San Francisco - Microsoft issued a rare emergency patch on Thursday to fix a critical bug in its Windows operating system, which could be exploited by online criminals to take over individual and corporate computers.

It was the first time since April 2007 that the software giant has issued a patch outside its schedule of monthly updates.

Microsoft said the critical flaw affected computers running Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, with less danger posed to computers running Windows Vista and Server 2008.

New York - The airlines' losing streak continued Thursday, as high fuel costs and sagging economy put a drag on operations.

The country's sixth largest passenger carrier US Airways flew deep into the red in the third quarter, like most of its rivals.

JetBlue, partially owned by Lufthansa, on the other hand narrowly missed the profit zone.

But in both cases, the losses were less than analysts expected.

Tripoli - Sudan and Chad are to exchange ambassadors in two weeks, a committee assigned to restore peace between the countries announced Thursday.

The committee, which comprises representatives from Libya, Sudan and Chad, said in a statement that both countries are now committed to promote confidence and trust.

At the meeting in Tripoli, the committee also recommended accelerating the work of observation teams on the border between the two countries.

On Tuesday, a System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 was launched by Microsoft. Through the launch of this Virtual Machine Manager, Microsoft added another key component to its virtualization arsenal. 

All important virtualization management pieces of Microsoft's strategy can be handled by Virtual Machine Manager 2008, and it has been learnt that Microsoft has spent much of 2008 deciding as to how the software could manage both Hyper-V and VMware's ESX hypervisor, as well as physical servers, through a single interface. 

It might be quite interesting and surprising to know, but India’s space program actually commenced at a church located in Thumba, a small village known only for fishing and a bit far from Thiruvanathanapuram airport in Kerala. 

Mexico City - Mexico's central bank sold 1.096 billion dollars of its foreign exchange reserves Thursday to boost the peso.

The Bank of Mexico sold 1 billion dollars as markets opened and the remainder later in the day.

The value of the dollar went as high as 14.30 pesos before the bank's intervention, although it closed at 13.79 pesos.

Mexico's central bank has sold more than 13 billion dollars since October 8, but the price of the dollar continues to rise. It was worth about 11.2 pesos on October 1.