Flutter, founded three years ago in San Francisco, detects simple hand signals via webcam, using them to control apps such as iTunes and Netflix.

The acquisition has caused speculation that Google will integrate the technology, used by some of its rivals, into its ranges of Chromebook laptops and Nexus handheld devices.

The search giant has not released any details of the deal.

It is also used in some smart TVs, and Samsung recently introduced gesture recognition for its Galaxy S4 smartphone.

The phone's Air Gesture technology allows users to scroll through web pages, accept calls, and control music by waving their hands.

Widespread use

An expert told the BBC that despite Google's acquisition, it remained to be seen whether gesture recognition would become a mainstream technology.

"The more interface styles we can develop the better, but whether gesture recognition becomes the norm depends on how well it can be personalised and whether people embrace it," said Richard Picking, of Glyndwr University.

"It could be particularly useful as a tool for older people, or those with disabilities," he added.

Flutter was initially funded through Y Combinator, a company that nurtures start-ups.

'Rocket fuel'

Co-founder Navneet Dalal, who used to work at Google, announced the deal on Flutter's website.

"Today, we are thrilled to announce that we will be continuing our research at Google," the statement read.

"We're excited to add their rocket fuel to our journey."

Without a single reactor order since a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered disaster at the plant in 2011, Toshiba Corp chief executive Hisao Tanaka is chasing a deal by the end of this year that would give the company a majority stake in a project to build a new British nuclear plant.

If Tanaka succeeds in taking control of the nuclear consortium NuGen, a Japan Inc push backed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government to promote nuclear know-how overseas could provide a launch pad for Toshiba to meet its target of 29 new nuclear reactor orders by March 2018.

Even as all of Japan's domestic nuclear plants remain off-line, Tanaka said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday that he was optimistic the post-Fukushima chill over the nuclear industry is thawing, and that technology contained in Toshiba's Westinghouse division will remain a cornerstone of the industrial conglomerate's business.

"We felt a backlash against nuclear power for a while, but I think that it's gradually being reassessed," he said. "The pace (of orders) has dropped but when you look around the world the importance of nuclear power has increased."

Winning a majority stake in NuGen would give Toshiba a foothold in pro-nuclear Britain, where Hitachi Ltd, Japan's other nuclear technology supplier, acquired the Horizon nuclear project last year and is planning to build two to three nuclear power plants.

Spanish utility Iberdrola SA is in talks to sell its 50 percent stake in NuGen, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. Taking a majority stake would require Westinghouse to buy shares both from Iberdrola and from joint NuGen shareholder GDF Suez.

JAPAN SAFETY DEBATE

Anti-nuclear sentiment spread across the world after the Fukushima accident, the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl in 1986, with Germany deciding to pull out of nuclear power entirely and France and Belgium committing to reducing their dependence on it.

Toshiba's revenue from maintaining domestic power plants has likely suffered with Japan's remaining 50 nuclear reactors now offline amid continuing debate about the industry's safety.

It was graphene -- a one atom thin substance. The Professor of Physics at Manchester University talks to CNN about discovering the first ever 2-dimensional material.

CNN: Graphene has been described as a 'miracle material', but what exactly is it? Andre Geim: It's the thinnest material you can get -- it's only one atom thick. A tiny amount can cover a huge area, so one gram could cover a whole football pitch. It's the strongest material we are aware of because you can't slice it any further. Of course, we know that atoms can be divided into elementary particles, but you can't get any material that is thinner than one atom, or it wouldn't count as a material anymore.

Read: Have a taste of the world's first stem cell burger Graphene is stronger than diamond; it shows extraordinary heat conductance; it conducts electricity a thousand times better than copper -- the list goes on. We're talking about probably 20 superlatives which apply to graphene. Another surprise is that you can just about see it with the naked eye, even though it's only one atom thick!

AG: We were trying to make graphite as thin as possible using lab equipment and for many months we struggled to make it thinner than 10,000 layers. Then we had a kind of Eureka moment. We were using scotch tape on a regular basis in the lab to clean the surface of the graphite. We would look at what was happening on the surface of the graphite and throw the scotch tape in the bin.

Then we decided to take the tape out of the bin and look at it under the microscope and we saw really transparent pieces of graphite -- graphene. Read: British inventors claim world's first flying bicycle CNN: Your discovery was certainly a surprise to the science world, but was it a surprise to you?

AG: Yes. We live in a 3-dimensional world. My physics intuition, developed over the last thirty years, told me that this material shouldn't exist. And if you had asked 99.9% of scientists around the world they would have said the idea of a 2D material was rubbish and that graphene shouldn't exist. And in most cases they would have been right, but in the case of graphite or graphene, and a dozen other materials like it, our intuition was completely wrong. You can reach this limit of one-atom-thin layers.

