CNet News writes that “[t]he European Union’s new proposal aimed at fast-tracking the immigration process for workers in ‘highly skilled’ [occupations] is making some U.S. technology heavyweights nervous.  It’s no secret that American tech firms prize vast quantities of H-1B temporary visas and permanent residency permits, otherwise known as green cards. The companies argue that these tools are necessary to bring in foreigners for positions they claim suffer from shortages of qualified Americans, particularly the foreign nationals who represent the majority of masters and Ph.D. graduates from U.S. universities in relevant technical fields.  Now they’re concerned that unless Congress acts fast to increase the cap on those rapidly grabbed prizes, they’ll soon lose out on foreign talent to EU countries.”

According to Yahoo!News, “[t]he One Laptop Per Child project was supposed to start production in October, but due to ‘last-minute bugs,’ the bulk of production has been delayed until November 12. That means the project will have trouble delivering laptops to children in Uruguay and Peru, the only countries that have ordered the machines so far, in time for kids to use them over their summer vacation.”

Macworld reports that “SanDisk is suing 25 companies, including South Korean giant LG Electronics for allegedly infringing patents used in removable flash storage products including MP3 players and USB flash drives.  The Milpitas, California, chip maker has also filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), asking to have defendants in the court cases barred from importing products into the U.S.”

The Financial Times points out that Canada has overtaken the UK as the world’s third largest producer of video games.  In light of these findings, revealed in a report published on Wednesday, British “[v]ideo games companies are calling for the government to grant them tax breaks.  Canada, which offers generous tax relief for games developers, last year generated 13.2 per cent of western retail revenues in the sector, compared with 12.4 per cent for the UK, according to a government-commissioned study by Games Investor Consulting, the independent research group.”

The Mercury News reports that social networking Web site Facebook has outgrown rival MySpace in the United States as measured by unique visitors.