A production vehicle derived from the concept will be in showrooms by the end of the year, Nissan says. "In reality, the EX Concept is a very real preview of an all-new luxury crossover that's inspired by coupe design, which is set to arrive at Infiniti retailers nationwide by the end of calendar year 2007".

Anticipated to be available on the production version as "world's first technologies," the EX Concept showcases two innovative features: Around View Monitor (AVM) and Lane Departure Prevention (LDP).

The accounting review meant Dell would not file its annual report with securities regulators by the April 3 due date, or by an extension date of April 18, the company added.

In its statement, Dell did not give details of the misconduct or of its other findings. A spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

"We still don't know the extent of the misconduct," said Sunil Reddy, senior portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management, which oversees about $21 billion in assets, including Dell shares.

"This news creates uncertainty, but more important are the operational metrics, which need to change in the right direction," Reddy said. "That's going to take some time."

Dell will also review to see whether the control deficiencies "constitute a material weakness" in its internal control over financial reporting. 

Dell announced last August that it had been investigating its accounting for a year. Later in 2006, the company said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. federal prosecutors were investigating its past accounting.

Founder Michael Dell in January retook the helm of the company from Kevin Rollins, who left after the investigations were disclosed and a series of lower-than-forecast financial results. Also last year, the company lost the No. 1 PC market share ranking to rival Hewlett-Packard Co.

The company in December replaced former Chief Financial Officer James Schneider with former American Airlines chief Donald Carty. Dell, 42, has also made a series of changes to his senior management team, including the appointment of former Motorola Inc. executive Ron Garriques to oversee a new global consumer unit.

The stock fell 6.6 percent to $21.85 in after-hours trading following the announcement, though it recovered slightly and was last down 2.7 percent at $22.75.

Intel, the world's biggest chipmaker, started Wednesday construction of a chipset assembly and test facility with total investment of 1 billion U.S. dollars in southern Ho Chi Minh City, the first of its kind in Vietnam, according to local media on Thursday.

When completed (scheduled in mid-2009), the facility will be the seventh assembly site of Intel's global network, and is projected to eventually employ some 4,000 local people, and generate annual revenues of 5 billion dollars, said Youth newspaper.

Assembly and test facilities package chips that come from semiconductor fabrication plants. The assembly and test process can be broken down into three stages: packaging, testing and shipping.

Vietnam is fostering high technologies, including information technology, in a move to realize the target of basically becoming an industrial country by 2020.

Vietnam plans to have 38 million phone subscribers by the end of this year, or 43 units per 100 residents, up from 27.5 million subscribers by the end of last year. It also eyes 6 million Internet subscribers, by late 2007, up from over 4 million by late2006.

Vietnam earned nearly 1.8 billion dollars from exporting electronics goods, including computers, mainly to Japan and Southeast Asian countries, in 2006, up 24 percent against 2005, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

"This kind of memory has never been seen before. Manufacturers of such items as cellular phones and consumer electronics will welcome it the most," Samsung President Hwang Chang-gyu said.

"With our Flex-OneNand, for example, they will be able to come up with cheaper and slimmer products while offering more applications," said Hwang who leads the firm’s semiconductor unit.

Flex-OneNand combines two memories and product manufacturers can adjust their capacity through dedicated software. Previously chip memories were either embedded or external.

This is expected to sharply increase data throughput speeds and reduce the prices of handsets, portable game consoles and media players.

"We are poised to roll out the Flex-OneNand in the second quarter of this year. Already big-name companies are ready to incorporate the item into their products," Hwang said.

"Down the road, more advanced features will debut on the back of fusion memories including Flex-OneNand," the researcher-turned-chief executive said.

Alongside the chips, Samsung also unveiled gigabyte solid-state disks and 8.4-million pixel CMOS image sensors at the forum.

Hwang projected that fusion memories will become a mainstream component for portable consumer gadgets.

"With the advent of the convergence era that blurs boundaries among conventional industries, we face the need to produce fusion chips encompassing as many applications as possible," Hwang said.

"In the end, mobile handsets will be composed of just three parts: a display, battery and chip that includes memory, flash card and logic functions," he said.

Hwang said Samsung aims to chalk up $10 billion in sales over the next five years from fusion chips alone, which he said are ready for prime time.

Asked about the impact of the fusion chips, Hwang refused to make specific comments because Samsung’s customers are now developing customized products.

Hyundai Motor America, chief operating officer Steve Wilhite said, "Concept Genesis extends our product range into new territories from a performance, design and packaging perspective. When it arrives in 2008 it will catapult Hyundai into competition against some potent rivals, and Genesis is up for the challenge."

It looks like the production model is unlikely to be seen on these shores, but it is expected to go on sale in the US for a starting price of less than $30,000.

