The Big Board, run by NYSE Euronext, regularly does systems testing on the weekends, but this was the first time it had run a simulated IPO, and it did so at the request of its member firms - many of whom took part in Facebook's 2012 IPO on Nasdaq OMX Group's main exchange.

The NYSE was testing mainly for two things: To see if its systems could handle the amount of message traffic that might be generated by the IPO; and to make sure that once the IPO took place any firms that placed orders would promptly receive the reports telling them that their orders had been executed.

It can also be seen as part of NYSE's struggle with Nasdaq for supremacy in technology listings. Both exchanges vied to be home to Twitter's stock, and many analysts said the trading disruptions that occurred on Facebook's Nasdaq debut likely played to NYSE's favor, as it tries to become the destination of choice for technology listings, something Nasdaq once dominated.

Twitter, which intends to sell 70 million shares at between $17 and $20 each, will be holding the biggest Internet IPO since Facebook, which sold a much larger 421 million shares at $38 each. Twitter is expected to start trading as early as November 7.

In the case of Facebook, the tremendous volume of orders on the first day of trading exposed a glitch in Nasdaq's system, ultimately preventing timely order confirmations for many traders, leaving them unsure about their exposure for hours, and in some cases for days afterwards. Major market makers estimated they lost collectively up to $500 million in the IPO.

The absence of Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld while the meltdown was occurring magnified the criticism toward the exchange - he had been celebrating the debut at Facebook's California headquarters before jumping on a plane back to New York.

"Blackberry doesn't fit with our strategy," Werner Brandt told Euro am Sonntag in an interview, adding that SAP already offers mobile solutions and did not need to fill any gaps there.

BlackBerry, based in Canada, once dominated the smartphone market but has put itself up for sale after being overtaken by Apple's iPhone and devices using Google Inc's Android operating system.

There seems to be no shortage of interest in Blackberry. SAP, along with Cisco Systems Inc and Google, was in talks about a full or partial acquisition, sources close to the matter had previously told Reuters.

Its co-founders are also considering a bid, and a group led by property and casualty insurer Fairfax last month unveiled a tentative offer of $9 a share.

People carried signs reading: "Stop Mass Spying," "Thank you, Edward Snowden" and "Unplug Big Brother" as they gathered at the foot of the Capitol to demonstrate against the online surveillance by the National Security Agency.

Estimates varied on the size of the march, with organizers saying more than 2,000 attended. U.S. Capitol Police said they do not typically provide estimates on the size of demonstrations.

The march attracted protesters from both ends of the political spectrum as liberal privacy advocates walked alongside members of the conservative Tea Party movement in opposition to what they say is unlawful government spying on Americans.

"I consider myself a conservative and no conservative wants their government collecting information on them and storing it and using it," said Michael Greene, one of the protesters.

"Over the past several months, we have learned so much about the abuses (of privacy) that are going on and the complete lack of oversight and the mass surveillance into every detail of our lives. And we need to tell Congress that they have to act," said another protester, Jennifer Wynne.

The event was organized by a coalition known as "Stop Watching Us" that consists of some 100 public advocacy groups and companies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, Occupy Wall Street NYC and the Libertarian Party.

The groups have been urging Congress to reform the legal framework supporting the NSA's secretive online data gathering since Snowden's disclosure of classified information about the programs that are designed to gather intelligence about potential foreign threats.

The Obama administration and many lawmakers have defended the NSA programs as crucial in protecting U.S. national security and helping thwart past militant plots. They have also said the programs are carefully overseen by Congress and the courts.

Snowden's disclosures have raised concerns that NSA surveillance may span not just foreign, but domestic online and phone communication.

Federal prosecutors in New York said Friday that the 144,336 bitcoins, which were widely used on the defunct site, were discovered on computer hardware belonging to Ross William Ulbricht, known online as Dread Pirate Roberts, who was arrested 1 October in San Francisco and charged with various conspiracy counts. They said it represented the largest ever bitcoin seizure.

Ulbricht's lawyer could not immediately be reached on Friday evening, though he had previously told reporters that Ulbricht denied the charges.

Since it began operations in 2011 Silk Road had provided an anonymous site where drug dealers, counterfeiters and other criminals could shop for everything from heroin to hitmen, according to the justice department.

