PARIS: During their second strike in a week, journalists at Le Monde streamed out of the newspapers nine-story headquarters in ghostly masks and rumpled white T-shirts painted with numbers from 1 to 129.

The numerals - equal to about a quarter of the 600 employees on the staff - denoted the number of journalists that management was seeking to lay off at the unprofitable 63-year-old institution as part of a revival plan which the top executives have likened to a doctor cutting off a limb to save a life.

“We are facing an extreme emergency,” said Laurent Greilsamer, assistant managing editor of Le Monde, who started his career at the newspaper more than 30 years ago. “To understand whats happening to Le Monde, its necessary to talk about the arrogance of newspapers. Its necessary to talk about Le Figaro, Libйration. Its necessary to talk about the daily national French press.”

With plunging advertising revenue and static circulation, Le Monde is emblematic of the general turmoil within the French newspaper industry, which is heavily subsidized by the state and has steadily lost readers to breezy, independent new competitors online and free newspapers like Metro. Even as French newspapers have transformed in a chase for readers, advertising has declined and electronic news sites - including that of Le Monde - have failed to fill the gap in income.

LЙquipe, the broadsheet sports daily that once had the largest circulation of any newspaper in France, was dethroned this year after newsstand sales fell 8 percent. Le Figaro, the new circulation leader, announced 80 job cuts to cope with weak advertising and \10 million, or $15.73 million, in losses last year. And seeking to raise cash, LHumanitй, formerly the daily of the French Communist Party, has sold its headquarters building.

“No one wants to change a system that is completely - according to our analysis - catastrophic,” said Philippe Maniиre, a former journalist and director of the Institut Montaigne, a research organization that developed a “Marshall Plan” of proposals to save the press, among them making state subsidies conditional on a three-year period of reforms to modernize printing and distribution. “We expected some interest from the public decision-makers. In fact, they are not interested. Its a habit they have.”

Historically, the French newspaper culture has been relatively weak compared to other Western countries - 181 of 1,000 people subscribe to newspapers in France compared with 371 in Germany and 274 in the United States, according to figures from the World Association of Newspapers, which is based in Paris.

In that tepid market, Le Monde has reeled from crisis to crisis. It has not made a profit in more than seven years. Daily circulation of 354,000 has fallen almost 9 percent since 2003, according to the OJD, the press observer that tracks French newspaper circulation. The company lost \15.4 million in 2007 and wracked up deficits of more than \180 million over the past seven years, the Le Monde chairman, Eric Fottorino, wrote in a column published Saturday, warning that “never have Le Mondes finances been more dire.”

Two years ago, Lagardиre, the French media and aerospace conglomerate, and Prisa, the Spanish media group that owns the newspaper El Paнs, offered some relief by each buying stakes in Le Monde worth a combined \50 million.

Both companies have signaled that they are prepared to invest more in exchange for increased influence. But for now, their money is unwelcome at Le Monde, a paper with a unique culture in which the journalists wield considerable power.

Le Monde - created in 1944 on the orders of General Charles de Gaulle to be the “conscience of France” - has a complex shareholder structure in which the staff of journalists holds a 60.4 percent stake in the company while Prisa and Lagardиre each hold stakes of less than 18 percent. The journalists stake allows the staff to weigh in on financial and management decisions, including the selection of the chief executive.

Last year, they stepped in to push out the former chairman, Jean-Marie Colombani, whose pricey drive to build Le Monde into a press group with purchases of other publications raised the companys debts.

Patrick Eveno, a historian at the Sorbonne who has written extensively about newspapers, said that the paper has embarked on a “reverse strategy” with plans to shed those publications; it recently sold its regional newspaper group led by the flagship Midi Libre.

Eveno said he considered the job cuts necessary for the newspapers survival, given the high costs of publishing a French newspaper and falling advertising revenue. “The journalists think that they need to be numerous to be make a good newspaper, but its important to think about the quality and not the quantity to make a good newspaper,” he said. “Its not a formula where the numbers always count.”

(04-20) 04:23 PDT BEIJING, China (AP) —

Automakers issued ambitious forecasts Sunday of up to 65 percent sales growth in China’s booming market this year Д a striking contrast to the gloom in the United States and elsewhere.

Sales of some individual models to newly prosperous Chinese drivers soared by up to 100 percent in the first quarter over the same period of 2007, said executives speaking at the Beijing auto show.

Toyota Motor Corp. expects to sell 700,000 vehicles in China this year, up 40 percent from 2007, executive Yuzo Ushiyama said.

“As the 40 percent (target) is much bigger than the overall market growth, this is challenging,” Ushiyama told reporters. “But we want to try (700,000 vehicles) as our goal.”

Automakers are looking to China to drive sagging sales at a time when demand in the United States is expected to decline this year while Europe and Japan are flat.

Sales in China, already the world’s No. 2 vehicle market after the United States, are forecast to grow 15 to 20 percent this year, driven by a boom that saw the economy grow by 10.6 percent in the first quarter.

Last year, Chinese drivers bought 5.5 million cars, minivans and SUVs and 3 million commercial vehicles, up from just 1.6 million vehicles sold in 1997. J.D. Power and Associates says sales should grow by 1 million vehicles annually through 2015.

“I think every year for some time in the future the same thing is going to happen,” said Philip Murtaugh, Chrysler LLC’s chief executive for Asia.

The number of Chinese families that can afford a car is expected to mushroom from 10 million in 2005 to 75 million in 2005, according to Jim Raymond, a General Motors executive.

