Federal authorities, capping a three-year investigation, are preparing insider-trading charges that could ensnare consultants, investment bankers, hedge-fund and mutual-fund traders, and analysts across the nation, according to people familiar with the matter.

Europe certainly sounds like they are years ahead in BIPV compared with the US.

Intel has announced the opening of a massive US$1 billion chip testing and assembly facility in Vietnam. The factory has a total area of 46,000 square meters.

Don't underestimate Intel's ability to retool and come back strong. In two years, earnings could top US$3 per share.

The company's US subsidiaries, Qimonda North America and Qimonda Richmond, have acknowledged the parent's ownership of over 800 patents and patent applications and abandoned claims of over US$2.1 billion against Qimonda. "We will now put all our efforts into continuing to exploit the patent portfolio by licensing and selling individual packages," said Qimonda insolvency administrator Michael Jaffe.

"Beceem's talented teams of engineers in India and the US have been focused on enabling a 4G ecosystem of operators and equipment manufacturers to drive the deployment of 4G networks," said Scott Bibaud, Broadcom's Executive VP & GM of the Mobile Platforms Group. "We look forward to adding their innovative technologies to our product portfolio and providing these technologies to our customers."

Mobile phone maker Motorola and mobile phone carrier Verizon Wireless are releasing a special edition R2-D2 Droid smartphone that is sure to get snapped up by Star Wars lovers across the US.

The add-on device, which just went on sale in China, has been billed as a more affordable option for users wanting to get their hands on an iPhone, but lack the budget.

Research firm ComScore reported that of top 5 platforms, only Google Android grew in market share, from 12% to 17% of the US smartphone market in May to July. Microsoft, RIM, and Apple all lost shares, while Palm hovered at 4.9 percent.

"China took the very important step in June of signaling that they're going to let the exchange rate start to reflect market forces. But they've done very, very little, they've let it move very, very little in the interim," said US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Russia applied to join the WTO's predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or GATT, in June 1993 but remains the biggest economy outside the trade body and has previously accused the US of holding up its bid.

The US trade deficit was smaller than expected in July, figures have shown, as exports reached their highest level in almost two years.

The Ideos is championed as "an affordable smartphone powered by the latest iteration of Android 2.2." And one of the headline facts is its price: "Between US$100 and US$200, depending on the market."

"Markets are broadly interpreting this as an improvement in the economy, but overall consumer confidence is still very, very bad," said Tim Quinlan, an economist with Wells Fargo. "We went from being severely depressed about the outlook, to just being depressed about the outlook."

Many high-technology companies have run afoul of the US' Export Control System, which regulates the overseas sales of items that can be put to use for military or intelligence-gathering purposes.

A "lost decade" in US employment reflects a change in the structure of the nation's labor market, according to Mohamed El-Erian, CEO at Pacific Investment Management Co.

ZTE Corp., China's second-biggest maker of telephone equipment, is expanding in the US with an agreement to sell a handset through Verizon Wireless.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, saw its quarterly profits rise 3.6%, but sales in its home US market fell for the fifth quarter in a row.

LDK Solar is planning to build a solar manufacturing facility with 1 gigawatt of solar cell and 500 megawatts of solar module capacity. The manufacturing facility is expected to begin production in the second quarter of 2011, backed by US$368 million in financing for up to three years from a Chinese lender.

After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the world's second-largest economy behind the United States, according to government figures. The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China's ascendance is for real and that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic superpower.

With a skimpy 8% share of the US market, according to the research firm comScore, Nokia trails Samsung, LG, Motorola and Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry.

Gold rose to a one-month high on August 13, lifted by persistent poor macroeconomic data from the US that is prompting investors to choose safer assets in the face of a gloomier economic outlook.

LDK Solar reported Tuesday that it earned net income of US$45 million, or 36 cents per American Depositary Share, in the quarter that ended June 30. That compared with a net loss of US$216.9 million, or US2.03 per ADS, when it took a hefty writedown on plummeting inventory value in the year-ago quarter.

The shares represent about 0.28 percent of common shares outstanding as of June 24, RIM said today in a statement. The company is buying the stock from an unnamed third-party financial institution, according to the statement.

Kyocera is ramping up its annual production to 600MW this year - an increase of 50% over the previous year - to meet growing demand in countries such as Japan, US, Germany, France and Italy, the company says.

Sharp said it made a group net profit of 10.69 billion yen (US$122.2 million) in the April-June quarter, reversing from a 25.2 billion yen net loss in the same period a year earlier.

MEMC, which makes wafers for computer chips and silicon for solar cells, said it earned US$13.8 million, or 6 cents per share, up from US$1.4 million, or a penny per share, during the same period last year.

Panasonic has placed a 820 billion yen (US$9.5 billion) bet on the future of green energy by offering to buy out minority shareholders in two subsidiaries specialising in rechargeable batteries, solar cells and other environmental technology.

Japan's Sharp is investing almost 4 billion yen (US$46 million) at a plant in Britain to double production of solar cell modules to meet growing demand across Europe.