Stock prices fluctuated sharply, as they often do the day after a big slide. The Dow Jones industrial average was down about 100 points

Stock prices fluctuated sharply, as they often do the day after a big slide. The Dow Jones industrial average was down about 100 points in early afternoon trading, having been down as much as nearly 280 points earlier. Traders remained anxious amid questions about what caused Thursday’s sudden drop, which sent the stocks of several companies briefly to almost zero.The market looked past a surprisingly strong report on the U.S. jobs market and focused instead on Europe’s spreading debt crisis and Thursday’s plunge. The Dow was down nearly 1,000 points Thursday afternoon — its largest one-day drop — before recovering two-thirds of its losses.

In early afternoon trading the Dow fell 96.28, or 0.9 percent, to 10,424.04. It had been down as much as 279 in earlier trading, and at a few points recouped all its losses for the day before slipping again in the early afternoon.The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 11.56, or 1 percent, to 1,116.59, while the Nasdaq composite fell 32.70, or 1.4 percent, to 2,286.94.Falling stocks outpaced gainers two-to-one on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume was a heavy 1.1 billion shares.

Technology stocks were particularly hard hit following reports that Nokia Corp. was broadening its legal fight against rival cell phone maker Apple Inc. to include the iPad, Apple’s new hit product. Apple shares fell 2.6 percent in heavy trading.Meanwhile Europe’s debt problems again weighed on stocks. Germany’s parliament approved Berlin’s share of the rescue package after a boisterous debate. However, investors still fear that Greece may not make a May 19 deadline to make a debt repayment.

Investors’ concern goes far beyond Greece, the smallest economy in the European Union. A further loss of confidence in European government debt could have an impact on other weak countries like Portugal, potentially requiring another difficult bailout process. The debt crisis has already badly undermined Europe’s shared currency, the euro.

“You’re not concerned about the kid with the cold, but how he spreads it to the rest of the class,” said Len Blum, a managing partner at investment bank Westwood Capital. Blum noted that Greece’s debt problem could be similar to the subprime mortgage meltdown in the U.S., which quickly spread to other parts of the financial system.Friday’s trading left the Dow down about 4 percent for the week and barely in the black for the year. The S&P was also down about 5 percent, while the Nasdaq was off 6 percent. The S&P and Nasdaq were also both still positive for 2010.The week’s losses would put the market about halfway through what experts call a “correction,” usually defined as a drop of between 10 percent and 20 percent following a sustained rise.

Stocks have been on a nearly uninterrupted upward path since March of last year, when indexes hit 12-year lows. Analysts have been predicting a correction for months, only to see the market bounce back after brief periods of decline.Long-term market watchers actually welcome occasional pullbacks in the market, saying that gives investors opportunities to pick up shares at bargain prices.”A corrective phase is in play,” said Rob Lutts, president and chief investment officer at Cabot Money Management.

If he’s right, this correction would be far faster than the historical average. “We used to take weeks and months to do what we now do in days,” Lutts said.In economic news, the Labor Department reported that employers added 290,000 jobs last month, far more than expected and the biggest jump in four years. However the jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent from 9.7 percent as more people looked for work.

The big improvement in the jobs report brought some clarity to the biggest question remaining for the U.S. economy: When employers would start hiring again. Despite positive signs in manufacturing and housing, job creation has been lagging far behind other sectors of the economy, a worrisome point for economists. Friday’s report may help change that perception.”It’s a good-size number and it had a lot of breadth,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo. “There isn’t a double-dip out there. The employment situation suggests that we have a sustained economic recovery in the U.S. Companies are hiring people.”

Apple fell $6.37, or 2.6 percent, to $239.88.Oil fell, and gold rose. The dollar was mostly lower against most currencies. The euro clawed back some ground against the dollar after several days of declines.European markets were broadly lower.The declines were deepest in France, where the CAC-40 index tumbled 4.6 percent. Germany’s DAX fell 3.3 percent and Britain’s FTSE 100 fell 2.6 percent. Japan’s Nikkei fell 3.1 percent.

Siemens AG says it expects demand for products from its industrial division to stabilize this year

FRANKFURT Siemens AG says it expects demand for products from its industrial division to stabilize this year after the economic downturn hit spending on big-ticket items.Munich-based Siemens said Friday that – assuming there is a steady economic recovery – new orders in the sector should reach the level of its 2009 fiscal year, which ended in September.

It expects revenue for the company’s biggest division to fall slightly.In the last fiscal year, Siemens’ industry sector had orders of euro33.3 billion ($45 billion) and revenue of nearly euro34 billion.The industrial sector includes building technologies, transport systems, and the Osram lighting unit.(AP)

G.M. to Decide Saab’s Fate Next Week

DETROIT  General Motors said it could decide next week to close its Saab Automobile unit after the Swedish company that planned to buy the brand backed out.It was the third time in less than two months that a sale of a G.M. brand has been called off, reflecting the difficulty of selling underperforming divisions in the midst of a global sales slump.G.M. said on Tuesday that its board planned to determine next week what to do with Saab. Closing the brand, as G.M. initially planned to do if it could not find a buyer, is a strong possibility, two people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the board had not made its decision.

The other options for G.M. are to seek another buyer or keep Saab, though both those steps are considered less likely.

