You don't need to pay a hefty sum (or go large) to get OLED in a laptop. Acer has unveiled a refreshed laptop line headlined by the Swift 3 OLED, an enhanced version of its thin-and-light mainstream portable. The highlight, as you'd guess, is a 14-inch "2.8K" display that promises OLED's signature high contrast, accurate color (100 percent of DCI-P3) and 500-nit HDR. Add in a 92 percent screen-to-body ratio and it might be a good fit if you want lush visuals without buying an exotic PC.

The Swift 3 OLED runs on 12th-gen Intel Core H-series chips with Iris Xe integrated graphics, PCIe Gen 4 SSDs and as much as 16GB of LPDDR5 memory. It ships to the US this July starting at $900. While we wouldn't call it a budget laptop, that's a relative bargain given the display tech.

The are upgrades for convertible machines, too. The 14-inch Spin 5 (shown at middle) comes with a 1600p display and configurations that offer up to a 12th-gen Core i7, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD. You'll also get two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an improved cooling system that should net more performance under heavy loads. Opt for the Spin 3 and you'll get 'just' a 1080p 14-inch display, but you'll also have the twin Thunderbolt 4 ports, SSD storage and a range of 12th-gen Core CPUs.

The updated Spin 5 arrives first, shipping in July with a $1,350 starting price. Acer delivers the new Spin 3 in August at an $850 base sticker.

And yes, Acer is expanding its eco-friendly Vero line. You'll find new 14- and 15-inch Vero laptops that meld 12th-gen Core, Thunderbolt 4 and 1080p displays with bodies made partly from recycled and ocean-bound plastic. Desktop users can spring for a 24-inch Veriton Vero all-in-one with up to a 12th-gen Core i9 and GeForce MX550 graphics. The Vero portables ship to the US in September starting at $750 regardless of size, while the Veriton Vero will wait until October to sell for $799.

MILAN (Reuters) -Telecom Italia (TIM) and Italian state investor CDP have signed a preliminary agreement to combine the phone group's fixed network assets with those of state-owned broadband rival Open Fiber, they said late on Sunday. The long-awaited move aims to pave the way for the creation of a unified ultra-fast broadband network across Italy, as CEO Pietro Labriola works on a turnaround plan for TIM focused on a full-blown split of its landline grid from service operations. The preliminary agreement was also signed by infrastructure funds Macquarie and KKR, which hold minority stakes, respectively, in Open Fiber and in TIM's last-mile network unit.

After struggling to find staff during the pandemic, businesses in Singapore have increasingly turned to deploying robots to help carry out a range of tasks, from surveying construction sites to scanning library bookshelves. At a Singapore construction site, a four-legged robot called "Spot", built by U.S. company Boston Dynamics, scans sections of mud and gravel to check on work progress, with data fed back to construction company Gammon's control room. Gammon's general manager, Michael O'Connell, said using Spot required only one human employee instead of the two previously needed to do the job manually.

BEIJING (Reuters) -China's 'zero-COVID' policy of constantly monitoring, testing and isolating its citizens to prevent the spread of the coronavirus has battered much of the country's economy, but it has created bubbles of growth in the medical, technology and construction sectors. The Chinese government, alone among major countries in vowing to eradicate the coronavirus within its borders, is on track to spend more than $52 billion (350 billion yuan) this year on testing, new medical facilities, monitoring equipment and other anti-COVID measures, which will benefit as many as 3,000 companies, according to analysts. "In China, the companies that provide testing services and other related industries are making big money because of the government's focus on a containment-based approach in fighting COVID," said Yanzhong Huang, a global health specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a U.S. think tank.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Des Moines utility has for years engaged in a bitter struggle to clean up drinking water that comes from rivers teeming with agricultural pollutants, filing lawsuits, proposing legislation and even public shaming to try to force farmers to reduce runoff from their fields. None of it has worked, so Des Moines Water Works is trying a less combative approach — inviting farmers to learn the latest techniques for reducing pollution at riverfront plots of corn and soybeans in

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Hydro Ottawa has been able to restore power to 90 per cent of its 180,000 customers impacted by the storm outage last Saturday.

During the first year as an official partner of Festival de Cannes, the iconic Italian red aperitivo, Campari, pushed the boundaries of creativity and brought its Red Passion to the 75th edition of the world-renowned film Festival with a series of events that continued Campari's existing legacy in the world of cinema.

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Today, the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) held its first in-person security exercise since the pandemic began.

About 165,750 ANZ clients were charged cash advance fees and interest for withdrawing or transferring money from their credit card accounts between May 2016 and November 2018, based on incorrect account balances, the regulator said in a statement. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said that in some cases, single customers were charged thousands of dollars in fees.

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TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan's Toyota Motor Corp on Monday said it missed its global production target for April as COVID-19 outbreaks and a parts shortage slowed its post-pandemic recovery. The world's largest automaker by sales produced 692,259 vehicles last month, a 9.1% drop from the same month last year, and falling short of an earlier plan of making about 750,000 vehicles worldwide. Toyota last week downgraded its global production plan for June to around 800,000 vehicles due to the impact of COVID-19 containment measures in China and signalled the possibility of lowering its full-year output plan of 9.7 million vehicles.

In Toronto’s far-flung suburbs, just a few months ago a typical three-bedroom house would have fetched 40 offers on bidding night and sold well over the asking price. "You're not getting the bidding wars anymore," said Tim Keung, chief executive of TimSold Real Estate, a local agency. A decade-long boom in housing prices from the United States to Europe and Asia is facing its first real test as borrowing costs rise and high inflation eats into households' budgets.

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Volkswagen plans to continue operations at its plant in China's Xinjiang region despite reports of human rights violations there, the chief executive said in comments published by the Handelsblatt newspaper on Monday. The German carmaker, which has a joint venture with China's biggest automaker SAIC Motor, has since 2013 run a plant in Urumqi, the capital of the western region where Western nations and rights groups say ethnic Uyghurs face torture and detention. "I believe that the presence of SAIC Volkswagen leads to the situation improving for people," Chief Executive Herbert Diess was quoted as saying.