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China executes official for child rapes after online uproar

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:24:07 -0400

BEIJING (Reuters) - Authorities in central China executed a former Communist Party official for raping 11 underage girls, state media said on Wednesday, following an online uproar about the latest case of abuse of power. Li Xingong, who was the party's deputy head in Yongcheng city in Henan province, was found guilty of assaulting the girls during police interrogations starting from the second half of 2011, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Li appealed against the guilty verdict, but was rejected by the Supreme Court, Xinhua said. ...

IMF says to extend reach with online economics training

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:28:20 -0400

By Stephanie Simon (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund will make its training sessions on financial policy and debt sustainability available online this year to government officials worldwide, allowing it to reach a bigger audience at lower cost, it said on Wednesday. IMF financial workshops are meant to help governments address economic dilemmas and are currently held in eight training centers worldwide, meaning officials must travel and remain onsite for weeks, said Sharmini Coorey, director of the IMF's Institute for Capacity Development. ...

Netflix to bring video streaming service to The Netherlands

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:09:55 -0400

(Reuters) - Netflix Inc will launch its TV and movie streaming service in The Netherlands later this year, expanding its reach further into Europe, the company said on Tuesday. Netflix boasts 29.2 million streaming subscribers in the United States and 7.1 million in international markets, delivering movies and television shows to Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. The company generates profits in the United States and Canada, but has lost money as it expanded into foreign markets. Netflix projects a profit of up to $149 million from its U. ...

Julia Stiles' YouTube Series 'Blue' Coming to Hulu in TV-Length Episodes

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:59:16 -0400

By Tony Maglio LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Wigs - the top channel for scripted drama on YouTube - in conjunction with Fox Broadcasting is bringing some of its most popular online series to Hulu in TV-length episodes, beginning with the popular Julia Stiles-starring "Blue," Wigs announced Tuesday. The first two seasons of "Blue" launched on the streaming service Monday. Earlier this year, Fox entered into a multi-year programming, marketing and distribution partnership with Wigs, after Fox decided to extend the reach to Hulu as part of its multi-platform strategy. ...

Microsoft says it freed millions of computers from criminal botnet

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:43:25 -0400

By Jim Finkle BOSTON (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said that an assault it led earlier this month on one of the world's biggest cyber crime rings has freed at least 2 million PCs infected with a virus believed to have been used to steal more than $500 million from bank accounts worldwide. "We definitely have liberated at least 2 million PCs globally. That is a conservative estimate," Richard Domingues Boscovich, assistant general counsel with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, said in an interview on Tuesday. ...

From the ashes of Webvan, Amazon builds a grocery business

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:33:17 -0400

By Alistair Barr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The online grocery start-up Webvan may have been the single most expensive flame-out of the dot-com era, blowing through more than $800 million in venture capital and IPO proceeds in just over three years before shutting its doors in 2001. Twelve years later, though, Webvan is rising from the dead - in the form of an online grocery business called AmazonFresh. Four key Amazon. ...

Naked gymnast faces charges over San Francisco transit stop antics

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:49:06 -0400

By Laila Kearney SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A trained gymnast whose naked acrobatics and harassment of passengers at a San Francisco public transit station were captured on video and circulated widely on the Internet is facing criminal charges over his antics, authorities said on Tuesday. Yeiner Alberto Perez Garizabalo, 24, was caught on video doing handstands and contortions on turnstiles and front flips off a concrete newsstand - all in the nude - at a Bay Area Rapid Transit District station on May 10. ...

Exclusive: Facebook reaches 1 million active advertisers

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:32:36 -0400

By Jennifer Saba (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it now has 1 million active advertisers globally who used the platform in the last 28 days, a milestone for the company that is seeking to revive its revenue growth. A vast majority of those advertisers are small business owners who have flocked to the world's No. 1 social network. Facebook executives are hoping to net even more small advertisers since 16 million local businesses, ranging from jewelry sellers to clothing stores, set up free pages on the network. ...

GE moves into 'Industrial Internet' service with Amazon

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:24:19 -0400

(Reuters) - General Electric Co joined forces with Amazon Web Services on Tuesday to make a wide range of data on products, including jet engines and gas turbines, available online so they can be analyzed. GE said Amazon Inc is the first online "cloud" service on which it will start creating an "Industrial Internet" to tap a market that analysts say could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the decade. ...

Spendthrift elite signals equity slide, behavioral experts warn

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:43:20 -0400

By Atul Prakash LONDON (Reuters) - Record prices at art auctions in recent weeks and oversubscribed holidays by private jet are among signals that a stock market slump is approaching, if followers of behavioral finance are to be believed. They insist social mood governs human action, including investment on stock markets, and their theories are gaining ground as tools for financial analysis. ...

