A deadly earthquake in the Italian town of L'Aquila in 2009 which killed 309 people "was not unforeseeable", a judge said Thursday, reigniting a heated scientific debate over whether experts should have warned the population beforehand. More »Italy judge says deadly L'Aquila quake was foreseeable
BlackBerry has revealed that iPad is not part of its BBM for iOS plans, at least not initially. It is concentrating on iPhone first, with possible tablet support coming at a later date. More »No iPad support for BBM at launch, says BlackBerry
(Reuters) - Computer Sciences Corp agreed to pay $97.5 million (63.7 million pounds) to settle a lawsuit accusing it of defrauding shareholders by hiding a variety of accounting problems. The settlement averts a trial that had been scheduled to begin on May 21, and was disclosed on Wednesday both in Computer Sciences' annual report and in papers filed with the U.S. district court in Alexandria, Virginia. Computer Sciences is based in nearby Falls Church, Virginia, and the technology services company said it reserved for the settlement in its fiscal year ended March 29. ... More »Computer Sciences settles lawsuit over accounting for $97.5 million
Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi revealed Gran Turismo 6 at Northampton’s Silverstone race track which will be a new track in the new game. More »Gran Turismo 6: PlayStation 3's iconic racer returns in September
BEIJING (Reuters) - China warned the European Union on Thursday that duties on Chinese solar panels would "seriously harm" bilateral trade, upping the tone of criticism a week after the EU said it would move ahead with hefty penalties in June. The European Commission has agreed to impose average import duties of 47 percent on solar panels from China, according to officials, a move they say is to guard against the dumping of cheap goods in Europe. China's Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang said he hoped reports about the duties were wrong. ... More »China says EU solar duties would "seriously harm" trade
LISBON (Reuters) - Vodafone will double the size of its fibre optic network in Portugal to cover 1 million homes by 2015, it said on Thursday, as it seeks to more effectively compete against Portugal Telecom and the soon-to-be-merged duo of Zon and Sonaecom. The move comes as Vodafone looks to offer bundled Internet, pay-TV, mobile and fixed telephone services by expanding its fibre network beyond the greater Lisbon and Porto regions. ... More »Vodafone says to double fibre network in Portugal by 2015
By Estelle Shirbon LONDON (Reuters) - A retired British politician sued the wife of the House of Commons Speaker for defamation on Thursday, accusing her of implying in a tweet that he was a paedophile guilty of sexually abusing boys living in a care home. Alistair McAlpine, an associate of the late former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is seeking damages from Sally Bercow in Britain's most high-profile Twitter defamation case to date. ... More »Politician sues for defamation in high-profile Twitter case
Micro-organisms in the world's oceans could produce cancer cures and antibiotics, according to researchers. More »Ocean search for new medicines
Internet giant Google has denied trying to "disguise" the way its business operated to minimise its tax bill in the UK. More »No disguise of business - Google
Ever since the Samsung Galaxy S4 hit the market, a minority of users have bemoaned its lack of storage space. Although it promises 16GB of storage, the reality is that just over 9GB is actually available to the owner from the box. The rest is needed for Samsung's own software and Android wizardry. More »Samsung looking to release more Galaxy S4 on-board storage to the user, through software optimisation
Google and the Bluetooth Special Interest Group have announced Android will soon include native support for Bluetooth Smart Ready and Bluetooth Smart devices. More »Android Bluetooth Smart Ready support confirmed, perhaps in time for Android 4.3?
