Sony, battling Amazon and Apple in the electronic book reader race, unveiled its latest devices on Wednesday and expanded their availability to Australia, China, Italy, Japan and Spain.
Sony cut the size and weight of all three of its e-readers while expanding the use of touchscreens to all models – allowing users to turn pages with [...]
Apple unveiled a refreshed line of iPods on Wednesday and slashed the price of the Apple TV box that streams television shows and movies over the Web to high-definition TV sets.
Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, speaking at an event at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco, also introduced “Ping,” a music-oriented [...]
Samsung unveiled on Thursday what the South Korean electronics giant hopes will be the first major rival to Apple’s highly successful iPad tablet PC.
The Galaxy Tab, presented at the IFA electronics trade fair in Berlin, Germany, has a seven-inch (17.8-centimetre) touchscreen, slightly smaller than the iPad’s 9.7 inches, and uses Google’s Android 2.2 operating system.
“Samsung [...]
An Indonesian volcano spewed ash thousands of metres into the air Friday in its most violent eruption since rumbling back to life earlier this week for the first time in 400 years.
Thousands of people have fled their homes since the 2,460-metre (8,100-foot) Sinabung in northern Sumatra started to erupt on Sunday after centuries of inactivity.
“The [...]
Lawmakers in Hong Kong passed a motion on Thursday, calling on the Philippine government to apologize for the Manila hostage crisis.
They also demanded compensation for the families of the eight Hong Kong tourists who were killed.
LegCo House Committee chairwoman Miriam Lau moved a motion to demand a public apology and compensation for the families of [...]
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday visited Afghanistan for military and government talks that highlighted tensions and disagreement between President Hamid Karzai and his top Western sponsor.
The trip came a day after US combat operations ended in Iraq, shifting attention to America’s war in Afghanistan, where troop deaths are at record highs and rampant [...]
The US government placed Anwar al-Awlaki, a key leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, on its list of terrorism supporters, froze his financial assets and banned any transactions with him.
The measures were outlined in Executive Order 13224 issued Friday by the US Treasury Department.
“Anwar al-Awlaki has proven that he is extraordinarily dangerous, committed to [...]
Suspected drug gang members launched a car bomb attack on police in Mexico’s border city of Ciudad Juarez for the first time, killing two police and two medics, a general said Friday.
The attack marked an escalation in Mexico’s brutal drug violence, which has left some 7,000 people dead so far this year, official figures showed [...]
A cap sealed over a leaking Gulf of Mexico well was holding back gushing crude for a second day on Friday, amid hopes BP may have nearly staunched the worst oil spill in US history.
The cap, sealed off on Thursday to enable tests on the well below, has stopped oil from flowing into the ocean [...]
Guests leapt desperately to their deaths from upper-floor windows as a fire tore through a hotel in northern Iraq killing 30 people, 14 of them foreigners, police and medics said on Friday.
Citizens of Australia, Britain, Canada and several Asian and South American countries were among those killed in Thursday night’s blaze in Sulaimaniyah, which raged [...]
Israeli forces on Saturday boarded the Rachel Corrie after it ignored orders not to head for Gaza, but there was no repetition of the bloody violence when commandos stormed an aid boat earlier this week.
The military said its troops had boarded the ship “with the full compliance” of the crew and passengers in a peaceful [...]
James Bond’s famous Aston Martin car from the films “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” is expected to raise more than five million dollars when it goes on sale, auctioneers said Wednesday.
The 1964 Aston Martin DB5 was driven by Sean Connery when he played the fictional British spy.
The customised car, which had the original British registration number FMP [...]
US software giant Microsoft inaugurated a research centre in Taiwan Thursday focused on cloud computing, a new technology attracting significant interest among the island’s high-tech firms.
Cloud computing refers to applications or data storage hosted online by technology firms instead of being installed and maintained on users’ machines.
The opening of the centre was a “milestone… in [...]
British energy giant BP was hit Thursday by two ratings downgrades over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and admitted that it had been ill-prepared for the worst spill in US history.