Yahoo says it had as many as 13,000 data requests

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:19:24 -0400

(Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said U.S. law enforcement agencies made between 12,000 and 13,000 requests for data in the last six months, the latest in a series of disclosures by technology companies since intelligence leaks showed the extent of government data gathering efforts. The company said the requests were made between December 1, 2012 and May 31 this year. "The most common of these requests concerned fraud, homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations," Yahoo said in a statement posted on its Tumblr page. (http://yahoo.tumblr.com/) Others were made under the U.S. ...

Nearly 250 apply for Boston bomb charity money

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:06:34 -0400

By Richard Valdmanis BOSTON (Reuters) - Nearly 250 people have applied to receive money from a $51 million charity fund set up for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, the fund's deputy administrator said on Monday. Twin explosions at the finish line of the world-renowned race on April 15 killed three people and injured 264 others, many of whom lost legs in the blasts. "We now have 247 applications, and I expect a few more to come in over the next couple of days," said Camille Biros. Applications had to be post-marked June 15 or earlier to be considered. ...

Apple got up to 5,000 data requests in six months

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 03:06:58 -0400

(Reuters) - Apple received over the last six months between 4,000 and 5,000 requests for customer data from U.S. law enforcement authorities relating to criminal investigations and national security matters, the company said on Monday. Microsoft and Facebook Inc published similar data last week after reaching a deal about disclosures with U.S. national security authorities. "We have asked the U.S. government for permission to report how many requests we receive related to national security and how we handle them. We have been authorized to share some of that data," Apple said. ...

Web companies begin releasing surveillance information after U.S. deal

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 01:14:40 -0400

By Joseph Menn and Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook and Microsoft have struck agreements with the U.S. government to release limited information about the number of surveillance requests they receive, a modest victory for the companies as they struggle with the fallout from disclosures about a secret government data-collection program. Facebook on Friday became the first to release aggregate numbers of requests, saying in a blog post that it received between 9,000 and 10,000 U.S. requests for user data in the second half of 2012, covering 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts. ...

Facebook got 9,000-10,000 government data requests in second half 2012

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:26:01 -0400

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data from various U.S. government entities in 2012's second half, involving 18,000 to 19,000 of its users' accounts, the world's largest social network said in a Friday blogpost. The company said it released the information after reaching a deal about disclosures with U.S. national security authorities. (Reporting by San Francisco newsroom; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Rulings push jury selection in Trayvon Martin case into second week

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:21:47 -0400

By Barbara Liston SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - A judge's decision to sequester jurors for the murder trial of a Florida neighborhood watchman who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in 2012 will slow an already painstaking selection process to find impartial minds amid saturation media coverage. Jury selection in the racially charged case of teenager Trayvon Martin is headed into a second week as prosecutors and defense lawyers on Friday worked to cope with the judge's sequester order and another decision to expand the pool of potential jurors. ...

"Tweet", "dad dancing" and "geekery" make Oxford Dictionary

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:15:19 -0400

LONDON (Reuters) - "Tweet", "dad dancing" and "geekery" are three of more than 1,200 new or revised words in the latest version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) released on Friday. The dictionary said in a quarterly update on its website that it had expanded its entries for "follow" (verb), "follower" (noun), and "tweet" (noun and verb) to include social media terms that have exploded in the past six years. According to the dictionary, "tweet" is now a posting on the social networking service Twitter as well as its more traditional meaning: a brief high-pitched sound. ...

CBS News says reporter's computer was hacked

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:16:50 -0400

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A CBS News investigative reporter's computer was remotely accessed by an unauthorized party several times late last year, the news organization said on Friday, citing an analysis by an outside cyber security firm. The review found that Washington-based reporter Sharyl Attkisson's computer "was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012," CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair said in a statement. ...

Defying shutdown, Greece's ERT runs bootleg news online

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 12:40:32 -0400

By Renee Maltezou ATHENS (Reuters) - Plastered on a studio inside the headquarters of shuttered Greek state broadcaster ERT, a sign proclaims: "The revolution will not be televised." For roughly 600 ERT journalists who found themselves out of a job when the government abruptly switched off the signal on Tuesday, the move was nothing short of a coup. Some defied management orders to leave the building and are broadcasting a bootleg news channel over the Internet in a sit-in atmosphere with conscious parallels to the protests in Istanbul's Taksim Square in neighboring Turkey. ...

Iranian Gmail users targeted in pre-election hacking campaign: Google

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 22:26:20 -0400

By Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Gmail accounts belonging to Iranian users have been targeted in an extensive hacking campaign in the weeks leading up to the country's closely watched presidential elections on Friday, Google Inc said on Wednesday. The U.S. Internet company, which described the attacks as broad "email-based phishing" attempts seeking to trick unsuspecting Gmail users into giving up their user names and passwords, said they originated in Iran and appeared to be "politically motivated in connection with the Iranian presidential election on Friday. ...

