Apple stores all over the United States have been under siege since yesterday as the iPad 2 went on sale Friday, confirming the high expectations of the company for the new device. The results of these sales will show if demand for Apple’s tablet remains strong nearly a year after the original proved a smash hit, single-handedly created the tablet market, and inspired a wave of imitators from Motorola to Research in Motion.

Microsoft’s Kinect sensor system is growing in popularity every day, and the company sold more than 10 million such devices since Kinect’s launch on 4 November, becoming the fastest-selling consumer electronics device on record, according to Guinness World Records.

Fashion experts are expecting Chinese designers to lead the way at this year’s edition of the Milan Fashion Week, as China’s creativity is the latest trend. This tendency was prompted by the new wave of rich people in China, who generated a record year for sales at luxury goods makers such as LVMH, making designers like Ralph Lauren, Ermenegildo Zegna and Prada to look for inspiration in oriental designs in order to satisfy that demand.

France has launched a global campaign that aims to regain the title of gastronomic sovereign, four years after Germany was proclaimed Europe’s top food exporter.

With the ongoing competition in the smartphones and tablet computers market, Google Inc launched on Wednesday a new service meant to help publishers sell digital versions of newspapers and magazines, keeping the pace with rival Apple Inc, which had launched a subscription platform for digital media sold through its iTunes app store only a day earlier.

After struggling with shrinking sales and accumulating debt for years, bookstore chain Borders Group Inc filed for bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, also announcing that it would close 200 bookstores, which represent about one third of the total number.

Economists in the United States seem to believe that the recovery is too weak for a big spike in consumer prices, although the core wholesale prices rose in January at their fastest rate in more than two years, leading to some fears of a possible inflation.

Verizon Wireless stopped selling online Apple Inc’s iPhone on Thursday evening, after registering record sales, surpassing its previous launch-day phone sales record in just two hours on the ViPhone pre-order day.

According to eyewitnesses present at News Corp’s launch of the Daily online paper in New York on Wednesday, Rupert Murdoch used what appeared to be a working model of the next iPad as presentation device for their product release.

The majority of the retailers in the United States are expected to post minor improvements in their profits for the month of January, as many parts of the country had been covered by heavy snow, keeping the shoppers away from the malls. Also, American shoppers spent most of their money before the holidays, in November and December, when retailers posted their best holiday sales in six years.