More than 900,000 registered users of the site bought and sold drugs using bitcoins, according to authorities. The currency, which has been around since 2008, first came under scrutiny by law enforcement officials in mid-2011 after media reports surfaced linking bitcoins to Silk Road.

With nearly 30,000 bitcoins previously seized, federal agents had so far collected more than $33m worth based on current value, the US attorney's office in Manhattan said.

The seizures were carried out as part of a corresponding civil action against Silk Road and Ulbricht. Ulbricht, who is detained in California, is expected to appear within weeks in Manhattan federal court to face criminal charges of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy.

"This is a large and complicated endeavor that I am proud to lead, and every decision is being made by my prior work experience," Marilyn Tavenner testified on August 1 before the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, describing the launch of the Healthcare.gov website.

Come Tuesday, the former nurse who heads the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will again find herself before a House committee - this time, to explain how Healthcare.gov failed when the administration flipped the on switch. She will face Republicans eager to prove, thus far unsuccessfully, that the White House orchestrated decisions that may have stalled the system.

Lawmakers on both sides of the partisan aisle are growing increasingly impatient with website snafus that they say are frustrating the public and adding to taxpayer costs. The White House has scrambled to fix technical issues and disputes Republican allegations that political motives were behind changes in the website's function.

Tavenner's scheduled testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to offer insight into the decision-making. A key player, she was cleared to visit the White House 425 times between December 2009 and June 2013, including for several meetings with Obama himself, visitor logs show.

One Oval Office meeting with Obama in March would have occurred as some technology officials in her agency publicly fretted about the possibility that the complicated website would malfunction, telling an insurance forum they were working to avert problems.

Tavenner, 62, who was confirmed for her job by the Senate in May, was optimistic about the rollout when questioned by skeptical Republican senators at an April hearing.

Tavenner is expected to be a critical witness this week because "she's more responsible for decisions made at CMS that probably led to this disaster," said Joe Antos, a healthcare analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank.

A committee aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: "We expect her to be forthcoming. We think she'll be a very serious witness, and she's certainly integral."

Killings, mostly blamed by the Shi'ite-led government on Sunni Islamists from al Qaeda, are running at daily rates not seen in five years and Nuri al-Maliki will ask Obama on Friday to speed up promised deliveries of drones and F-16 jets that he believes can help staunch the long desert border with Syria.

Iraq's own security forces, trained and equipped by the U.S. troops who withdrew in late 2011 after a nine-year occupation, have been unable to prevent a surge in violence which has taken the civilian death toll so far this year to about 7,000. Sealing the Syrian border would only address part of the problem.

On Sunday, police reported 11 vehicles blowing up in mainly Shi'ite Muslim areas in and around Baghdad, killing 41 people in an apparently coordinated series of explosions typical of al Qaeda. A further 14 people were killed when a suicide bomber drove up to a line of soldiers waiting to collect their pay from a bank in the northern city of Mosul and detonated his car.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility.

In the worst of the attacks in the Baghdad area, two car bombs exploded moments apart near a busy market in the town of Nahrawan, south of the capital, killing seven.

In Baladiyat, where another car bomb killed three people, a woman living nearby spoke of a terrifying start to the working week: "I was eating my breakfast when a powerful blast shook the building, shattering the window of my apartment and covering the dining table with glass," said Suad Ahmed.

"I was terrified. I heard women and children shouting next door. I started to cry. I was afraid of death."

SYRIA CONNECTION

Violence between the Sunni minority, long dominant in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and before, and majority Shi'ites empowered through elections promoted by Washington peaked four years after the U.S. invasion; the monitoring group Iraq Body Count recorded over 29,000 civilian deaths in 2006 and 25,000 in 2007.

Having steadied to a monthly average of 300 to 400 deaths from 2009 to 2012, tolls have close to doubled since violence in April, when government forces stormed a camp where Sunnis were protesting at what they see as their political marginalization.

Morrisons, Subway and Nestle are among firms signed up to the voluntary "responsibility deal" between industry and government.

But Prof John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health, said the approach "lacked credibility".

The Department of Health (DoH) said it would "make a huge difference".

