Facebook testing marketplace model with Local Market

NEW YORK: In the near future, Facebook would no longer remain just a social media platform -- it would also likely become a marketplace.

The social networking giant is working on a dedicated buying and selling community called 'Local Market', powered by Facebook groups.

A number of Facebook users recently reported seeing the new feature appearing briefly in their Facebook iPhone app, sometimes in place of the Messenger button, TechCrunch reported.

The feature, which is only in testing and not broadly distributed, is a structured marketplace aimed at buyers and sellers, allowing Facebook users to browse through or post items to sell across a variety of product categories like autos, appliances, furniture, clothing, household, kids, books, etc.

The new section includes 'Buy' and 'Sell' interfaces, as well as a way to search across the marketplace for particular items using keywords

Google to merge Chrome OS into Android

Google is reportedly merging its two operating systems: Android and Chrome. According to a report in Walls Street Journal, "Google plans to fold its Chrome operating system for personal computers into its Android mobile operating system..."

The report, which cites people familiar with the matter as source, says that the company plans to preview the combined new OS in 2016 and launch the final version in 2017.

"Chromebooks will get a new, as yet undetermined, name, the people familiar with the matter said. Google plans to retain the Chrome name for its internet browser, which runs on both PCs and mobile devices," says the report. The two will be united under the Android name, which will give PCs that use the operating system access to the Google Play app store, WSJ reported.

The speculated move shows the growing dominance of mobile as a platform. Google's Android OS has been the undisputable leader in the mobile segment, powering over 80% smartphones globally.

At the recent Nexus launch event, Google revealed that it has over 1.4 billion active users of Android OS.

Android OS was born in 2007, two years after the Google acquired mobile software startup Android Inc. The company's Chrome OS has been developed in-house and was unveiled in 2009.

The first speculations about Android and Chrome OS growing closer started in March 2013 when Andy Rubin, the then head of Google's mobile business, handed the reins of Android business to current Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Pichai then was senior vice president for Chrome and Apps.

Rubin came to Google in August 2005, when the company acquired has startup Android Inc.

Google sued by express delivery driver over wages

SAN FRANCISCO: A driver for Google's same day delivery service filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the company on Friday, alleging it improperly classified her as an independent contractor and owes expenses.

The case, filed in a Massachusetts state court, comes days after Amazon Prime Now drivers filed a similar lawsuit against Amazon.com in California.

The level of benefits owed to workers in the on-demand economy has been the subject of litigation in the courts, and debate in the US presidential race.

Like drivers in the Amazon case, Google Express driver Anna Coorey said in her lawsuit that she was hired by an intermediary courier service but is required to work only for Google during her shift. Drivers wear Google Express uniforms and are required to accept every delivery assigned to them during each shift, the lawsuit said.

That makes drivers employees under Massachusetts state law, attorneys for Coorey argue, who should be paid overtime and other expenses.

A Google spokesman could not immediately comment on the lawsuit.

Ride services Uber and Lyft face similar lawsuits from drivers, brought by the same law firm which filed the case against Google on Friday.

The case in Suffolk County Superior Court is Anna Coorey vs. Google Inc and Beavex Inc.

Halloween asteroid that will zip past Earth today looks like a skull: NASA

WASHINGTON: A large space rock that will zip past the Earth this Halloween on Saturday is most likely a dead comet that bears an eerie resemblance to a skull, said US space agency NASA.

Discovered three weeks ago, the asteroid, 2015 TB145, will fly by our planet at just 1.3 lunar distances, or about 490,000 km, at 1.00pm on Saturday, that means it will pose no threat to the Earth, Xinhua quoted the space agency as saying.

Scientists observing asteroid 2015 TB145 with NASA' s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Maunakea, Hawaii, determined that the celestial object may have shed its volatility after numerous passes around the sun.

Radar images generated by the US National Science Foundation's 305-metre Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico showed the object is spherical in shape and about 600 metres in diameter.

"The IRTF data may indicate that the object might be a dead comet, but in the Arecibo images it appears to have donned a skull costume for its Halloween flyby," Kelly Fast, IRTF programme scientist at NASA Headquarters said.

Vishnu Reddy, a research scientist at the US Planetary Science Institute, found that the asteroid, nicknamed 'Spooky' is similar to dark carbonaceous meteorites.

"We found that the object reflects about six percent of the light it receives from the sun. That is similar to fresh asphalt, and while here on Earth we think that is pretty dark, it is brighter than a typical comet which reflects only 3 to 5 percent of the light," Reddy said.

"That suggests it could be cometary in origin but as there is no coma evident, the conclusion is it is a dead comet."

Asteroid 2015 TB145 was discovered on October 10, by the University of Hawaii' s Pan-STARRS-1 (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) on Haleakala, Maui, part of the NASA-funded Near-Earth Object Observations Programme.

The next time the asteroid will be in Earth's neighbourhood will be in September 2018, when it will make a distant pass at about 38 million kilometres, or about a quarter the distance between Earth and the Sun.

Huge 'crack in the earth' opens up in US mountains

A huge crack in mountains in America has appeared.

The formation occurred in the foothills of Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains in the last fortnight.

Images of the crack were first posted online by the SNS Outfitters and Guide Service, which called it "a really incredible sight".

It estimated that it was 750 yards long and 50 yards wide.

Although experts have said the occurrence is not an ominous or mysterious sign, some on social media have suggested otherwise.

SNS said an engineer had inspected the giant crack.

"Apparently, a wet spring lubricated across a cap rock. Then, a small spring on either side caused the bottom to slide out," it said on its Facebook page.

"He estimated 15 to 20 million yards of movement."

Wyoming Geological Survey's manager of groundwater and geological hazards said the formation is most likely the result of a slow-moving landslide.

"Landslides can move at catastrophic speeds... while others can be much slower," Seth Wittke told the Powell Tribune.

"The size of this type of opening can vary depending on the size of the hill and the stability of the land."

He added: "A number of things trigger them, moisture in the subsurface which causes weakness in soil or geology, and any process that would weaken the bedrock or un-stabilise it somehow."

The survey's public information specialist Chamois Andersen added: "It is not uncommon to have slides like that."

Russia no longer a superpower: US

WASHINGTON: Russia is no longer a superpower as its deteriorating economy is ranked "somewhere behind Spain", the White House on Thursday said and stressed that Moscow's influence is limited compared to the erstwhile Soviet Union.

"Russia is no longer a superpower. Observed in the last couple of weeks that the condition of Russia's economy is weak and further deteriorating," White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

"They are now the 15th-largest economy in the world, and they rank somewhere behind Spain," he said.

Earnest said Russia does not have the kind of influence that the Soviet Union once did and it does not have the kind of economic power that the Soviet Union once was able to flex.

"Their economy is getting worse, and Russia is isolated in a significant way. Not just from countries in Europe, but, as they get further engaged in a sectarian quagmire inside of Syria, they're finding that the only friends that they have there to fight in a difficult fight with them is a floundering Syrian government and the Iranian regime," he said.

Earnest also earlier said that the US Navy scrambled four fighter jets to intercept Russian warplanes earlier this week near a US aircraft carrier operating off the Korean peninsula in the Sea of Japan.

Two Russian planes flew close to the USS Ronald Reagan, prompting the mobilisation of four FA-18s, he said.

"There were four FA-18 firers from the carrier airwing five that were launched to intercept the bombers and the US Navy aircraft did escort the Russian aircraft until they departed the area where the carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan was operating," he said.

"We have previously raised concerns about Russian military aircraft essentially carrying out incursions on the sovereignty of other countries... This is a little bit different than that. This is -- these are international waters and international airspace," Earnest said.

The US has regularly urged the Russian military to make sure that their operations in this space were consistent with generally accepted international protocols.

This is a particular situation that did not result in a significant confrontation for that reason, he added.

Earnest acknowledged that there's no doubt that there are some vigorous disagreements between our two countries on issues like Ukraine and Syria, most prominently.

