NEW YORK Will it be Ellen DeGeneres, Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz? Maybe none of the above. The announced shutdown of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in two years creates room for a new queen (or king) of daytime television.

SAN FRANCISCO While U.S. newspapers are losing subscribers at a staggering rate, a few dailies stand out because their circulation is rising. But they aren't necessarily selling more copies.

SEOUL, South Korea Apple Inc's iPhone is coming to South Korea this week, a local carrier announced Sunday, bringing the iconic communications device to one of the world's most sophisticated mobile phone markets.

NEW YORK The flurry of initial public offerings this week is confirmation that this fall's rebound in the market wasn't a fluke and sets the stage for more companies to raise money through IPOs in 2010. But the response to two of the newly public companies shows that investors continue to be careful about where they place their bets.

NEW YORK Consumers who haven't yet ordered Barnes & Noble's electronic book reader, the Nook, won't see one before Christmas.

MILWAUKEE A lawsuit in Wisconsin is bringing a fresh challenge to the practice of paying for keywords on Google and other search engines to boost one company's link over a rival's.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. Microsoft Corp. is giving away nearly 24,000 vouchers to North Carolina residents who want to improve their computer skills so they can improve their lot in the work force.

BRUSSELS European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle Corp.'s planned $7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc.

PHILADELPHIA A deal for Comcast Corp. to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal and create one of the most powerful media companies in the world is taking longer than expected as the current owners tussle over price.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. A group of major national research libraries says users now can search the full text of 1.6 billion pages from 4.6 million digitized volumes.

TOKYO Sony's new online service connecting the whole range of its gadgets to downloadable content like movies and games should help build brand loyalty, a top executive said Friday.

HAVANA President Barack Obama has answered questions submitted by a celebrated Cuban blogger, saying he isn't interested in "talking for the sake of talking" with Raul Castro and indicating he won't visit the island until the communist government changes its ways.

SAN JOSE, Calif. EBay has completed its sale of Skype for about $2 billion to an investor group that included the founders of the Internet phone service.

SAN FRANCISCO A key element of Dell Inc.'s turnaround strategy has been a vow not to cut prices as aggressively as rivals just to keep market share. The tactic has allowed competitors such as Acer Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. to steal business from Dell, and this fall Dell lost its ranking as the world's No. 2 PC maker.

SAN FRANCISCO Some of the computer industry's biggest players - such as IBM Corp., Intel Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. - have wowed Wall Street this fall with stronger-than-expected profits.

SAN FRANCISCO Consumers will have to wait until next year's holiday shopping season to find out if Google Inc.'s new operating system can deliver on its promise to make low-cost computers run faster.

Shareholders approved the formation of a new company out of DirecTV Group Inc. and some of Liberty Media Corp.'s entertainment businesses, as the chairman of both firms dampened speculation about a sale to a big phone company.

WASHINGTON Think of it as closed captioning for the new media world.

SAN FRANCISCO Yahoo Inc. is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon in its latest attempt to get people to use its Internet search engine more frequently.

Once again it's that shopping time of year and if digital photography is on your shopping list, here is a roundup of accessories to kick off the season.

ATLANTA A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request by AT&T Inc. to force competitor Verizon Wireless to pull its "There's a Map for That" commercials.

ATLANTA For the second time in a little more than a year, a glitch at one of the two centers that handle flight plans for the nation's air travel system set off delays and cancellations for passengers around the country.

PHILADELPHIA Media mogul John Malone said Thursday that Comcast Corp.'s plan to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal would give it too much market power and force competitors to consider similar acquisitions.

SAN FRANCISCO The struggling Internet company AOL plans to shed up to 2,500 jobs - more than a third of its work force - as it prepares to separate from Time Warner and finally sever their ill-fated marriage.

TOKYO Sony said it aims to be profitable in gaming and flat-panel TVs by the fiscal year ending March 2011, pushing 3-D technology as a way to showcase its strength in entertainment and surface from deep losses.

