To improve the performance and reliability of solid-state drives (SSD), SanDisk Corp. on Wednesday announced an advanced flash file management system called ExtremeFFS system.

Don Barnetson, senior director of marketing at the Milpitas, Calif.-based memory maker's SSD business unit, said ExtremeFFS should boost the speed of writing common types of data to SSDs by as much as 100 times, thereby dramatically improving two of the main weaknesses of SSDs.

For the manufacture of critical components for thermal power plants, forgings major Bharat Forge Ltd (BFL) is proposing to form an energy joint venture with a Europe-based company of the Alstom Group.

Baba Kalyani, Chairman and Managing Director, BFL, described the move as a part of the company’s planned entry into the capital goods sector.

Craiglist, an online classifieds company, has long been used by prostitutes and sex-oriented businesses to advertise their services. However, that may soon end as on Thursday Craiglist in an agreement with 40-state attorneys general, agreed to curb its unruly 'erotic services' listings.

Contrary to Wall Street's expectations, the global economic downtown has impacted Disney Co.'s quarterly results, harder and faster than expected. Experiencing a sharp decline in hotel bookings and low revenue returns from network advertising, Disney's shares slid 9%, recovering a little after executives stimulated bookings by announcing hotel discounts, during the first half of 2009.

Releasing its annual figures on Thursday, the regional offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reveals that the results of a crackdown on immigrants already convicted for crimes, including those who have been dodging standing deportation orders stands at a record high, with more than 100,000 illegal immigrants in Texas deported in the past 12 months.

Raiding homes, scouring jails and prisons, in what is a 20% increase from the previous year, ICE agents deported 349,000 illegal immigrants across the nation, during the
12 months leading up to September.

Former Governor Spitzer, who reinvented the office of attorney general, but had trouble adjusting to being governor, has been reprieved. A statement by Michael Garcia, United States attorney ends eight months of uncertainty for the disgraced governor, who will not face any criminal charges for patronizing a high-priced prostitution ring.

A Democrat, Spitzer, who after eight years as state attorney general, was elected as Governor in 2006, built his reputation as a prosecutor, who single-mindedly tackled white-collar corruption and promised to bring the ethics back to Albany.