Nissan, Honda, Chrysler report US sales increases

DETROIT — Falling gas prices improved buyers' moods and boosted U.S. auto sales in October.

GM, Chrysler, Nissan and Honda all reported sales gains last month. Ford's sales fell 2 percent as it cut back on F-Series pickup sales ahead of the launch of a new F-150 later this year.

The early reports Monday were a strong sign that the auto sales boom would continue at pre-recession levels through the rest of the year. Industry analysts are expecting a 6 percent sales gain for October.

The national average price of gasoline fell 33 cents to end October at $3 a gallon and dropped to $2.98 Monday, according to AAA. That marks the first time in four years that gas has been cheaper than $3 a gallon, and it helped boost sales of SUVs and pickup trucks.

GM said its Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks both posted gains above 10 percent. The company sold nearly 50,000 Silverados alone.

But GM's overall U.S. sales rose just 0.2 percent to 226,819. Chevy Cruze compact car sales were up 51 percent, largely due to increases in fleet sales to governments and rental car companies. But other high-volume cars faltered. The midsize Chevy Malibu was off 29 percent, while Impala sales fell 9 percent.

Ford's car sales declined 11.5 percent to 188,654, but SUV sales were strong. Sales of the Escape small SUV jumped 12 percent while sales of the Explorer midsize SUV rose 6 percent. Ford's truck sales were flat compared with last October.

Chrysler said its U.S. sales rose 22 percent to 170,480 for its best October since 2001, while both Nissan and Honda posted their best October ever. Nissan sales were up 13 percent over a year ago, while Honda's rose nearly 6 percent.

Nissan said low gas prices and high consumer confidence pushed up sales across most of its model lineup. The University of Michigan said Friday that consumer confidence reached a seven-year high in October.

"We expect that these factors will continue to boost auto sales for the last two months of 2014." said Fred Diaz, Nissan's U.S. sales and marketing chief.

The Japanese automaker said its Nissan and Infiniti brands sold just over 103,000 cars and trucks last month. Nissan sales rose almost 15 percent while the Infiniti luxury brand was down 1 percent. Nissan was led by the Rogue small crossover SUV, with sales up almost 14 percent.

At Chrysler, the red-hot Jeep brand led the way with a 52 percent increase over a year ago. The company sold nearly 16,000 Cherokees as the small SUV again unseated the Grand Cherokee as the brand's top seller. Ram pickup sales continued to be strong, up 33 percent for the month.

Honda said its sales rose to 121,172. Honda brand sales were up 5.5 percent, while luxury Acura brand sales rose 8 percent on thanks to demand for the new TLX sedan.

Sales of Honda's best-seller, the CR-V small crossover SUV, jumped 30 percent to 29,257, while sales of the recently redesigned Fit subcompact were up 83 percent. But sales of the Civic small car dropped 12 percent as buyers generally sought bigger cars and crossovers.

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Microsoft band is one to watch

Oh, how the tables of technology have turned now that Microsoft appears poised to have Apple playing catch-up in the smartwatch wars.

In a surprise debut, the Redmond, Wash.,-based software giant launched its first health-and-fitness wearable, the Microsoft Band, late last week, sending Windows fans into a tizzy. The band quickly sold out online and in stores, appearing to set the stage for a successful holiday sales season.

With a combination of strategic design, pricing and timing, Microsoft has a clever plan to grab a chunk of the would-be Apple Watch crowd. Apple's highly anticipated wearable won't launch until after the holidays, a rare exercise in poor timing by the Cupertino, Calif., trendsetters that Redmond has successfully exploited with the early launch.

The Microsoft Band is part of a large, ambitious vision for Microsoft to dominate the digital health landscape. Part of the new Microsoft Health Platform, the device features a GPS, a UV monitor to keep track of potential sun exposure, sleep sensors that detect the quality of your nightly rest and integration with popular fitness apps such as RunKeeper.

The emphasis on health tracking comes in addition to text message, email and other alerts that you'd expect from a smartphone-compatible band.

Priced at a reasonable $199, not only is the Microsoft Band $150 cheaper than the upcoming Apple Watch (which starts at $350 and up), it is also a cross-platform device: it works with Android, iPhones and of course Windows Phone, meaning that non-Windows Phone users are likely to get a taste of the software with this band. While the Apple Watch won't include a GPS or a UV monitor, it does offer the increasingly popular Apple Pay digital wallet platform, some cool new ways to communicate (it reportedly "taps" you to get your attention) and lots of sports and health-tracking functionality.

