British mobile phone giant Vodafone said Tuesday that it was holding initial talks to merge its Vodafone Greece division with Greek telecommunications operator Wind Hellas.

"Vodafone Group confirms that it has entered into discussions with Largo Limited to explore a potential business combination between Vodafone Greece and Wind Hellas," it said in a brief statement. Wind Hellas is controlled by Largo.

Twitter users fired off a record number of tweets per second following the announcement by pop diva Beyonce at the MTV Video Music Awards that she is expecting a baby.

"Last night at 10:35 pm, Beyonce's big MTV #VMA moment gave Twitter a record bump: 8,868 Tweets per second," the San Francisco-based real-time messaging service said in a statement on its @TwitterGlobalPR feed.

Electronics giant Samsung Monday said it would launch a counter claim against U.S. firm Apple in Australia as part of a dispute between the rival companies over tablet computers.

The American company launched legal action against South Korea's Samsung Electronics in Sydney earlier this month, accusing it of infringing its patents with its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet.

At the height of what he calls his addiction, Ryan Van Cleave would stand in the grocery store checkout line with his milk and bread and baby food for his little girls and for a split second think he was living inside a video game.

It sounds crazy, but it's true: Something would catch his attention out of the corner of his eye — maybe another shopper would make a sudden move for a Hershey bar — and he was mentally and emotionally transported to another world.

Steve Jobs has been Apple's most recognizable personality, but much of its cachet comes from its clean, inviting designs. For that, Apple can credit its head designer, Jonathan Ive.

Ive, a self-effacing 44-year-old Brit, helped Jobs bring Apple back from the brink of financial ruin with the whimsical iMac computer, whose original models came in bright colors at a time when bland shades dominated the PC world. He later helped transform Apple into a consumer electronics powerhouse and the envy of Silicon Valley with the iPod, the iPhone and, most recently, the iPad.

A popular Twitter-like service in China has contacted millions of users warning them to ignore false reports, in a sign of growing official unease over the rise of social networking sites.

Sina's micro-blogging site Weibo sent at least two messages on Friday to refute rumors, including one that the suspected murderer of a 19-year-old woman had been released on bail because of his father's connections.

A 19-year-old New York man who created a program that allows iPhone users to "jailbreak" the device to run unauthorized applications claims to have landed an internship at Apple.

Nicholas Allegra, creator of the site JailBreakMe, announced the news on Thursday on his Twitter feed @comex.

Internet giant Google has rolled out an online map tracking the path of Hurricane Irene and providing other useful information about the storm headed for the U.S. east coast.

The map, located at crisislanding.appspot.com, is a product of the Google Crisis Response team, which provides online tools to help with relief efforts following natural disasters.

The end of Steve Jobs' reign as Apple Inc. CEO doesn't mean he is bowing out as the maestro of personal technology.

True to its tight-lipped style, Apple isn't spelling out how actively involved Jobs will be as the company's new chairman while he tends to his own fragile health after surviving pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant during the past seven years.

Research in Motion launched a new service Thursday that allows BlackBerry users to share music with friends.

BBM Music allows BlackBerry users to select 50 songs from a catalog of millions of tracks for their own personal playlist, said Alistair Mitchell, RIM's vice president of BBM platform and integrated services. BBM users can share songs from that list with friends who use the instant messenger service.