BERLIN (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics' first tablet computer, the Galaxy Tab, will go on sale in two weeks, it said on Thursday, turning up the heat on Apple Inc's iPad. Global handset vendors and PC makers including Nokia, LG Electronics and Hewlett-Packard Co are moving into the new category of ...

T.I. whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., 29, was arrested with his wife on Sunset Boulevard Wednesday night after police smelled marijuana coming from a car in which the Grammy award-winning rapper was a passenger. He was booked for possession of a controlled substance and was released after ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies are cutting healthcare costs further amid a continuing sour economy, scaling back benefits and shifting a greater share of the expense to employees. The findings, published on Thursday, come as the congressional campaign heats up over the nation's stagnant economic ...

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund will give Pakistan $450 million in emergency flood aid, providing some relief for a government overwhelmed by the disaster and facing renewed militant violence. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in Washington on Thursday ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. companies are cutting healthcare costs further amid a continuing sour economy, scaling back benefits and shifting a greater share of the expense to employees. The findings, published on Thursday, come as the U.S. congressional campaign heats up over the nation's ...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Critics hoping for more from Apple Inc's Web-to-TV plans -- a device, say, that would revolutionize living room entertainment the way the iPad changed tablet computing -- may just need to wait a bit longer. Shortly after Apple unveiled its latest Apple TV product on ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - AOL Inc said on Thursday it has renewed a search agreement with Google Inc, further cementing a decade-long partnership as AOL tries to turn around its business. The new five-year deal, effective immediately, includes a revenue share on a per-search basis. Additional financial ...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Striking South African state workers staged a protest march on Thursday after rejecting a revised wage offer aimed at ending their three-week strike that has the government and the labor movement at loggerheads. The majority of unions, most of which are in the largest ...

The Federal Communications Commission has been prodding phone, cable and Internet companies for months to find consensus on the thorny issue of net neutrality -- a debate over whether high-speed Internet providers should be allowed to give preferential treatment to content providers who pay for ...

BURBANK, California (Reuters) - A booming market of tweens is changing the landscape of online games. This audience of boys and girls aged 8 to 11 has game publishers launching new games like Disney Online's "World of Cars Online" and Sony Online Entertainment's "Star Wars: Clone ...

Baidu CFO Jennifer Li, speaking at a company event, said broader future investment priorities for the company would include mobile Internet and ecommerce initiatives in the business-to-consumer space. Baidu began expanding its investments in mobile Internet last year, including its introduction of ...

"Risk management departments are springing up in companies across the globe. They categorize and analyze risk to the company before it happens and in most cases, they create systems and processes to prevent risks from occurring. But the reality is that all hazards can't be predicted or ...

"While monthly filings are volatile, consumer bankruptcies are still the highest they have been since Congress overhauled the bankruptcy law in 2005," ABI Executive Director Samuel Gerdano said in the report. A total of 127,028 consumer bankruptcies were filed in August, according to the ...

"Nokia is discontinuing the Ovi Files service, effective October 1, 2010," the company said, asking users to uninstall the Ovi Files Connector from their computers. Nokia started to build its own Internet services offering in 2007, but has ramped down several unsuccessful products ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Automaker General Motors Co plans to begin courting investors for its initial public offering immediately after the November 2 U.S. midterm congressional elections, two sources familiar with the plans said on Wednesday. GM's roadshow is set to begin on November 3 and will last ...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Aggressively lowering blood pressure did little to prevent kidney damage in blacks, unless protein in their urine showed evidence of damage in the first place, researchers reported on Wednesday. Doctors had hoped to show that dropping blood pressures to 130/80 or below would ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Departing White House economist Christina Romer said on Wednesday the United States needed to find the political will for more economic stimulus, even if it pushed up the fiscal deficit in the short run. "While we would all love to find the inexpensive magic bullet to ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The future of an 80-acre New York apartment complex will be at stake on Thursday as a judge considers whether a venture led by a prominent hedge fund investor may conduct a foreclosure auction. William Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management LP and Boston-based Winthrop ...