The Microsoft Band isn't a watch. That's key in understanding how it contrasts with Apple's wearable. With a variety of band options and styles, Apple's fitness-and-health device is meant to replace the watch you already wear (even though so few of us do), and also to be worn all the time. It doesn't look weird to wear the Microsoft Band at the same time as a watch, but you're not going to to be able to wear it to a formal event.

I'll have a more detailed review after wearing my new Microsoft Band this week, but at first blush it looks like Apple has some competition.

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Court won't hear dispute over Sherlock Holmes

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court won't take up a copyright dispute over the right to depict Sherlock Holmes in a new anthology of stories.

The justices on Monday declined to hear an appeal from heirs of legendary writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who say anyone portraying characters from the popular detective series must seek permission or pay a licensing fee.

A U.S. district court ruled that copyrights had expired on all Sherlock novels and stories published before 1923, but not on the final 10 stories published after that. The lower court said author Leslie Klinger could use characters from pre-1923 works and a federal appeals court agreed.

The Doyle estate argued that the characters continued to develop in later works so they should remain off-limits until remaining copyrights run out in 2022.

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US approved Ferguson no-fly area to keep press out

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government allowed police in Ferguson, Missouri, to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace for nearly two weeks in August for safety reasons, but audio recordings show that local authorities instead wanted to keep news helicopters away during violent street protests.

On Aug. 12, amid demonstrations following the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, Federal Aviation Administration managers struggled to redefine an earlier flight ban so police helicopters and commercial flights at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport could fly through the area — but not others.

"They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out," said one FAA manager about the St. Louis County Police Department in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. "But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on."

At another point, a manager at the FAA's Kansas City center said police "did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this TFR (temporary flight restriction) all day long. They didn't want media in there."

The conversations contradict claims by the St. Louis County police, which said the restrictions had nothing to do with limiting the press and instead were imposed because of gunshots fired at a police helicopter.

But county police officials told the AP recently there was no damage to their helicopter, and they were unable to provide a report on the shooting. On the tapes, an FAA manager described reports of the helicopter shooting as unconfirmed "rumors."

The AP obtained the recordings under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. They raise serious questions about whether police were trying to suppress aerial images of the demonstrations and the police response by violating the constitutional rights of journalists with tacit assistance by federal officials.

Such images would have offered an unvarnished view of one of the most serious episodes of civil violence in recent memory. The recordings also offer a rare look into government operations, especially as local public-records requests to Ferguson officials by the AP and other news organizations were denied or met with high processing fees.

"Any evidence that a no-fly zone was put in place as a pretext to exclude the media from covering events in Ferguson is extraordinarily troubling and a blatant violation of the press's First Amendment rights," said Lee Rowland, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney specializing in First Amendment issues.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement Sunday his agency will always err on the side of safety. "FAA cannot and will never exclusively ban media from covering an event of national significance, and media was never banned from covering the ongoing events in Ferguson in this case."

Huerta also said that, to the best of the FAA's knowledge, "no media outlets objected to any of the restrictions" during the time they were in effect.

An FAA manager, in the recordings, lamented that procedures for defining a no-fly area didn't have an option that would accommodate only excluding news helicopters. "There is really ... no option for a TFR that says, you know, 'OK, everybody but the media is OK,'" he said, later working out wording they felt would keep news helicopters out of the controlled zone but not impede other air traffic.

The less restrictive change by the FAA practically served the authorities' intended goal, an official said: "A lot of the time the (lesser restriction) just keeps the press out, anyways. They don't understand the difference."

The Kansas City FAA manager then asked a St. Louis County police official if the restrictions could be lessened so nearby commercial flights wouldn't be affected. The new order allows "aircraft on final (approach) there at St. Louis. It will still keep news people out. ... The only way people will get in there is if they give them permission in there anyway so they, with the (lesser restriction), it still keeps all of them out."

"Yeah," replied the police official. "I have no problem with that whatsoever."

KMOV-TV News Director Brian Thouvenot told the AP his station was prepared at first to legally challenge the flight restrictions, but was later advised that its pilot could fly over the area as long as the helicopter stayed above 3,000 feet. That kept the helicopter and its mounted camera outside the restricted zone, although filming from such a distance, he said, was "less than ideal."

None of the St. Louis stations was advised that media helicopters could enter the airspace even under the lesser restrictions, which under federal rules should not have applied to aircraft "carrying properly accredited news representatives." The FAA's no-fly notice indicated the area was closed to all aircraft except police and planes coming to and from the airport.

"Only relief aircraft operations under direction of St. Louis County Police Department are authorized in the airspace," it said. "Aircraft landing and departing St. Louis Lambert Airport are exempt."

