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Business News: Malone close to buying major stake in co. -- Will John Malone provide an 11th-hour rescue deal for Mel Karmazin?

BSkyB is preparing to launch an unlimited digital music service to rival Apple's iTunes offering internet access to millions of songs for a small monthly fee.It emerged at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today that the satellite broadcaster is working with mobile music specialist Omnifone on the technology needed for the service.Any broadband user - not only the 2 million signed up to Sky's own broadband service - would be able to listen to as many tracks as they like either through their computer or their television.Users can also download and keep their favourite tracks which are free of co-called Digital Rights Management software to be played on any device.The broadcaster is also testing ways of tying in the service with its satellite and broadband packages to make them more attractive. But it wants to make the ­service available to anyone with a broadband connection.Sky announced its intention to enter the digital music market last July as it clinched a deal with Universal Mus

Governor Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol gives her first television interview since the birth of her baby boy Tripp, opening up to Fox News' Greta Van Susteren about motherhood and offering her personal views on abstinence."[Teens] should just wait ten years, it would just be so much easier," Bristol said about teen pregnancy. As for abstinence, Bristol says she supports it but sometimes finds it "unrealistic."During her interview with Greta on "For the Record," Governor Palin showed up with her new grandson. "Everyone helps out," the new mom said of her big family. "I never would've thought I would've been a mom [a year ago] and I never thought my mom was gonna be chosen for vice president [nominee.]"

The sad news that Jade Goody's cervical cancer has been diagnosed as terminal was all over the weekend papers. Now Goody's PR, Max Clifford, has given the biggest hint yet that her real-life tragedy will also become a television event to be snapped up by the highest bidder.Clifford said that Goody was likely to allow cameras to film her forthcoming wedding with 21-year-old Jack Tweed 'because it was a happy event' and would be a 'distraction' from her terminal illness.Goody is currently the subject of a Living TV documentary, but Clifford suggested that the broadcast rights to her wedding could be snapped up by a rival broadcaster. The Living TV crew has not filmed for 10 days following the sharp decline in her health and her terminal diagnosis, he added.'The wedding is still to be discussed but it is a happy event and on that basis possibly she will [allow cameras to film the event]. It also helps her think about something else and is in some ways a distraction,' he added.Asked if the

Friends Reunited could be worth between £20m and £40m, a fraction of the £175m ITV paid for it in 2005, according to City analysts - who say the ailing broadcaster should look to sell despite the dire market conditions.JP Morgan estimates that ITV's online assets, which include ITV.com, Friends Reunited and ITV Local, are worth approximately £66m. Based on a price tag of twice Friends Reunited's annual revenue, which JP Morgan estimates will be £18.9m in 2009, the social networking website could be worth about £38m on paper.'ITV should sell Friends Reunited for whatever they can get for it,' said Filippo Lo Franco, head of JP Morgan's European Media equity research team. 'Although they do not have a credit or liquidity issue this year, their earnings to net debt ratio is heading for 5 to 6 times and £40m more in their pocket [for Friends Reunited] today would certainly help.'However, Alex DeGroote, an analyst at Panmure, questions whether the market may value Friends Reunited at closer

Sharp 108-Inch LCD Flat Panel Television

President Abraham Lincoln's close and sometimes tumultuous friendship with former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass is the subject of Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Author John Stauffer says the two men were alike in many ways though they strategically on how to end slavery.

The mobile phone industry will today call for Europe's regulators and governments to set aside a quarter of the radio spectrum released by the switch to digital television for extending mobile broadband services into rural and remote areas.The call, by industry body the GSM Association at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, comes as European governments are deciding how to dispose of the so-called digital dividend.In the UK, Ofcom has already been forced to rethink the way it will slice the spectrum up once the analogue TV signal is switched off in 2012, in order to bring its plans more in line with Europe.The digital dividend is alongside the original spectrum that was granted to mobile phone companies when services first started in the 1980s and can carry mobile broadband over long distances, making it perfect for rural areas where fixed-line infrastructure is not up to the job.In the UK, mobile phone companies are locked in a fight with Ofcom over the potential re-use of their e

Joanna Pacitti's 'close connection' to American Idol is the reason why Joanna was quietly removed from the competition last Thursday. That's a reference to Joanna's connection to two 19 Entertainment executives; 19 produces the series.'Unfortunately, it was just a perceptional problem, that there [was] just too close a connection between [Pacitti and the employees], we felt. A replacement was made as a producorial and judge choice. Simple as that. I think it was handled correctly,' Fox's president of alternative programming, Mike Darnell, told the Los Angeles Times.Ryan Seacrest also commented, although he was slightly less specific. 'The producers do the background checks right around [the] Hollywood [round]. When they see something that stands out, they have to address it. And they saw something, and there was apparently some sort of a link that, somewhere along the line, could be construed as one that's close to the competition, and they didn't want to risk it,' he told Fox News

Joanna Pacitti's 'close connection' to American Idol is the reason why Joanna was quietly removed from the competition last Thursday. That's a reference to Joanna's connection to two 19 Entertainment executives; 19 produces the series.'Unfortunately, it was just a perceptional problem, that there [was] just too close a connection between [Pacitti and the employees], we felt. A replacement was made as a producorial and judge choice. Simple as that. I think it was handled correctly,' Fox's president of alternative programming, Mike Darnell, told the Los Angeles Times.Ryan Seacrest also commented, although he was slightly less specific. 'The producers do the background checks right around [the] Hollywood [round]. When they see something that stands out, they have to address it. And they saw something, and there was apparently some sort of a link that, somewhere along the line, could be construed as one that's close to the competition, and they didn't want to risk it,' he told Fox News