Apple introduced a smaller version of its popular iPod Shuffle music player on Wednesday with a new feature that tells the user what song is playing. The new 4-gigabyte gadget costs $79, is half the size of the previous Shuffle, and carries up to 1,000 songs — twice as many as the last generation of
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Google Inc is seeking to blur the line between the telephone and the computer even further with the introduction of Google Voice on Thursday. The new service weaves traditional phone features with Google's Gmail email product, allowing a person to store transcripts of voicemail phone messages in their email inbox and to find a specific
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Britain's Home Retail Group Plc , owner of the Argos high street catalogue and Homebase do-it-yourself chains, said it was prepared for an "extremely challenging" 2009, with profits expected to slump 40 percent. The group, which said it would meet profit expectations for 2008, was responding to the tough economic climate by cutting costs, with
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The world economy could shrink 1-2 percent this year, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said, as industrial output in global growth engine China grew at its slowest rate on record. In the world's second-biggest economy, Japan, revised data showed the pile of unsold goods doubled in the fourth quarter, as its economy shrank 3.2 percent,
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The 2009 Cyprus Rally starts tonight at Spyros Kyprianou athletic centre in the southern coastal town of Limasol. After two years of participating in the Middle East Rally Championship (MERC), this year the Cyprus Rally will again be part of the World Rally Championship (WRC), as Round 3 of the WRC Calendar. The start of
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By Steve Gorman Anyone who has visited Disneyland recently and taken a sip from a drinking fountain there may have unknowingly sampled a taste of the future — a small quantity of water that once flowed through a sewer. Orange County Water District officials say that's a good thing — the result of a successful,
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By Ian Ransom Down-at-heel Xiaojiahe in Beijing's university district seems an unlikely haven for China's aspiring elite, but its reeking alleys and dank rooms offer a low-budget bolthole for graduates battling to find work. "It's not the best living environment here," said Qi Shaoguang, a 22-year-old law graduate from China's dustbowl province of Henan, as
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By Sam Cage The tidy towns and mountain vistas of Switzerland are an unlikely setting for an oil boom. Yet a wave of energy companies has in the last few months announced plans to move to Switzerland — mainly for its appeal as a low-tax corporate domicile that looks relatively likely to stay out of
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The global economy may shrink 1-2 percent this year, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said, as revised Japanese data confirmed the world's No. 2 economy suffered its deepest slump since the oil shock of 1974. The latest grim snapshot of the world economy highlights the need for urgent action as G20 finance chiefs prepare to
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New Zealand's central bank cut interest rates to an all-time low on Thursday and signalled the easing cycle was close to an end as it forecast the ailing economy to slowly recover later this year. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand cut its benchmark rate by half a percentage point to 3.0 percent, sending the
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