International ratings agency Fitch said it had cut BP’s long-term issuer default rating and senior unsecured rating from AA+ to AA and had placed [...]
Israel began deporting all the foreign activists detained during a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, as international pressure mounted for a full investigation of the incident.
Pro-Palestinian activists behind the aid convoy meanwhile vowed to renew their bid to break the Israeli blockade and deliver their cargoes to the Palestinian territory in the coming [...]
Japan’s centre-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned on Wednesday, less than nine months after taking power following a landslide election win.
Hatoyama, who took office in September, has seen his poll ratings plummet from more than 70 per cent to below 20 per cent amid a row over an unpopular US army base on the southern [...]
The UN Security Council called Tuesday for an impartial investigation into the Israeli attack against a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the immediate release of all civilians.
The statement came at the end of an emergency session that lasted more than 12 hours, pitting Turkey against the United States in calling for a strong [...]
The founder of City Harvest Church and 16 other individuals and staff involved in the handling of the church’s financial affairs are being investigated by the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD).
Police confirmed on Monday evening that Reverend Kong Hee and 16 others are assisting in an on-going investigation arising from complaints made to the Commissioner of [...]
The government will be giving out the last tranche of GST credits on July 1 for all eligible Singaporeans who have already signed up or who sign up by 18 June.
Singaporeans can receive between S$100 and S$250 in GST Credits for this year, if their Annual Assessable Income for Year of Assessment 2009 is not [...]
South Korea Tuesday stepped up its campaign to hold North Korea responsible at the UN Security Council for sinking a warship, briefing visiting Russian experts and sending an envoy to the United States.
A team of Russian naval experts arrived Monday to review the findings of a multinational investigation team, which concluded last month that a [...]
Toys “R” Us is seeking to raise $800 million in stock through an initial public offering, hoping to clear some debt from its balance sheet, the company said in a securities filing Friday.
The Wayne, N.J.-based toy retailer did not say how many shares it plans to sell.
Toys “R” Us will use most of the capital [...]
BP engineers scrambled on Sunday to implement another high-risk plan to stem the devastating Gulf oil spill now being described as likely the worst environmental disaster in US history.
Hours after the British oil giant acknowledged failure in its “top kill” attempt to plug the underwater well, company officials said it could take a week to [...]
Singapore Foreign Affairs Minister George Yeo will host the 2nd ASEAN-Gulf Cooperation Council Ministerial Meeting on June 1.
The meeting underscores the strengthening relations between ASEAN and Gulf countries.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The meeting here will be co-chaired by Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign [...]
There’s good news on efforts to contain and clean up an oil slick caused by the collision of two vessels in Singapore.
The spill came from the Malaysian-registered tanker MT Bunga Kelana 3, which was carrying nearly 62,000 tonnes of crude when it collided on Tuesday with the MV Waily, a bulk carrier registered in St [...]
China resisted pressure on Sunday from South Korea and Japan to censure North Korea publicly for the sinking of a warship, calling only for regional tensions over the incident to be defused.
Host President Lee Myung-Bak and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama teamed up at the two-day summit to nudge China’s Premier Wen Jiabao to declare [...]
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was set for summit talks in Japan on Monday dogged by high-seas dramas involving North Korea and jostling between Beijing and Tokyo for territory and underwater resources.
The talks between Wen and Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama come after their weekend summit with South Korea’s President Lee Myung-Bak, at which Wen resisted [...]
It has been a while, but Motorola has finally returned to the mobile phone scene – its first Android smartphone, the Dext, was launched here last week.
Running on the older Android operating system version 1.5, the Dext packs a 3.1-inch touchscreen display, a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera capable of video capture in H.264, and Assisted-GPS. It [...]
US book publishers are smiling again, after years of watching digital versions of their titles sell for below what they thought they were worth.
A host of rivals to the market-dominating Kindle electronic reader has given newfound hope to publishers that they will finally be able to dictate their own terms after being at the mercy [...]