Toyota plans to recall more than 300,000 Prius hybrid sedans worldwide to upgrade software to avoid brief lapses in the antilock braking system, according to widespread news reports.

The Nikkei, which doesn’t cite its sources, reports the company also will recall the Lexus HS250h and Toyota Sai hybrid sedans, which were introduced in July and December, respectively. The cars use the same braking system as the 2010 Prius. The Japanese daily estimates the recall would involve about 28,000 vehicles worldwide.

Toyota says it has notified its U.S. dealers to expect an update on the situation this week. Any Prius recall would apply only to 2010 models built before the company made the fix on its assembly lines in late January.

Toyota said late last week that when the Prius ABS engages, there may be a “pause” in braking force of less than one second as the car switches from regenerative mode to standard hydraulic braking. The problem most often occurs at low speeds on icy or bumpy roads.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which has received 124 complaints about Prius brakes, opened an initial investigation into the issue late last week. It is not clear that a recall by Toyota would close the probe.

CEO Akio Toyoda, who has been largely invisible in recent weeks as Toyota Motor Co. dealt with recalls involving more than 8 million vehicles worldwide, surfaced Friday at a hastily arranged press conference at 9 p.m. local time in Japan to express his “regret” for causing “inconvenience and concern” to the company’s customers.

The grandson of Toyota’s founder promised to personally oversee a newly formed special global quality committee. He says Toyota also will ask outside advisers to critique its vehicle engineering, manufacturing and sales practices. Toyoda admits the company is “in crisis” but insists that “Toyota cars are safe.”

Crisis management experts say Toyoda needs to do much more. They have contended that the CEO should have been acting as the company’s public face all along instead of turning over that function to lesser-known U.S. and Japanese executives. Toyoda explained Friday that he prefers to delegate announcements to the most knowledgeable executive on any matter. His only other comment in recent weeks was a brief apology when a Japanese television crew cornered him at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, late last month.

Critics say it’s a mistake to have Yoshi Inaba, president of Toyota’s North American operations, rather than Toyoda testify at two Congressional hearings this month. Toyota says Toyoda won’t appear at a hearing on Wednesday, refuting a report to the contrary in The Wall Street Journal that cites an unnamed senior company executive.

Lear Corp. posted net income of $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, compared with a year-earlier loss of $688 million.

The improvement is mainly because of a $1.5 billion one-time gain from reorganization and “fresh start” accounting adjustments made when the company emerged from Chapter 11 in November. Even so, when interest, taxes and one-time items are excluded, Lear reported core operating earnings of $116 million, compared with $22 million in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Sales increased 5% to $2.7 billion as demand grew strongly in Brazil, India, China and Europe.

For the year, Lear recorded an $815 million profit compared with a $690 million loss in 2008. Core operating earnings shrank to $107 million from $418 million. Sales plunged to $9.7 billion from $13.6 billion because of the weak dollar and a sharp decline in auto production in Europe and North America.

The company generated $11 million in free cash flow in the fourth quarter, although it burned $156 million in cash in the full year to end 2009 with $1.6 billion in cash. During its four months in bankruptcy, Lear reduced its debt from $2.7 billion to $972 million.

The company continues to increase its business outside North America, which grew to 70% of net revenue from 64% in 2008, aided by rapid growth in developing markets. Sales in China jumped 58% to $1.3 billion in 2009.

For 2010, Lear forecasts core operating earnings will increase to $250 million-$350 million and sales will grow to $10.2 billion-$10.7 billion. Both measures would still be short of 2008 levels.

American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. reported a $49 million net profit for the fourth quarter of 2009 compared with a $112 million loss in the year-earlier period, as sales last year increased 13% to $464 million.

Results in the latest quarter reflect the effect of a $49 million tax refund vs. a $70 million tax expense a year earlier. AAM also recorded one-time charges of $18 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.

For the full year, the company narrowed its net loss to $253 million from $1.2 billion in 2008. Last year’s one-time charges of $169 million were one-sixth of those the year before.

Sales fell to $1.5 billion from $2.1 billion in 2008 as SUV sales tumbled and AAM’s main customers, General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, idled plants in North America for weeks at a time. AAM estimates those shutdowns cost it nearly $400 million in lost sales. Content per vehicle inched up less than 1% to $1,403.

AAM ended 2009 with $481 million of liquidity, up $110 million from Sept. 30 but $20 million less than at the end of 2008.

The company hiked its 2010 sales outlook to $1.9 billion-$2.1 billion and predicted it will be profitable this year.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 9.7% from 10% in December, based on a survey of households that showed employment increased by 541,000 last month, the Dept. of Labor reports.

