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As Wall Street eagerly awaits signs that Internet sensation Facebook will offer shares to the public, the venture capitalists that prowl California's Silicon Valley are keeping close tabs on another hot commodity: the employees leaving Facebook.

Microsoft Corp is set to announce its long-awaited Project Pink phones early next week, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday, as the world's largest software company attempts to gain traction in the growing market for young smartphone users.

The United States on Monday reiterated its call for China's currency to be market-based, as lawmakers warned they would act if there was no movement from China on revaluing the yuan.

(Corrects number of Quora co-founders from four to two)

The United States on Monday reiterated its call for China's currency to be market-based, as lawmakers warned they would act if there was no movement from China on revaluing the yuan.

Is Gold the best investment? You may have heard this and read about this phrase a million times already. Now it seems Gold investment reading is becoming too stereo cast that it has lost its sheen. But wait a minute. Though too much written word about Gold has turned out to be boring, the yellow metal itself has not shown the boredom in its rise. It has given good investment returns for those who put their trust in it.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China said on Friday it had shut its website after a burst of hacker attacks, days after attacks on the Yahoo email accounts of some foreign journalists covering China were discovered.

Yahoo email accounts of some journalists and activists whose work relates to China were compromised in an attack discovered this week, according to rights groups and foreign correspondents, days after Google said it would move its Chinese-language search services out of China because of censorship concerns.

Google Inc has said it identified cyber attacks aimed at silencing opposition to a Vietnamese government-led bauxite mining project involving a major Chinese firm, and said they were similar to those at the heart of the company's friction with Beijing.

Google Inc blamed the great firewall of China for blocking its Internet search service in the country on Tuesday, but said it did not know if the stoppage was a Chinese technical glitch or a deliberate move in their face-off over Internet censorship.

Google Inc said many users in China were blocked from using its search service on Tuesday by a technical glitch that made their search queries appear to be associated with Radio Free Asia, which is blocked by Chinese authorities.

Google Inc said its mobile services have been partially blocked in China for two days, while searches on its Chinese-language site became erratic, about a week after the company shut its mainland Chinese portal and rerouted Web searches to a Hong Kong site.

Two days after shutting its Chinese portal over censorship, Google Inc said it plans to phase out deals to provide filtered search services to other online or mobile firms in China.

Users of Google Inc.'s search engines across Beijing reported erratic service on Wednesday, with the site sometimes failing to open, and some searches for even non-sensitive terms like hello returning error messages.

The United States on Tuesday said Google's action to shut its mainland Chinese-language portal was a business decision by the company that did not involve the U.S. government.

Europe's highest court ruled Google Inc did not infringe trademark law by selling keywords to trigger ads after Louis Vuitton and others said the practice undermined their brands.

Google has not violated the rights of luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton and two other firms by allowing online advertisers to buy search keywords identical to trademarks, Europe's top court said.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are out, but in China's vast and bewildering online universe you can freely read the New York Times or visit a favorite porn site.

Google shut its mainland Chinese-language portal and began rerouting searches to its Hong Kong site, unleashing Beijing's ire and prompting worry over its prospects in China.

Google Inc closed its China-based search service and began redirecting Web searchers to an uncensored portal in Hong Kong, drawing harsh comments from Beijing that raised doubts about the company's future in the world's largest Internet market.

China said on Tuesday that Google Inc had violated a written promise and was totally wrong to end censorship of its Chinese-language search portal, signaling a tough line over the Internet dispute.

Google Inc moved its China Internet search service to Hong Kong in a bid to resolve its dispute with Beijing over censored search results while keeping a foot in the world's largest Internet market.

It is the case of Curious Judge and The Man with the Yellow Hat.

British price comparison website Foundem's chief executive said it was confident EU antitrust regulators will launch a formal probe into Google's business practices based on its complaint.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency launched a new broadside against Google Inc on Monday, saying in an angry commentary that the company had reneged on promises to abide by Chinese law.

With speculation swirling that Google Inc will soon announce the closure of its China-based Internet portal, the reaction from some Chinese has been hurry up and leave, or simply: so what?

China's state media on Sunday accused Google Inc of pushing a political agenda by groundlessly accusing the Chinese government of supporting hacker attacks and by trying to export its own culture, values and ideas.

Google Inc may make an announcement next Monday about whether it will pull out from China, the China Business News reported on Friday, quoting an unnamed Google employee.

Google Inc could win a widely expected victory next week in Europe's top court and still face many more battles over keyword advertising, the backbone of its Internet business model.