"We've been pretty candid about our concerns about Russians behaviour, particularly with regard to those two countries," he said.

Google parent Alphabet may open units in China: WSJ

WASHINGTON: Google parent Alphabet may do business in China following the reorganization of the technology giant, co-founder Sergey Brin said in an interview Thursday.

Brin, who is president of Alphabet, told the Wall Street Journal that the new organizational structure would allow each unit autonomy on the matter.

"Each Alphabet business can make its own decisions on which countries to operate in," Brin was quoted as saying. "We already do quite a lot of business in China, although it has not been an easy country for us."

Google ended most operations in China in 2010 in a dispute over censorship and an attack on Gmail users. It does sell ads to businesses in China, but Google services are not officially available in the country.

Earlier this month, Google bought a stake in Chinese artificial intelligence startup Mobvoi which is aiming to develop smart wearable technologies. The two firms previously announced an agreement earlier this year to bring the Google Android Wear operating system to China.

Google in August announced its plan to reshape under the newly formed parent company.

The move gives the tech giant more ability to focus on its core business, while offering startup-like flexibility to long-shot, trailblazing projects.

Alphabet will be the corporate parent, overseeing the Google unit for search and a handful of other operating firms created for projects in health, Internet delivery, investment and research.

Samsung IT arms push into autos

SEOUL: Samsung Electronics and group companies are trying a belated push into the business of supplying technology to car makers, while rivals are already sewing up lucrative deals with an industry that is notoriously difficult to break into.

Data compiled by Thomson Reuters IP & Science shows the world's top smartphone maker and other Samsung Group tech affiliates are ramping up research and development for auto technology, with two-thirds of their combined 1,804 US patent filings related to electric vehicles and electric components for cars coming since 2010.

The analysis did not include filings made after 2013 due to a lag between filing and publication.

They haven't yet landed significant business, and Samsung Group declined to comment on strategy, but the lure is obvious.

Automakers already incorporate or are developing technologies to enhance safety and provide better smartphone connectivity and entertainment systems, creating an opening for tech companies to break into a market for software, services and components that is worth around $500 billion, ABI Research analyst Dominique Bonte said.

"There are two trends: The car becomes a connected software device, and the entire mobile and ICT ecosystem is getting very interested in playing a part in that evolution," Bonte said.

That is particularly welcome as demand for smartphones, TVs and computers slows, but Samsung is arriving late at a party where some of the best partners are already taken.

Cross-town rival LG Electronics Inc announced a major supply agreement with General Motors in October, sending LG's shares surging, while US chipmaker Nvidia Corp, known for graphics processors that power games consoles and laptops, says its chips will be in more than 30 million cars in the next three to four years.

Unlike Apple and Google, there is no clear sign yet that Samsung is developing its own autonomous driving technology.

IHS analyst Danny Kim said Samsung Group does not yet have a unified, group-wide approach to building its supplier presence in the industry.

"Samsung needs a serious commitment to drive the synergies between all competent organisations within Samsung Group," he said.

A decade after selling its debt-laden carmaking unit to Renault, Samsung Group in 2010 announced its second foray into the auto industry, identifying car batteries as one of its five growth businesses.

Its Samsung SDI Co Ltd is now the world's No. 6 electric car battery maker, counting BMW, Chrysler and Volkswagen among its clients.

In the hunt

 
Other parts of the Samsung empire are now in the hunt.

Samsung patent filings show a wide range of technologies including a drowsy-driving detection system, an alert system for break-in attempts and a transparent display for directions and traffic information.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co Ltd recently formed a dedicated team to sell components such as camera modules to new auto clients and says it would consider acquisitions to boost car-related businesses.

Samsung Display has also cited the auto industry as a potential growth area and has been testing its organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays with BMW and auto parts maker Continental.

The growth prospects are mouthwatering.

Nvidia says its autos revenue was $148 million for the first half of this fiscal year, nearly doubling in a year.

Consulting firm McKinsey said in a 2014 report that revenue from hardware, software and services for connectivity-enabled cars could grow to 180 billion euros ($200 billion) by 2020 from an estimated 30 billion euros in 2014.

Carmakers may spend an additional $6,500 per car when they launch fully autonomous vehicles, the Boston Consulting Group said in a report this year.

Analysts say the supply relationships built by SDI could be expanded by bundling parts and services from other Samsung arms.

Samsung insiders acknowledge, however, that it may take several years before tech arms other than Samsung SDI generate significant auto-related sales.

Product development cycles in the auto industry are far longer than in consumer electronics, and carmakers are cautious about adding suppliers without a track record. It took the better part of a decade for Nvidia to gain acceptance as a global supplier, while LG worked with GM for nearly a decade before it got its supply contract for the Chrevrolet Bolt.

Samsung Electronics could still catch up by taking the one-stop-shop approach, similar to that of LG Electronics, by working with sister companies to combine offerings such as batteries, chips, sensors and software such as the Tizen operating system into a single package, analysts say.

ABI's Bonte said Samsung could also speed things up by acquiring established players such as Japan's Renesas Electronics Corp, which researcher Gartner says was the world's top auto semiconductor maker last year, with $3.1 billion in revenue.

"It's important for a supplier to be able to sell not just one single component but provide that entire platform," he said.

American Airlines flight diverted after passenger's 'alarming' 9/11 speech

LOS ANGELES: An American Airlines flight bound for Philadelphia from Los Angeles was diverted to Phoenix on Thursday after a passenger made "alarming" statements referencing the September 11, 2001 attacks, police said.

The passenger was removed from American Airlines Flight 754 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International airport and transported to a psychiatric facility for evaluation under an involuntary hold, said Sergeant Vince Lewis of the Phoenix Police Department.

"We had a situation where right after takeoff a passenger stood and walked to the first class section, where he stood at attention there and refused to take his seat," Lewis said.

"He began making statements that, although they were alarming and threatening in nature, gave the flight crew the indication (of possible mental health issues)," he said.

Lewis said some of the passenger's comments referenced the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and his beliefs about the government.

The flight, which departed Los Angeles International Airport at 8:38am Pacific Time, carried 150 passengers, three infants and six crew members, and was refueled and allowed to continue on to Philadelphia, a spokesman for American Airlines said.

A spokeswoman for the Phoenix airport declined comment, referring calls to police

The 'driest place on Earth' is covered in pink flowers because of El Nino

COPIAPO, CHILE: Here's a softer side to the disruptive weather phenomenon known as El Nino: an enormous blanket of colorful flowers has carpeted Chile's Atacama desert, the most arid in the world.

The cyclical warming of the central Pacific may be causing droughts and floods in various parts of the world, but in the vast desert of northern Chile it has also caused a vibrant explosion of thousands of species of flowers with an intensity not seen in decades.

Yellows, reds, purples and whites have covered the normally stark landscapes of the Atacama, where temperatures top 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) this time of year.

From violet-and-white Chilean bell flowers, or "countryside sighs" (Nolana paradoxa), to red "lion claws" (Bomarea ovallei), to yellow Rhodophiala rhodolirion, they have filled the normally pale desert valleys with rivers of color.

"This year has been particularly special, because the amount of rainfall has made this perhaps the most spectacular of the past 40 or 50 years," said Raul Cespedes, a desert specialist at the University of Atacama.

Sleeping beauty

El Nino, which wreaks havoc on world weather patterns every two to seven years, has hit particularly hard this year, causing unusually heavy rainfall in the world's driest desert.

That has caused dormant flower bulbs and rhizomes - underground stems that grow horizontally - to germinate.

"When you think of the desert, you think of total dryness, but there's a latent ecosystem here just waiting for certain conditions to arise," said Cespedes.


The reason for the bloom is the El Nino phenomenon, which alters weather patterns across the Pacific basin. (AFP Photo)

The desert flowers are perhaps nature's consolation for what has been a devastating year for Atacama.

