This electric vehicle occupies one-third the length of a standard European parking space, and both passenger and driver enter through a fold-out windscreen. Its wheels can turn 90 degrees, which is very useful when parking. Hiriko also features an innovative navigation systems and 120 km autonomy. Denokinn, the Basque investment group backing the venture, wants to price the new car at €12,500 ($16,400).

Sales of city cars, known in the industry as “A-segment cars,” plateaued last year: their global sales have fallen from 6.2m units in 2010 to about 5.9m in 2011, according to the research outfit IHS Global Insight. It expects city-car sales to rebound slightly in 2012, to around 6.1m. The Basque start-up is going to face a big challenge, similar to the one facing its more experienced rivals, Daimler and Renault.

The German-born executive took over from Lazaridis and Balsillie, two longstanding co-CEOs who turned the BlackBerry maker into a global company and a household name. They will remain on the board, and some analysts have expressed concerns that they would keep a prominent role in the future strategy of the company. Mr. Heins, however, made it clear that he would be the one making the decisions.

In order not to lose ground, RIM may have two main ways forward: (1) giving a stimulus to sales with the tablet PlayBook and the release of BlackBerry 10 OS or (2) a gradual shrinking of the company’s market share, with the company targeting a small number of corporate and governmental customers who want proprietary messaging and security features.

The shift would let Twitter limit censorship just in one country and not for its entire audience. The decision received criticism from some users because the service has been used as an agent of social change around the world, including places like the Middle East.

Twitter, like other major Internet companies such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo knows how to deal with a complex web of laws and state-imposed restrictions, which have the power to hush dissident voices and sway public opinion.

Some free-speech advocates defended Twitter, saying it was handing them tools to fight censorship. Zeynep Tufekci, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said she found herself in the unusual position of praising, not condemning, *Twitter*’s policies.

On the contrary, other groups accused Twitter of taking censors’ sides and demanded a change to this new policy. “Twitter is depriving cyber dissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organisation,” Reporters Without Borders, a journalist organisation, wrote in a letter to Dorsey, *Twitter*’s executive chairman.