That kind of playful thinking has helped the Danish company become the world's second-biggest toy maker as it clicks with fast-growing Asia and builds on its popular plastic bricks with video games and theme parks.

"We are seeing a society where the wealthier it becomes, the more room there is for what I call the business of play," Chief Executive Jørgen Vig Knudstorp told Reuters in Singapore.

"In that I will include the role of play in education, the role of play in theme parks and family entertainment, the role of play in adult age."

Video games are big business and Lego Group has "a major role through licensing arrangements" but the digital realm is a complement, not a replacement, for physical play, he said. Lego has a partnership with video game developer TT Games that has resulted in titles such as Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman. Another game, Life of George, combines building physical bricks with apps that can be downloaded on an iPhone.

Lego, whose name is derived from the Danish words "leg godt" meaning "play well", started 81 years ago in the workshop of carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen and is now owned by the founder's grandson and his children.

Rides, rollercoasters and replicas of famous landmarks are also part of the strategy to target families.

Kirkbi A/S, the Kristiansen family's investment company, owns about 36 percent of British-based Merlin Entertainments Group, which runs six Legoland theme parks around the world.

Last year, it opened its first Asian theme park in southern Malaysia, a short drive from Singapore. An onsite hotel is nearing completion and is due to open next year.

Lego is banking on people like Vanessa Lee, a Singaporean mother of four children aged 8 to 13 who enjoy playing with sets such as Ninjago and Bionicle.

"It's quite expensive but I don't mind buying it for them," she said. "It takes quite some time to build the sets, especially the big ones, so it helps train their patience."

The Dallas, Texas-based company stands out among its peers for experimenting with a core concept of the legislation - the lofty goals of coordinating treatment in a single, integrated system that reins in costs by improving care.

The government-led model, called an accountable care organization, or ACO, ties a provider's pay to how well it cares for patients. It is gaining traction with healthcare professionals willing to bet that care designed to prevent a health problems from becoming worse and more costly will ultimately save money for everyone.

As many as 31 million Americans, or 10 percent of the U.S. population, receive their healthcare through some form of an ACO, according to management consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

Critics question whether the ACO model's potential savings justify the start-up costs. They also fear that the plans will replicate the unpopular health maintenance organizations of the 1990s by making it too expensive.

Rising cost is also a broad criticism that mostly Republican opponents have about the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. On Tuesday, online marketplaces and call centers created by the law opened for millions of uninsured Americans to shop for healthcare coverage.

Tenet set up a commercial accountable care organization in Modesto, California, in January 2012 after Kaiser Permanente, known for providing the ACO blueprint, built a medical center there. Tenet is now more deeply involved through its purchase, of a smaller hospital group, Vanguard Health Systems, finalized on October 1 for about $1.8 billion.

Tenet and Vanguard have complementary strategies, Tenet's chief executive, Trevor Fetter, said in an interview.

"We both are very eager to be in situations where we get paid for performance," Fetter said.

Vanguard operates Detroit Medical Center, one of 32 initial participants in the Obama administration's Medicare "Pioneer" program, considered a bellwether for the ACO model. While Detroit Medical Center saved money in the first year and remains a participant in the program, others did not.

IS THE MODEL SUSTAINABLE?

Tenet's willingness to try the ACO approach contrasts with the No. 1 and No. 2 for-profit hospital chains, HCA Holdings Inc and Community Health Systems. They want to see more evidence that the model is sustainable and saves money.

"We think the issues are converging," Republican Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters on Wednesday.

Ryan, last year's Republican vice presidential candidate, sees the development as positive, forcing two deadlocked adversaries to come to the negotiating table in the face of a bigger threat than a partially shut-down government

But it could mean the shutdown will not end until the middle of October.

More significantly, the result could be a dangerous and unpredictable fiscal superstorm that may be harder to resolve than the shutdown alone or the 2011 debt limit struggle that sent financial markets plummeting and brought the United States to the brink of default.

The central problem is that congressional Republicans view the debt ceiling as their best chance to negotiate concessions from President Barack Obama, while at the same time, Obama says he will not negotiate around the debt ceiling, as he did in 2011.

That alone is a recipe for stalemate.

The time frame is equally daunting. The government's $16.7 trillion borrowing cap must be raised by October 17.

Finally, Republicans aim to bring new demands to negotiations that already have deadlocked over Republican efforts to derail or curtail Obama's signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare.

Beyond Obamacare, Republicans have talked about seeking concessions on tax reform, approval of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline, a reduction in "sequester" spending cuts on the military along with a long wish list of other Republican priorities.

