account run by Peter Hartz, his fellow board member for personnel, before they hit the headlines in 2005? Mr Piech has always professed ignorance. Mr Hartz, in his own snappy trial a year ago, said the buck stopped with him, and took the rap accordingly: two years' suspended sentence and a fine of EURO576,000 ($750,000). Two witnesses so far have supported his account. But others insist that Mr Piech knew about, and discussed, how to keep the workforce on-side by giving special treatment to workers'-council members, especially Mr Volkert. ...

  Last year was terrible for the recorded-music majors. The next few years are likely to be even worseIN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there. In public, of course, music executives continued to talk a good game: recovery was just around the corner, they argued, and digital downloads would rescue the music business. But the results from 2007 confirm what EMI's focus group showed: that the record industry's main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before--faster than anyone had expected. For the first half of 2007, sales of music on CD and other physical formats fell by 6% in Britain, by 9% in Japan, France and Spain, by 12% in Italy, 14% in Australia and 21% in Canada. (Sales were flat in Germany.) Paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs. More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing. ...

  Christophe de Margerie, the boss of Total, thinks that the world's oil production may be nearing its peakCHRISTOPHE DE MARGERIE is not exactly a conformist. His family is in the champagne business, but he deals in a much less exalted liquid: oil. Despite his heritage, his favourite tipple is single-malt whisky from Islay, which, a colleague confides, he often requests specially at posh corporate events where champagne is de rigueur. His starburst moustache would look right at home on the face of a British cavalry officer, but is an unusual choice for the chief executive of Total, the most valuable company in France (and, indeed, in the whole of the euro zone). And unlike many French bosses, who shuffle from ministry to moneymaking, he has spent his working life in business.Mr de Margerie's opinions also stand out, at least within the ranks of senior oilmen. Last year he declared that the world would never be able to increase its output of oil from the current level of 85m barrels per day (b/d) to 100m b/d, let alone the 120m b/d that energy analysts predict will be needed by 2030. That is in stark contrast with the view of Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Total's larger American rival, Exxon Mobil, who argues that the world is neither short of oil, nor likely to be any time soon. It also contradicts the line of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which claims that the only thing that prevents its members from producing more oil is the fear that no one will buy it. ...