International aid is starting to arrive in Sumatra following an appeal by the Indonesian government in the aftermath of Wednesday’s powerful earthquake.
More than 1,000 people are known to have died and up to 3,000 more are believed trapped beneath collapsed buildings in the city of Padang.
Widespread destruction has also been reported in surrounding areas.
Australia, Russia, [...]

NICOLE Kidman has finally shown her baby girl Sunday Rose to the world in an intimate TV appearance with Oprah Winfrey.
Kidman held up a tender picture of her and the four-month-old - who she has previously taken extraordinary lengths to shield from the public eye - while spruiking Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming epic Australia in an [...]

SHANGHAI - Red-hot Spaniard Sergio Garcia climbed to number two in the world rankings with a dramatic play-off victory over Oliver Wilson in the $5-million HSBC Champions tournament yesterday.
Garcia closer to Tiger The 28-year-old sank a seven-foot birdie putt from the fringe of the 18th green on the second play-off hole to win his second [...]

WASHINGTON - As leaders of the Group of 20 countries, a bloc of the world’s advanced and top developing economies, prepare to meet here at the weekend to seek improved cooperation to fight the ongoing global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund called for financial expansion.
Fund calls for policies to ease crunch
“Demand is falling around [...]

HONG KONG (AP) — Asian markets rose Wednesday, tracking overnight gains on Wall Street, amid hopes for a year-end rally and that a new U.S. president would act to boost the sluggish American economy.
With Barack Obama’s victory in the U.S. presidential race, investors were hopeful he could focus renewed energy on tackling deteriorating conditions in [...]

The U.S. media projected Democrat candidate Barack Obama has won the historic elections early on Wednesday, becoming the first African-American president. Sen. John McCain congratulated Obama for his victory.
CNN, ABC and FOX projected at 11 p.m. Eastern time (GMT 0400) that Obama had won the election.
Obama won Ohio, a key battleground state with 20 electoral [...]

by Stephen Withers
Much packaging is designed to make products look good on the shelf or to discourage shoplifting. Neither is relevant to online retailing, so Amazon is moving towards “frustration-free packaging”.
free hit counters
How many times have you cut your hand while opening sealed plastic clamshell package surrounding a smaller product such as a memory card [...]

The pre-beta version of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system released to developers at the Professional Developers Conference has already made it onto prominent BitTorrent sites, where thousands of enthusiasts around the world are currently downloading it.
Well-known BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova were at the time of publication Friday hosting multiple downloads [...]

Netflix plans to stop selling DVDs that were rented by subscribers, another step toward expanding its subscription focus from DVDs rented by mail to include movies streamed over the Web.
In a Netflix blog posting Monday, the company announced that it would discontinue sales previously viewed DVDs on November 30:
As you know, our core business is [...]