COMPANIES

Audi AG, Volkswagen AG’s luxury unit, is in talks to buy Ducati, the storied Italian motorbike company from its private equity owner, Investindustrial Holdings Ltd., London, CAR magazine reported Monday.

Shares of Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) were near their record high after reports the No. 1 chipmaker is trying to create a virtual TV service for the consumer sector.

The share of power generation in the U.S. by burning coal has fallen to near a 35-year low, as electric power plants showed less interest in thermal coal due to a mild winter and a shift to cheaper gas.

TBC Corp., a unit of Japan's Sumitomo Corp., will pay $173 million in cash for Midas Inc. (NYSE: MDS), the automotive parts and repair chain based in Itasca, Ill., said Tuesday.

Shares of Apple rose to another record after an influential analyst issued a report that boosted price targets and said the company shouldn’t have problems selling its latest iPad.

Gold mining executives meeting in Toronto for an annual prospectors' convention have been buzzing about their stocks relatively weak valuatio and what they should be doing about it, the Financial Times reported.

The City of Gulf Shores, Ala., announced it has settled with British oil company BP for future losses incurred by the 2010 Gulf of Mexico.

Shares of Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) rose slightly after the company sued Facebook for alleged patent infringement. Facebook denied the charges in a statement but has not filed a legal response.

Customers of bankrupt U.S. brokerage MF Global are receiving bids from global banks for their claims, according to a published report.

Samsung Galaxy S2 is receiving the latest Android Ice Cream Sandwich update soon. Samsung Mobile's official Facebook page broke the news that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has officially made its way to Samsung I9100 Galaxy S2.

A report in DigiTimes on Monday cited unnamed sources within Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturers, who claimed that the next generation iPhone will be released in the second half of 2012 and will very likely contain an embedded 4G LTE radio.

Apple has already sold out of pre-ordered iPads for launch day delivery and new orders will take at least two to three weeks to ship.

The new iOS 5.1 was launched along with the latest Apple iPad last week. The iOS 5.1 is released for all iOS 5-compatible devices, which includes all versions of the iPad, the iPhone 3GS and above, and third-generation and later models of the iPod touch.

Crytek is working on a “mystery project” for PC and console.

New York state resident Philip Ward is being charged with the 1989 murder of his pregnant girlfriend Veronica Bowen. Forty-five-year-old Ward, who is currently serving 20 years for the murder of another girlfriend, admitted to police that he killed Bowen and decapitated her.

Yahoo, the No. 2 search engine that just hired a new CEO, could threw a wrench into Facebook’s proposed $5 billion initial public offering by suing for patent infringement.

Apple (AAPL) stock continues to pound the competition, closing at $552.00 on Monday, an all-time record for the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer company. Monday's high now puts Apple's market cap over $514 billion, which now exceeds Exxon's market cap -- currently standing at $403 billion -- by more than $100 billion.

Silver Standard Resources, Inc. (NASDAQ:SSRI) reported Monday the company had earned $2.6 million, or 3 cents per share, for the quarter ended December 31, a drastic drop of 99.3 percent when compared to the same period in the prior year, but better than analyst expectations which had assumed the company would post a loss for the quarter.

Top-tier technology companies including Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT), among others, all buy back shares. Qualcomm and Applied Materials have just refreshed their buyback programs and hiked their dividends, too.

The Khan Academy, which aspires to change the education industry by providing free world-class education to anyone anywhere, officially launched its iPad app on Monday in an effort to distribute the not-for-profit organization's 2,700-plus educational videos.

After fewer than 200 miles of driving, Consumer Reports' brand-spankin-new, $107,850 Fisker Karma broke down during a routine speedometer calibration and had to be towed.

Shares of IBM set a new high of $201.57 after new CEO Virginia Rometty said the No. 2 computer services company was “uniquely positioned” to deliver benefits of “a gusher of data” flowing into the global economy.

Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) hired a chief financial officer with extensive experience in cable broadcasting, particularly with that industry's spin-offs as well as mergers and acquisitions, the New York-based company said Monday.

Apple doesn't openly tell the media what the company is building, but in an e-mail exchange with a fan, CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple will soon offer Italian language support for Siri, the company's AI personal assistant exclusive to the iPhone 4S.

The iOS 5.1 update has finally arrived. However, it is to be remembered that the list of new features are not extensive and largely consists of bug fixes and interface tweaks. Nonetheless, there are some important additions to it as well.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation of struck throttle issues possibly affecting as many as 360,000 2005 and 2006 Ford Taurus cars.

Veteran talk show host Larry King, 78, will get a new gig on the new Ora Internet TV site financed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu.

In a recent data report, it has been declared that Korean Giant Samsung's market share is the triple of what Apple has in China and the analyst are claiming that it is still increasing.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc will hold its annual board meeting in India later this month.