The same day that notice was issued, a county police spokesman publicly denied the no-fly zone was to prevent news helicopters from covering the events. "We understand that that's the perception that's out there, but it truly is for the safety of pilots," Sgt. Brian Schellman told NBC News.

Ferguson police were widely criticized for their response following the death of Brown, who was shot by a city police officer, Darren Wilson, on Aug. 9. Later, under county police command, several reporters were arrested, a TV news crew was tear-gassed and some demonstrators were told they weren't allowed to film officers. In early October, a federal judge said the police violated demonstrators' and journalists' rights by forcing them to stay in constant motion.

"Here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying and arresting reporters who are just doing their jobs," President Barack Obama said Aug. 14, two days after police confided to federal officials the flight ban was secretly intended to keep media helicopters out of the area. "The local authorities, including police, have a responsibility to be transparent and open."

The restricted flight zone initially encompassed airspace in a 3.4-mile radius around Ferguson and up to 5,000 feet in altitude, but police agreed to reduce it to 3,000 feet after the FAA's command center in Warrenton, Virginia, complained to managers in Kansas City that it was impeding traffic into St. Louis.

The flight restrictions remained in place until Aug. 22, FAA records show. A police captain wanted it extended when officials were set to identify Wilson by name as the officer who shot Brown and because Brown's funeral would "bring out the emotions," the recordings show.

"We just don't know what to expect," he told the FAA. "We're monitoring that. So, last night we shot a lot of tear gas, we had a lot of shots fired into the air again. It did quiet down after midnight, but with that ... we don't know when that's going to erupt."

One FAA official at the agency's command center asked the Kansas City manager in charge whether the restrictions were really about safety. "So are (the police) protecting aircraft from small-arms fire or something?" he asked. "Or do they think they're just going to keep the press out of there, which they can't do."

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On Twitter, follow Jack Gillum at https://twitter.com/jackgillum and Joan Lowy at https://twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy

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Sony Pictures Animation to fund Youtube animated comedy shorts, teaming with toon guru Fred Seibert

Sony Pictures Animation and Fred Seibert's Frederator Networks have launched a contest to find new toon talent, with the winner to be granted a deal for a series that will run on Frederator's Cartoon Hangover channel on YouTube.

Under the companies' new Go! Cartoons incubator project, Sony Pictures Animation will fund 12 five-minute animated shorts, one premiering every month on Cartoon Hangover's YouTube channel starting in the fall of 2015. One of those shorts will then be picked to become a limited series for the channel, which has more than 1.3 million subscribers.

"This is a great opportunity for Sony Pictures Animation to find new talent that might not emerge from more traditional platforms," said Bob Osher, president of Sony Pictures Digital Prods.

Osher called Fred Seibert "a force of nature in animation," noting that Seibert has developed multiple series from similar incubator projects including "The Powerpuff Girls," "The Fairly OddParents" and "Adventure Time." In addition, Genndy Tartakovsky, director of Sony's "Hotel Transylvania," was also discovered through one of Seibert's incubator initiatives, when Tartakovsky pitched the idea for series "Dexter's Laboratory."

With Go! Cartoons, Sony Pictures Animation and Frederator said they're looking for character-driven comedy toons between four and five minutes, appealing primarily to a family audience. Entries should be stand-alone shorts, not a series or pilot. Go! Cartoons is a "great way to shake the trees for new talent thanks to the involvement of a major animation studio like Sony Pictures Animation -- and we'll continue to fund and produce content our own unique way," Seibert said.

Seibert, who has a film-development deal with Sony Pictures Animation, is an industry vet who helped launch MTV in 1981 (creating the network's mutating logo) and later ran Hanna-Barbera. Frederator Networks, Seibert's media division, launched Cartoon Hangover in October 2012 and the channel's "Bravest Warriors" series became one of the most-watched scripted series out of the YouTube funded-channels project.

Cartoon Hangover's most recent incubator lab, Too Cool! Cartoons, resulted in new series including "Bee & PuppyCat" from Natasha Allegri, which has more than 4 million views. Frederator Studios launched a Kickstarter campaign for the series and 18,209 fans contributed $872,000 to bankroll the animated series.

Sony Pictures Animation's movies franchises include "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" and "The Smurfs." The studio will be releasing "Hotel Transylvania 2" next fall, once again directed by Tartakovsky, and a fully animated, yet-untitled Smurfs feature in August 2016.