UK lawmakers' report criticizes Google's tax affairs

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:21:27 -0400

By Tom Bergin LONDON (Reuters) - British lawmakers described Google's tax affairs as "contrived" in a report released on Thursday and called on the UK tax authority to vigorously investigate whether the company was acting within the law. The parliamentary investigation was prompted by a Reuters report, which showed the company employed staff in sales roles in London, even though it had told lawmakers in November its British staff were not selling to UK clients - an activity that could boost its tax bill substantially. ...

U.S. charges eight for cybercrime targeting banks, government

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:18:12 -0400

By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors in New Jersey on Wednesday unveiled criminal charges against eight people accused of trying to steal at least $15 million from U.S. customers in an international cybercrime scheme targeting accounts at 15 financial institutions and government agencies. U.S. ...

Facebook adds 'hashtag' feature, taking a page from Twitter

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:49:28 -0400

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc, the world's No. 1 social network, is adopting the "hashtag," one of the most recognizable features of its younger rival Twitter, in a move to position its Web service as an important complement to television, sporting events and breaking news. Facebook said on Wednesday that it will begin to roll out the feature on its social network, making it easier for users and advertisers to find hot spots of user activity around specific events or topics. ...

NSA chief says U.S. infrastructure highly vulnerable to cyber attack

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:11:48 -0400

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. critical infrastructure - which ranges from telecommunications to water to energy supplies - is not well prepared to handle a destructive cyber attack, the top U.S. general in charge of cybersecurity said on Wednesday. National Security Agency chief General Keith Alexander, making his first public appearance since revelations surfaced last week about U.S. telephone and internet surveillance efforts, made the comments in a statement prepared for testimony before Congress. ...

Cricket-Australian Warner dropped over alleged altercation

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:11:21 -0400

* Opener allegedly had physical altercation with England player * Warner was fined last month for Twitter outburst (Adds Bailey comment) June 12 (Reuters) - Australia batsman David Warner was dropped from the team's Champions Trophy match against New Zealand on Wednesday for an alleged physical altercation with an England player. The flamboyant left-hander, who was primed to open the batting for Australia in back-to-back Ashes series against England starting in July, has been reported for breaching the code of behaviour. "Warner... ...

UK banks fear cyber attack more than euro crisis: BoE's Haldane

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 08:18:38 -0400

LONDON (Reuters) - Worries over hacking and other cyber attacks has pushed aside the euro zone crisis as the top risk for Britain's banks and they must do more to protect themselves, a senior Bank of England official said on Wednesday. Global cyber crime in the financial sector has become a more pressing worry, underlined by a series of cases this year. U.S. prosecutors last month laid out details of a crime ring they say stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from cash machines in 27 countries. ...

Across Asia, officials' e-mails may be vulnerable

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 06:26:43 -0400

By Andjarsari Paramaditha and Amy Sawitta Lefevre JAKARTA/BANGKOK (Reuters) - Government and security officials in parts of Asia have been sending sensitive information and policy documents via e-mail services offered by U.S. web giants, and concerns are spreading that these may have been monitored and collected by the National Security Agency (NSA). The official name cards of several directors at Indonesia's ministry of foreign affairs, for example, give only Yahoo or Gmail addresses, services provided by Yahoo Inc and Google Inc. ...

Chinese man gets 12 years in U.S. prison for selling $100 million in stolen software

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:25:03 -0400

(Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Chinese businessman to 12 years in prison for selling stolen software used in defense, space technology and engineering with a retail value of more than $100 million, prosecutors said. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware said businessman Xiang Li, 36, would be deported to China pending his release from prison. Li, of Chengdu, China, was arrested in June 2011, in an undercover sting by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents on the Pacific island of Saipan, an American territory near Guam. ...

Facebook urges U.S. government to allow disclosure of security requests

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:16:01 -0400

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Tuesday urged the U.S. government to allow Internet companies to reveal the size and scope of the national security information requests they receive, echoing statements made by Google Inc and Microsoft Corp. Facebook's statement came hours after Google publicly asked the Department of Justice that it be allowed to disclose the full extent of the secret requests the company receives in order to demonstrate that Google turns over a relatively limited amount of user data. ...

Facebook tackles stock price complaints in first shareholder meeting

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:14:28 -0400

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg faced a barrage of questions on Tuesday about the company's slumping stock price during the No. 1 social networking company's first shareholder meeting since its rocky initial public offering last May. Zuckerberg, who has presided over a 37 percent decline in the stock since its debut at $38, said he believed Facebook was on the right path toward long-term success, even though he was disappointed with its performance on Wall Street. ...

