Trollhattan, Sweden (AHN) – Swedish carmaker Saab is filing for bankruptcy after a deal to infuse Chinese funds fell through over technology licensing objections from American shareholders. The Chinese deal was the last hope for Saab, which has suspended work at its main factory and has failed to pay employees.

Saab CEO Victor Muller personally filed the bankruptcy papers and admitted it was “the darkest day in my career, probably in the history of Saab.”

“But we had no other alternatives,” Muller explained.

Saab was in talks with Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile Co. Ltd. (Youngman) and a bank in China about an equity interest in in Swedish Automobile N.V. (Swan). However, General Motors (GM) opposed the deal, which would give Chinese investors access to sensitive automotive trade secrets and manufacturing know-how.

As a result, the company announced Monday that, “the Board of Saab Automobile subsequently decided that the company without further funding will be insolvent and that filing bankruptcy is in the best interests of its creditors.”

In a statement, Saab Automobile AB (Saab Automobile), Saab Automobile Tools AB and Saab Powertrain AB filed for bankruptcy with the District Court in Vanersborg, Sweden. Saab expects the court will approve the filing and appoint receivers within weeks.

In the meantime, Saab will continue operating.”We’re continuing to evaluate the situation. We’re determining the next appropriate steps,” Saab spokesperson Michele Tinson told the Detroit News. “It’s a little premature to announce any actions in the United States.”

The filing will be a total loss for Swan, which will completely write-off its stake in Saab.

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Detroit, MI, United States (AHN) – Chrysler’s Dodge Dart has found new life as a smart car.

Chrysler Group LLC said its new smart car, the first vehicle to feature Fiat SpA technology, will be called the Dodge Dart.

The vehicle, currently in production, will be highlighted at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January.

The debut of the new Dart will mark the first small-car offering from Chrysler in more than a decade.

The car will also allow Fiat to increases its stake in Chrysler to 58.3 percent once the smart car is certified by the government as delivering 30 miles per gallon.

The Dart was first introduced in 1960 as a full-sized vehicle. It was later produced as a compact car from 1963 to 1976.

The price of the new Chrysler offering was not released.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The U.S. federal government is proposing new regulations that would require American vehicle manufacturers to produce cars that would have an average 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025. That would mean fuel efficiency would go up almost 5 percent yearly from 2017 to 2025.

The higher benchmark would place U.S.-made vehicle’s fuel efficiency on par with cars in Europe, Japan and China. While the higher standards would save motorists money and vehicle manufacturers admit the goal is technically achievable, they warned that the higher standards would cost a lot of money to develop.

The car makers also expressed doubt if motorists would prefer smaller and lighter cars to achieve better fuel efficiency. Americans love to travel in larger heavy vehicles capable of carryubg cargo such as child car seats and skis.

Washington is expected to release the proposal for new fuel efficiency standards by September and complete legislation in early 2012 after holding public hearings.

In turn, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers asked the U.S. government for a gradual phase in of the higher standards, new credits for using certain technology and fuels, and a review period that may result in lower targets if the venture turns out to be too costly.

Gloria Bergquist, vice president of public affairs of the AAM, added that the car manufacturers also want assurance that Washington will help build charging stations for electric and plug-in vehicles, which would also be pushed to help achieve the higher fuel standards.

However, Washington officials clarified that the 56.2 mpg is not a final figure and could still change. The current U.S. standard is lenient compared to other nations and lags by about 10 mpg. By 2020, Europe is expected to hike the continent’s fuel efficiency standard to 60 mpg.

The car makers are supported by some congressmen and governors. One Democratic governor even wrote a top Obama official to warn that the proposed fuel efficient vehicles could be costlier. This could lead car owners to hold on to their larger but less efficient models, which could in turn put jobs in the vehicle manufacturing industry at risk.

The current U.S. standards targets to reduce the country’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions by 307 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and cut oil consumption by 1.8 million barrels a day by 2030.

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Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (AHN) – McMaster University researchers announced a medical breakthrough with their successful transformation of human skin cells into human blood.

According to Mick Bhatia, director of the university’s Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, they have successfully created blood from skin cells of young and old patients.

The technology would help stock blood banks and opens the door to creating other transplant tissues without going through the longer step of making first embryonic stem cells. It also provides hope for patients undergoing transfusion, particularly cancer victims whose blood cells are affected by chemotherapy.

According to Bhatia a skin patch as small as 12 square centimeters (4.7 square inches) would create sufficient blood for most transfusions. Since the tissue would come from the patient’s own body, the risk of rejection is eliminated.

The McMaster researchers said the laboratory-grown blood would likely be ready for testing in humans within the next two years.

Their study was published Sunday in the Nature journal.

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Shenzhen, China (AHN) – Another factory worker employed by electronics technology giant Foxconn has jumped to his death in Shenzhen in southern China.

The Friday death brings the number of apparent suicides by employees jumping from the building to at least 10 since the beginning of the year, according to reports. Foxconn had doubled wages and installed safety nets around the building to prevent employees from jumping.