The rivalry for a share of China’s market has turned the Beijing auto show into a major industry event that this year drew more than 100 Chinese and foreign automakers. On Sunday, as companies held presentations for reporters, they competed for attention with live bands, acrobats and dancers. The show opens to the public on Thursday.

On Sunday, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche was joined on stage by Chinese film star Zhang Ziyi as he showed off the new Mercedes-Benz SUV, the GLK, which goes on sale in China next year.

Major U.S., Japanese and European competitors are growing faster than the market as a whole, building market share at the expense of China’s dozens of tiny automakers.

Volkswagen AG’s sales in China grew 32 percent in the first quarter, executives said. They gave no full-year projection but said they hope to top 1 million vehicles in 2008, which would be a 10 percent increase over 2007’s 910,491 cars.

“In no other country does this brand sell as many cars as in China,” VW chairman Martin Winterkorn said.

Hyundai Motor Co.’s Chinese joint venture expects to see sales rise 65 percent this year to 380,000 cars, executive vice president Li Honglu told Dow Jones Newswires.

France’s PSA Peugeot-Citroen expects to sell 150,000 cars in China this year, a 30 percent increase over 2007’s 115,000 vehicles, according to Jean-Louis Chamla, vice president of international sales and marketing.

Daimler AG said Mercedes-Benz sales in China rose 42 percent in the first quarter. That included a 110 percent jump in sales of the R-class minivan.

Zetsche declined to give a 2008 forecast but said Mercedes will add 20 new dealerships in China this year, bringing the total to 120.

Still, automakers said they face intense competition and pressure to cut prices in China, where dozens of small Chinese producers measure their share of the fragmented market in fractions of a percentage point.

“I think this is just the most competitive market in the world,” said Carlos Tavares, executive vice president of Nissan.

PARIS: Moussa Bakir, the stockbroker questioned last week in connection with the investigation of the \4.82 billion trading scandal at Sociйtй Gйnйrale, has told French police investigators that he knew his friend, the former trader Jйrфme Kerviel, had a “problem” with his supervisors, reviving lingering questions about how much the banks hierarchy knew about the traders unauthorized dealings.

Bakir, according to brief excerpts from his recent statements to French financial police published Thursday in the popular French daily Le Parisien, also said that he was unaware of any fraudulent dealings by Kerviel.

“I knew that he had a problem with his bosses without knowing why,” Bakir said. The scandal led to a loss equivalent to $7.1 billion.

The assertions by Bakir, a 32-year-old broker at Newedge, Sociйtй Gйnйrales futures brokerage previously known as Fimat, follow the disclosure last week of nearly 2,000 pages of electronic message exchanges that the broker had with Kerviel between early October 2007 and Jan. 18, Kerviels last day at the bank.

The communications, in which the two friends even exchange maudlin jokes about going to prison, suggest that Kerviel confided at least some details of his actions, which Bakir said were “irresponsible” but, in his view, not “illegal in the sense of the law.”

Bakirs claim, if true, that Kerviel was in conflict with his superiors raises fresh questions about the extent of knowledge among Kerviels superiors about his unauthorized trades, and when they first became aware of the scale of his bets, which eventually exposed the bank to more than \50 billion of risk - more than the companys market value.

One person with knowledge of Sociйtй Gйnйrales trading control systems confirmed Kerviels claimed that his immediate superiors - themselves former traders with years of experience - had several clear warnings that Kerviel was trading beyond his authority.

In his statement to the police in late January, Kerviel identified two supervisors of his equity derivatives trading team - known as Delta One - whom he said were familiar with his activities going back to last April.

These colleagues, according to lawyers with knowledge of the case, were Martial Rouyиre, head of the Delta One trading desk, and his deputy, Eric Cordelle.

Rouyиre has since been questioned by the French authorities, and a lawyer for Sociйtй Gйnйrale, Jean Veil, has said that he expects Kerviels “entire hierarchy” to eventually be questioned.

Kerviel told the police that his supervisors received an e-mail message from the banks accounting services in April 2007 questioning his trades.

“The only thing that was said to me is to manage a way to straighten out,” Kerviel said.

“They dont intervene. The other warnings that they get after dont make them react more.”

The other warnings came several months later.

In November, the surveillance office at Eurex, the Frankfurt-based derivatives exchange, sent two e-mail messages to Sociйtй Gйnйrales compliance department questioning “several transactions” executed by Kerviel over the previous seven months that had raised red flags with the exchange.

According to the person familiar with Sociйtй Gйnйrales control procedures, Rouyиre and Cordelle, as Kerviels direct superiors, would have been contacted by compliance officers following the e-mail messages from Eurex.

“A question like that, coming from outside, is something unusual,” said the person, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

This person said it was “inconceivable” that Kerviels superiors were not alerted, though he conceded that they might not have realized the size of the bets the trader was making.

This person said that on at least one occasion in late 2006 or early 2007, Kerviel made a \500,000 profit on an unspecified one-way bet.

But Kerviels role on the trading desk did not allow him to speculate with the banks money, and he was reprimanded by his bosses, who said his profit would not be included in the tally used to calculate year-end bonuses.

The incident would have been sufficient grounds to fire Kerviel, this person said, and normally he would have been watched closely afterward. “They should not have let Kerviel continue to take risks,” the person said. Rouyиre was questioned last month by the French authorities.

Photos and contact details for Rouyиre and Cordelle were recently removed from a directory on Sociйtй Gйnйrales internal computer system, according to bank employees.

Melody Jeannin, a Sociйtй Gйnйrale spokeswoman, said Thursday that the bank would not comment on the status of specific personnel, saying only that “several” individuals were either being dismissed or had resigned in connection with the Kerviel affair.