Business news for Mon, 24 Dec 2007 & with word service. 15 news.

UK Coal Plc, Britain's largest supplier of the fuel, advanced the most in more than seven years in London trading after it received an approach for its mining and power generation assets. Austria's Meinl International Power Ltd asked for a meeting with UK Coal or its advisers next year, the Sunday Times said, citing a letter Meinl sent to the mining company. Discussions aren't expected, Doncaster, England-based UK Coal said yesterday in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service, according to Bloomberg News. It didn't identify who made the approach. The shares jumped as much as 23 percent. "There's a lot of value to be had from the mining business and I'm not certain an offer would reflect that potential," Charles Kernot, an analyst at Seymour Pierce in London, said in an interview. "UK Coal has looked into splitting the property and mining businesses and concluded that it's not in the best interests of shareholders." Coal prices have risen to

Airlines and upstarts seeking to deliver high-speed Internet services to passengers say they've learned from Boeing's decision to pull the plug on a similar service.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Energy stocks opened mixed in thin pre-holiday trade Monday, with a decline in crude-oil futures keeping the sector from participating in a move higher by the broader market. Early trades saw the Amex Oil Index rise 0.2% to 1,550 points, edging slightly into record-high territory, while the Philadelphia Oil Service Index pulled back 0.4% and the Amex Natural Gas Index slipped 0.2% to 579.5 points. Crude for February delivery was last down 47 cents at $92.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

United Airlines' West Coast stronghold is under assault by low-price competitors, putting pressure on fares at a time when United desperately needs to raise prices to offset fuel costs. This year Virgin America, JetBlue Airways Corp. and Southwest Airlines Co. have launched service at San ...

THE number of Chinese broadband users has hit 122 million, the highest in the world, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday, citing an official from the information industry authority. Sixty percent of the netizens surfed on the Internet via broadband, said Jiang Yaoping, vice minister of the ministry of information industry, at a work conference of China Telecommunications Corporation on Saturday. Last year, more than 30 percent of China Telecom's income came from non-phone services, rising from 5.5 percent in 2002, the report said. One-third of the new broadband users are farmers, where the demand for the service is high, China Telecom officials said. The increased user number boosted the non-voice income of fixed-phone carriers, accelerating the transformation of traditional phone carriers into comprehensive information service providers, the report said.

"Match.com has created an application on Facebook that allows consumers to use its dating service directly through the social networking site…"

For as long as he can remember, Stan Fleury was a Comcast cable customer. But this summer, the San Ramon network engineer moved over to AT&T's U-verse service, the telephone company's answer to cable. Despite the rare picture freeze, Fleury, 44, is happy with...

The online dating service Chemistry.com plans to unleash a new advertising campaign that seeks to depict its competitor, eHarmony.com, as out of touch with mainstream American values.

Airlines and service providers ponder what passengers can use and how to keep them from annoying their neighbors.

Airlines, providers learned lessons from Boeing's experience Airlines and service providers seeking to deliver high-speed Internet services to passengers say they have learned from Boeing Co.'s 2006 decision to pull the plug on its ambitions to outfit its planes with a similar service.

CTA Yellow Line service will not be operating during the Monday morning rush hour because of a downed power line, officials said.

"Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 has exited its beta phase and entered Release Candidate phase…"

The Atlanta office of media buying and planning agency OMD is scaling down. The company is shutting down its newspaper unit in Atlanta after losing AT&T Inc. (formerly Cingular Wireless) as a client in October when the company consolidated its estimated $2.3 billion account at WPP Group's Mediaedge:cia. All employees that worked on AT&T's newspaper business will be out of a job Dec. 21, according to sources close to the situation. The OMD Atlanta office will remain open, housing about 30 employees who will service the remaining accounts, including the Georgia Lottery, Randstad, Icelandair and Bayer Advanced. Dale Travis will remain general manager of the Atlanta office. Bryan Jackson and Steve Rubinacci, formerly with OMD Atlanta, have moved over to Mediaedge:cia Atlanta to continue their work in print.

Shareholders in NetB2B2 have been unhappy over the handling of the internet business-to-business services group's fundraising plans, but failed to hijack the extraordinary general meeting last week.

As airlines are gearing up to offer Internet service in the skies, many questions remain over what limitations, if any, will be imposed on passengers.