John Williams, from the Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues attempted to forecast the risk of novel or disappearing climates by the year 2100, using global climate models and greenhouse gas emission scenarios from the recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC).

Their findings are being published Tuesday in this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers found that under both high and low emissions scenarios, many regions would experience biome-scale changes. Biomes are types of major ecological communities, such as rainforest, grassland, or desert.

Tropical and subtropical regions may experience previously unrecorded climates, with the greatest changes in Amazonian and Indonesian rainforests. Areas like the southeastern United States and the Arabian Peninsula may also be affected.

Tropical mountains and poleward regions, such as the Peruvian and Colombian Andes, Siberia, and southern Australia, face a risk of climates disappearing altogether.

In the high-end scenario, up to 39 percent and 48 percent of the planet's land surface could experience novel or disappearing climates, respectively, while in the low-end scenario, the projections are up to 20 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

The regions facing climate disappearance have also been recently identified as biodiversity hotspots, suggesting that standard conservation solutions may fail to protect the fragile biodiversity in these areas.

Porsche plans to lift its stake in Volkswagen to 31 percent from 27.3 percent. Under German law, it is required to make an offer for the entire company once it owns more than 30 percent of the shares.

The offer of 100.92 euros ($134.40) a share is the minimum amount Porsche can legally offer other shareholders and is well below Volkswagen"s most recent closing price of 117.70 euros. A Porsche spokesman said it was not seeking to acquire a majority stake in Volkswagen any time soon.

"We expect very few, if any, shareholders to sell us their shares at this price," the spokesman, Michael Baumann, said. "This gives us the freedom to move further without taking other special steps."

The move confirms, however, that Porsche is determined to tighten its grip on Volkswagen, with which it has deep historical links. The two companies cooperate in manufacturing sport utility vehicles, and two of Porsche"s most senior executives serve on Volkswagen"s board.

In a statement, Volkswagen"s chief executive, Martin Winterkorn, said he welcomed Porsche"s increased stake.

Analysts said Porsche was forced to cross this threshold sooner than it might have wished because of the recent rally in Volkswagen"s share price. Many analysts had expected it to wait until a European court issued a ruling on a German law that protects Volkswagen from hostile takeover bids.

The court is expected to strike down the law, which places a cap on the voting rights of shareholders at 20 percent, regardless of how many shares they own. If it does not, Porsche could find itself holding a large stake in Volkswagen without commensurate voting power.

"It"s clearly a high-risk approach, because Porsche doesn"t know exactly what is going to happen at the court," said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, the director of the Center for Automotive Research in Gelsenkirchen.

Shares of Volkswagen have risen 37 percent this year, largely on speculation about Porsche"s intentions.

Porsche first acquired shares in Volkswagen in September 2005, saying it wanted to protect the independence of its partner. It has steadily increased its stake, occasionally ruffling Volkswagen"s other major shareholder, the state of Lower Saxony, which owns 20.5 percent.

The links between the two companies are longstanding, complex and personal. Ferdinand Porsche, the patriarch of the Porsche family, designed the Volkswagen Beetle at the behest of Hitler.

The chairman of Volkswagen"s supervisory board, Ferdinand K. Piëch, is a member of the Porsche family, which still controls the sports-car company. He was once chief executive of Volkswagen, and continues to exert influence over its day-to-day affairs.

Analysts regard Porsche"s growing stake in Volkswagen as a way for Mr. Piëch, an automotive engineer and billionaire industrialist, to reassemble the pieces of his grandfather"s empire.

If all of Volkswagen"s shareholders were to accept Porsche"s offer, Mr. Baumann said, the deal would be valued at about 35 billion euros ($46.6 billion). Porsche has lined up financing for that, though he made it clear that the carmaker does not intend to raise the offer beyond the current discounted level.

Porsche"s investment in Volkswagen has already shaken up the larger company. Last fall, Volkswagen dismissed its chief executive, Bernd Pischetsrieder, and replaced him with Mr. Winterkorn, a protégé of Mr. Piëch, who ran the company"s luxury car division, Audi.

Soon afterward, Volkswagen"s No. 2 executive, Wolfgang Bernhard, resigned. Mr. Bernhard, a former chief operating officer at Chrysler, had pushed a stringent cost-cutting program.

Since then, analysts say, Volkswagen has shifted its emphasis to high-quality engineering and design. These are hallmarks of Porsche, and of Mr. Piëch, when he was chief executive of VW.

"In the long-term, we"ll have to see how competitive Volkswagen will be in the market," Mr. Dudenhöffer said. "The risk is Piëch wants to do everything. He wants to buy control, and he"s reversing Volkswagen"s strategy."