By Andrea Shalal-Esa WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government believes a Chinese missile launch this week was the first test of a new interceptor that could be used to destroy a satellite in orbit, a U.S. defence official told Reuters on Wednesday. China launched a rocket into space on Monday, but no objects were placed into orbit, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The object re-entered Earth's atmosphere above the Indian Ocean. ... More »U.S. sees China launch as test of anti-satellite muscle -source
By Lidia Kelly MOSCOW (Reuters) - International leaders are moving closer to taking action on corporate tax avoidance, despite challenges, a top official at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said on Wednesday. National austerity measures taken by OECD member governments as a result of the financial crisis have sparked voter anger at the way big international companies shift profits around the world to cut their tax bills. ... More »OECD sees action on corporate tax avoidance
Australia said it was pushing for a ban Thursday of any commercial use of a pioneering technique to reduce the impacts of climate change by "fertilising" the world's oceans with iron, warning of significant risks. More »Australia pushes for ocean 'fertilisation' ban
The Sun has unleashed four potent solar flares this week, marking the most intense activity yet this year and causing limited interruptions to high-frequency radio communications. More »Sun unleashes four potent solar flares
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom has won the right to demand the United States hand over all the evidence in its online piracy case against the internet entrepreneur, New Zealand's Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The ruling by New Zealand's highest court is a minor victory for Dotcom, a resident of the country who along with six associates is facing extradition to the United States to face charges that they conspired to infringe copyright, launder money and commit racketeering and fraud. ... More »NZ Supreme Court to hear Megaupload evidence appeal
By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday denied class-action status to copyright owners suing Google Inc over the use of material posted on YouTube without their permission. U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan denied a motion to certify a worldwide class of copyright owners in a long-running lawsuit over videos and music posted to the popular website. "The suggestion that a class action of these dimensions can be managed with judicial resourcefulness is flattering, but unrealistic," Stanton wrote. ... More »Copyright owners can't sue Google's YouTube as a group - judge
By Alexei Oreskovic and Edwin Chan SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc launched a music service on Wednesday that allows users to listen to unlimited songs for $9.99 a month, challenging smaller companies like Pandora and Spotify in the market for streaming music. With its new service, announced at its annual developers' conference in San Francisco, Google has adopted the streaming music business model ahead of rival Apple Inc, which pioneered online music purchases with iTunes. ... More »Google launches streaming music service ahead of Apple
Children prefer to read on screens rather than from books, but those who use the new technology have weaker literacy skills, research suggests. More »Screen readers 'less literate'
By Sinead Carew and Nicola Leske NEW YORK (Reuters) - Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc posted a higher than expected quarterly profit and said current-quarter revenue could increase, giving some relief to investors who had worried it was being hurt by weak technology spending. Cisco shares rose about 8 percent after Chief Executive John Chambers said the company was seeing some good signs in the United States and that other parts of the world are "encouraging." "We are managing the business to account for a continued slow steady recovery on a global basis," Chambers said. ... More »Cisco profit beats Street, shares rise on outlook
Months after its US release, Microsoft Surface Pro finally has an official UK release date. Note 23 May in your calendars because that's when the Windows 8 tablet-meets-laptop PC will be available to pick up in the shops. More »Surface Pro UK release date confirmed as 23 May, prices start at £719
By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) - Two health workers in Saudi Arabia have become infected with a potentially fatal new SARS-like virus after catching it from patients in their care - the first evidence of such transmission within a hospital, the World Health Organization said. The new virus, known as novel coronavirus, or nCoV, is from the same family of viruses as those that cause common colds and the one that caused the deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in Asia in 2003. ... More »WHO reports first patient-to-nurse spread of new SARS-like virus
BOSTON (Reuters) - Several top stock-picking hedge funds bought about 30 million shares of PC maker Dell Inc in the first quarter, possibly increasing pressure on company founder Michael Dell to improve his bid to take the company private. Dell is embroiled in a leveraged buyout deal proposed in February at $13.65 a share by its founder and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. But the price has upset some of the company's largest shareholders. ... More »Highfields, other funds dove into Dell fray in first quarter
By Sam Forgione and Aaron Pressman NEW YORK (Reuters) - Barry Rosenstein's JANA Partners liked grocery chain Supervalu Inc in a big way in the first quarter, while Philippe Laffont's Coatue Management lost its stomach for the company's shares. Regulatory filings revealed that JANA, a hedge fund with $5.5 billion in assets, picked up some 14 million shares of Supervalu in the quarter ended March 31. For Laffont's $9.5 billion firm, however, it was a different story, as the hedge fund dumped all of its roughly 10 million shares. ... More »Hedge funds shop at Supervalu, sour on Apple
By Soyoung Kim and Olivia Oran NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dish Network Corp has lined up four banks to finance its $25.5 billion (16.7 billion pounds) bid for Sprint Nextel Corp, escalating the bidding war against Japanese telecom company SoftBank Corp, according to two people familiar with the matter. Dish, run by billionaire founder Charlie Ergen, is working with Barclays Plc, Macquarie Group, Jefferies and the Royal Bank of Canada to help finance around $9 billion in debt needed for the offer, the people said on Wednesday. The U.S. ... More »Dish lines up banks to finance Sprint bid - sources