Washington  - Discovery astronauts were preparing to undock from the space station later Wednesday to head back to Earth after completing a milestone mission that has doubled the station's capacity.

The mission astronauts installed the fourth and final set of solar panels needed to double power capacity at the station so it can hold six instead of the current three long-term residents - possibly as early as May.

Stockholm  - A website, recently at the centre of a trial in Sweden over alleged illegal file sharing, was Wednesday reported to be launching a potentially controversial service aimed at make people online more anonymous.

The service, known as IPREDator, is available on the Pirate Bay website and allows users to use a special virtual private network (VPN), thereby making their web activity practically untraceable.

Users could sign up for a VPN, currently in a test version, for 5 euros (6.7 dollars) a month.

Wellington - A New Zealand teenage whizz-kid who admitted developing software that infected a million computers around the world has been hired by telecommunications company TelstraClear to advise companies how to avoid hackers.

Owen Walker, 19, who was tracked down by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, is advising on "botnets" - networks of computers infected by malicious software - TelstraClear spokesman Chris Mirams told Radio New Zealand on Wednesday.

San Francisco - Apple launched what it said was the world's first talking music player on Wednesday and said that the new device was the smallest iPod ever.

Apple said that the new iPod shuffle was smaller than an AA battery and that its voice feature would allow it to announce song and device information to the user.

The new 4 gigabyte gizmo holds up to 1,000 songs and is easier to use than previous versions with all of the controls located on the earphone cord, Apple said.

Nokia is making discussions with top music content providers plus music companies with the intention to launch virtual music stores in the Indian market.  

Mr. Chandan Dang, Nokia India Regional General Manager (North), said that Finnish giant is joining hands with around 150 music companies, which includes Universal Music, Warner Bros, Sony BMG and other national music leaders.

Paris  - Intel, the giant US chip manufacturer, plans to pursue research efforts for future technology for high performance computers in France, in cooperation with the French Commission for Atomic Energy (CEA,) the French government said late Friday.

The University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin near Paris is to be involved in the project, the presidential offices said after a meeting between President Nicolas Sarkozy and Intel board chairman Craig Barrett.