San Francisco - Test flights for the much-delayed Boeing Dreamliner are due to start in June and the first customers are on schedule to receive the plane in the first quarter of 2010, the US aviation company said Wednesday.

Test flights for the aircraft have been delayed for more than two years, but Boeing has now filed 60 per cent of the paperwork needed for certification of the 787, Mike Delaney, chief project engineer of the 787 programme, said at a press conference.

San Francisco  - An iPhone Lite? Or perhaps an iPad? Whatever new device Apple has up its sleeve, the US technology press is wasting no time in speculating on its identity.

From the heights of the Wall Street Journal to the unending chatter of a thousand blog-postings, the speculation reached a crescendo Wednesday after a BusinessWeek article that the company was in talks with US cell phone giant Verizon to provide "a smaller cheaper version of the iPhone" and a second device described as a "media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos."

San Francisco - General Electric has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology, using holographic images to allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs, the company announced Monday. The storage advance is only a laboratory success at this stage but researchers said that the technology has passed critical thresholds that will make it transferrable to commercial and consumer applications.

San Francisco -

San Francisco  - Apple has fired some 1,600 employees from its chain of retail stores due to slackening consumer demand, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The job cuts were referenced in a securities filing by Apple Thursday in which the company said it had 14,000 full-time equivalent employees in its retail division as of March 28, down from the 15,600 as of the end of December.

The move came as Apple's recent earnings report showed a drop in sales for its Mac computer line, which is the biggest earner at the stores.

San Francisco  - A remote town in Montana has come up with a new proposal for its empty jail - turning it into a replacement for the US government's notorious facility in Guantanamo, Cuba.

But the proposal has met scepticism at the federal level.

According to the Billings Gazette Friday, officials in Hardin, Montana proposed the site as a Guantanamo replacement since they have been unable to secure contracts for inmates since the 27-million- dollar facility was completed in July 2007.