They first bloomed in March, after heavy rains that caught the region by surprise and caused massive floods that killed more than 30 people.

They are now blooming for the second time this year, at the outset of the southern hemisphere summer.


A gigantic mantle of multicolored flowers covers the Atacama Desert, the driest in the world. (AFP Photo)

Tourist drawcard

"This is a very unusual phenomenon. Because of the floods in March there was an exceptional winter bloom, which had never before been recorded... and then there was another bloom in spring," said Daniel Diaz, director of the National Tourism Service for Atacama region.

"Two flowerings a year is very unusual in the most arid desert in the world, and that's something we've been able to enjoy this spring, along with people from all over the world. There's a lot of interest in seeing it," he told AFP.

The region has seen a 40 percent increase in tourists since the flowers began blooming.
"It is so unusual, yet so real," said British tourist Edward Zannahand, who made a special stop in Atacama on what he described as a road trip around the world.

Samsung reports profit, but not because of smartphones

SEOUL: Samsung Electronics reported its first earnings gain in more than a year as a record profit from computer chips masked a decline in its smartphone business.

But the company predicted that its fourth-quarter profit would decline as the boost that its chip business is getting from a strong dollar is expected to fade.

Its third-quarter net income was 5.3 trillion won ($4.6 billion), up 28% over a year earlier. That was lower than the 5.6 trillion won forecast in survey of analysts by financial data provider FactSet.

Samsung posted a record profit for its semiconductor division helped by its supplies to Apple and favorable currency exchange rates. But the company's smartphone business posted its lowest profit in three quarters, after it cut prices for some of its high-end Galaxy smartphones.

Sales of 51.7 trillion won were up 9% from a year earlier. Operating profit jumped 82% to 7.4 trillion won.

Samsung's stock price surged as much as 4% after it announced a plan to increase shareholder returns, including buying back and cancelling $10 billion worth of stock over the next year. It also promised to return as much as 50% of its annual free cash flow to shareholders for the next three years.

In the July-September quarter, Samsung posted 3.66 trillion won ($3.2 billion) in operating profit from its semiconductor division alone, accounting for about half of the company's overall profit. Samsung said its revenue from the foundry division, which supplies application processors powering Apple's iPhones, increased from the previous quarter.

Lucrative display panels known as OLED helped Samsung's display division earn 0.9 trillion won in operating profit. Samsung said it secured supply deals with a wider number of smartphone makers around the world for its OLED screens.

Samsung's components business also reaped benefits from a strong dollar and a weak local currency. Samsung said the favorable foreign exchange rates generated 800 billion won of income mostly from its components business.

But its operating profit from its mobile business slid to 2.4 trillion won ($2 billion) from 2.8 trillion won in the second quarter, even though Samsung released premium smartphone models more quickly than previous years and expanded its handset models using curved screens. The company also rolled out Samsung Pay, a mobile payment service, for its Galaxy phone users in South Korea and the US.

Samsung said mobile profit declined despite higher phone shipments and a slight increase in revenues because growth came from cheap handsets. Price cuts for its Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones reduced its profit margin.

The company is expected to sell slightly more smartphones during the winter holiday seasons and see an improvement in the processor chip department that supplies to Apple. But that will not help profit.

"We expect earnings to decline compared to previous quarter, as we do not expect the positive foreign exchange impact to continue," Robert Yi, head of Samsung's investor relations team, said on a conference call.

Samsung sold more smartphones than any other phone maker during the third quarter, according to market research firms. IDC said Samsung shipped 84.5 million smartphones during the July-September period, compared with Apple's 48 million iPhone sales.

But Samsung's smartphones are significantly cheaper than iPhones. The company said its phones were sold at between $180 and $190 on average, less than a third of the price that Apple commands with the iPhone.

In order to sway customers and increase the mojo of its phones, Samsung plans a global expansion of its Samsung Pay mobile payment system, an exclusive service for the latest Galaxy phone users.

Global internet freedom falls for fifth consecutive year

WASHINGTON: Global online freedom declined for a fifth consecutive year as more governments stepped up electronic surveillance and clamped down on dissidents using blogs or social media, a survey showed today.

The annual report by non-government watchdog Freedom House said the setbacks were especially noticeable in the Middle East, reversing gains seen in the Arab Spring.

Freedom House found declines in online freedom of expression in 32 of the 65 countries assessed since June 2014, with "notable declines" in Libya, France and Ukraine.

The researchers found 61% of the world's population lives in countries where criticism of the government, military or ruling family has been subject to censorship.

And 58% live in countries where bloggers or others were jailed for sharing content online on political, social and religious issues, according to the "Freedom on the Net 2015" report.

In a new trend, many governments seeking to censor content from opponents have shifted their efforts to targeting online platforms, pressuring services like Google, Facebook and Twitter to remove content, the report said.

"Governments are increasingly pressuring individuals and the private sector to take down or delete offending content, as opposed to relying on blocking and filtering," said Sanja Kelly, Freedom House's project director. "They know that average users have become more technologically savvy and are often able to circumvent state-imposed blocks."

Freedom House said governments in 14 of the 65 countries passed laws over the past year to step up electronic surveillance.

The report said online freedom took a hit in France from new restrictions on online content that could be seen as an "apology for terrorism" and from a new surveillance law.

It also noted France's "sweeping legislation requiring telecommunications carriers and providers to, among other things, install 'black boxes' that enable the government to collect and analyze metadata on their networks."

In Libya, Freedom House cited "a troubling increase in violence against bloggers, new cases of political censorship, and rising prices for Internet and mobile phone services."

In Ukraine, the report highlighted "more prosecutions for content that was critical of the government's policies, as well as increased violence from pro-Russian paramilitary groups against users who posted pro-Ukraine content in the eastern regions."

The report said most countries in the Middle East and North Africa, where the emergence of the Arab Spring in 2010 and 2011 was aided in part by activists' use of online social media, were cracking down on government critics.

Why Facebook employees will work on 2G connections on Tuesdays

Facebook is to launch a 2G Tuesdays initiative, which will hugely slow down their internet connections so that they can see what it's like to use the app in emerging markets.

The company is making a huge attempt to push into the developing world, introducing new apps and features tailored towards emerging markets. But many of the people making those apps are on entirely different connections - which tend to be much faster than those of the people that will eventually use them.

To help bridge the "empathy gap" between those two groups, Facebook is launching an opt-in initiative called 2G Tuesdays, reports Business Insider. That will allow people to intentionally slow their internet down to 2G speeds - rather than the 3G or 4G ones that most developers will have access to.

When Facebook employees log into the app on Tuesday mornings, they'll see a prompt at the top of their News Feed. That will ask them whether they want to be part of the programme for the next hour, slowing down their connection.

"For that next hour, their experience on Facebook will be very much like the experience that millions of people around the world have on Facebook on a 2G connection," Facebook engineering director Tom Alison told Business Insider. "They're going to see the places that we need to improve our product, but they're also going to see the places where we have made a lot of progress."

Facebook hopes that the experience will lead people to develop new technologies to speed up the experience on slow connections. It has already highlighted some of those technologies, like a system that allows the app to work out how fast a users' internet connection is and then show News Feed stories that account for that - avoiding videos if a connection is slow, for instance.

Internet @ 46: 10 must-know facts

Dear netizens, your favourite internet has turned 46. Today is the day internet was born with the first data message sent via ARPANET (the network regarded as the precursor of internet) between University of California and Stanford Research Institute in October 1969. As the internet turns an year older, here's a look at the state of internet as it exists today.

1.In 2014, nearly 75% (2.1 billion) of all internet users in the world (2.8 billion) were from the top 20 countries. The remaining 25% (0.7 billion) population was distributed among other 178 countries, each representing less than 1% of total users.

2.China, the country with most users (642 million in 2014), represents nearly 22% of the total user base, and has more users than the next three countries combined (United States, India and Japan).

3.Among the top 20 countries, India is the one with the lowest penetration: 19%, and has the highest yearly growth rate.

