The soaring popularity of smartphones is crushing demand for point-and-shoot cameras, threatening the once-vibrant sector as firms scramble to hit back with web-friendly features and boost quality, analysts say.

A sharp drop in sales of digital compact cameras marks them as the latest casualty of smartphones as videogame consoles and portable music players also struggle against the all-in-one features offered by the likes of Apple's iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy.

As India's financial capital shut down for the weekend funeral of a powerful politician linked to waves of mob violence, a woman posted on Facebook that the closures in Mumbai were "due to fear, not due to respect." A friend of hers hit the "like" button.

For that, both women were arrested.

Morocco's pioneering 160-megawatt solar power plant took a step forward on Monday, securing European financing agreements worth 300 million euros ($385 million), or nearly half of the project's cost.

The European Investment Bank (EIB), Germany's KfW bank and the French Development Agency signed the financing accords with Morocco's solar energy agency MASEN in Marrakesh, to support the first phase of the Ouarzazate solar complex, a joint statement said.

Hollywood-style robots able to shoot people without permission from their human handlers are a real possibility and must be banned before governments start deploying them, campaigners warned Monday.

The report "Losing Humanity" -- issued by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic -- raised the alarm over the ethics of the looming technology.

South Korea's most popular smartphone messaging application Kakao Talk said Tuesday it was launching three of its wildly successful mobile games on the global market.

Kakao Talk, launched in March 2010, boasts around 36 million domestic users -- some 70 percent of the population -- with another 30 million overseas.

Google Inc. has reached a licensing deal with representatives of European music publishers, artists and composers in which the U.S. online giant and its customers will gain access to 5.5 million musical works across 35 countries from artists including Lady Gaga and Rihanna.

The accord with Armonia, the alliance of French, Italian and Spanish licensing groups, is billed as the broadest of its kind.

Smartphones and tablets powered by Google's Android software are devouring the mobile gadget market, eating into Apple's turf by feeding appetites for innovation and low prices, analysts say.

The Android operating system powered nearly three out of four smartphones shipped worldwide in the recently ended quarter as the mobile platform dominated the market, according to industry trackers at IDC.

Pinball and slot machine wizard Joe Kaminkow is working his magic on the social games scene pioneered by Zynga and taking Facebook users along the yellow-brick road as his opening move.

Kaminkow and his small team at startup Spooky Cool Labs got a blessing from Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment to make "Wizard of Oz" game for play at the leading social network complete with clips from the classic film.

China's home-grown passenger plane was only a model at the country's premier airshow, but a growing number of orders show Beijing's drive to challenge the dominance of Boeing and Airbus.

State-backed Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) said it won 50 orders for the planned 168-seat C919 plane at the Zhuhai airshow, which ended on Sunday, bringing the total to 380.

South Korea's Samsung has hit back at rival LG in a patents row over next-generation display panels, with both firms accusing the other of stealing technology and senior staff to grab a lead in the market.

Samsung Display, an affiliate of Samsung Electronics, asked a Seoul patents court last week to annul seven patents related to organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel technologies held by LG, a company spokesman said Monday.