"I think there will be an even bigger list when it comes to the debt ceiling," said Representative John Fleming, a Louisiana Republican. "We're going to be talking about the Keystone XL pipeline, movement of cuts into entitlement reforms, beginning to adjust sequester," and more.

'REALLY MESSY'

"This just gets really messy," said Sean West, a political risk analyst with Eurasia Group in New York. "The parties are now literally at war with each other."

Representative Peter King of New York, a moderate Republican, said he was concerned that conservative Tea Party Republicans might be tempted to push the envelope too far when it comes to the debt ceiling.

The al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized Azaz, about 5 km (3 miles) from the frontier with Turkey, last month and has repeatedly clashed with the local Northern Storm brigade since then.

A previous attempt by rebel groups to broker a truce between the two sides did not hold.

The fighting prompted Turkey to close its border crossing, a lifeline for Syria's rebel-held northern areas because it let refugees out and supplies like food and building materials in.

A statement posted online by four rebel brigades on Thursday called for an "immediate ceasefire" between the two sides and called on them to submit their dispute to an Islamic court in Aleppo, about 30 km (20 miles) to the south.

"We ask our brothers in the faction of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to withdraw their forces and equipment to their essential bases immediately," said the statement.

"We consider them above spilling the blood of Muslims or rushing to describe them as infidels and apostates."

The statement was signed by commanders from the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawheed, Suqour al-Sham and Army of Islam brigades, and a copy was posted to Northern Storm's Facebook page. It did not say what the groups would do if the two sides did not stop fighting or if ISIL did not withdraw.

Rebel divisions have hurt their fight against President Bashar al-Assad's better equipped and organized forces in the 2-1/2-year-old conflict. Tensions have been rooted partially in conflicting ideologies, but more often in disputes over resources, territory and spoils of war.

Also on Thursday, activists in the rebel-held city of Raqqa to the east accused ISIL fighters of smashing a statue of an early Islamic leader because they considered it idolatrous, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Separately, a video posted online showed rebel commanders in Rastan, a town in the outskirts of the central city of Homs, criticizing ISIL and the Nusra Front, another al Qaeda-affiliated faction.

Along with the sound engineers and roadies who help stage a concert, insurance underwriters play a large role in making sure a star can get onstage and grab the microphone. Insurers are also key during those times when stars do not show and concerts get canceled.

On Wednesday afternoon, a Los Angeles jury found AEG Live was not liable in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of late pop singer Michael Jackson, in a case where lawyers in court papers had suggested the damages could exceed $1 billion.

The fact that AEG Live found itself at the center of the wrongful death suit had sent shockwaves through the music world in past months, with concert promoters as well as well-known entertainment insurers like AON/Albert G Ruben and Lloyds of Londonexpected to beef up policies for acts they insure and potentially raise some prices.

Even though AEG was not held responsible, insurance experts believe the case has spurred the industry to re-think policies and find ways to prevent similar situations down the road.

The role of Dr. Conrad Murray, convicted for manslaughter for his role in administering a fatal dose of the surgical anesthetic propofol to Jackson, is already prompting changes, say underwriters. In the future, the star or his promoter may be required to carry separate insurance on his entourage.

"The biggest stars all have doctors and their own staff," said Lorrie McNaught, senior vice president at Aon/Albert G. Ruben Insurance Services Inc, a large entertainment insurance firm, which has handled many of the world's biggest tours over the last 12 months.

"If you have a security guard who winds up punching someone in the face or kills someone, who is responsible?

"Is it the artist, the bodyguard, the promoter? I think promoters will require stars to indemnify their own staff," said McNaught. "Even if AEG was not held responsible, I still think this case will make attorneys find ways to tighten contracts."

An attorney for Lloyds of London involved in the Michael Jackson case declined comment for this story.

While Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has been under pressure for years to improve the company's performance and share price, this appears to be the first time that major shareholders are taking aim at Gates, who remains one of the most respected and influential figures in technology.

A representative for Microsoft declined to comment on Tuesday.

There is no indication that Microsoft's board would heed the wishes of the three investors, who collectively hold more than 5 percent of the company's stock, according to the sources. They requested the identity of the investors be kept anonymous because the discussions were private.

Gates owns about 4.5 percent of the $277 billion company and is its largest individual shareholder.

The three investors are concerned that Gates' role as chairman effectively blocks the adoption of new strategies and would limit the power of a new chief executive to make substantial changes. In particular, they point to Gates' role on the special committee searching for Ballmer's successor.

They are also worried that Gates - who spends most of his time on his philanthropic foundation - wields power out of proportion to his declining shareholding.

Gates, who owned 49 percent of Microsoft before it went public in 1986, sells about 80 million Microsoft shares a year under a pre-set plan, which if continued would leave him with no financial stake in the company by 2018.