NEW DELHI/TORONTO (Reuters) - India added Google and Skype to its electronic security crackdown on Wednesday and began accessing some of the traffic carried on its initial target, Research In Motion's BlackBerry. In the latest salvo of a campaign driven by fear that unmonitored email puts Indian ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Women with mutations in the well-known BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes who have their breasts and ovaries removed are much more likely to survive than women who do not get preventive surgery, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. The study shows the benefits of genetic tests that give women ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Women with mutations in the well-known BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes who have their breasts and ovaries removed are much more likely to survive than women who do not get preventive surgery, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. The study shows the benefits of genetic tests that give women ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - An altered version of the cancer drug Gleevec could form the basis of a new class of drugs that block the development of brain-damaging plaques in Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. They said they hoped drugmakers could tinker with the formula for Gleevec, ...

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - At least two bombs exploded at a Shi'ite procession in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday, killing up to eight people and wounding 100, piling pressure on a government already overwhelmed by floods. Witnesses said a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of ...

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Already deprived of sunlight, fresh air and their loved ones for 26 days, NASA doctors say 33 miners trapped deep in a Chilean mine must continue to forego two other pleasures: alcohol and cigarettes. Facing a wait of around two to four months as rescuers race to drill a ...

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The chattering line of Brazilians, many straining under the weight of their duty-free bags, stretched back hundreds of feet after a recent Monday night flight from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro. Backed by a booming economy, record job creation and a strong currency, ...

Facebook Credits will be available in Target stores beginning September 5 in increments of $15, $25 and $50. Social games that can be played for free are some of the most popular activities on Facebook, which has about 500 million members worldwide. Games such as Zynga's FarmVille invite users to ...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Actor Paul Hogan, star of the "Crocodile Dundee" movies, has vowed to continue fighting the Australian tax office which has barred him from leaving Australia until he pays a massive bill, saying he's victim of a witch hunt. Hogan, 70, was served with a departure ...

The CEOs of the 50 U.S. companies that laid off the most workers between November 2008 and April 2010 were paid $12 million on average in 2009, or 42 percent more than the average across the Standard & Poor's 500, according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think ...

Sprint's board is debating whether to let T-Mobile USA invest in Clearwire, although T-Mobile USA hasn't put a proposal on the table, the paper reported. Clearwire has said it could announce new funding by the end of the fourth quarter and it is in talks with new and existing investors.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg says a lawsuit by a man who claims to own a huge chunk of the popular social networking website is seeking to uncover unnecessary details about his private life to harass him. Zuckerberg is fighting a civil lawsuit filed by Paul ...

The Office of Congressional Ethics, a nonpartisan entity set up to review allegations of misconduct, recommended the official committee scrutiny after its own preliminary review found substantial reason to believe a violation had occurred. Officials with the Office of Congressional Ethics declined ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration asked a federal judge on Tuesday to lift an injunction halting human embryonic stem cell research, saying it would irreparably harm research and cost more than 1,300 jobs. The Justice Department also appealed against the injunction by Judge Royce ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Pat Toomey has opened a 10-point lead over Democrat Joe Sestak among likely voters in a Senate race in Pennsylvania dominated by economic worries, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday. Toomey, a conservative former congressman, leads Sestak, a ...

From early September, Yahoo Japan's unit GyaO Corp will add dramas from public broadcaster NHK and cartoons and other programs from TV Tokyo Corp to its pay-for-view streaming service, charging several hundred yen per show, the paper said. The agreement with NHK and TV Tokyo means that GyaO will ...

"Obamacare is an intrusion by the federal government into personal health care matters and it's an explosion of federal spending that does nothing to make healthcare more affordable," the Republican governor said in a statement. Since Obama signed the landmark reforms into law in March ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Temporarily extending tax cuts for the rich opens the door to permanent tax cuts and that is something the United States cannot afford, an economic advisor to President Barack Obama said on Tuesday. Jason Furman, deputy assistant to the president for economic policy, said a ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he hoped to pick up Republican votes for a pared-down energy bill after the midterm congressional elections. "Maybe after the elections we can get some more Republicans to help us on these issues," Reid, a Democrat, told ...

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germans are not known to be a nation of spendthrifts but when it comes to consumer electronics they throw caution to the wind -- much to the delight of exhibitors at Berlin's IFA trade fair starting this week. "Germans are currently in a downright buying frenzy," ...

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - Britain said on Tuesday it would discuss closer military cooperation with France in talks this week, but played down a report that the two countries would share aircraft carriers to save costs. Britain is building two new carriers at a cost of 5.2 billion pounds ($8.0 ...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's established telecom carriers must allow smaller Internet providers access to their high-speed fiber networks at the same speed they offer to their own customers, the telecom and broadcast regulator ruled on Monday, but it said they can charge a 10 percent mark-up for ...

