Online social networking site Facebook is looking to expand its staff by as much as 50 percent this year, its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told Bloomberg news agency in an interview dated August 20.

Facebook's website says it has more than 900 employees.

The company, which counts venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, Microsoft Corp and Russian Internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies among its investors, has more than 250 million registered users.

In June, rival MySpace, owned by News Corp, said it would cut 30 percent of its U.S. staff and two-thirds of its international workforce.

The world's top cellphone maker Nokia said on Monday it would start to make laptops, entering a fiercely competitive, but fast-growing market.

Nokia has seen its profit margins drop over the last quarters as handset demand has slumped, and analysts have worried that entering the PC industry, where margins are traditionally razor-thin, could hurt Nokia's profits further.

"We are fully aware what has the margin level been in the PC world. We have gone into this with our eyes wide open," Kai Oistamo, the head of Nokia's key phone unit, told Reuters.

Its first netbook, the Nokia Booklet 3G, will use Microsoft's Windows software and Intel's Atom processor -- offering up to 12 hours of battery life, and weighing 1.25 kilograms. Netbooks are low-cost laptops optimized for surfing the Internet and performing other basic applications. Pioneered by Asustek in 2007, other brands such as HP and Dell have also pushed out their own lines since then.

Research firm IDC expects netbook shipments this year to grow more than 127 percent from 2008 to over 26 million units, outperforming the overall PC market that is expected to remain flat and a phone market which is shrinking some 10 percent.

"Nokia will be hoping that its brand and knowledge of cellular channels will play to its strengths as it addresses this crowded, cut-throat segment," said Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight.

"At present we see Nokia's foray into the netbook market as a niche exercise in the context of its broader business."

Nokia said it would unveil detailed specifications, market availability and pricing of the device on Sept 2.

A source close to Nokia said the new netbook would use the upcoming Windows 7 operating system. Microsoft says a stripped-down version of Windows 7 will be introduced to netbooks the same time as its general release on October 22

CHICAGO , U.S. researchers said on Thursday they have found a way to make large-scale flexible display screens that can be stretched to fit the contours of a bus yet are transparent enough so riders can see out windows.

The thin, light screens might be used to make brake light indicators that follow the contours of a car, or health monitors or imaging devices that wrap around a patient like a blanket, said John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose study appears in the journal Science.

He said the large display screens combine the scale and durability of light-emitting diodes, or LED technology, used to make flat, lighted billboards, with the flexibility of screens made using organic -- carbon-containing -- materials.

"If you look at these giant billboard displays along the road side, those are made out of inorganic light emitting diodes (LEDs). Our feeling is those systems are quite impressive," Rogers said in a telephone interview.

"The question became is it possible to take that technology and use it in a non-billboard format."

Rogers said current technology using inorganic materials produces chunky individual LED lights that need to be arranged piecemeal with a robotic arm. Screens made using organic materials can be sprayed or painted onto a film surface, but they are not as bright or durable, he said.

To solve this challenge, researchers built their LEDs on a thin layer of film later dissolved by a chemical and then affixed tiny plastic tabs on two corners to ensure the LEDs did not wash away in the chemical bath.

The team used a special stamping technology to deposit and assemble the inorganic LEDs onto glass, plastic or rubber surfaces. The system works much like a rubber stamp and ink pad, using the LEDs as ink.

"The new approach can lift large numbers of small, thin LEDs from the wafer in one step, and then print them onto a substrate in another step," Rogers said.

The LEDs can be interconnected and wired with a conventional process used to wire computer chips, he added. And because LEDs can be placed far apart and still provide enough light, the panels and displays can be nearly transparent.

"We can put them on a strip of plastic and make brake lights," said Rogers, who noted that the project was initially funded in part by Ford Motor Co, which was looking for a way to make brake lights that can follow the contour of a car.

The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy also funded the project.

