EU court prohibits Italian gambling restriction
Private-sector gambling businesses said the decision would help them to pry open betting markets from the grip of state-run monopolies.

Microsoft attacks Google over book scanning
A lawyer pfor the software maker lanned to say in a speech that Google was cutting into the profits of authors and publishers.
- Microsoft contest focuses on Xbox Live Arcade

Thai government seizes TV station sold by ex-leader
ITV, sold by Thaksin Shinawatra to Temasek Holdings of Singapore, will be closed temporarily and managed by an arm of the Prime Minister's Office.

Briefing: British 'gangstas' busted by own YouTube posting
Four fake "gangstas" have been arrested after posting footage of themselves brandishing weapons on the Internet, the British police said.

Excellent adventure for the socially conscious
Technology, entertainment and design luminaries converge at the TED conference in California, where progressive activism will be high on the agenda.

The Workplace: Your company monitors your personal e-mail
Don't panic, but watch your back — messages about anything other than work might attract unwanted attention.

Internet lenders could prove disruptive
The Web sites connect those eager to borrow money with others willing to lend it, offering both sides better interest rates than banks.

Radio broadcasters agree to fine over payola
The broadcasters have agreed to pay $12.5 million to resolve claims that they accepted cash and other incentives in exchange for playing songs, a practice popularly known as payola.

Media titans clash and audiences lose
A fight between Richard Branson of Virgin and the Murdochs has spilled over into the living rooms of three million British TV viewers.

Sober EuroNews arrives at a raucous party
The channel draws a larger audience than its biggest competitors, CNN or BBC World, in the five major European markets.

Concern about silencing of Thai TV station

BANGKOK The Thai government completed the takeover of the only independent television station in the country on Tuesday and said it would temporarily pull it off the air after the station failed to pay about $3 billion of dollars in fines and license fees.

The takeover was expected after the station said last week that it could not pay. The government announced that it would terminate iTV's license Tuesday, the deadline for payment.

The move was the latest to raise concern among investors and the public about the direction of the military- installed leaders of Thailand. Others include the imposition of capital controls and new restrictions on foreign ownership of Thai companies. $@

British 'gangstas' busted by own YouTube posting

Four fake "gangstas" have been arrested after posting footage of themselves brandishing weapons on the Internet, the British police said.

The two-minute clip, posted on YouTube, shows a hooded youth posing with a kitchen knife, a baton and what appears to be a pellet gun.

The Merseyside police said they had arrested four men aged 15 and 20 on suspicion of firearms offenses and that they had recovered a gun.

The police were able to trace the group partly because the clip included a shot that lingered on a street sign in Seacombe, England. $@(AP)

STMicroelectronics, the biggest European semiconductor maker, won a U.S. court ruling that its flash-memory cards do not infringe a patent owned by SanDisk. The decision concerns just one dispute in the companies' battles over flash-memory patents that began in 2004.

$@(Bloomberg)

Magyar Telekom said Tuesday that it would offer an unbundled broadband Internet service in Hungary by March 30. Magyar, a unit of Deutsche Telekom said the unbundled ADSL service eliminated the need for a voice subscription for broadband Internet access. $@(Reuters)

The publisher Sdu has been sold by the Dutch state to a consortium of ABN AMRO Capital and Allianz Capital Partners for about €330 million, or $433 million, the Finance Ministry said. Sdu prints identification documents and publishes books and trade magazines. $@(Reuters)

Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, said it had entered a partnership with the University of Cambridge to research the use of nanotechnology. Nokia said it would collaborate with the Cambridge engineering department. $@(Bloomberg)

Ted Turner said he had sold all of his stock in Time Warner, a year after leaving the board of the media company. Turner, who had 31.3 million shares as of May 2006, stepped down as a director last year, a decade after selling CNN and other cable networks to Time Warner. $@(Bloomberg)

Amazon.com will slow investment spending this year, its chief financial officer said. Higher prices will limit greater spending on infrastructure upgrades, said the executive, Thomas Szkutak.$@ (Bloomberg)

Tribune said it had sold two Connecticut newspapers to Gannett for $73 million. Gannett bought The Advocate and Greenwich Time, the company said, while retaining rights to real estate associated with the newspapers it sold. $@ (Bloomberg)

Activision, maker of "Call of Duty" and other video games, agreed to buy DemonWare, a producer of software based in Dublin used by game platforms to connect players. Top DemonWare executives have agreed to join Activision, the game maker said. $@(Bloomberg)

PayPal, the top online payments company, said Monday that it had translated its Web site into Japanese to make it easier for Japanese shoppers to use its services. The company said it would begin offering a Japanese version of its international site in a week. $@(Reuters)