SAN FRANCISCO Chinese online gaming company NetEase.com Inc. said Wednesday that its third-quarter profit rose on higher revenue from online games.

CAMARILLO, Calif. Semiconductor maker Semtech Corp. on Wednesday reported a third-quarter loss due to a charge related to its acquisition of Sierra Monolithics Inc.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. Semiconductor maker Marvell Technology Group Ltd. said Wednesday that it named Ta-lin Hsu to its board.

SAN FRANCISCO Semiconductor maker Semtech Corp. said Wednesday that it agreed to buy fellow chipmaker Sierra Monolithics Inc. for $180 million in cash.

NEW YORK In a Nov. 17 story about job cuts at Verizon Communications Inc., The Associated Press, relying on a labor union report, erroneously reported that Verizon is laying off more than 1,000 employees in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

SAN FRANCISCO Sony Corp. says some customers who pre-order its newest e-reader may not get the gadget in time for the holidays.

LONDON IBM Corp. said Wednesday it signed a contract extension worth 300 million pounds ($500 million) with a British government agency that licenses drivers and registers their cars.

NEWARK, N.J. A New Jersey man will serve a 366-day federal prison term for conducting a cyber attack on Church of Scientology Web sites in January 2008.

NEW YORK You might call him the Mickey Mouse of video games. He's reminiscent of a doughnut, round and sweet and comforting. He's also a vessel, devoid of a real personality so you can live vicariously through him.

SAN FRANCISCO Palm Inc. is fighting harder than ever to snag a chunk of the smart phone market, and just six months after releasing the stylish Pre it's back with a lighter, more petite and affordable version called the Pixi.

NEW YORK The video game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" is blasting its way into entertainment history.

NEW YORK JPMorgan Chase is letting Facebook users help decide how to give away $5 million.

WASHINGTON Union officials in the United States are teaming up with their German counterparts in a bid to organize workers at wireless carrier T-Mobile USA.

PHILADELPHIA DirecTV Group Inc. chose the vice chairman of PepsiCo Inc. as its chief executive Wednesday, filling a vacuum created when its former chief left just as the nation's largest satellite TV provider was in the midst of a spinoff.

LONDON A couple suspected of helping spread some of the Internet's most aggressive computer viruses has been arrested in the English city of Manchester, police said Wednesday.

RALEIGH, N.C. Cell phone handset maker Sony Ericsson will move its North American headquarters from North Carolina to Atlanta and close a half-dozen sites worldwide as it retrenches against what it expects will be a tighter market and cuts about 1,600 jobs globally.

NEW YORK "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves" has seized a leading eight nominations for this year's Video Game Awards, Spike TV announced Wednesday.

HONOLULU Chinese astronomers have signed on to participate in the development of the world's largest telescope that will be built atop a Hawaii volcano, a group said Tuesday.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. California regulators adopted the nation's first energy-efficiency standards for televisions Wednesday in hopes of reducing electricity use at a time when millions of American households are switching to power-hungry, wide-view, flat-screen, high-definition sets.

NEW YORK Users of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 video game consoles can now brag about their achievements on Facebook as both systems integrate the social network this week.

WASHINGTON Stung by an embarrassing electronic leak last month revealing ethics investigations into dozens of lawmakers, Congress moved Tuesday to prohibit federal employees from using the same type of Internet file-sharing software blamed for the disclosure.

BEIJING A Beijing court has ordered Microsoft Corp. to stop selling some versions of its Windows operating system in China in a licensing dispute with a local supplier.

SEOUL, South Korea South Korea's telecommunications regulator cleared the way Wednesday for the launch of Apple's iPhone, amid reports the hit device could reach consumers by the end of this month.

SAN FRANCISCO Scientists say they've made a breakthrough in their pursuit of computers that "think" like a living thing's brain - an effort that tests the limits of technology.

REDMOND, Wash. Concur Technologies Inc., which makes corporate expense-management software, said Tuesday its fiscal fourth-quarter profit rose as revenue got a boost from a 13 percent increase in subscription revenue.