It says the average man should eat no more than 30g of saturated fat a day, while the average woman should eat no more than 20g.

According to the British Dietetic Association, most people eat about 20% more than the recommended maximum levels - and a survey of 2,000 people for Sainsbury's found 84% of those questioned did not know how much saturated fat was a healthy amount. 'Healthy options'

The DoH said cutting the amount of saturated fat in people's diets by 15% could prevent around 2,600 premature deaths every year from conditions such as heart disease and stroke.

Almost half of the food manufacturing and retail industry - based on market share - has signed up to this latest pledge to reduce the amount of saturated fat in products, the DoH said.

Measures planned by companies include Nestle altering the make-up of KitKat biscuits, Morrisons reformulating its range of spreads and Subway replacing biscuits and crisps in its Kids' Pak with healthier options.

Other firms which are cutting saturated fat or have pledged to do so include Tesco, Sainsbury's, Aldi and Mondelez International - which will alter products including its Oreo biscuits.

Prof Ashton said that, while it was "a good thing that some companies are making food that has less saturated fat than before", the pledge did not go far enough. "They need to ensure that at the same time they lower the sugar and salt that they have used to make foods more tasty as a result of lowering the fat content."

He added: "This announcement is a drop in the ocean in comparison with the scale of the obesity crisis.

"We cannot rely on the voluntary approach of the responsibility deal to solve this problem.

"It now lacks credibility and can be seen as a feeble attempt by the industry to save face."

Labour public health spokeswoman Luciana Berger said: "A few company names on a non-binding plan with no timescale stands little chance of delivering the fundamental change needed to improve our national diet.

"In the week that the chief medical officer warned of the long-term dangers of childhood obesity, we need to go much further."

The planned removal of more than 40,000 troops and the closure of dozens of bases over the next year will shrink the protective umbrella for U.S. officials to keep tabs on construction work, training programs and other initiatives in the corruption-plagued nation.

Only about 20 percent of the country will be accessible to U.S. civilian oversight personnel in 2014, according to an analysis conducted by the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction and obtained by The Washington Post.

Instead of curtailing those projects, the Pentagon, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development plan to rely on teams of private contractors to monitor the work of other private contractors on the taxpayer-funded projects.

In a document soliciting firms to help with inspections, USAID said it also intends to use satellite photos and “crowdsourcing” experiments that will solicit feedback on progress from Afghans who are supposed to benefit from U.S.-financed work.

The inability of U.S. government personnel to inspect development projects is prompting worry among lawmakers and government inspectors that millions more dollars could be squandered in what has become the costliest reconstruction of a single country in American history.

“I would be shocked if this doesn’t have an unhappy ending,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who has been critical of reconstruction programs in Afghanistan and Iraq. “They are kissing oversight goodbye.”

By plotting some of the largest civilian and military projects on a map generated by the inspector general’s office, The Post found that at least 15 major reconstruction initiatives, projected to cost more than $1 billion, are expected to be beyond the reach of U.S. government personnel next year. Among them are two of the U.S. government’s signature development endeavors: the $75 million installation of a new turbine at a dam in the southwest and part of the area where a $230 million highway is being built in the east.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is building three garrisons for the Afghan army — each costing between $60 million and $80 million — in parts of the country that are outside the sectors identified by the inspector general as accessible.

"Nary a tweet," says William Baldwin, president of Pillar Financial Advisors in Waltham, Massachusetts, when asked about client interest in the deal.

Out of 29 broker-dealers and independent advisers contacted by Reuters, 23 said they are not recommending Twitter shares. Only one said he would recommend it - and only to certain clients. Five others said they would wait to snap up the stock if it plunges after it begins to trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

While retail interest might be low, tech industry analysts say there is expected to be a good appetite for Twitter stock from institutional investors at the current valuation. Actual institutional investor sentiment still remains unclear. Retail investors typically account for 10 to 15 percent of IPOs.

Twitter said on Thursday it will sell 70 million shares at between $17 and $20 apiece, valuing the online messaging company at up to about $11 billion, less than the $15 billion that some analysts had been expecting. If underwriters choose to sell an additional allotment of 10.5 million shares, the IPO could raise as much as $1.6 billion.

