Microsoft asks for more time in antitrust case

WASHINGTON -- Microsoft said Friday it needs more time to gather and produce evidence demanded by the nine states that have not yet settled with the software giant in its antitrust case.

The company also asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to define the scope of penalties the company might face for breaking antitrust law, a request that the judge denied earlier this year.

"The scope and magnitude of the discovery request as well as their proposed relief are far broader than anyone could have anticipated in September," Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said.

The other states that have not yet settled with Microsoft are California, Connecticut, West Virginia, Utah, Minnesota, Kan-sas, Florida and Massachusetts.

Microsoft has already begun to comply with terms set forth in its settlement with the Bush administration and nine other.

White Christmases becoming rarer

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- It's not just a case of nostalgia distorting one's childhood memories -- for many Americans, white Christmases really were more common back when they were kids.

A study of four decades of Dec. 25 statistics in 16 U.S. cities found that Christmas Day snows of at least an inch have declined since the 1960s.

Altogether, the number of white Christmases per decade dropped from 78 in the 1960s to 39 in the 1990s, according to researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Oak Ridge meteorologist Dale Kaiser, who ordinarily spends his time studying climate change over the United States, Russia and China, cautioned against reading too much into the survey.

Test flights of Osprey to resume in April

WASHINGTON -- The V-22 Osprey will resume flight tests this spring, more than a year after being grounded following two crashes that killed 23 Marines, the Pentagon announced Friday.

Tests on the Osprey are scheduled to start in April and last about two years, said Pete Aldridge, undersecretary of defense for acquisitions. No troops will be aboard the test flights.

"I personally still have some doubts," Aldridge told a Pentagon news conference. "But the only way to prove the case one way or the other is to put the airplane back into flight test."

The Osprey has the unique ability to take off like a helicopter, rotate its propellers 90 degrees and fly like an airplane. Each V-22 costs about $89.7 million.

New Jersey won't give pageant more money

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- The state has refused the Miss America Organization's demand for $1 million to keep its pageant in Atlantic City next year. Instead, it asked the pageant to give it one more year to come up with a plan.

Miss America Organization CEO Robert Renneisen Jr. announced Tuesday that the country's most famous beauty pageant was entertaining offers to move, saying it costs too much to stage the annual pageant at Boardwalk Hall.

Last year, it cost the organization about $1 million, according to pageant officials. The state already contributes $678,000 in labor, setup and equipment costs during the annual 12-day stay at Boardwalk Hall.

-- From wire reports