Aug. 23 - U.S.President Barack Obama and his family flies into Massachusetts island Martha's Vineyard with pleas for a quiet week-long break.

Sarah Toms. Reuters.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - A reality TV star wanted for the brutal murder of his bikini model ex-wife in California has been found dead in a motel near Vancouver, Canadian police said on Sunday.

Ryan Jenkins, a Canadian who was the subject of a manhunt in the United States and Canada, apparently took his own life while hiding at the motel in Hope, British Columbia, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Local media said Jenkins hung himself, but Canadian police refused to confirm details of his death after finding his body in the motel room on Sunday.

Authorities in California had charged Jenkins, 32, with the murder of Jasmine Fiore, whose mutilated body was found in a suitcase stuffed into a trash bin just over a week ago in the town of Buena Park outside Los Angeles.

Police said Fiore's fingers and teeth had been removed to make it harder to identify her body, but investigators were able to determine who she was by using the serial number on her breast implants.

Jenkins appeared in the television show "Megan Wants A Millionaire" on VH1, which premiered after completing production in March. Airing of the program has been suspended because of Fiore's death.

Jenkins, who is from Calgary, Alberta, was among 17 men described as millionaires who competed for the affections of former Playboy model Megan Hauserman. When introduced on the show, he was said to have a net worth of $2.5 million.

Jenkins had wed Fiore, 28, in Las Vegas in March, but the marriage was annulled. She had recently moved to Los Angeles and worked as a model in advertising and for Playboy as a coordinator for their "Girls of Golf" events.

Jenkins's body was found just hours after Canadian police confirmed they believed he had entered the country, having used a boat he owned in Washington state to escape U.S. authorities on the Washington state border near Vancouver.

SUNGAI SIPUT, Malaysia - Religious authorities in Malaysia postponed on Monday the caning of a Muslim woman convicted of drinking alcohol until after the holy month of Ramadan.

The planned caning of 32-year-old mother of two Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno has drawn criticism from rights groups concerned by the rise of Islamic laws in this traditionally moderate country, even though Kartika had accepted the punishment.

Earlier on Monday it appeared she might have been freed when a court order that would have transferred her to a prison where she was to have been caned was ruled invalid by an Islamic justice official.

Kartika was released from a van that would have transported her to the prison in Pahang state in eastern mainland Malaysia where she committed the offence that she admits and for which she wanted to be punished in public.

"The punishment has not been canceled, it was postponed because of Ramadan," Pahang state Executive Councillor for Religion, Missionary Work and Unity, Mohamad Sahfri Abdul Aziz, told Reuters.

Ramadan, a time of fasting and contemplation for Muslims, started on Saturday and lasts a month and Mohamad Sahfri said that the decision was taken after consultations with Malaysia's Attorney-General.

Kartika, who has admitted that she drank beer at a hotel in Pahang in December 2007, said that she still accepted the sentence but wanted to be treated fairly.

"I am shocked but I remain steadfast with my decision," Kartika, wearing a cream-colored, traditional long Malay dress decorated with flowers and a headscarf, told reporters after the state announced it would push ahead with the caning.

"All I want now is to know my true situation and do not treat me like a football," said Kartika who had worked as a nurse in Singapore until her trial.

MAHATHIR WEIGHS IN

While caning is a common punishment under Malaysia's civil code, as it is in neighboring Singapore, no woman has been caned and the severity of the punishment has generated criticism that this modern majority-Muslim state was becoming more hardline.

It is also a sensitive political issue where Malays, who account for 55 percent of the 27 million population, must be Muslim. A Malay nationalist party is the main party in the coalition that has ruled the country for 51 years, but it is battling an opposition Islamic party for their votes.

"There is a general push toward the implementation of sharia (Islamic) laws," Osman Bakar Deputy Chief Executive of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies Malaysia told Reuters.

"It's too simplistic to say that the government is becoming more Islamicized to gain more votes, more Malay support."

