When its gasoline pumps started going dry in the United Arab Emirates' poorer northern states earlier this year, Dubai's oil company blamed mysterious service upgrades.

Few believed that at the time, and now the company is dropping its subtlety, triggering an uncharacteristically public spat over fuel pricing policies.

Germany's finance minister says private holders of Greek government bonds must accept bigger losses to achieve "a durable and sustainable solution" for Europe's debt crisis.

Wolfgang Schaeuble told German public broadcaster ARD on Sunday that an agreement struck in July when banks and other investors agreed to renounce on 20 percent of their Greek debt must be renegotiated.

German automaker BMW wants a stake in SGL Carbon, already one of its strategic partners and the leading carbon-based product maker, the weekly Der Spiegel reported Sunday.

"We have a fundamental interest in SGL Carbon," a senior BMW executive told the magazine.

The longest BlackBerry outage in many years left customers outraged this week, threatening to cost the granddaddy of all smartphones more business when it's already struggling to keep up in a crowded marketplace.

The three-day blackout interrupted email and Internet services for tens of millions of frustrated users and inflicted more damage on an already tarnished brand.

Cliff Blezenski was initially hesitant to think of "Gears of War" as a trilogy. The design director at Epic Games and mastermind behind the chainsaw-slicing video game shooter series knew that gamers were a particularly judgmental bunch, especially when it comes to the interactive industry's gluttonous strategy of constructing franchises from the ground up.

"I think if you come out and say, 'This is the start of a trilogy,' gamers get defensive, cross their arms and say, 'We'll see,'" said Blezenski. "You have to play it game by game. We had ideas of where each game could go in the series, but until we had confirmation, we never really started work on a sequel, except for coming up with pie-in-the-sky ideas."

The Pentagon denied reports Saturday that the U.S. military has given up on plans to keep several thousand troops in Iraq after a year-end deadline, saying talks with Baghdad were still underway.

U.S. and Iraq officials have been negotiating a possible American military training mission of about 4,000 troops after 2011, but a dispute over legal protections for the U.S. forces has jeopardized the security agreement.

Militants tried to blast their way into an American base in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, striking before dawn with rocket-propelled grenades and a vehicle packed with explosives.

The attackers failed to breach the gate of the base in Panjshir province's Rakha district, though they did hit a security tower with a rocket-propelled grenade, said provincial Police Chief Gen. Mohammad Qasim Jangalbagh.

An independent British medical watchdog says the first treatment proven to help people with the deadliest form of skin cancer live longer is too expensive.

In draft advice issued Friday, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence said Bristol-Meyers Squibb's Yervoy, "could not be considered a cost-effective use" of health funds. A final decision is expected next month after a public consultation.

Apple fans in Australia on Friday became the first in the world to get their hands on the latest iPhone as the US technology giant unleashed its first device since the death of co-founder Steve Jobs.

In a party atmosphere, hundreds of people queued outside the technology giant's four-storey flagship Sydney store, filming the experience on their iPhones and iPads as staff inside clapped, cheered and chanted.

Thundering typhoons! Steven Spielberg has won the seal of approval of Tintin's native land — and that's no mean feat.

In Tintin's home city, movie journalists got a sneak preview of "The Adventures of Tintin — The Secret of the Unicorn" this week, and knives were sharpened in case it turned out that some Hollywood mogul had barged in and desecrated perhaps Europe's greatest cartoon character ever.