4.At the opposite end, United States, Germany, France, UK and Canada have the highest penetration: Over 80% of population in these countries has an internet connection.

5.Between 2000-2015, global internet penetration grew 7 fold, from 6.5% to 43%.

6.Mobile broadband is the most dynamic market segment; globally, mobile broadband penetration has reached 47% in 2015, a value that increased 12 times since 2007.

7.The proportion of the population covered by a 2G mobile cellular network grew from 58% in 2001 to 95% in 2015.

8.By end 2015, 34% of households in developing countries will have internet access, compared with more than 80% in developed countries. In least developed countries (LDCs), only 7% of households have internet access, compared with the world average of 46%.

9.Mobile-broadband penetration levels are highest in Europe and the Americas, at around 78 active subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. Africa is the only region where mobile broadband penetration remains below 20%.

10. In developing countries, average monthly fixed broadband prices (in purchase price parity calculated in dollars) are three times higher than in developed countries; mobile broadband prices are twice as expensive as in developed countries.

Sony swings to profit on strong PS4 sales

TOKYO: Sony swung to a second-quarter operating profit as strong PlayStation 4 videogame sales helped to offset a fall in smartphone sales and keep the company on a recovery track after years of decline in its consumer electronics business.

Sony said on Thursday its July-September operating profit came to 88 billion yen ($729 million), its best second-quarter operating profit in eight years. The profit was also a touch above the 87.3 billion yen average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

In the same quarter last year, it booked a loss of 85.6 billion yen due to impairment charges for the mobile business.

The company said its game and networks business booked a 10% rise in operating profit thanks to strong PlayStation 4 software sales. It lifted the full-year profit outlook for the games business to 80 billion yen from a previous 60 billion and boosted the sales outlook for PlayStation 4 videogame consoles to 17.5 million units from 16.5 million.

Camera sensors have also played a key role in the company's recovery of the past year. The devices division, which includes image sensors, reported an operating profit of 32.7 billion yen, up 4.4 billion from a year earlier.

The upbeat results come a day after Sony agreed to acquire Toshiba Corp's image sensor business for an estimated 20 billion yen and take on about 1,100 workers from a company reeling from a $1.3 billion accounting scandal.

"This business is crucial for Sony," Kenichiro Yoshida, Sony's chief financial officer said at a press conference. "We are facing a shortage of engineers in this field. We would welcome Toshiba engineers."

Sony is hoping that its dominant position in the camera sensor market would help the company offset weaker demand for its mobile phones, TVs and other consumer electronics.

Sony's mobile phone business remained in the red, posting a 20.6 billion yen loss due to heavy competition with other Asian makers.

Sony left unchanged its full-year operating profit and sales forecasts. It predicted an operating profit of 320 billion yen, a near five-fold jump, on sales of 7.9 trillion yen, down 3.8%.

Oracle to build high school on its Silicon Valley campus

SAN FRANCISCO: Oracle founder Larry Ellison already owns an island in Hawaii. Now, his company is building a high school next to its Silicon Valley headquarters to help fulfill Ellison's desire to teach students more about technology and problem-solving.

The plan unveiled at an Oracle customer conference calls for the business software maker to complete the 64,000-square-foot school by August 2017.

Although it will be owned by one of the world's biggest technology companies, the school isn't going to be called 'Oracle High'. Instead, it will be known as Design Tech, or 'd.tech', a public school approved last year.

The campus being built by Oracle will accommodate up to 550 students and 30 teachers in the shadow of Oracle's towering office in Redwood Shores, California, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. The school will be free and open to any student living in California.

Since starting Oracle Corp 38 years ago, Ellison has amassed an estimated fortune of $54 billion that has enabled him to buy most of the Hawaiian island of Lanai, own elaborate homes around the world and bankroll two victories in sailing's premier race, the America's Cup.

But Ellison isn't financing Design Tech. Oracle is footing the entire bill, though the company isn't disclosing how much it expects to spend.

Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz stressed the company wouldn't be getting involved if Ellison hadn't sketched out a vision to create a school where "students learn to think.''

Although Oracle will own the high school, the company won't be involved in the curriculum. Design Tech gained Oracle's financial support because it "reflects Larry's vision for a unique high school founded on principles we believe in: Innovation, creativity, problem-solving and design-thinking,'' Catz said.

Oracle's commitment to Design Tech comes less than a week after Facebook's billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced plans to finance a school for pre-school through eighth-grade students in one of Silicon Valley's few least affluent communities, East Palo Alto. The Primary School will provide health care services in addition to educational instruction for up to 700 students.

Zuckerberg and Chan also have given $100 million to schools in New Jersey and pledged to donate another $120 million to other schools located in low-income communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

IBM facing SEC probe over accounting practices

SAN FRANCISCO: The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how the International Business Machines Corp recognized revenue for certain deals in the United States, Britain and Ireland, IBM said on Tuesday, news that sent its shares down 4%.

IBM, the world's largest technology services company, said it learned of the investigation in August and was cooperating with the SEC, but did not disclose what deals were being probed.

An IBM spokesman told Reuters the company had a "rigorous and disciplined process" for its reporting of revenue.

Shares of IBM fell as much as 4.4% to a five-year low of $137.33 and closed down 4%.

News of the SEC probe came a week after the company posted lackluster quarterly results and cut its 2015 profit forecast.

"It couldn't come at a worse possible time because now the stock is at another 52-week low as a result of this," said Belpointe analyst David Nelson.

He said, however, that the probe "doesn't look like a massive smoking gun."

"The investigation could be into warranty reserves, they could have recognized an item at the wrong time," Nelson said.

IBM has been a subject of several SEC probes in the past, including a 2013 investigation on how it reported revenue from its cloud computing business. Regulators ended that probe without recommending any action. 

Earlier this month, the SEC called financial reporting "a key enforcement priority" as it announced a series of enforcement actions for violations of federal securities laws.

Revenue recognition is how a company records revenue on its books, with discrepancies often arising depending on whether cash is received, or payments deferred. Accounting rules differ in the United States and in Britain and Ireland.

A May 2014 change in the accounting standard for revenue recognition has increased scrutiny by regulators. Some 60% of SEC actions from 1998-2007 focused on improper revenue recognition, according to a 2010 report by COSO, a committee with representatives from private-sector accounting and other professional groups that studies fraudulent financial reporting.

Separately, IBM also authorized a $4 billion share buyback on Tuesday, in addition to $2.4 billion remaining from a previous share repurchase program announced last October.

Shares of the IBM have dropped steadily in recent months, falling 21% since hitting a year high of 173.97 in April.

Last week, IBM posted a bigger-than-expected drop in third-quarter revenue and cut its full-year profit forecast as a stronger US dollar accentuated weakness in demand from China and emerging markets.

Apple reports Q4 results: The story in numbers

Tech giant Apple has announced its fiscal fourth-quarter results. The world’s most valuable company narrowly beat both analyst expectations and its own guidance to Wall Street. While the iPhone contributed nearly two-thirds of Apple's $51.5 billion in revenue for the last quarter, the company also reported sales of its other major products -- including Mac computers, iPads and the new Apple Watch, along with services like iTunes store. Here's all the key numbers from Apple's fourth quarter.

1. 

 Revenue: $51.5 billion

Revenue in corresponding quarter last year: $42.1 billion

2. 

 Profit: $11.12 billion

Profit in corresponding quarter last year: $8.5 billion

3. 

 Gross margin: 39.9%

Gross margin in corresponding quarter last year: 38%

4. 

 Operating cash flow: $13.5 billion

5. 

 Greater China (includes Hong Kong) revenue: $12.52 billion

6. 

 iPhone revenue: $32.21 billion

iPhone unit sales: 48 million

Year-on-year change: 22% (units); 36% (revenue)

7. 

