Dulles, Va. - AOL on Wednesday unveiled this year's top searches, based on topics in specific categories that received the highest volume of online queries on AOL Search and AOL Video Search. The most popular search terms included Paris Hilton, American Idol and Brad Pitt, with the rise in online video leading to a new wave of results dominated by music and entertainment. The complete list of top searches is available at the link below.

Seoul - South Korea's Daum Communications announced on Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with Google to use the company's AdSense system to serve search ads on its Internet portal. Daum claims 38 million registered users, and collects more than one-third of its revenues from online advertising. The company also owns Lycos, which it acquired from Terra in 2004, but has recently fallen into second place among Korean portals behind NHN Corp.

Mountain View, Calif. - Domain name registrar VeriSign announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with former MySpace chairman Richard Rosenblatt's Demand Media to market the .tv top-level domain name as the preferred address for rich media content.

London - Global news agency Reuters has appointed David Schlesinger as its new editor-in-chief, the company said on Wednesday. The former global managing editor and head of editorial operations since 2003 will replace current editor Geert Linnebank, who will remain chairman of the Reuters Foundation and become a senior adviser to CEO Tom Glocer.

London - Nintendo has announced that its next-generation Wii video game console has become the fastest-selling console ever in both Europe and the U.K.

New York - Digital music service eMusic, the second-largest online music seller after iTunes, announced on Wednesday that it has now sold over 100 million digital song downloads.

New York - More than three-quarters of active Internet users in the U.S. now have broadband access at home, according to a new report from Nielsen/NetRatings.

Los Angeles - News Corp.'s websites, which include the MySpace social network, overtook the Yahoo network as the most-visited sites by U.S. users during November, according to audience data from comScore Media Metrix.

London - U.K. telco BT has developed an interactive TV technology where viewers can vote via SMS messages to change the course of a show's events in real-time, ZDNet UK reported.

Cambridge, Mass. - Akamai Technologies, a provider of technology for accelerating online content and business processes, has completed its acquisition of Nine Systems Corp., a privately held, San Diego-based provider of rich media management tools for the production and publishing of online content.

Washington - A new political news newspaper and website founded by a pair of former Washington Post journalists will launch on Jan. 23, the date of President Bush's State of the Union address, The New York Times reported.

Dulles, Va. - Some four months after first announcing plans to cut about 5,000 jobs -- representing about a quarter of its total workforce -- AOL has now completed the vast majority of the layoffs, Reuters reported on Wednesday.