Google asks U.S. permission to publish information request data

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:33:18 -0400

(Reuters) - Google Inc asked the Department of Justice Tuesday that it be allowed to publish the total number of national security information requests made by the government, arguing that the figures would prove the company does not give the government "unfettered access" to its users' data. The Internet company has come under scrutiny following disclosures in The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers of its role in a National Security Agency data collection program named Prism. ...

Netflix does not infringe on Rovi patents: preliminary ruling

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:47:46 -0400

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The internet video streaming service Netflix Inc does not infringe on Rovi Corp patents for interactive television program guides, an International Trade Commission judge said in a preliminary decision. The full commission plans to issue a final decision in the case in October. Rovi shares fell as low as $24.20 following the news but later recovered to $25.43, down 4.1 percent, in afternoon trading. Netflix shares were up 0.5 percent at $221.37. In mid-2012, Rovi accused several companies of infringing on its patents for on-screen guides for TV listings. ...

Samuel L. Jackson's 'Breaking Bad' monologue is just the beginning for charity platform prizeo

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:17:19 -0400

By Tony Maglio LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Hot off the heels of Samuel L. Jackson doing his best Walter White impression and raising $170,000 for Alzheimer's disease in the process, charity crowdsource funding company Prizeo is moving on to its next (hopefully successful) celebrity campaign. And it has plenty in the pipeline. (It doesn't hurt when two of your investors are William Morris Endeavor and Atom Factory, which manages Lady Gaga.) Prizeo's first celebrity campaign was with English actor Steven Fry, back in the United Kingdom. ...

Analysis: Disney goes to Infinity to turn around gaming unit

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:52:13 -0400

By Lisa Richwine and Malathi Nayak (Reuters) - When Walt Disney Co introduced its latest video game, Infinity, to the gaming faithful this week at the annual E3 gaming conference, it rented a Los Angeles movie theater to show 30-minute clips of upcoming films and hosted a party with the glitz it usually reserves for its blockbuster movie wannabes. It shows just how much the company is counting on Infinity - whose players can for the first time mix together characters from Disney's different franchises - to help turn around one part of the media giant that stubbornly refuses to turn a profit. ...

Blavatnik leads $130 million buy into Russian online retailer Lamoda

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 07:05:46 -0400

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Billionaire American industrialist Leonard Blavatnik has led a $130 million round of financing for Russian online fashion retailer Lamoda, the company said on Tuesday. Russia's e-commerce industry, dominated by local players such as Ozon, has boomed in recent years amid rapidly improving access to the internet, and has already attracted several large investments. ...

Censorship lawsuit against Baidu and China gets new life in U.S.

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:14:10 -0400

By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - A U.S. judge has given a lawsuit by pro-democracy activists against Baidu Inc and the People's Republic of China new life, even after the country invoked its authority as a sovereign nation to block the censorship case. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan said the activists were entitled to serve their lawsuit on Baidu's lawyer in New York, without infringing China's sovereign protections. ...

Rwanda signs 4G internet deal with South Korea's KT Corp

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:03:03 -0400

By Jenny Clover KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwanda on Monday signed a deal with South Korea's largest telecoms provider KT Corp to roll out high-speed 4G Internet to most of its citizens within three years. Rwanda, a landlocked central African state and one of Africa's fastest growing economies,, has laid more than 3,000km of fiber-optic cable since 2009 in a bid to develop a service based economy and become a regional leader in information communication technology (ICT). Critics, however, say almost no large investor has come on board yet. Rwanda's economy expanded by 9. ...

Amazon plans big expansion of online grocery business: sources

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:57:20 -0400

By Alistair Barr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is planning a major roll-out of an online grocery business that it has been quietly developing for years, targeting one of the largest retail sectors yet to be upended by e-commerce, according to two people familiar with the situation. While food is a low-margin business, Amazon could outperform similar online grocery services by delivering orders for higher-margin items like electronics at the same time. ...

Twitter partners with world's largest ad agency

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:56:54 -0400

(Reuters) - Twitter and WPP, the world's largest advertising agency, have combined forces to better focus advertising by using consumer data. The strategic partnership, announced on Thursday, means that WPP and its agencies such as GroupM and Kantar, will use Twitter's data trove to gain insight into customer behavior to pinpoint where to spend its ad dollars. "Twitter's relevance continues to grow - not only as a social platform, but also as a window into consumer attitudes and behavior in real time," WPP CEO Martin Sorrell said in a statement. ...

In Zimmerman case, defense wants Martin's character on trial

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 11:57:32 -0400

By David Adams MIAMI (Reuters) - To his supporters, Trayvon Martin was a typical teenager: flawed yet full of promise, a boy on the verge of becoming a man with dreams of piloting planes. If he differed from his peers it was because he embraced public displays of affection from his parents. To defenders of the man who killed him, Martin was a gun-loving fight enthusiast with a marijuana habit, a representative of the dark side of the "gangsta" culture popularized by hip-hop music and urban crime mythology. ...