 Mac revenue: $6.88 billion

Mac unit sales: 5.71 million

Year-on-year change: 3% (units); 4% (revenue)

8. 

 iPad revenue: $4.28 billion

iPad unit sales: 9.88 million

Year-on-year change: -20% (units); -20% (revenue)

9. 

 Revenue from services (includes iTunes and Apple Pay): $5.09 billion

Year-on-year change: 10% (revenue)

10. Revenue from "other products" (includes Watch, TV streaming box and Beats): $3.05 billion
Year-on-year change: 61% (revenue)

Volkswagen posts first quarterly loss in 15 years

Volkswagen posted its first quarterly loss in at least 15 years, slammed by costs related to its rigging of diesel emissions tests, and lowered its profit outlook.

The German group on Wednesday reported a third-quarter operating loss of 3.48 billion euros ($3.84 billion), in line with a 3.47 billion-euro loss forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts.

VW set aside 6.7 billion euros in the July-September period to cover costs related to the manipulations affecting 11 million cars globally, up slightly from the 6.5 billion announced a week after the cheating became public on Sept. 18.

As a result, the German group said it now expected its operating profit to drop "significantly below" last year's record 12.7 billion euros.

Excluding costs of the scandal, the carmaker still expects its group operating margin to come in between 5.5 and 6.5% this year, after 6.3% in 2014.

Volkswagen plans to cut investments by 1 billion euros a year at its core division, which accounts for 5 million cars to be recalled. Luxury division Audi, source of about 40% of VW group profit, will also cut planned spending.

Volkswagen confirmed the loss it reported on Wednesday was its first quarterly loss in at least 15 years but, due to accounting changes, was unable to say precisely when the last loss occurred.

VW may need to set aside more money for measures to stabilize sales if deliveries take a hit from the scandal, chief executive Matthias Mueller has said. Steps could include discounts on new cars if owners turn in old models as well as cheap loans and incentives to dealers to buy back older cars.

Group deliveries, which also include premium brands Audi and Porsche, slid 1.5% in September to 885,300 cars and fell 3.4% in the third quarter to 2.39 million cars, causing VW to drop behind Japanese rival Toyota in nine-month global auto sales charts after clinching the top spot three months earlier.

Volkswagen CEO apologizes for emissions scandal at Tokyo auto show

Volkswagen's new chief executive Herbert Diess apologized at the Tokyo auto show Wednesday for the automaker's emissions-cheating scandal, promising to win back customer trust, and said it will delay the launch of a diesel vehicle in Japan.

The head of VW's Japan division Sven Stein, who appeared at the VW booth before Diess, bowed for several seconds in a Japanese style of apology. Diess made no bow.

"On behalf of my entire company, I'd like to apologize," said Diess, a recent hire from BMW, stressing that the priority is to fix the problem, uncover what happened and make sure the scandal never happens again.

Volkswagen is engulfed in a crisis after US authorities found its diesel vehicles had software installed that allowed the cars to cheat emissions tests. On the road, the vehicles were in fact emitting pollutants at levels many times higher than advertised. The automaker faces recalls for millions of vehicles and punishing fines.

"We are doing everything we can to bring back this trust in our brand," said Diess.

He promised to "create a new and even better Volkswagen," rallying behind the principles of "innovation, responsibility and lasting value." Then Stein and Diess unveiled a plug-in hybrid sport utility vehicle, pulling back a cloth covering a car on the stage.

Stein acknowledged after the presentation that sales in Japan had plummeted, more than by a third, although other factors besides the scandal, such as the lack of new models, compared to last year, may also be behind the plunge.

The launch of a diesel model in Japan, which had been planned for the first quarter of next year, will be delayed until the second half, according to Volkswagen.

Although the vehicle does not have the same diesel engine involved in the scandal, Stein said he wanted to allay customer worries.

The Japanese market is dominated by powerful local manufacturers such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., but Volkswagen has done relatively well compared with US rivals. Volkswagen sells about 60,000 vehicles in Japan a year, with some 600,000 Volkswagen owners on the roads, according to VW.

In global vehicle sales, a closely watched indicator for an automaker's resonance with customers worldwide, VW had come out No. 1 in the first half of this year, beating Toyota. But after the first three quarters, Toyota was again on top. The scandal surfaced in September.

When asked if VW could be No. 1 again, Diess, who was besieged by reporters after his presentation, said that wasn't a priority and winning back trust was.

"Then we talk about market share," he said.

Barbie is now doing feminism — but not everyone's convinced

A Barbie advert that attempts to counter various feminist criticisms of the doll over the years was released by Mattel earlier this month — but according to some feminists, there's still a long way to go.

The advert, titled 'Imagine the Possibilities', shows a number of young girls doing adult jobs, much to the surprise of the grown-ups who deal with them.

A young girl stands in a lecture hall, teaching bemused biology students about the brain.

Another coaches a football team, getting them to warm up and whipping them into shape, while a third treats household pets in a veterinary surgery.

At the end of the advert, it is revealed that they were just playing all along - the lecture hall was in fact a a few boxes in a little girl's bedroom, and she is acting out the lesson by playing with her Barbies.

The final caption reads: What a girl plays with Barbie, she imagines everything she can become," and the advert ends with the slogan "You can be anything."

It's a heartwarming advert, and one that's not nearly so pink and garish as a typical advert for girls' toys.

Barbie has tried to be feminist before, especially in the much-mocked 'computer hacker Barbie' book. But for many, this ad hit the nail on the head, and shows that dolls can young girls aspire to bigger things than going on dates with Ken or shopping for dresses.

However, some feminist commentators have responded by saying there are still flaws at the heart of the Barbie brand.

Barbie shows girls can become anything, writes Jessica Valenti in The Guardian - "except fat, of course. Or not white. Or anything over than the still very standard, horrifyingly proportioned Barbie."

"Imaginations are limited when girls are given only a narrowly defined idea of what being a woman looks like," she continued.

It's true that while Barbie has held hundreds of different jobs over the years, she looks exactly the same - something that could be hurting the doll's sales.

In Nigeria, the 'Queen of Africa' doll outsells Barbie, with the popularity of the black doll suggesting that girls may like a doll more if it looks a little more like them, according to its creator.

Shoshanna Devora, a writer for British feminist blog The F Word, had similar criticisms — writing: "As long as a girl plays with a Barbie doll and absorbs the unconscious message that she needs a 19-inch waist to attain her goals, Barbies continue to be limiting, not empowering."

Barbie's critics have praised the core message of the advert and Mattel's more explicit commitment to making Barbie a slightly better role model, and the brand has come a long way since the release of 'Slumber Party Barbie' in 1965, who came with a set of toy scales and a tiny diet book (with only one piece of advice - "Don't eat!").

However, even with the beginning of this new campaign, Barbie may have a way to go until she becomes the feminist hero that Mattel wants her to be.

Car designer to auto giants: Beware of Google, Apple

The days of cheap and cheerful cars like the Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla may be numbered as technology firms Google and Apple muscle into the auto industry, and change the way people own and drive cars.

That's the warning from Ken Okuyama, high-end Japanese designer of the Ferrari F60 Enzo and Porsche Boxster, who says game-changing self-drive technology could threaten Japan's position as a major car producer.

"If they don't watch out, they risk becoming just suppliers to those (tech) companies," Okuyama told Reuters in an interview at his industrial design studio in the Japanese capital ahead of this week's Tokyo Motor Show.

Okuyama, who made his mark at Italy's fabled Pininfarina studio and also redesigned the Chevrolet Camaro and Corvette, says taking on Google and Apple will be the ultimate test for Toyota and other mainstream automakers.

As writing code becomes as vital to car making as engineering, Japanese automakers are under pressure to show they can compete with the tech giants.

Google's fleet of self-driving cars includes a modified version of Toyota's Lexus sport utility vehicles, in addition to the pod-like, driverless Google Car prototype, both of which are being road-tested in the United States. Apple could roll out a self-driving vehicle in 2019.

