COMMODITIES: Analysts said investors were not entirely convinced that gasoline inventories in the US were growing fast enough to meet demand
Gasoline and oil futures jumped on Friday on continued concerns that domestic refineries aren't producing enough gas to meet peak summer driving demand.

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REGIONAL ROUNDUP: Taipei ended the week close to a seven-year high as trading turned aggressive in the wake of jitters over a possible sell-off in Chinese equities
Asian stocks closed mostly higher on Friday with investors shrugging off a mixed performance by Wall Street and ongoing concerns about a further sell-off in China.

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European shares ended higher on Friday as investors welcomed slightly stronger-than-expected US jobs data, strength in the telecom sector and gains from French automaker Renault.

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The dollar traded mainly higher on Friday as better-than-expected US data helped shift expectations on healthy growth going forward in the world's biggest economy.

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Wall Street celebrated a bumper week on Friday that left the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Standard and Poor's 500 stock indexes basking at record highs.

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OPEN TO ABUSE: Reporters Without Borders said that Microsoft Beijing's compilation of demographic profiles could be misused by the government to track down Net users
Microsoft Corp's Beijing-based researchers are analyzing Web surfing patterns to guess computer users' gender, age and other demographic information, a technology the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders worries could be misused by the Chinese government.

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SLEEP CAFE: Japan's economic crisis a decade ago and changing values have given rise to a new social stratum of poor, young people living out of 24-hour Net cafes
It's almost midnight as Ryo settles into a reclining chair for the night, a can of tea and a pack of cigarettes at his side, a construction job awaiting him in the morning.

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Adding another potentially lucrative channel to its prosperous advertising network, Internet search leader Google Inc on Friday announced its acquisition of Feed-Burner Inc, a service focused on making money from the steady stream of information flowing from blogs, podcasts and traditional news sites.

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ow will airports accommodate the world's biggest passenger jet?

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Two Taiwanese trade delegations composed of agricultural and industrial representatives are arriving in Washington this week as part of their US procurement tour, officials at Taiwan's representative office in the US said on Friday.

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■ SEMICONDUCTORS
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