© 2014 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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High court won't hear crisis pregnancy center case

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is leaving in place a portion of a New York City law aimed at regulating crisis pregnancy centers that are run by anti-abortion organizations.

The court rejected a free-speech appeal Monday in which the centers argued that the law's requirement that they disclose whether a licensed medical provider works at the facilities is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

City officials said the 2011 law protects consumers and demands truth in advertising.

Courts have blocked other parts of the law, including a requirement that centers disclose whether they provide referrals for abortion, emergency contraception or prenatal care.

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Council to consider hiking relocation fees

The City Council will debate whether to further protect displaced renters whose units are being converted to high-priced condominiums or cooperatives by doubling the relocation fees that property owners are required to pay them.

Fees would increase from $5,000 to $10,000 for elderly, disabled and low-income tenants, and from $3,000 to $6,000 for others, to bring them in line with increased housing costs since their adoption in 2004, according to City Councilor Josh Zakim.

"It's really to protect long-term renters when a building is converted from rentals, which is happening more and more," Zakim said. "They haven't been raised in 10 years, and I think it's pretty clear that not only have housing costs in Boston risen dramatically in those last 10 years, but they've exceeded the rate of inflation."

One large Boston residential property owner, City Realty Group, says the proposed increases go too far. The company owns more than 600 residential units.

"The relocation fees have remained the same for a long time, and we feel that a moderate increase would be appropriate," said Matt Whitermore of City Realty. "Doubling the relocation fees does seem a bit excessive."

Zakim said the fees are not a "significant" cost for landlords, and the city wants to create housing opportunities for all residents — including those who have lived in units for years and can't pay $500,000 or more for a condo.

"The reason why the state Legislature authorized cities and towns to put (the fees) in is there is a crisis of affordable housing — that's clear," Zakim said. "We saw that from the mayor's release of his housing task force report and just what we hear from constituents and advocates every day."

Still, he said, the fees are only a small solution.

"Solving the housing crisis in Boston is going to take a lot more than this," Zakim said."

The ordinance, which exceeds state regulations, applies to properties with four or more units, and outlines the required notice to tenants. Adopted in 1999, it requires reauthorization by the Council every five years.

"The current legislation expires on Dec. 31, so if it's not reauthorized by then, these tenant protections will go away," Zakim said.

The council's Committee on Government Operations will hold a hearing on the issue on Thursday.

"There continues to be a need for this, because we continue to see clients that are faced with displacement — both with new situations that happen as well as people who were supposed to be protected by the law but had owners who were trying to get around the law," said Mac 
McCreight, a senior attorney in the housing unit at Greater Boston Legal Services, which worked with city councilors on the proposed revisions.

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Apple iPad Air 2 broadens offerings

Apple iPad Air 2 ($499 & up, Apple Store)

The thinnest iPad yet is out, and it comes in gold, silver and space gray metal tones.

With a new processor, the 9.4-inch iPad with 2,048-by-1,536 pixel resolution features improved cameras and a Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

The good: Apple continues to refine the design and performance of the iPad, which is still the gold standard for tablets.

The bad: Battery life and sound quality could be better for the price.

The bottom line: Apple now has a full slate of its most groundbreaking device, starting with the iPad Mini on the low end at $249 and ending with this new offering on the high end.

There's something for everyone.

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Skip check-in; latest hotel room key is your phone

NEW YORK — Hotels don't want guests to have to linger at the front desk — or even stop by at all.

New programs are helping speed up the check-in process for busy travelers, or in at least one case, letting them go straight to their rooms by using their smartphone to unlock doors.

The innovations are still being tweaked as hotels scramble to catch up to airlines. Fliers today use their phones to check in, select seats and as a boarding pass. Hotels envision a similar relationship, with guests ultimately ordering poolside drinks via an app.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts on Monday became the first chain to let guests unlock doors with their phones. The feature is available at only 10 Aloft, Element and W hotels but will expand to 140 more properties in those brands by the middle of next year.

Hilton Worldwide is the only other hotel chain to publicly acknowledge plans for mobile room keys — which it plans to roll out at the end of 2015 at some U.S. properties. Hilton won't say how many hotels will be included, except that the service will be available at four of its brands, Hilton, Waldorf Astoria, Conrad and Canopy.

"Guests want this because it makes their lives simpler," says Mark Vondrasek, who oversees the loyalty program and digital initiatives for Starwood. "The ability to go right to your room, gives them back time."

Other hotel companies are finding other ways to streamline the arrival process.