Honda, which on Tuesday said it was developing a new automatic setting to be used in congested traffic, and technology to pre-program cars to drive automatically, acknowledged the potential threat from tech firms in the future.

"At this point, whether Google or Apple can come up with a car is unclear," said Koichi Fukuo, president of research and development at Honda. "But they are spending aggressively to recruit people to achieve that and in that sense ... we can't rule out the possibility they may eventually become a competitor."

Market to split

 
As cars become more automated, Okuyama predicts the auto market over time may split into two camps: Vehicles that simply fulfill public transportation needs such as self-driving taxis serviced by ride-hailing applications; and super-luxury cars that will be trophy items for the wealthy.

As a result, he says, car ownership will decline, decreasing demand for affordable, traditional cars like Honda's hugely popular Civic models.

"Automakers have used existing technology and road infrastructure to create cars which have an emotional connection with drivers. This is how they have been adding value to their products," Okuyama said.

"But cars have become commodity products, and, as such, they have to become more functional and even more affordable," he said, foreseeing a future where stripped down, minimalist 'commodity' cars would share the roads with luxury vehicles.

While this market polarization could be years away, Okuyama says Japanese automakers must focus even more on finding ways for cars to benefit from advanced technologies - an area where he says they have lagged for years.

"Self-driving cars will eventually become commonplace ... as a result, carmakers will have to sell not only the hardware, but also the overall system to run the cars," he said. "Companies like Mercedes and Toyota are looking at this, but Google is ahead in this game."

To be sure, Japanese automakers are starting to show off their own automated driving capability, with Toyota this month unveiling automatic lane changing and merging functions on a Tokyo highway. The world's largest car maker plans to market its first self-driving car in 2020.

Honda and Nissan have also set 2020, the year of the Tokyo Olympics, as a target date to bring advanced self-driving cars to the market.

Most automakers have focused on developing automated driving functions, such as automatic braking systems, parking and lane-changing capabilities which drivers can switch on or off.

Google and ZMP, a Tokyo-based robotics start-up which plans to introduce a robot taxi service in time for the Olympics, are taking automated driving a step further, developing cars with no steering wheel or pedals -- taking humans out of the driving equation altogether.

Since returning to Japan in 2007 and starting his own design firm, Okuyama, 56, has focused on urban planning and public transportation projects, giving a facelift to some of Japan's 'bullet' trains and designing a concept line of farm equipment.

But slick, fast luxury cars remain close to his heart, and the high-tech sports cars Okuyama now designs for his own brand sit firmly in trophy car territory. A bespoke model he plans to unveil at the Tokyo show clocks in at a cool $1.3 million.

Apple Pay growth slows down a year after launch: Research

LAS VEGAS: Apple's mobile wallet Apple Pay is winning over more US households a year after its launch, but growth has slowed, research showed.

Fourteen percent of US households with credit cards had signed up for the payment option by the end of September, up from 11% in February, Phoenix Marketing International said at a payments conference in Las Vegas.

"A very rapid initial threshold was achieved by Apple Pay and it is still growing but the growth rate has slowed down," said Greg Weed, director of card performance research at Phoenix.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment, but noted that a company statement in early October cited "double digit monthly growth in Apple Pay transactions" since its launch.

About 48% of Gen Xers, in their mid-30s to mid-50s, use Apple Pay, compared with 42% of millennials, aged 21 to 34, Phoenix said.

Among Apple Pay users, 86% have linked their credit cards to make a purchase, 49% consumers use their debit cards and 22% use different types of prepaid cards, the report showed.

Phoenix said it has been researching Apple Pay since its launch in October 2014, with a group of 15,000 consumers.

In June, two-thirds of the top 100 US retailers told Reuters they did not plan to accept Apple Pay this year.

Facebook notifications set to become more useful

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook, making a bigger push to deliver personalized information to its members, said it was expanding its mobile alerts to include sports scores, weather updates and local news updates.

Until now, the huge social network's alerts to smartphone users had been focused around postings by friends, birthdays and upcoming events.

Facebook's expanded alerts will now also include community news and events, storm warnings and other weather information, and suggestions for television programs or nearby movies.

"We've heard feedback that people wanted to add important information that they can easily see, all in one place," said Facebook product manager Keith Peiris.

Members will be able to personalize these notifications for "things happening around your community, like local events and news that is popular in the city you live in," Peiris added.

Facebook said the change will be rolling out gradually to users of Android and iOS devices but that the notifications will be opt-in.

"Your current notification settings will not change, and you can adjust those any time in your settings," through "cards" on the social network, Peiris said.

"We'll continue to listen to feedback about the information people find most useful and may periodically add more cards to choose from."

Wal-Mart eyes drone home deliveries in the US

SAN FRANCISCO: Wal-Mart is actively looking at the possibility of using drones to make deliveries to US customers, a spokesman has said, following the lead of Amazon and other retailers.

The retail behemoth has been testing the technology indoors "for several months" and on Monday made a request to US aviation authorities to do likewise outside.

In addition to deliveries, Wal-Mart wants to use the unmanned aircraft to keep a bird's eye view on its warehouses or other facilities, or to convey purchases in-store to customers' cars.

"This is part of our continuous efforts to drive efficiencies in our supply chain and to serve customers faster and better," a spokesman told AFP.

"There is a Wal-Mart within five miles (eight kilometers) of 70 per cent of the US population, so that creates interesting possibilities for serving customers with drone technologies."

In March, the Federal Aviation Administration said it would allow online giant Amazon to carry out testing for its drone programme.

The company hopes to develop a delivery system which would dispatch small packages in under 30 minutes.

Google is also keen on the idea and in August last year -- a month after Amazon sought permission for drone test flights -- said it was also trying out using drones to deliver items bought online.

Ferrer rallies to beat Johnson in Vienna for 26th ATP title

SOELDEN: Eighth-ranked David Ferrer clinched his 26th career win after rallying to defeat Steve Johnson of the United States 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 at the Erste Bank Open on Sunday.

The top-seeded Spaniard improved to 5-0 in finals this season after also winning in Doha, Rio de Janeiro, Acapulco, and Kuala Lumpur.

The victory has all but secured him a spot at next month's season-ending ATP finals in London.

The 47th-ranked Johnson, who was playing in his maiden final, took a quick 3-0 lead. He lost serve at 4-2 but broke Ferrer again at 5-4 to close out the first set. Three straight breaks at the start gave Ferrer an early advantage in the second.

The final set went with serve until Johnson led 5-4 before Ferrer won the last three games.

Federer targets seventh Basel title

BASEL: Roger Federer will aim to profit from the public adoration of his hometown crowd as he bids for a seventh title at the Swiss Indoors starting on Monday.

The 34-year-old world number three will have certainly put aside his unexpected loss last week in Shanghai, where he was ambushed by Spain's Albert Ramos in an opening match and went back to Europe only a few days after arriving to a hero's welcome in China.

But that's all part of the past for Federer, who claimed a sixth Swiss title at the St Jakobshalle a year ago in well under an hour against David Goffin. The player who got his start in the game at the tournament as a ballboy, owns six trophies from 11 Basel finals over a span of 15 years, standing 56-9 on home ground.

Federer opens on Tuesday in the first round against Kazakh Mikhail Kukushkin with his drive and confidence not particularly dented by his early Shanghai surprise. "Ten years ago I would have only hoped to be still able to play at 34, yet here I am. I'm going through a really exciting phase of my career, of my life. I can only be happy," said the father of two sets of twins.

Joining Federer in the field is double Grand Slam champion and fellow Swiss Stan Wawrinka (seeded second) and third seed Rafael Nadal, whose run to the Beijing final and Shanghai semis has helped the 29-year-old start repairing a poor season in the closing stages.

Wawrinka, winner of the Tokyo title this month, opens against Croatian serving king Ivo Karlovic while Nadal kicks off the week's evening sessions when he faces Lukas Rosol on Monday. Rosol famously stunned Nadal in the Wimbledon second round in 2012. Nadal lost in the Basel quarter-finals a year ago before revealing his need for an off-season appendectomy.