Foxconn manufactures electronics for companies that include Apple Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co.

The last apparent suicide was in August. Labor activists have accused Foxconn of running a sweatshop, allegations the company has denied.

Labor activists say stress levels are high in Chinese factories in general because of long hours, high stress and minimal pay.

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London, United Kingdom (AHN) – Artificial insemination technology has allowed more British women to become mothers in what is considered already their menopausal years. 107 British women in their 50s had babies in 2009, a 55 percent rise from 2008.

The idea of older women still having babies has been criticized because of perceptions that the older British women place their personal desire to become a parent above the welfare of their child because such women likely have less time and patience to deal with babies at that stage in their lives.

The ONS report is timely because a fertility clinic chain in London, Care Fertility, will have an exhibit of fertility treatments and clinics this week. Simon Thornton, group medical director of Care Fertility, explained that because of better fitness a growing number of women in their 40s and 50s are still fit to bear and raise children.

Aside from better health, what helps these women with their late pregnancies is the development of a chromosome test that helps select embryos of the women likely to develop in the womb as healthy babies.

According to a trial, 87 percent of IVF patients whose five-day old embryos underwent the four-hour chromosome test for genetic defects delivered a healthy baby. The success rate for women who underwent artificial insemination, but did not go through the chromosome test, was only 68 percent.

What is ironic, though, is that most of the sperm donors for the older women who undergo IVF are younger men.

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Beijing, China (AHN) – A Chinese supercomputer that ranked seventh in the world’s top 10 list of fastest supercomputers in June has taken the lead and unofficially dislodged the U.S. from the No. 1 spot.

The Tianhe-1′s 2.5 petaflop per second calculation speed announced Thursday was better than the Jaguar’s 1.75 PFlop/s. One petaflop is equivalent to 1,000 trillion calculations.

Jack Dongarra, a supercomputer expert at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which operates the Jaguar, confirmed the performance of the Tianhe-1 upon inspection of the machine at the National Center for Supercomputing in Tianjin last week.

Designed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, the Tianhe-1 uses Nvidia graphic chips and standard Intel microprocessors. Both components are made in the U.S. but the communications chips and a microchip, the FeiTeng-1000 CPU, are made in China.

The use of graphic chips ordinarily meant to enhance video games graphics represent a major design shift in supercomputing, according to experts.

The world’s third fastest supercomputer, the Nebulae, is also China-made. Housed in Shenzen, it runa at a speed of 1.27 PFlop/s.

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San Francisco, CA, United States (AHN) – PayPal, the online payment arm of digital auction house eBay, announced Tuesday moves and innovations to challenge Visa and MasterCard in mobile ecommerce.

PayPal, which has a 10 percent share of the online payment market, is luring more app developers to its side with its mobile payments library. The library allows developers to process new payments.

PayPal also announced a new beta iPhone app that gives users a list of PayPal merchants in a specific location to expedite payments to stores like Starbucks.

The Mobile Express Checkout, meanwhile, keeps mobile phone users logged in to PayPal while shopping online.

A partnership with VeriFone was also forged to enhance the former’s PAYWare mobile card solution through PayPal’s bump technology, which allows person-to-person payment by “bumping” phones together.

PayPal also announced the beta tests of its Titanium+Commerce project with Appcelerator. The project allows merchants to design apps that will facilitate mobile payments. It will become available by 2011.

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London, Ontario, Canada (AHN) – Officials of the Thames Valley District School Board ordered a tightening of internet security over the weekend after the passwords of 27,000 high school students were exposed.

The students’ passwords, grades and schedules were made available on a page on popular social networking site Facebook. After the incident, which took place Wednesday, the board temporarily shut down the website the following day.

The computer system upgrade is expected to be finished in a few weeks. The upgrade would encrypt the passwords and webpages for students.

Valerie Nielsen, superintendent of education responsible for information technology of the board, advised students who use the same passwords in their other accounts, such as private emails or other social networking sites, to change their password information as soon as possible.

Police from London, Ontario, are probing how the hacking was done.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Sirius XM Radio announced he company tripled its subscribers in the third quarter of 2010 compared to a year ago. The satellite radio provider said it added 334,727 net subscribers in the third quarter of 2010, compared to a net subscriber gain of 102,295 in the third quarter of 2009.

The figures mark a rise in the popularity of the technology and subscribers are the most important revenue stream for the company.

In the first three quarters of this year, Sirius XM added 1,089,417 net subscribers compared to a loss of 488,126 net subscribers in the first three quarters of 2009. In the third quarter the company boasted a third quarter with a record-high 19,862,175 subscribers, an increase of more than 1.3 million subscribers from September 30, 2009.

The company, which was facing bankruptcy a year ago, is making strides and expects to end the year with approximately 20.1 million subscribers, the highest in its history, implying net additions of approximately 1.3 million in 2010.

On Tuesday, Sirius shares reached a 52-week high of $1.35. The stock has been steadily gaining since a low of 55 cents one year ago.

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