Leaders of the world’s economic powers say Germany should balance its push for European fiscal austerity with doses of stimulus spending to avoid a financial calamity with global repercussions.

Vidal Sassoon used his hairstyling shears to free women from beehives and hot rollers and give them wash-and-wear cuts that made him an international name in hair care.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told China on Thursday that it must protect human rights, in remarks that rejected Beijing’s criticism of the U.S. for getting involved in the case of a blind dissident.

Rick Santorum said there is “no question Barack Obama has to be defeated,” but did not say he would back presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, instead revealing he had only spoken to Newt Gingrich, not Romney yet.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A one-click online payment system using Facebook and Twitter that could boost Internet sales for newspapers, music vendors and other low-priced goods and services is being tested by a major European media company, according to its developer. The Internet poses an increasingly urgent problem for newspaper publishers who want to make money from the articles they put on their websites, but who are worried they will deter visitors by asking them to take out a full subscription

When Fahim Saleh bought the domain name “prankdial.com,” he fit the demographic one might expect: a high school boy in a small town, an occasional prankster and an Internet geek.

Ryan Cleary (pictured), the 19-year-old from Essex, England arrested last June for aiding in the operations of notorious hacking collective LulzSec, has landed back in jail, the AP reports.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The Greek government should take a leaf out of South Korea’s book and invest in better networks and getting more people online, a study which measures how the Web raises GDP levels said on Friday. While many European countries make noticeable gains in their economic output as the Internet makes shopping cheaper and helps new businesses grow quickly, Greece’s heavily indebted economy is far behind, research by Boston Consulting Group found.

(Reuters) – Zynga Inc shareholders will sell Class A shares worth about $591 million, with founder and CEO Mark Pincus alone set to reap about $227 million based on Thursday’s closing price. Shareholders will sell a total of 43 million shares in the online game maker, including 16.5 million from Pincus, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday

SAN FRANCISCO, March 21 – Hewlett Packard Co will merge its printer and PC businesses, combining two of its largest divisions as Chief Executive Meg Whitman tries to jumpstart growth at the technology company. The combined unit, with $65 billion in annual sales, will account for about half the company’s revenue and be headed by PC chief Todd Bradley, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Reuters had reported on the plans on Tuesday

(Reuters) – Handset maker HTC Corp’s Beats Electronics is close to buying the digital music subscription service MOG for an undisclosed sum, according to a person close to the talks. The company has been in discussion with Beats for weeks and the deal could be announced within the next fortnight, according to the source. A spokesman for Beats declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for MOG

(Reuters) – The director of a video gone viral that calls for the arrest of fugitive Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony has been hospitalized in California for exhaustion following an “unfortunate incident,” his group said on Friday. It said filmmaker Jason Russell’s condition stemmed from the emotional toll of recent weeks. The 30-minute YouTube video called “Kony 2012,” viewed by tens of millions of people, aims to wake up the world to atrocities committed by Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, including kidnapping children and forcing them to fight

Reuters – Microsoft Corp released an incomplete version of Windows 8 for the public to download and try out on Wednesday, looking to rev up excitement for the slick, new-look operating system that it hopes will restore its fading tech supremacy.

Reuters – Web-based software maker Salesforce.com Inc’s cancellation of plans to build a massive office complex in San Francisco has puzzled investors and city officials.

Reuters – The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency told software vendors on Tuesday that it plans to revolutionize the way it does business with them as part of a race to keep up with the blazing pace of technology advances.

AP – Research In Motion released a free upgraded operating system for its struggling Playbook computer tablet on Tuesday, almost a year later than it first said it would.

Appolicious – It used to be that we’d want our smartphones to be more like the laptops or PC computers we use every day. Originally, most of us were amazed that we could have at least some kind of computer within the palm of our hand. This is what Apple’s iPhone and Android devices now provide, especially when running a huge variety of amazing and powerful apps.

Reuters – Marin Software, a startup that publishes applications used to manage online advertising campaigns, has raised $30 million in a new investment round led by Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings.