The news at a glance

Automobiles: Feds offer ‘cash for clunkers’

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood kicked off the federal “cash for clunkers” program this week, offering car dealers “a badly needed boost,” said Joseph Szczesny in Time. The $1 billion program pays car buyers up to $4,500 to trade in old gas-guzzlers for new, more fuel-­efficient models. Qualifying cars must be no more than 25 years old and get less than 18 miles to the gallon. Dealers that “have been working off their swollen supply in recent months” are counting on the program to help move their remaining 2009 inventory.

Car manufacturers are also racing to capitalize on what’s officially called the Car Allowance Rebate Systems program, or CARS, said Jean Halliday in Advertising Age. Chrysler, whose “new-vehicle sales have suffered this year in the very public glare of negative news about its trip to bankruptcy court,” has the most aggressive promotion, offering to match the federal incentives dollar for dollar. Even shoppers whose trade-ins don’t qualify for the federal program can collect up to $4,500 from the company.

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Microsoft: More choice for European customers

Microsoft has raised the white flag in its long-running war with Europe’s antitrust cops, agreeing to give owners of its Windows operating systems a choice of Web browsers, said Charles Forelle in The Wall Street Journal. The software giant said it would offer to switch European customers who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as their default browser to a competing platform. The move, which averts a heavy monetary penalty from the EU, “could give a big boost to alternative browser makers including Microsoft rival Google.”

Amazon: Bezos issues an apology

Amazon is scrambling to placate angry customers, after it remotely deleted copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from its Kindle electronic reading devices without warning, said Brad Stone in The New York Times. Though copies of the book were being sold by a third-party publisher that did not have rights to the novel, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said that Amazon’s “‘solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” But an apology might not suffice. Civil libertarians are now demanding that Amazon be barred from deleting books it sells via Kindle.

Apple: Death of Chinese worker stirs concern

Apple’s oversight of its overseas suppliers is under renewed scrutiny after the apparent suicide of a supplier’s employee, said Owen Fletcher and Dan Nystedt in PC World. Sun Danyong, 25, leaped or fell to his death in Shanghai after his employer, Foxconn, accused him of stealing a prototype of Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone. Foxconn manufactures the iPhone for Apple. “Allegations of trouble with Foxconn workers in China have bitten Apple before.” An investigation three years ago found that employees were forced to work excessive overtime.

Verizon: Profits fall as customers go wireless

Verizon Communications, the largest U.S. phone company, has reported a 7.2 percent decline in second-quarter profits, “hurt by higher costs and less demand among business customers pinched by the recession,” said Jeffrey Bartash in Marketwatch.com. Net income for the three months ended June 30 fell to $3.16 billion from $3.4 billion a year earlier. The company added more than 1 million wireless customers in the latest quarter, but the gains “failed to fully offset a continued decline in Verizon’s older, wireline division.”