But a separate Labor Dept. survey of employers finds that the economy shed a net 20,000 jobs last month. The rate of job loss has been slowing in recent months..

The Labor Dept. says revised data shows the U.S. lost 8.4 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, 1.2 million more than previously estimated.

There were some bright spots in the January employment report. A broader measure of unemployment that includes people who have stopped looking for work dropped to 16.5% from 17.3% in December. Factory payrolls increased by 11,000 jobs month over month, the first such increase in three years. The number of people working part time fell to 8.3 million from a record 9.2 million in December. Average earnings and the length of the work week increased, and employers hired more temporary help. Economists say those steps typically precede new hiring by employers.

Nevertheless, economists say the overall jobless rate is likely to increase in coming months as more job seekers re-enter the market.

Toyota Motor Corp. is assembling a crisis team in Washington, D.C., that includes lobbyists, lawyers and public relations experts to help it deal with the political fallout from a series of recalls, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Toyota officials are scheduled to testify Wednesday at the first of two U.S. House of Representatives committee hearings about how the company and federal regulators responded to questions about the safety of Toyota vehicles.

The newspaper, which doesn’t identify its sources, says Toyota has hired Washington-based public strategy firm Glover Park Group, which is run by a group of former advisers to President Bill Clinton. Glover Park confirms it has been retained. Toyota also is reportedly relying more heavily on one of its existing PR firms, New York City-based Robinson, Lerer & Montgomery, which assisted Tyco International and Adelphi Communications in handling crisis communications.

Toyota tells the Journal only that it has “beefed up” its legal, political and PR support team. The newspaper says staff and advisers are mapping out strategies in a “war room” at Toyota’s Washington offices. The Journal says plans include rallying the support of lawmakers from states where Toyota has plants: Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Texas and West Virginia.

News reports say Toyota officials in Japan and the U.S. have skirmished about PR and political responses to the crisis. The Journal says Japanese executives previously overruled American managers who urged a more aggressive campaign of press conferences, advertising and lobbying.

The newspaper says Toyota executives in Japan suspect the uproar is a backlash against a successful Japanese company at a time when Chrysler Group LLC and General Motors Co. are still recovering from trips through bankruptcy. The U.S. government’s 60.1% stake in GM has heightened suspicions in Japan about political favoritism.

Daimler AG plans to add Wolfgang Bernhard, head of its Mercedes-Benz Vans unit, to its management board and give him responsibility for production and purchasing at its flagship Mercedes-Benz Cars unit. He will continue to oversee the van unit.

Rainer Schmueckle, COO of the car unit, has previously handled production and purchasing duties. The company says it is holding unspecified discussions with Schmueckle. Daimler’s supervisory board will vote on whether to expand the management board to add Bernhard.

News reports that cite anonymous sources say Schmueckle will leave Daimler. He is credited with restructuring the company’s car and truck units. But his decision to shift production of the C-Class midsize sedan from a plant in Sindelfingen, Germany, to a factory near Tuscaloosa, Ala., in 2014 provoked angry protests by German workers in December.

Analysts suggest Bernhard, 49, is being positioned to assume the post of Mercedes-Benz Cars CEO now held by Dieter Zetsche—and perhaps to eventually succeed the 56-year-old Zetsche at Daimler’s helm. Bernhard was COO of Chrysler, then a Daimler unit, when Zetsche was CEO there. Bernhard was slated to take charge of Mercedes-Benz Cars in 2004 before a dispute with then-CEO Juergen Schrempp and opposition from the company’s unions led to his ouster.

Bernhard was CEO of Volkswagen AG’s namesake unit from 2005-2007, where he was known as a hard-nosed cost-cutter who sometimes clashed with German labor unions. He left VW shortly after his ally, CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder, was removed in a boardroom coup. When Bernhard returned to Daimler last April as head of the van business, it was widely viewed as a stepping stone to a bigger job.

Retired employees of Visteon Corp. in the U.S. have filed an appeal in federal court of a federal bankruptcy judge’s decision last month to allow the company to terminate their healthcare and life insurance benefits, reports the Associated Press.

Visteon, which filed for Chapter 11 in May, says it cannot afford to pay the benefits, which cost about $31 million last year. The company also seeks to transfer three of its four U.S. pension plans to federal insurer Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp.

Last month the bankruptcy judge ordered the U.S. Trustee to give retirees a place on Visteon’s official creditors committee or create a new committee for them. The company is negotiating with its lenders to craft a reorganization plan. A hearing on the plan is slated for Feb. 18.