He lowered his profile at Microsoft after he handed the CEO role to Ballmer in 2000, giving up his day-to-day work there in 2008 to focus on the $38 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In August, Ballmer said he would retire within 12 months, amid pressure from activist fund manager ValueAct Capital Management.

Microsoft is now looking for a new CEO, though its board has said Ballmer's strategy will go forward. He has focused on making devices, such as the Surface tablet and Xbox gaming console, and turning key software into services provided over the Internet. Some investors say that a new chief should not be bound by that strategy.

News that some investors were pushing for Gates' ouster as chairman provoked mixed reactions from other shareholders.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday it arrested Silk Road owner, Ross William Ulbricht, 29, known online as "Dread Pirate Roberts," in San Francisco on Tuesday, according to court filings.

Ulbricht, who holds an advanced degree in chemical engineering, appeared in federal court on Wednesday and a bail hearing was set for Friday.

His lawyer Brandon LeBlanc, a public defender, declined to comment.

Federal prosecutors in New York charged Ulbricht with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, the filing said.

"Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint.

The site was used by "several thousand drug dealers" to sell "hundreds of kilograms of illegal drugs," he said.

The site, which has operated since early 2011, also offered tutorials on hacking ATM machines, contact lists for black market connections and counterfeiters, and guns and hit men for sale, according to the charges.

More than 900,000 registered users of the site bought and sold drugs using the digital currency Bitcoin. In recent media reports about the growing popularity of Bitcoin, the Silk Road website has emerged as part of a darker side to the use of digital currencies.

Through the site, according to the charges, users could buy drugs and have them shipped to an address. Investigators, posing as regular users on Silk Road, made more than 100 purchases of drugs, which were shipped to the New York area.

"DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS"

According to the complaint, Ulbricht, who shortened his alias from Dread Pirate Roberts to DPR when posting on Silk Road's forums, operated the site from San Francisco.

At times, he used computers at Internet cafes to access the servers running the website, which employed several technological tools to mask the location of its servers and the identities of its administrators and users.

The complaint described other aspects of Ulbricht's online presence: In a Google+ profile, he described himself as a fan of libertarian economic philosophy and posted videos from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an Auburn, Alabama-based economics institute.

A visitor could check in at a hotel without having to line-up at a front desk by simply signing in via the Facebook application on a smartphone, Cisco said.

The company also demonstrated how it might work at a hospital as Chief Executive Officer John Chambers gave a speech at the Interop technology conference in New York.

Chambers said retailers could deliver tailored promotions or information to consumers who check in through Facebook when they arrive at a store.

Cisco said some customers of its Connected Mobile Experience Wi-Fi technology are currently testing the system.

While Cisco is looking to sell network equipment, Facebook appears to be following arch-rival Google Inc in collecting data on the shopping and Web browsing habits of customers so it can offer targeted ads.

Earlier this year, Google announced plans to bring free wireless Internet access to 7,000 Starbucks Corp cafes across the United States.

A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that private equity group Cerberus Capital Management LP was considering an offer for BlackBerry, which put itself on the block in August after bleeding market share to other smartphone makers.

The Wall Street Journal earlier named Cerberus as one of two firms that specialize in distressed investing that might be looking at BlackBerry. It did not name the second firm.

The Journal quoted one of its sources as saying that Cerberus aims to sign a confidentiality agreement with BlackBerry that would give it access to private financial information, but that it might in the end not bid.

Cerberus declined to comment.

BlackBerry shares were up about 1 percent, reversing a 5 percent fall earlier in the session.

The stock, at about $8 by mid afternoon, remained well below a tentative $9 a share offer from a consortium led by Toronto insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings Inc, which wants to take the smartphone maker private.

BlackBerry, which increasingly competes unsuccessfully with Apple Inc's iPhones and devices running Google Inc's Android operating system, accepted the tentative $4.7 billion Fairfax offer last month.

Fairfax and BlackBerry declined to comment.

"We do not intend to disclose further developments with the respect to the process until we approve a specific transaction or otherwise conclude the review of strategic alternatives," a BlackBerry spokesman said.

Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry, previously known as Research In Motion, was founded by Mike Lazaridis, whose little wireless devices offered the first easy way for lawyers, executives and politicians to access email away from the office.

Lazaridis left the company last year but remains a major shareholder. The Journal said he is also assessing whether to bid. Lazaridis could not be immediately reached for comment.

In the latest in a string of underwhelming results, BlackBerry last week reported a wide loss and slumping sales. It will cut 40 percent of its workforce to halve operating expenses.

When BlackBerry reported these results, it said it would update its 2013 outlook in a regulatory filing, and the likely $400 million in expected charges formed part of the latest filing, released late on Tuesday.