European flights are almost back to normal after air passengers spent the night at airports in Paris and Brussels because of the freezing weather that disrupted Christmas travel.

As part of the strategy for transforming the system LSI business and securing an asset light business model, Toshiba has signed a MoU with Sony, expressing the intent to dissolve Nagasaki Semiconductor Manufacturing (NSM) and to transfer 300mm wafer fabrication lines there from Toshiba to Sony.

Elpida Memory intends to launch capital tie-up talks with Taiwan firms that are currently the world's sixth- and seventh-biggest DRAM chipmakers. Elpida president Yukio Sakamoto plans to visit Taiwan early next month (January 2011) to start the talks and hopes to reach a deal by the end of the company's fiscal year, according to sources.

Sony Computer Entertainment chief Kaz Hirai has said that the next PSP could boast both a touch screen and conventional controls to give casual and hard-core gamers the opportunity to play titles in a way they prefer.

Dow Chemical plans to push its game-changing "solar shingle" technology, which installs on roofs like ordinary shingles but can generate electricity from sunlight, into commercial markets in 2011, which will bring the largest U.S. chemical manufacturer into an entirely new and lucrative market.

BYD's first plug-in car, the F3DM, has arrived in California where it will be used in a pilot project by the Los Angeles Housing Authority. The F3DM has 40-60 miles of electric range and 300 miles of gasoline range, and in a unique feature, drivers can specify whether the gas engine assists the electric motor.

China Unicom, which only sells iPhone handsets bundled with mobile service contracts at present, will sell the 8GB version of the iPhone 3GS with no contract for CNY3,999, said the spokesman for China United Network Communications.

The six-member commission has said it will not review an October finding by ITC judge Charles Bullock that Samsung didn't violate Spansion patent rights, according to a posting on the Washington-based agency's website.

Toshiba will outsource fabrication of system chips to South Korea's Samsung Electronics, freeing up resources for its memory chip operations, the Nikkei business daily has reported.

Sony plans to buy back a Nagasaki semiconductor plant from Toshiba for about 50 billion yen (US$597.2 million) to double output capacity for image sensors used in smartphones and other devices, the Nikkei business daily reported recently.

Skype suffered a serious server outage Dec. 22 that left swaths of its 560 million or so worldwide users without PC calling capabilities for most of the day.

The amount of noise coming out of Germany about proposed additional solar feed-in tariff cuts is an annual rite of passage -- and period of unrest -- for solar investors. Yet there's been a major change of tone this year in the battle of the future level of installations in the solar sector's leading market.

China is defending its subsidies for wind and solar power against a U.S. complaint to the World Trade Organization that such support is unfair, but says it will work to resolve the dispute.

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.

Micron Technology said it expects prices for NAND to drop another 10% in the current quarter but pointed to signs of improvement as demand for the chips used in smartphones, tablets and solid-state hard drives grows.

The upgrade reflects improving 2011 prospects for NAND flash memory demand, driven by tablets, smartphones and solid-state drives. The improving demand picture offsets concerns about higher supply due to new NAND fabs from Samsung, Toshiba and Micron expanding production in 2011.

Auriga analyst Daniel Berenbaum has reiterated a Buy rating on Micron Technology and an US$11 price target, writing that the company's in much better shape to weather plunging DRAM prices.