His appearance this year will be his fourth after first playing the event in 2003 when he lost in the first round. But the 14-time Grand Slam winner knows he is vulnerable on the indoor hardcourts which comprise the remaining fortnight of the ATP season. "The bad news is that we go to indoors now until the end of the year. But at the same time I'm going to work hard to try to keep doing well, keep enjoying," said Nadal.

South African Kevin Anderson, a Vienna quarter-finalist last week, takes the fourth seeding ahead of Frenchman Richard Gasquet and sixth seed John Isner. Marin Cilic is seeded seventh ahead of 2014 finalist David Goffin. The event lost former finalist Kei Nishikori of Japan and Canadian Milos Raonic to injury pullouts.

Comet Lovejoy releases 500 bottles of alcohol per second, say scientists

WASHINGTON: Comet Lovejoy is living up to its name by releasing large amounts of alcohol -as much as 500 bottles of wine every second -into space, scientists have found. The discovery marks the first time ethyl alcohol, the same type in alcoholic beverages, has been observed in a comet, researchers said.

The finding adds to the evidence that comets could have been a source of the complex organic molecules necessary for the emergence of life, they said. "We found that comet Lovejoy was releasing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second during its peak activity ," said Nicolas Biver of the Paris Observatory , France, lead author of a research paper published in journal Science Advances. The team found 21 different organic molecules in gas from the comet, including ethyl alcohol and glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar.

Comet Lovejoy (formally catalogued as C2014 Q2) was one of the brightest and most active comets since comet Hale-Bopp in 1997.Lovejoy passed closest to the Sun on January 30 this year, when it was releasing water at the rate of 20 tonnes per second. The team observed the atmosphere of the comet around this time when it was brightest and most active. They observed a microwave glow from the comet using the 30-meter diameter radio tele scope at Pico Veleta in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Spain.

The advanced equipment was capable of analysing a wide range of frequencies simultaneously , allowing the team to determine the types and amounts of many different molecules in the comet despite a short observation period. Some researchers think that comet impacts on ancient Earth delivered a supply of organic molecules that could have assisted the origin of life. Discovery of complex organic molecules in Lovejoy and other comets gives support to this hypothesis.

Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet quarterly results allay IT industry fears

Google parent Alphabet Inc, Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc made headway in the latest quarter in the areas that will be their main engines of growth for years to come, driving up shares across the tech sector.

For Alphabet, search traffic on mobiles surpassed desktop traffic worldwide for the first time, while Amazon was able to boost margins, an area of concern, as its cloud business boomed.

Microsoft's growing emphasis on cloud computing under CEO Satya Nadella also put the company on track successfully transition away from its slowing business that relies on sales of personal computers.

"I think what you're seeing is these companies finally able to address the primary challenges that have been facing the businesses," said James Cakmak, an analyst at brokerage Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co in New York.

"For Amazon it's margin, for Alphabet it's mobile, for Microsoft it's the cloud or diversifying away from its legacy businesses."

The better-than-expected results are a bright spot for the market following a period of intense volatility over worries about China and the timing of a US interest rate hike.

Before the start of the third-quarter reporting season, corporate earnings had been expected to fall by 4.1%, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The three companies' results show that a key part of the US economy continues to function well even as the global economy slows, said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of investment advisory firm Sarhan Capital in New York.

"The technology sector, specifically the Internet sector, remains bright," he said.

In the cloud

 
Cloud computing remains the priority for Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft as large enterprises shift to Internet-based services to host and manage their data.

"I think the combination of Amazon, Microsoft and Google, as the technology leaders of the world, each showing accelerating growth in their Internet-related businesses, represents a very powerful statement," said Frederick Moran, an analyst at brokerage Burke and Quick Partners in Uniondale, New York.

For Amazon, cloud computing is its fastest growing business and the company said it was investing in new services such as Internet of Things to capitalize on rising demand to store and manage large amounts of data.

While selling cloud storage space to enterprises remains a miniscule part of Alphabet's revenue, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that it was a growing priority.

"Every businesses in the world is going to run on cloud eventually. So, we view it as an amazing opportunity," he said.

At least 30 of 50 analysts covering Alphabet raised their price targets - Bernstein to $950.

At least 11 of 34 Microsoft analysts raised theirs. BofA Merrill Lynch was the most bullish with a target of $63.

Of 42 analysts covering Amazon, at least 20 raised their targets. Piper Jaffray and JP Morgan were the most bullish with price targets of $800.

Whoopi Goldberg's tour bus bursts into flames

Actress Whoopi Goldberg's tour bus caught fire behind an auditorium where she was performing.

The performance by 59-year-old comedy star was cut short after the fire and hundreds of people had to be evacuated, reported TMZ.

Goldberg was performing at a casino in New Brunswick, Canada when the fire broke.

According to an eye witness the show was stopped immediately and everyone in attendance was told to leave the building.

The cause of the fire is still unknown.

Google makes muting Chrome tabs easier

Stop us if you've heard this one: You're surfing the Web, opening tabs left and right, when out of nowhere, you get blasted with sound from an autoplay ad or video.

In most browsers, you're stuck: You're going to have to click through all your tabs to find the offending media. Not so in Google Chrome. An update to the browser, released last year, puts a tiny little audio icon to the right of noisy tabs.

Once you locate that tab, though, you still have to scroll through and find the video or source of noise. Until now. On the latest iteration of the Chrome browser, Google has added a simple option for muting tabs completely. Just right-click and select the "Mute tab" option, and anything playing within the tab will stay silent until you unmute it. A little speaker icon with a line through it will indicate which tabs you currently have muted.

According to reports, Mozilla is also experimenting with a similar functionality for Firefox. In the Firefox 42 beta, a little icon will appear on a tab if it's producing any kind of sound. Click on it, and you'll mute the tab (or unmute it)—a slightly easier implementation than Chrome's solution.

As Mashable pointed out, Google was initially hesitant to make this move. "After much debate, we decided not to proceed with a tab mute control, as this crosses a very important line: If we provide Chrome controls for content, we're implying that Chrome should take on a responsibility to police content," Chromium's Francois Beaufort posted on Google+ last year.

"For 'behaving' content, we think it's reasonable for a user to click on a tab and use the content's media controls to stop playback. In this case, a Chrome tab mute control would be redundant. This redundancy is bad since it can confuse users (e.g., to play a video and forget that a tab was muted days ago); and, based on experience, confused users often report unexpected behaviour as browser bugs, which would be a big distraction to the Support and Eng staff," he later added.

Google's parent company Alphabet posts 15% rise in Q3

SAN FRANCISCO: Google's third-quarter report is getting an "A" from investors as the internet search leader enters a new era under Alphabet, its new parent company.

A third-quarter report released on Thursday indicated that Google is making significant strides in the increasingly important mobile market, with its earnings surging 45% to nearly $4 billion, or $5.73 per share.

Alphabet, which replaced Google as a publicly traded stock earlier this month, won extra credit by announcing plans to spend nearly $5.1 billion buying its own shares over an unspecified period.

Buying back stock is something Google never did in its 11-year history as a publicly traded company.

The third-quarter gains also reflected the financial discipline that has been imposed by Google's recently hired chief financial officer, Ruth Porat: The company's operating expenses rose at slightly slower pace than revenue, helping to fatten profit margins.

Google's revenue for the three months ending in September totaled $18.7 billion. After subtracting ad commissions, revenue totaled $15.1 billion, a 15% increase from last year.

Both the earnings and revenue topped the analysts' projections that steer investors' expectations.

The results "show the strength of Google's business, particularly in mobile search," Porat said.

Investors agreed as Alphabet's Class C stock soared $65.86 to $747. If the shares hit that level in Friday's regular session, it will be a new peak for the stock.

The report covered a three-month period ending marked Google's final quarter as a public company. Google now is a subsidiary of Alphabet, which was created to oversee the hodgepodge of businesses that have been launched with the tens of billions of dollars that Google has made as the Internet's dominant search engine.

