San Francisco  -

San Francisco - Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a trial version of a new Internet Explorer designed to fight the growing challenge from Firefox.

But the new browser from the giant software company won't have it easy. Developers for the open-sourced Firefox released a trial version of a new application for the internet, Ubiquity, which makes it easier to access and share information that combines intuitive commands with browser functionality.

San Francisco - Scientists from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) were busy Wednesday fighting a computer virus that managed to infect one of the laptop computers used by astronauts on the space station, a spokesman for the US space agency said.

Citing security concerns, NASA declined to identify the virus, or how it made its way to the space station.

But the space news site SpaceRef. com, which first reported the infection, identified the virus as "W32. Gammima. AG". Referring to NASA's daily status reports, the site said the virus was probably transmitted on a flash disk drive which somehow had not been scanned.

San Francisco  - Microsoft is to pay comedian Jerry Seinfeld 10 million dollars to star in a 300-million-dollar advertising campaign for its Windows Vista operating system.

The campaign, which is one of the largest ever undertaken by the software giant, is aimed at establishing a cachet for the computer operating system and will feature Seinfeld along with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

San francisco - Rescuers in Arizona were searching Monday for 11 people who went missing after flash floods roared through Grand Canyon National Park, a police spokesman said.

The search took on added urgency Monday afternoon as weather forecasts predicted another round of the thunderstorms that sparked the flash floods Saturday, said Kathleen Levinson of the Coconino County Sheriff's Office.

San Francisco  - Popular online radio channel, Pandora, which allows users to choose the songs and artists they want to hear, is likely to close down soon due to a massive increase in royalties demanded by the music industry, the site's founder Tim Westergren said.

"We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," Westergren told the Washington Post in an interview. "This is like a last stand for webcasting."