Verizon Wireless will start selling the HTC's Droid Incredible 2 on April 28 while Sprint will put the Nexus S 4G from Google on sale May 8. Both smartphones will sell for US$199.99 with two year service agreements.

President Barack Obama has vowed to cut US$4 trillion in cumulative deficits within 12 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

"US day-one sales numbers for Nintendo 3DS were the highest of any Nintendo hand-held system in our history," Nintendo said in a statement. The company promised more detailed stats on April 14, when NPD Group will release a report about the month's video game sales.

Just days after a judge ruled provisionally against a claim before the US International Trade Commission that Apple's handsets, including the iPhone, had violated five of its patents, Nokia shot back with a further case over another five.

ZTE says it will quadruple the number of smartphones it ships globally to 12 million this year, including its first model for a top-tier wireless provider in the US Huawei, which already provides a smartphone to the smaller prepaid providers, said it is in talks with the four national carriers.

Provisional estimates released by the World Bank put the economic damage resulting from the disaster at as much as US$235 billion, around 4% of GDP. That figure would make this disaster the costliest since comparable records began in 1965.

Earlier this week, the yen hit its highest level since World War II against the US dollar, adding to fears over Japan's recovery. The yen weakened to 81.81 against the US dollar after news of the plan.

Figures show US retail sales in February 2011 rose for the eighth month in a row and January's figures were higher than thought.

The Obama administration is considering tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to rapidly rising gasoline prices brought on by turmoil in the Middle East. Oil for April delivery settled at US$104.42 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday.

Growing global demand has fuelled a surge in US manufacturing activity, which last month (Feb. 2011) accelerated at its fastest rate in almost seven years, according to the Institute of Supply Management.

Solar Frontier, a unit of Japanese refiner Showa Shell Sekiyu,said it began production at a 100 billion yen(US$1.2 billion)thin-film solar module factory.

At its current rate of growth, analysts see China replacing the US as the world's top economy in about a decade.

The International Monetary Fund has issued a report on a possible replacement for the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The goal is to have a reserve asset for central banks that better reflects the global economy since the dollar is vulnerable to swings in the domestic economy and changes in US policy.

Unemployment fell sharply for a second straight month in January. Still, many economists find the two-month drop, the largest since 1958, too good to be true and expect it to edge back up in the months ahead.

In Japan, Toyota will recall 1.28 million units of models including the Voxy, Noah and Isis minivans and RAV4 sport- utility vehicles, according to statements from the company. Separately, Toyota said it would conduct a voluntary safety recall of 245,000 Lexus luxury cars in the US to inspect installation of fuel pressure sensors and call back 135,000 Avensis sedans in Europe for potential defects in fuel systems.

The San Francisco-based bank said in a statement that such agreements "are a common first step in a business relationship involving a Chinese company," and that the partnership "could lead to the development and building of solar power projects."

Just more than a week after Goldman Sachs offered its most prized clients a chance to invest in Facebook, the firm on Monday withdrew the opportunity from clients in the US because of worries that the deal could run afoul of securities regulations.

AUO CEO LJ Chen will be allowed to travel outside the US for the first time since criminal price-fixing charges restricted his movements. While in Taiwan Chen will not be allowed to meet with any of his co-defendants, some of whom may be there at the same time.

China's President Hu Jintao has said the international currency system was "a product of the past." He also implicitly criticized the Federal Reserve's recent decision to pump 600 billion dollars into the US economy, a move criticized as weakening the dollar at the expense of other countries' exports. The comments came ahead of a state visit to Washington on Wednesday.

Bank of China has opened trading in the Chinese currency to customers in the US, representing a symbolic endorsement by Beijing of foreign trading in the yuan. The move is the first by a state-owned bank into yuan trading in the U.S.

Qualcomm Inc. agreed to buy Wi-Fi chip maker Atheros Communications Inc. for US$3.1 billion in cash as it aims to address growing demand for devices that use Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet.

The pending acquisition of Motorola's mobile telecom equipment arm by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), which is pending approval by China's Ministry of Commerce, would make it more difficult for domestic rivals Huawei Technologies and ZTE to enter the US market, an analyst said.

Snowstorms have deterred shoppers at post-Christmas sales in America's northeast. However, some analysts expect the storms will boost online sales.

Gold prices surged above US$1,400 an ounce on December 28 as a weaker dollar pushed investors into the safe haven of precious metals. Gold also seems to be gaining value based on its own track record for 2010, when global economic instability made it the go-to investment for jittery traders.

Crude-oil futures on Wednesday settled above US$90 a barrel for the first time since October 2008, riding a growing wave of optimism about the global recovery.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study reveals cost of solar PV installations in US down 30 per cent, but still around a third more than in countries which have pioneered solar panel deployment

"We are working on LTE device for next year, 2011. We think the US mobile operator will be taking some leading and pushing the LTE 4G in the US market, but however, we are seeing the rest of world will be deploying LTE network elsewhere in 2011, could be second half of 2011," said Peter Chou.

Toshiba will spend about US$1.19 billion to build a new fabrication plant to produce the panels for Apple.

The US Army wants to issue every soldier an iPhone or Android cellphone -it could be a soldier's choice. And to top it off, the Army wants to pay your monthly phone bill.

What a long, strange trip it's been for the South Korea-US free trade agreement. The two sides announced this weekend that they've reached a deal on revisions to the draft that was signed in 2007 but never ratified. It comes not a moment too soon, given the boost this will give to a US economy stumbling its way to recovery and with tensions rising on the Korean peninsula.

Theoretically, that makes sense: The more dollars in the economy, the less valuable the currency. But from what we've seen - at least so far - the critics are wrong. The greenback's gains have been surprisingly good recently.

IBM seems to be shifting away from semiconductor manufacturing, and planning to rely on Samsung and GlobalFoundries as foundry suppliers. Both foundries are set to have wafer fabs for foundry operations in the US, which could help cement relations.

SAP AG must pay US$1.3 billion to rival Oracle Corp. for copyright infringement, a federal jury ruled Tuesday, following a high-profile court battle between the business software makers.