In January, Alphabet will report Google's financial numbers separately from a group of peripheral businesses that experiment with self-driving cars, invest in startups, make Internet-connected thermostats and search for cures to health problems.

That breakdown is expected to reveal how much money Google would have been making in recent years if it hadn't been diverting billions of dollars to finance risky projects that Alphabet CEO Larry Page calls "moon shots."

Google's profit margins also have been squeezed by the shift to mobile devices from laptop and desktop computers during the past five years. The company was better prepared for the upheaval than most of its technology peers because it had the foresight to build and develop Android, a mobile operating system that features Google's search engine, maps, email and YouTube video site.

Even though Android is being used on 1.4 billion devices around the world, Google still has been hurt by the move to mobile. That's because advertisers haven't been as willing to pay as much for marketing messages shown on the smaller screens of smartphones.

The phenomenon is one reason that Google's average price for ads, a statistic known as "cost per click," has declined for four straight years. The third-quarter cost per click dropped another 11% from the same time last year.

But marketers are gradually paying more to connect with prospective customers on mobile devices as Google has come up with ways to fit more ads on screens and done a better job of demonstrating that the pitches translate into sales.

In the US, the average cost per click for ads shown after mobile searches climbed 18%, according to digital marketing consultants IgnitionOne. Google says average ad prices on mobile devices have been rising in the US but hasn't provided specific numbers.

Now, anyone can search for your public Facebook posts

Facebook has fed everyone's public posts into its search engine, meaning that most updates will now be readily available for everyone — no matter how old they are.

The move follows an update last year that made all individual posts searchable. But that was initially restricted only to posts by friends.

Now, 2 trillion public posts from all around the world have been added. And it's highly likely that any Facebook users' posts have been sucked up in that move.

Facebook hopes that the tool will allow it to become more of a way of finding out what is going on — it will be possible to search for how people are reacting to a news event, for instance, or to find everything that everyone has said about a certain TV show. It will also allow Facebook to track more accurately what people are talking about, so that its search tools can offer information about what's going on.

But it will also make it far easier to find old posts from people that they might not have really intended to be public. Facebook showed off how searching for "water on mars" would bring up everything that people were saying about Nasa's announcement — but searching for a more personal, private event would do the same.

Facebook does have an option for hiding posts. Heading to the Settings bar and clikcking "See More Settings" brings up the "Who can see my stuff?" option, where privacy options can be changed.

In those settings is the option to "Limit Past Posts". That will make every status that you've ever posted available only to your friends, at the same time hiding it from the new search.

The site also provides a review tool, which can be found in the "Who can see my stuff?" menu, that allows people to go through a timeline of everything they have posted and decide whether they want to make it private.

In future, that same settings page can be used to limit posts only to friends or to specific people. The same choice can be made whenever you post — just underneath the status update page sits an audience option, which adjusts who will see the update.

Veto under fire as United Nations turns 70

UNITED NATIONS: More than 100 countries on Friday challenged Security Council powers to restrict their use of the veto as the United Nations turned 70, with a joint pledge not to oppose resolutions on mass atrocities.

The initiative is aimed at avoiding the kind of gridlock that has paralyzed the Security Council on Syria, with Russia and China vetoing any attempt to sanction the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

With 104 countries on board including Security Council permanent members France and Britain, the "code of conduct" won backing from a majority of the UN's 193 member states.

Supporters of the drive have lobbied countries for months to sign on to the pledge and pointedly announced the outcome on the 70th anniversary of the United Nations.

Under the measure, countries commit "not to vote against a credible draft resolution" that seeks to end or prevent genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The code of conduct leaves it to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to determine when an outbreak of violence could lead to mass atrocities.

Other than the five permanent members, the Security Council has 10 non-permanent members elected for two-year terms who vote on resolutions but have no veto power.

Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain and Mexico were also among the pledge signatories, as well as three of the countries set to take up non-permanent seats in January: Japan, Ukraine and Uruguay.

The code was drafted by a group of countries known as the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency group, led by Liechtenstein.

Their campaign chimes with a separate French proposal to restrict the use of the Security Council veto in cases of mass atrocities.

France's idea has won support from 73 countries, but is rejected outright by Russia while China and the United States have reacted coolly.

Human rights groups have applauded the initiative, even though they are realistic about prospects for persuading the big powers to curb their use of the veto.

"It may provide a challenge to the misuse of the veto by some permanent members, a misuse that rightly offends so many UN member states," said Richard Dicker, Human Rights Watch's director for international justice.

"The code could increase the political costs of voting against a credible Security Council resolution in situations of mass atrocity crimes."

The veto power accorded to the P5 dates back to the UN's foundation, but calls to re-think its use have mounted.

Russia and China used their veto power last year to block a resolution asking the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes committed in Syria.

Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin last month dismissed calls for restricting use of the veto as "populist" and said such a proposal was not realistic.

Churkin argued that declaring that mass atrocities have occurred could become a political tool, and raised questions about who would be empowered to make that determination.

Russia and its predecessor the Soviet Union have used their veto 81 times, while the United States has resorted to the measure 77 times, some 30 of those on Israeli-Palestinian issues alone.

Britain has used the veto 32 times, France 18 and China nine times.

Hamilton ready to scale his own Everest

AUSTIN: Lewis Hamilton will achieve the dream of a lifetime if he secures his third Formula One world championship in Austin on Sunday but he will then face a question as big as Texas: What next?

Like a mountaineer one step away from conquering the highest peak, the Mercedes driver knows he also stands on the edge of uncertainty as he goes into the U.S. Grand Prix. Without wanting to preempt anything, go into 'ifs' and 'buts' or even acknowledge that the weekend felt in any way out of the ordinary, Hamilton recognised that he would have to refocus his career ambitions.

"I could imagine that, for me it would be like getting to the top of Mount Everest. I mean, what do you do next?" he said of the prospect of matching the three titles of his boyhood hero, the late Brazilian Ayrton Senna.

The answer for most would simply be win more championships and races, but Senna's triple has a particular resonance for Hamilton. The 30-year-old, who has already overtaken the Brazilian's tally of race wins, has always wanted to win three. Not seven like Michael Schumacher, or four like Sebastian Vettel, but to do what Senna did.

As he said in Japan two weeks ago, he never aspired to be like any other driver. "There's no higher mountain but there are equally tough challenges in maybe lower mountains. Things just change, so I really don't know," said the Briton, as he continued to ponder how he might react.

"I am going to keep on wanting to win. That is never going to change in me. That competitiveness I have in me is just in my blood. The other day we were bowling with some people, and we had some girls with us and I could not for the life of me let them win. That competitiveness will always be there. I can't even fathom what's beyond it. I never thought beyond three (titles). I didn't even think I would have two."

Hamilton won his first title with McLaren in 2008, with his father present, and took his second with Mercedes last year in the final race - again with father and family present. This time, he just has his pet bulldog 'Roscoe' for company and he said he was not expecting any family to join him.

"At the moment it just feels like another weekend. It really, really does. Which I'm actually happy about," he told British reporters. "Last year, the last race was an intense period - I might have it or might not have it. But now I'm in a good position with four races (to go).

"I've set up my mind up knowing I've got these four races to win the championship. My goal is to cross the line in Abu Dhabi as champion, not cross the line in Austin as champion. If it happens, then great but otherwise no extra pressure."

The Briton has won nine races in 15 this season and could become the first champion to win 10 or more in successive years, as well as Britain's first back-to-back champion. So will that make him a 'legend', one of the greats who transcends the sport?

"I hope at some stage I might be. I think that would be a positive," said the sport's first black world champion. "I mean, I'm doing not too bad. When you look at those people who have done wonders in their sports and really stood out, I hope at some stage when I come to the end hopefully people will stay I did stood out. I do stick out like a sore thumb compared to the other drivers."