Death is no longer the fusty business it once was: from swipeable bar codes on headstones to designer urns, webcam-based ceremonies and virtual memorials, funerals have shot into the 21st century.

Can't make it to a faraway funeral? No problem. A growing number of undertakers will let you take part via the web, with mourners hooking up to join the ceremony via a secure Internet connection.

Superstorm Sandy knocked out a quarter of the cell towers in an area spreading across 10 states, and the situation could get worse, federal regulators said Tuesday.

Many cell towers that are still working are doing so with the help of generators and could run out of fuel before commercial power is restored, the Federal Communications Commission said.

Zac Vawter considers himself a test pilot. After losing his right leg in a motorcycle accident, the 31-year-old software engineer signed up to become a research subject, helping to test a trailblazing prosthetic leg that's controlled by his thoughts.

He will put this groundbreaking "bionic" leg to the ultimate test Sunday when he attempts to climb 103 flights of stairs to the top of Chicago's Willis Tower, one of the world's tallest skyscrapers.

Panasonic Corp.'s losses ballooned to 698 billion yen ($8.7 billion) for the fiscal second quarter as sales plunged in flat-panel TVs, laptops and other gadgets, and restructuring costs to turn itself around were proving bigger than initially expected.

The red ink, announced Wednesday, proved far worse than the 105.8 billion yen loss racked up for the July-September period last year.

Google is cramming a few more gadgets on to already crowded holiday shopping lists.

The devices announced Monday include the latest in Google's line of Nexus smartphones and a larger version of the 7-inch (17.78-centimeter) Nexus 7 tablet, which the company began selling in July. It's also adding cellular capabilities to the Nexus 7 and doubling the capacity of existing models.

Nokia says its Windows 8 phones will hit stores in Britain and France this week, before reaching Russia, Germany and other select markets in November.

The Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 are the ailing company's first handsets to use Microsoft's Windows 8 software, launched last week.

Apple on Monday announced that the executive in charge of Maps, Siri and other software in its culture-changing iPhones is leaving as part of a shakeup in the upper ranks of the company.

Apple chief Tim Cook said the departure of Scott Forstall and enhanced roles of Jon Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi were part of a move to better integrate hardware, software, and services.

Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt was to meet French President Francois Hollande on Monday amid a revenue row with French, German and Italian media firms who want the Internet giant to pay for content.

Google, which receives four billion hits worldwide every month, has warned it will exclude French media sites from its search results if France adopts a bill that forces search engines to pay for linking to its news sites.

It's a wildly popular website laden with unlicensed songs and Hollywood movies, a prime exhibit of the digital piracy that is strangling the music industry in Asia and eroding legitimate online sales around the world.

But a few clicks inside the free-to-download bonanza that has pushed Vietnam's Zing.vn into the globe's top 550 websites reveals a surprising presence: the American government, which maintains a bustling social media account on the site.

Microsoft bills Windows 8 as a "re-imagining" of the personal computer market's dominant operating system, but the company still has a lot of work to do before the makeover captures the imagination of most consumers, based on the results of a recent poll by The Associated Press and GfK.

The phone survey of nearly 1,200 adults in the U.S. found 52 percent hadn't even heard of Windows 8 leading up to Friday's release of the redesigned software.