When Penske Automotive terminated its deal to buy Saturn in September, G.M. immediately announced that the brand and its dealerships would close.Koenigsegg, which agreed to buy Saab in June, issued a statement attributing its decision to G.M.’s moving too slowly.“The time factor has always been critical for our strategy to breathe new life into the company,” Koenigsegg said. “Unfortunately, delays in closing this acquisition have resulted in risks and uncertainties that prevent us from successfully implementing the new Saab business plan.”Officials at G.M, who were caught off-guard by the deal’s collapse, denied responsibility. “We negotiated in good faith and we met all our timing obligations under the agreement,” a G.M. spokeswoman, Renee Rashid-Merem, said.

“We’re obviously very disappointed with the decision to pull out of the Saab purchase,” G.M.’s chief executive, Fritz Henderson, said in a statement.Three weeks ago, G.M. backed out of a deal to sell its European operations, Adam Opel, to a Canadian parts supplier and Russian bank.It has a tentative deal to sell Hummer to a Chinese industrial machinery manufacturer, but the Chinese government has not given its approval.Meanwhile, the Ford Motor Company spent nearly a year shopping around its Swedish brand, Volvo, before entering into exclusive talks with the Chinese carmaker Geely last month.

John Casesa, an auto analyst with the firm Casesa Shapiro Group, said the collapse of the Saab and Saturn deals was more a symptom of the state of the automobile industry than of any missteps by G.M.“Saab is a weak brand in a market where there are no buyers,” Mr. Casesa said. “Car companies are in no mood to buy anything and financial sponsors aren’t able to buy anything. Saab wouldn’t be an easy sale in a good market.”Saab, which filed for bankruptcy protection in Sweden in February, has been a perennial money-loser and is among G.M.’s smallest brands, with sales of 93,000 vehicles worldwide last year.

It is on pace to sell fewer than 10,000 vehicles in the United States this year.Closing Saab would cost G.M. considerably less than it is spending to shut down Saturn, analysts said, and failing to sell Saab is not expected to affect G.M.’s post-bankruptcy recovery.G.M. paid $600 million for half of Saab in 1990 and $125 million for the rest in 2000. Terms of the deal with Koenigsegg have not been revealed, but it was contingent on $600 million of financing from the European Investment Bank and Swedish government guarantees.Joran Hagglund, the Swedish secretary of state for industry, said on Tuesday that it was too early to know if it was the end of the line for Saab, but he said that there was no chance of the government stepping in.David Jolly contributed reporting from Paris.

motoman sda5d Hiro robot – a humanoid that can identify colours

For as long as anyone can remember, the Tokyo International Robot Exhibition has been a showcase for Japan at its wackiest: stern industrial machines lurked backstage as waltzing, noodle-making or ping-pong-playing humanoids stole the limelight.But in recessionary 2009, with Japanese industry writhing in pain, the national robot obsession has turned serious. For the first time, the show explained how the machines really are going to take over.A new mood was in the air: the downturn, said one Tsukuba University engineer, had honed Japanese robotics research and forced it to be more practical. Companies and universities that were once given unlimited budgets to push the boundaries of robotics were now being told to come up with something usable and commercial and fast.

Toyota’s recent decision to pull out of Formula 1 was a hot topic of discussion: would its next cost-cutting move be to close the robotics division or would it still throw millions into perfecting a trumpet-playing automaton?The fun stuff, accordingly, was downplayed while potential applications were pushed to the front. That gave many of the companies a chance to show that, quietly but steadily, the technology has been improving by leaps and bounds.Getting a cute humanoid robot such as Honda’s Asimo to go from walking to running took decades of effort, said one Tokyo University engineer, but the work of making a machine into a better pizza-maker than a human moved much faster.

Japanese robots are being built with open software codes, to encourage outside programmers to come up with ideas to make them even more useful. It is all working rather too well.Perhaps disturbingly for workforces around the world, there is a fast-growing list of human jobs that robots can do quicker and better.The show marked the debut of Kawada Industries’ Hiro robot – a humanoid that can identify colours, shapes and human faces and boasts some of the most dextrous mechanical paws ever created.

Asked what purpose it might serve, Hiro’s handler explained that at the Nissan factory, the production line already consists almost entirely of robots. However, occasionally they have to bring in a human. “This robot could replace that person,” the handler said.Kawada was not the only company whose work may soon inflate global unemployment numbers. Yaskawa, occupying the largest booth at the show, proudly touted its Motoman series of assembly robots. These, claimed the company, would soon be “replacing people without taking up too much space or requiring any change in the layouts of production lines”.

In the next booth, a representative of Yaskawa’s fiercest competitor, FANUC, said: “What’s amazing is their [the robots’] speed. They can achieve the speed of the most experienced workers. We don’t need to worry about the employment issue … When they’re not required to work, we just turn off the switch.”Kawada and Yaskawa’s main business until now has been producing robots for the auto industry. The priority now is to push the machines into more areas of the manufacturing and services industries. As well as spot-welding a Toyota Prius, Motoman can be retooled to perform routine blood tests faster than a team of nurses.

The service and nursing industries are the primary target. As the Japanese population continues to age, robotics companies have spotted a potential market. This year, developers touted an array of robotic guide dogs, nurses, cleaners, firemen and even robots that can fold and press towels.

A Kawada engineer speculated that human workers and robot workers may soon be working face to face; a practice currently prohibited by Japanese trade ministry regulations.“As things stand, robots and humans don’t work together and are separated by fences,” he said. “We are working on the assumption that those barriers will be gone in the future … our society has fewer children, and a lot of people want robots to do the hard work.”Robots that were once there for laughs are now being programmed to take jobs or, as the legend on one pair of steely hands had it: “Diverse performances of this dual-arm, multi-functioning robot enable the automation of human work.”