An underwater cable failure in the Mediterranean Sea crippled Internet and phone services in India and other countries across the Middle East, leaving businesses disturbed. The disruption is suspected to have been caused by a ship's anchor near Alexandria, northern Egypt.

Cisco Systems Inc. has launched its Nexus 7000 product line, powerful switches for corporate data centers. Along with this update of its market offerings, the Network Equipment maker forecast strong sales despite worries of a slowdown in U.S. technology spending.

Is HD DVD nearing its end? Only a week after Warner Brothers Entertainment withdrew its support for the next-generation HD DVD, sales plunged. The good news for consumers is that it has helped bring down the prices.

British billionaire Richard Branson and the aerospace designer Burt Rutan unveiled an interesting model of a spaceship-cum-aircraft, aiming to allow people to enjoy sub-orbital joy rides on regular basis.

Time Warner Inc.'s HBO movie channel will launch a service on Tuesday to allow subscribers to access its content on the internet. The pay-cable network will offer HBO On Broadband, featuring 400 hours of movies and original series that can be downloaded to computers.

London -- British scientists have determined air quality in the United Kingdom has significantly improved during the past 25 years with the reduction of heavy metals.

Britain's National Physical Laboratory monitored air quality at 17 sites and determined the presence of harmful heavy metals such as lead, iron and copper had diminished.

The results show a 70 percent reduction in all heavy metals tested. Lead showed a particularly sharp decline, falling from 556 nanograms per cubic meter in 1980 to 19.95ng/m3 -- a reduction of 96.5 percent. A nanogram is one-billionth of a gram.

The decrease in air pollution reflects advances in environmentally focused technology such as unleaded fuel, said Richard Brown, NPL's principal research scientist.

"Taking lead as an example, the steady decline of emissions from coal and oil combustion along with the change in fuel usage, and reductions in industrial output, has resulted in a significant reduction of lead in the atmosphere," said Brown. "We expect to see this decline continuing across the board until levels finally bottom out and become close to those occurring naturally."

Lenovo, the maker of conventional black ThinkPad laptops for businessmen is set to navigate into a new arena with flashy notebook computers called IdeaPads, to target the everyday customers.

Drunken driving was the cause of another accident, this time involving a police officer off duty in Chicago. The officer, who name authorities have not released, is said to be in critical condition after he rammed his car into stationary tow truck Monday night on the Dan Ryan Expressway. The 43-year old officer was rushed to Stroger Hospital after the accident. He has several broken bones and is said to be in critical condition.

Washiongton -- The U.S. space agency, commemorating its 50th anniversary, has launched the first major redesign of its primary Web site in more than four years.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the redesigned Web site features a new level of interactivity and customization. It offers the opportunity to comment on selected NASA stories, create personal playlists of favorite NASA videos and share agency content with social bookmarking sites on the Internet, NASA said..

"We're very excited to roll this new version of nasa.gov out for the public," said Brian Dunbar, NASA's internet services manager. "We've been able to add new functionality to the site, broaden and simplify the navigation to NASA's wide range of content and still keep the features that users liked best about the old design. All together, the new design will make it much easier for users to complete their top tasks."

Google is in the midst of setting up an online storage and backup service that will enable users to store word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and photos onto its (Google's) servers. The endeavor of the Mountain View, Calif. Based Company is to move more user data onto the internet cloud.