Facebook hopes to release its own smartphone by next year, as the newly public social networking giant looks to boost its revenue in the mobile Internet market, the New York Times reported Monday.

The company has hired more than half a dozen software and hardware engineers who have worked on Apple's bestselling iPhone and one engineer who has iPad experience, the paper said, citing employees and other unnamed sources.

Panasonic may halve its 7,000-strong headquarters as part of a bid to streamline the Japanese electronics giant and turn a profit following a record annual loss, media reports said Tuesday.

The Osaka-based firm is looking at shrinking its main office by between 3,000 and 4,000 staff, mainly through early retirements and employee transfers to subsidiaries, the Nikkei business daily and Jiji Press reported.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics said it would start selling its newest smartphone in 28 countries from Tuesday as it seeks to cement its position as the world's top-selling mobile phone maker.

The Galaxy S3, unveiled in London earlier this month, will hit shelves Tuesday in nations including Britain, France and the United Arab Emirates, the firm said in a statement.

Online social networks, a newcomer in Mexican elections, are making a mark on the country's presidential campaign, forcing candidates to respond to issues and protests enabled by the Internet.

"If it wasn't for the social networks, the campaign would be really boring," said Roy Campos, head of the polling company Mitofsky.

The horrendous stock market debut for Facebook suggests investors are not ready to jump in and create another tech bubble despite big expectations for social media, analysts say.

Facebook closed out its first full week of trade with a loss of 16 percent from its offering price of $38, in a huge disappointment after a much-hyped initial public offering worth $16 billion, the biggest for a tech firm.

Yahoo! shuttered its fledgling digital newsstand for iPads on Friday in what it said was the start of a product purge intended to make the floundering Internet pioneer more nimble.

Livestand was launched in November as a way to turn tablet computers into personalized magazines rich with stories, images and video suited to individual tastes.

Australia on Saturday hailed a surprise decision giving it a role in a radio telescope project aimed at revolutionizing astronomy, vowing to draw on its decades of experience in space science.

Australia and South Africa were named joint winners of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project following a meeting of the organization’s members in the Netherlands on Friday.

Facebook's rocky initial public offering hasn't stopped life at the world's biggest online social network. On Thursday, the company unveiled a camera app for the iPhone.

The app can be downloaded from Apple's App Store and works like most other camera applications for smart phones. To take a photo, you tap a camera icon in the upper left corner of your screen, aim and shoot. You can then add filters, crop or tilt your photo, and share it on Facebook.

Zombies stalked San Francisco streets on Thursday as social game maker Zynga ghoulishly introduced a game that lets iPhone or iPod Touch users slash and hack the undead.

Actors posing as the living dead were unleashed here and in Manhattan ahead of the "Zombie Swipeout" launch. The hordes enticed humans with free "blood pops" -- hibiscus and mint popsicles promising the "fleshiest" ingredients.

The Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse landed safely in Madrid early Friday at the end of the first leg of its attempt at an intercontinental flight without using a drop of fuel.

Pilot Andre Borschberg successfully had launched the plane from an airfield in Payerne in western Switzerland at around 8:30am (0630 GMT) Thursday, bound for Rabat via Madrid, after a two-hour delay due to foggy conditions.