The new feature called "Priority Inbox" will help users focus on messages that matter without having to set up complex rules, Google said in its official blog. The Priority Inbox application splits the inbox into three sections: 'Important and unread', 'Starred' and 'Everything Else'.

TOKYO (Reuters Life!) - Chicken sexers in Japan once enjoyed well-paid careers with overseas travel and job security but industry changes mean their expertise is not needed so widely and less people are seeking to join the profession. Chicken sexing -- or determining the sex of chickens -- is ...

The Boeing 737 aircraft, owned by American Airlines -- a unit of AMR Corp -- careened off the runway and broke into three parts on December 22 after landing in rainy weather at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston. Quoting people familiar with the details, the Journal said National ...

Head & Shoulders said on Monday it had taken a $1 million Lloyd's of London policy on the locks of Pittsburgh Steelers' Polamalu, the Super Bowl-winning safety. Polamalu, 29, who was born in the United States but is of Samoan descent, says he has not cut his hair since 2000. He has been a ...

FRANKFURT/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. chipmaker Intel Corp unveiled a deal on Monday to buy German chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG's wireless unit for $1.4 billion, as it claws its way into the booming smartphone market and cuts its reliance on personal computers. The deal is the second ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire investor Ron Burkle's investment firm said it has no intention of taking control of Barnes & Noble as it fired a new shot in its proxy battle against the top U.S. bookstore chain. Burkle, who owns 18.8 percent of Barnes & Noble, launched a proxy battle ...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's government increased its wage raise offer to unions representing 1.3 million striking state workers, a source said on Monday, trying to end a strike that threatens Africa's largest economy. The offer came in talks arranged after President Jacob Zuma's ...

ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's invitation to hundreds of young women to convert to Islam overshadowed a two-day visit to Italy intended to cement the growing ties between Tripoli and Rome. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hailed Italy's relationship with Libya at an evening ...

The National Association for Business Economics said on Monday that 60 percent of 242 members surveyed from July 30-Aug 10 said monetary policy was "appropriate" for the conditions the economy currently faces. The Fed kept benchmark overnight interest rates steady in a zero to 0.25 ...

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a 10-member Congressionally appointed panel, said on Monday it will hear on Wednesday and Thursday from a slate of regulators and high-profile figures in the crisis, including former Lehman Brothers Chief Executive Dick Fuld and ex-Wachovia CEO Robert ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Diversified U.S. manufacturer 3M Co said it would buy Cogent Inc for $943 million, paying a nearly 18 percent premium for the maker of identification systems used to screen travelers at border crossings. 3M said it would pay $10.50 a share. Cogent shares jumped 24.4 percent to ...

"My economic team is hard at work in identifying additional measures that could make a difference in both promoting growth and hiring in the short term and increasing our economy's competitiveness in the long term," he said in a statement at the White House.

ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi met Muammar Gaddafi Monday looking to reinforce business ties, after the Libyan leader aroused a media storm by suggesting to a group of young women they convert to Islam. Italian newspapers and opposition politicians responded angrily ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Consumer spending rose at the strongest pace in four months in July, supported by a small gain in incomes that offered hope consumers will be able to keep contributing to a modest economic recovery. Analysts said the 0.4 percent increase in spending reported by the Commerce ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Elizabeth Warren is folksy and plain-spoken and favors cardigans over Washington power suits. Many on Wall Street view her as their worst nightmare but she is a hero to liberal activists and consumer groups. This autumn, Warren, a contender to become the top U.S. consumer ...

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Earl, now the second major hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic season, was packing top sustained winds of 120 miles per hour. Any hurricane with sustained winds between 111 and 130 mph is considered major and gets a Category 3 rating on the Saffir-Simpson scale ...

The Commerce Department said on Monday spending increased 0.4 percent, the largest gain since March, after being unchanged in June. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected consumer spending to rise 0.3 percent. "On the real wage side, you had a good bump that's a sign that income is ...

Even now, 65 years after the end of World War Two, leftover bombs are often found in Budapest during construction work. (Reporting by Krisztina Than, editing by Tim Pearce)

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The South African government and unions representing 1.3 million striking state workers plan talks Monday night following President Jacob Zuma's order to ministers to negotiate immediately to end the walkout. Union officials hoped Zuma's call and the negotiations will lead ...