Marriott International launched the ability to check in through its app at 330 North American hotels last year. By the end of this year, the program will be live at all 4,000 hotels worldwide. When a room becomes available, a message is sent to the guest's phone. Traditional room keys are pre-programmed and waiting at the front desk. A special express line allows guests to bypass crowds, flash their IDs and get keys.

At Hilton, all 4,000 properties worldwide will have a similar check-in by the end of the year. The one added feature: Guests can use maps on the app to select a specific room.

InterContinental Hotels Group is testing express check-in at 60 hotels.

The services are geared toward road warriors who don't want to slow down, even for a second. Guests who like personal interaction can still opt for a more leisurely check-in, and hotel companies say the move isn't about cutting jobs.

"If you're at the end of a long day, you might want a little less of a chatty experience. But if you're showing up at a new resort, you may want to know what the pool hours are," says Brett Cowell, vice president of information technology for Hyatt, which is testing permanent keys for frequent guests at six hotels.

The push isn't just about avoiding frustrating check-in lines. Hotels are trying to get more travelers comfortable using their mobile apps to interact. In some cases, that means using an iPad to request a wakeup call. But ultimately hotels would like to see people purchasing suite upgrades, spa treatments and room service though their phones and tablets — and at some point wearable devices like smartwatches.

Marriott guests made $1.25 billion in bookings last year through its mobile app, according to George Corbin, senior vice president of digital for the company.

Switching to smartphone room keys won't be easy. Starwood's app communicates using a Bluetooth data connection. Each hotel room needs to have a new lock that can communicate with phones.

The top 15 hotel companies have more than 42,000 properties worldwide with a combined 5.2 million rooms, according to travel research firms STR and STR Global. Many hotels have made updates over the past few years, but they remain the minority.

Then there is the issue of security. If there is knock on the door late at night and a guest goes to the peephole to see who is there, nobody wants the phone in their pocket to accidently unlock the door. That's why Starwood requires the phone to actually touch a pad on the outside of the door to open it.

Finally, only one phone can be linked to a room at a time. So if two people are staying in the room, they still need to get a traditional key for the second traveler.

Marriott says it is holding off on smartphone keys until all the potential bugs can be resolved.

"If there was ever a moment that matters," Corbin says, "it's the moment when you go up to your door and the key doesn't work."

But for the frequent business traveler, this might just be the time-saver they are looking for.

Bruce Craven spends about 100 nights a year on the road, traveling between his California home and New York where he does executive training programs and teaches at Columbia Business School. He's been testing Starwood's smartphone room key since March.

"If you're traveling all the time, little things can take on a symbolic importance," Craven says. "This is one less thing that I need to think about."

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Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott.

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Red Lobster goes back into its shell

NEW YORK — It turns out people go to Red Lobster for the seafood.

The struggling chain on Monday plans to announce another revamped menu that removes dishes including Spicy Tortilla Soup and a Wood-Grilled Pork Chop, while tacking on more dishes featuring lobster. The non-seafood dishes had been added by the chain's previous owner, Darden Restaurants Inc., in hopes of attracting people who don't like seafood as sales declined.

But the new management thinks that was a mistake.

"At the end of the day, we believe that seafood is really why people come to Red Lobster," said Salli Setta, Red Lobster's president, in a phone interview.

The revamped menu is 85 percent seafood, up from 75 percent. Red Lobster says the menu will be easier to navigate and features more photos of the food. Four of the five new dishes include lobster, and it's increasing the amount of shrimp in the popular "Ultimate Feast" platter by 50 percent. The price of the dish, which also includes lobster and crab, will go up by a dollar to $26.99.

The reversal comes after Red Lobster was sold off to investment firm Golden Gate Capital by Darden this summer. Darden, which is based in Orlando, Florida, and owns Olive Garden, had failed to turn around the chain's declining sales and blamed a variety of factors such as the growing availability of shrimp at other restaurants and price-sensitive customers.

For its last fiscal year, Darden had said Red Lobster's sales declined 6 percent at established locations, following a 2.2 percent decline the previous year. Red Lobster, which is still operating out of Darden's offices until it moves into its new home, no longer has to disclose its sales figures because it is privately held.

Whether its new menu will win back customers remains to be seen, with people increasingly heading to chains like Chipotle where they feel they can get high-quality food without paying as much.

Other changes had already been in the works.

CEO Kim Lopdrup, who is back at Red Lobster after serving as its president from 2004 to 2011, has said steep discounting like "30 shrimp for $11.99" was a mistake. The chain this summer also started changing the way it plates its dishes, with fish piled over rice instead of having foods spread out on a dish. Red Lobster says that presentation is more visually appealing, while also helping retain the food's heat.

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Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi

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