Wednesday in Singapore, the precious metal advanced within sight of a 2-month high hit Tuesday, as global equities plummeted and the euro slipped on renewed worries about the health of the global economy. Spot gold added $3.85 to $1,256.95 by 3:56 GMT after rising as high as $1,259.80 on Tuesday, its strongest since June 28, with investors rattled by a Wall Street Journal report that said "stress tests" published more than a month ago underestimated some lenders' holdings of potentially risky government debt.

In early Asian session Wednesday, the Japanese unit gained ground across the board as Asian stocks fell on persistent concern about the global economic outlook prompted traders to seek the safe-haven Japanese currency. The yen thus jumped to a fresh 15-year high against the dollar, 8-day high against the franc, 15-day high against the euro and a 1-week high against the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars.

Google is launching the service to move the web to the TV screens across the United States this year autumn with the worldwide launch scheduled for the next year. CEO Eric Schmidt said the service, which will allow full Internet browsing via the television, would be free, and Google would work with a variety of programme makers and electronics manufacturers to bring it to consumers.

ABN Amro is renewing its partnership agreement with with IBM, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys Technologies, according to India's Economic Times. In 2005 the Dutch bank agreed a five year EUR1.8 billion combined deal with the three firms and Accenture and Patni Computer Systems in 2005.

ProPay (www.propay.com) announced that it was ranked among the 2010 Inc. 5000 List of Fast-Growth companies for the second year in a row. ProPay provides businesses of all size with secure tools to accept credit and debit cards through PCI DSS compliant merchant solutions. ProPay says that its main advantages are these:

Clear2Pay, an international provider of payment solutions, has partnered with Edenred, previously known as Accor Services, to launch the first card-based luncheon voucher on the Belgian market.

Sony released its latest version of PlayStation 3 firmware. The new 3.42 release features a "patch... added to address security vulnerability in the system software". Those users who fear that the new system software will indeed prevent the USB dongle may just discard the update. But in this case they won’t ever access PlayStation Network.

The biggest mobile show in the world is hosting its first event dedicated specially for Apple developers next year. Mobile World Congress, which takes place each February in Barcelona, Spain, will add MacWorld Mobile to its new slate of events focused on developers, who make the small software programs or apps that have become key to phone makers' fortunes. Apple itself never participates in wider industry events like MWC or the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas but prefers to stage its own shows, which attract huge amounts of media attention.

The US currency revealed mixed presence across the board during early North American deals today. The dollar thus edged higher to a 6-day high against the euro, but it dropped to a 6-day low versus the yen.

According to the post on the TechCrunch blog Yahoo is moving a large part of its YOS group to Bangalore. The YOS (Yahoo Open Strategy) group, run by SVP Jay Rossiter, includes YDN as well as other products aimed at developers like YCW and YQL. Yahoo only confirms that some California based YDN engineers are being moved to other projects, calling it a “pretty minor internal shift of resources.” But as TechCruch notes that at least two senior engineers were fired outright.

In early European trading today, the Japanese unit firmed on drop in most Asian and European stocks that propelled traders to seek for safe-haven currencies. The yen thus reached a 1-week high against the pound and multi-day highs against the rest of majors, barring the Swiss franc.

An investigation was launched by the US Department of Justice into the Google’s deal to overtake airline ticketing software firm ITA Software Inc. The DoJ wants to determine if the deal would exert too much influence on the online travel industry, the Wall Street Journal said. Google bought ITA Software, one of the Web's key providers of airline travel software, for $700 million in July, in a move that Google said would allow it to improve the way consumers find flight and fare information online.

ExoPC of Rimouski Quebec, Canada, started taking preorders for its upcoming slate device that runs Windows 7 Home Premium. While originally preorders were limited to only 1,200 devices, now it is open to everyone. The 32GB version will run you CAD $649 (about $625) while the 64GB is being sold for CAD $749 (about $720). Both models come with up to 160MB/s SanDisk P4 mini-SSDs and a rated battery life of up to four hours.

According to the polls conducted by Mashable and Washington Post many users are against censorship introduced by Craigslist on its Adult Section. A survey at Mashable shows 71 percent of the respondents voted no to the question "Should Craigslist's Adult Services be censored?" Meanwhile, the Washington Post asked its readers, "Do you agree with Craigslist's decision?" to block access to its Adult Services section. Fifty-two percent of them said no.