ROME (Reuters) - Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's attempt to convert dozens of young women to Islam during a visit to Italy led to an angry reaction from Italian media on Monday. Several commentators accused Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of sacrificing principles and dignity for the sake of ...

COPIAPO, Chile (Reuters) - Chile was looking at ways on Saturday to speed up the rescue of 33 miners trapped deep underground for 23 days who officials have said might have to wait three to four months to see the light of day. Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said rescuers were considering other ...

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - Equal pay for men and women remains a pipe dream in Australia with a report on Monday showing the pay gap between the sexes is wider now than 30 years ago. The report by KPMG, commissioned by the non-profit group Diversity Council Australia, found Australian women earn ...

"The economy is still growing, but it's not growing as fast as it needs to," Obama said in an interview with NBC News. (Reporting by Caren Bohan; editing by Chris Wilson)

Company executives told the newspaper that both partners were committed to completing a turnaround before considering their options after their joint venture ends in 2013. "We are always willing to talk to those who want to bring ideas and capital to the industry," Nokia's Chief ...

Palo Alto-based Angstro has developed applications to find photos on Facebook, combine Caller ID with LinkedIn profiles and other tools for Twitter, according to the company's website. "The struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning," Angstro co-founder ...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A powerful South African labor leader threatened at the weekend to withdraw support for President Jacob Zuma's African National Congress, ending a long- standing alliance strained by a nearly three-week-old strike. Adding to the pressure on the government, a union ...

Earl, located 365 miles east of the Northern Leeward Islands, had top sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kmh) as it pushed across the mid-Atlantic behind Danielle. Danielle, which has posed no threat to land or the U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil patch, is the first major hurricane of the 2010 season.

Hurricane warnings and watches were issued across several Caribbean islands, with Earl expected to become a hurricane on Sunday, when it is forecast to pass over the Northern Leewards, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. According to forecasts, Earl should become a major hurricane within 72 ...

COPIAPO, Chile (Reuters) - Chile was looking at ways on Saturday to speed up the rescue of 33 miners trapped deep underground for 23 days who officials have said might have to wait three to four months to see the light of day. Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said rescuers were considering other ...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African President Jacob Zuma on Saturday accused striking state workers of abandoning the sick at hospitals and said he expected a deal to be reached soon to end the labor action by about 1.3 million. The strike by state workers seeking pay rises more than double the ...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. birth rates in 2009 declined for the second straight year, a sign the economy may be causing some women to think twice about having children, U.S. health officials said on Friday. Estimates from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 4,136,000 children ...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A company linked to Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen is suing 11 major corporations, including Apple, Google and Facebook, accusing them of infringing on technology patents. Interval Licensing is asserting four patents against a cluster of defendants, including also ...

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. authorities want to extradite from the Turks and Caicos Islands a Jamaican banker accused of running a Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of nearly $300 million in one of the Caribbean's biggest financial fraud cases, a law enforcement official said on Friday. U.S. ...

PHOENIX (Reuters) - A shake-up in immigration policy may lead to deportation proceedings being dropped for thousands of aliens who entered the United States illegally but are applying to stay in the country, officials said on Friday. They said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An expert panel named by President Barack Obama spelled out ideas to simplify the byzantine U.S. tax code, including pre-filled-out returns for some individuals and reducing the corporate tax rate while cutting loopholes. The panel's report stops short of specific ...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a preliminary investigation of the problem on May 13 after receiving 234 reports of rear axle fractures and two minor crashes. The number of complaints has risen to 950. NHTSA said the design of the axle appears to allow it to collect road ...

The White House said the president spent about 15 minutes talking with Bloomberg about the economy. Data earlier on Friday showed the U.S. economy had grown at a slower pace than initially thought in the second quarter, increasing concerns for the strength of the country's recovery. "The ...

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's largest union threatened Friday to bring gold and platinum mining and other industries to a halt next week in a strike to support a labor stoppage by 1.3 million state workers. The strike by state workers seeking pay raises more than double the inflation ...

ANTRODOCO, Italy (Reuters) - Like countless other small towns across Italy suffering from the economic downturn, Antrodoco has long prayed for an investor with deep pockets to help revive its fortunes. For a town in the shadow of a mountain where a pine grove spells out "DUX" -- for 20th ...

In the letter, the Federal Trade Commission said research showed consumers continue to inadvertently share sensitive documents via peer-to-peer software like LimeWire. The FTC also said it is imperative that distributors of such software "act more responsibly and provide safeguards against ...