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Almost 180 staff at troubled music retailer Zavvi have lost their jobs after administrators closed 22 stores.

Ernst & Young said the closures would be effective immediately.

Joint administrator Tom Jack said: "Despite record consumer demand since Christmas, it is no longer possible to support continued trading across all of the Zavvi stores."

And he added: "Unfortunately the current difficulties faced on the UK high street seem to be discouraging retailers from investing in a significant number of new stores."

He said the 178 workers would receive support from the Insolvency Service's Redundancy Payment Office and Jobcentre Plus.

The remaining 92 Zavvi stores will continue to trade as efforts to sell the business continue.

Administrators said the workers facing redundancy were permanent employees.

There were no exact figures for temporary staff, but these have already left the stores after their contracts ran out on January 3.

Zavvi - the former Virgin Megastore chain - fell into administration on Christmas Eve after it was crippled by the collapse of Woolworths' Entertainment UK wholesaling division.

EUK was the company's main supplier and its demise left Zavvi unable to take customer orders. Zavvi's remaining outlets are now set to slash the price of their products by a further 20% to 50% from Friday.

-Nova

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India has been holding initial talks with the US over the possible purchase of a missile defence shield system, the UK's Financial Times has reported.

The talks have been going on for some time and the paper quoted the US embassy in Delhi as saying they were on a scientific and technical level.

Such a move would be sure to infuriate nuclear-armed rival Pakistan.

US plans to set up a defence shield in Europe have caused a massive diplomatic rift with Russia.

The system in Europe, as well as one in the US, involves radar and anti-missile missiles, or interceptors, which would try to destroy incoming ballistic missiles.

Nuclear deal

The FT said Indian officials had been shown computer simulations and had attended live missile tests.

It quoted a US embassy official as saying: "India is a partner of ours, and we want to provide it with whatever it needs to protect itself.

"This fits into the overall strategic partnership we are building."

The paper said no decision had been made by Delhi on the purchase of foreign systems.

It also quoted a senior Pakistani official as saying Islamabad would "have to take counter-measures to respond".

"For the past many years, we have been considering the possibility of such an outcome one day," the official told the FT.

The US announced in December it had successfully tested its missile defence system in Alaska.

The US says it wants to introduce the system to Europe, using Poland and the Czech Republic to counter missiles from "rogue" states like Iran.

Russia sees the system as a direct threat and has vowed to deploy missiles to "neutralise" the US shield.

India and the US have been forging closer defence and economic ties recently.

In October they signed a civilian nuclear co-operation accord to end 34 years of US sanctions.

India gains access to US civilian nuclear technology and fuel in return for inspections of its civilian, but not military, nuclear facilities.

-BBC News

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