Nokia announced Friday that it would not produce mobile video games for its N-Gage gaming platform after September 2010.

As per company’s blog post, existing N-Gage games can be bought until September 2010. However, N-Gage Arena and other community features will remain operational all through 2010.

It may be noted here that N-Gage remained struggling to allure high volume of next generation games.

The US Homeland Security Department has created a new $9 million cyber security center that will help integrate National Cybersecurity and Communications monitoring systems.

The new National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center combines two of DHS’ operational institutes viz. US Computer Emergency Readiness Team and the National Coordinating Center for Telecommunications.

Chevron Corp., the second largest US oil company, said Friday that it suffered a drop of 51.5 per cent in profits during the third quarter, citing lower prices of oil and gas.

California-based Chevron pocketed a profit of $3.83 billion during the third quarter as compared with $7.89 billion in the same period of 2008.

Company’s revenue slipped to $47.0 billion, representing a drop of 41 per cent from last year.

Friday proved to be a bad day for major stocks, which tumbled more than 2.5 per cent.

The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 250 points at 9,712.73, the sharpest decline since July. Dow industrial's all 30 stocks slipped.

The Standard & Poor's 500 plunged about 2.8 per cent at 1,036.19.

The Nasdaq composite index dropped 52.44 points to 2,045.11.

European stocks also followed suit. Major indexes lost 2.21 per cent in London and 2.86 per cent in Paris.

Clean coal power generation will not be commercially worthwhile unless the carbon price reaches $60 a tonne.

The government's global carbon capture & storage institute also said that under the existing conditions carbon would take more than 20 years to hit a level of $60 a tonne.

Speaking his mind, CEO of Global CCS Institute Nick Otter, said, "The CO2 price now is not capable of taking the technology forward."

Social networking site Facebook released the updated version of its privacy policy and asked its users to provide feedback.

Elliot Schrage, chief of communications at Facebook, wrote in a company's blog that users could send their comments by November 5.

Canada had been pressurizing Facebook to make changes in its privacy policy. Earlier, privacy czar Canada had conducted an inquiry into handling of personal information by Facebook.

Macquarie Group Ltd, Australia's leading investment bank, said it pocketed a profit of $479 million during the six months to September, 21 per cent down from the same period last year.

Macquarie has forecast a similar result for the second half of the year, for full year growth of around 10 per cent.

Macquarie's full year profit stood at $871 million during the fiscal 2009.

The group is optimistic on the prospects for the business but wants to remain cautious.

F&C Asset Management reported an increase of 12.3 per cent in assets under management during the third quarter.

Assets jumped to £99.2 billion over the three months to September 30, from £88.3 billion in the previous quarter.

However, F&C Asset Management experienced a net outflow of £382 million as compared with £2.57 billion last year.

Stronger Euro against sterling helped assets to jump by £3.8 billion.

Britain's Unite union said Friday that it would seek an injunction from the High Court to prevent British Airways from imposing new work contracts on its 14,000 cabin crew.

BA recently announced its plans to hack nearly 1,700 jobs, freeze pay for existing staff and lower wages for new workers.

Speaking on the issue, BA said that the announcement was made after pursuing consultations with the union leaders.

The company further added, "The changes do not alter contractual terms and conditions for individual crew members."

Yell, the publisher of Britain's Yellow Pages directories, tumbled 10 per cent after it failed to win support for its restructuring plans.

Yell wants to raise 500 million pounds via a cash call to slash its debt mountain from 3.8 billion pounds to 3.3 billion pounds.

Yell requires 95 per cent of its creditors by value to support the plan. It has already extended the time limit to win approval for its plan.

It also wants to slash its long-term debt by further 300 million pounds within the next 18 months via issuing equity.

Workers of the Ford Motor Co. rejected union contract concessions, dashing automaker's hope to ensure cost-cutting changes.

The contract changes include a 6-year ban on strikes over wages and benefits and freezing wages of new workers until 2015.

84 per cent of the United Auto Workers union Local 862 voted against the changes in Louisville.

Workers at the Dearborn plant in Michigan voted 93 per cent against concessions.

Banking regulators closed nine banks Friday, including Los Angeles-based California National, bringing the number of failed banks in 2009 to 115.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said the failed banks in Illinois, Texas, California and Arizona were subsidiaries of a Chicago-based bank holding company, commonly called FBOP Corp.

The US Bancorp in Minneapolis will assume the deposits plus most of the assets of the failed banks.

British house prices climbed 0.4 per cent in October, reporting the first annual increase in the past 19 months.

Lender Nationwide said Friday that house prices in Britain gained 2 per cent in October as compared with the same period of 2008. The average value of a British house climbed to £162,038 during October.

But, the increase was less-than-expected on the monthly basis. Housing market had reported an increase of 0.9 per cent in September and 1.4 per cent in August.

QinetiQ, the British defence technology company, announced Thursday that Leo Quinn, the former CEO of bank-note printer De La Rue, will succeed its current CEO Graham Love next month.

55-year old Graham Love will step down on November 30. However, the company did give any reason for his departure.

Leo Quinn is well known for turning around businesses.

Speaking on the topic, a spokesman for QinetiQ said, "The view was taken that a new chief executive would take QinetiQ to the next level of its development."

Vodafone has released Friday its new 360 suite that is expected to put people at the heart of their mobile phones.

The launched handset is Samsung H1, which has 3.5-inch touch enabled OLED screen, 16GB memory, WiFi, GPS plus a 5 megapixal camera.

The H1 runs the Linux-based LiMO operating system.

The 360 service includes a universal contact list that integrates information from address books within a number of services.

A 3D zoom feature lets its users to browse via their recent interaction in chronological order.