The National Front coalition, led by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), stumbled to its worst ever losses in national and state elections in 2008.

In a sign of sensitivity over the issue ahead of a state by-election this month that pits the government against the Pan Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) in a majority Muslim state, the government's minister for women withdrew a statement in which she labeled the punishment as "harsh" for a woman.

Former premier Mahathir Mohamad, a frequent critic of the West who ruled Malaysia for 22 years until 2003, said there was no need for Islam or Islamic countries to apologize.

"The news of the caning has gone all around the world," he said on his popular web log (www.chedet.co.cc).

"I do not know if this gives a good or bad image to Islam. As a Muslim, we do not have to care too much about the view of others toward Islam when doing what the religion calls for."

SEOUL (Reuters) - A U.S. official charged with enforcing U.N. sanctions on North Korea sought South Korea's continued support during talks on Monday even as Pyongyang makes conciliatory moves after months of military grandstanding.

A high-ranking North Korean delegation led by close aides of leader Kim Jong-il sent to mourn a former South Korean leader met President Lee Myung-bak on Sunday and delivered a message from the North's leader in their first formal communication since Lee took office about 18 months ago.

South Korea's presidential Blue House denied reports in several South Korean newspapers the envoys conveyed a request by Kim for a summit with Lee, who ended years of unconditional aid when he took office and has been roundly vilified by the North.

Analysts said the rare conciliatory gestures from North Korea may indicate that sanctions contained in U.N. resolutions put in place following the North's long-range rocket launch in April and nuclear test in May could be squeezing the state and forcing it to seek funds for its depleted coffers.

Philip Goldberg, the U.S. coordinator for the U.N. sanctions on North Korea, met South Korean officials for talks on enforcing the punishments aimed at stamping out the North's arms trade, which estimates say provide it with at least hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

"Our goal is to return to the process of denuclearization," Goldberg told reporters after talks in Seoul.

North Korea has said it considers as dead often-stalled disarmament-for-aid talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. It has signaled that it instead wants only direct dealings with the United States, something Washington said it would not do.

SEEKING MONEY FROM SOUTH?

The U.N. sanctions are designed to ban business with North Koreans suspected of being in the illegal arms trade and with firms trading arms or other illicit materials.

Analysts said enforcing U.N. resolutions aimed at Pyongyang hinged on neighbor China, the North's biggest benefactor and the closest thing it can claim as a major ally.

But Beijing, which has called on Pyongyang and Washington to talk, has been reluctant to push any punishment that could destabilize the North's leaders and bring chaos to its border.

The North may be swayed into resuming the talks to please China, the host of the discussions, but few analysts expect that it will ever give up its nuclear weapons.

The North may be looking for renewed help from the South, which once supplied aid equal to about 5 percent of its estimated $17 billion a year GDP.

Despite the North's conciliatory gestures, it maintained a strident tone over a joint U.S.-South Korean military drill that started last week calling it a prelude to nuclear war that could prompt Pyongyang into making a retaliatory strike.

"It is the toughest mode of counteraction of the DPRK (North Korea) to react to the enemy's stick with a sword and its artillery piece with a missile," the North's main newspaper said.

The North had all but cut ties after Lee took office in anger at his policy of linking aid to progress the North makes to decrease the security threat it poses to the region.

In one sign of the North seeking a thaw, leader Kim said earlier this month he wanted to resume suspended tourism projects in the North by an affiliate of the South's Hyundai Group.

"The recent reconciliatory moves between the two Koreas certainly help ease the long-haul worries over the South Korean market," said Choi Seong-lak, an analyst at SK Securities.

Last week, Kim Jong-il dispatched envoys to the South for the first time in two years for the funeral of former President Kim Dae-jung, whose 2000 summit with the North Korean leader in Pyongyang led to better ties and massive aid for his state.

(Additional reporting by Shin Ji-eun; Editing by Jon Herskovitz)

Source : Reuters