Blame last year's botched Facebook Inc IPO for the diminished interest from Mom and Pop in Twitter.

When the social networking giant's stock hit the market in May 2012, it encountered allocation problems, trading glitches and a selloff - shares did not recover their IPO price until a year later.

"People are still smarting from that experience," says René Nourse, a financial adviser at Urban Wealth Management in El Segundo, California. Part of the problem is that investors do not understand Twitter the way they "got" Facebook, Nourse and other advisers say.

NO CALLS ON TWITTER

Three brokers with Morgan Stanley, which was lead underwriter on the Facebook IPO, said clients are showing little or no interest in Twitter.

"With the debacle over Facebook, I haven't had one client ask about it," said one of the brokers, based in the southeast. The broker asked not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The revisions increase consumer powers, add rules for the booming Internet shopping sector and stiffen punishments for businesses that mislead shoppers.

Chinese regulators have been cracking down on real or perceived corporate wrongdoing, with domestic and international infant formula makers and drugmakers particularly coming under the spotlight this year.

Global firms like Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) have also been getting caught in the glare, while South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), the world's largest smartphone maker, had to apologize to Chinese customers on Thursday after a broadcast on China Central Television criticized company repair policies.

China is also trying to stimulate domestic consumer spending as it attempts to transition from an investment-led economy to a more consumption-driven model. But domestic consumers are often wary of product safety and quality, with 3.8 billion yuan ($624.79 million) worth of poor quality goods sold in China between 2010 and 2012, according to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC).

"Strengthening consumer confidence will benefit the whole nation's economic development and boost domestic demand," Jia Dongming, director of the civil law working committee under China's Standing Committee, said at a press briefing to announce the changes to the law.

The amendments to the 1993 law include increasing compensation for consumers and raising fines for retailers who violate the law, including in cases where faulty products lead to consumers being harmed or killed. Compensation rose from equaling the amount of damages to three times the amount.

China will also strengthen the role of the China Consumers' Association, which will be able to represent groups of consumers in any wider class actions against retailers.

Officials also stressed the growing importance of protecting consumers in China's booming online shopping sector, which has expanded rapidly with the rise of market leader Alibaba's Taobao, Wal-Mart Stores Inc's (WMT.N) Yihaodian and 360Buy.com.

Internet sales have risen almost 50-fold since 2006 to hit 1.3 trillion yuan ($213.75 billion) in 2012, according to Jia, while analysts predict e-commerce will account for a fifth of total retail sales in China within five years.

The law will make it easier for consumers to return goods bought online, while sellers will bear the burden of proof in any disputes. Online retailers will also have to meet strict privacy requirements, including requesting users' permission to use any personal data.

The claims figure, which was calculated by Wall Street's industry-funded watchdog the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, falls short of the $62 million that Nasdaq had initially set aside to repay brokerages that lost money.

Nasdaq said the figure is lower in part because some claims did not qualify for compensation under its plan.

The main reason for the lower figure, however, was because one firm opted to try to recover funds through arbitration.

The announcement did not name the brokerage, which was UBS AG.

UBS has pegged its losses from the glitch-ridden IPO at $350 million and was vocal in its decision to file an arbitration demand which claimed Nasdaq had violated a contract agreement.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet, however, blocked the bank's arbitration proceeding over the summer on several grounds, including a determination that the bank's claims did not fall within the scope of the arbitration provision in their services agreement.

"Nasdaq has demonstrated that the arbitration should be enjoined because it is likely to succeed on the merits and will suffer irreparable harm," Sweet wrote.

"Given the substantial federal issues posed by UBS claims, the threat of an arbitration panel issuing a decision that may conflict with the decision of a federal court in a parallel litigation also weighs strongly against permitting UBS to proceed with its arbitration proceeding," he added.

Megan Stinson, a spokeswoman for UBS, told Reuters on Friday that the bank has since appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She could not comment further, as the case is currently under seal.

Facebook's problematic debut on the Nasdaq exchange on May 18, 2012, resulted from a systems failure that prevented the timely delivery of order confirmations and left more than 30,000 Facebook orders stuck in Nasdaq's system for more than two hours.

Many brokerages were left in the dark wondering if their trades went through. Major market makers estimated they lost collectively up to $500 million in the IPO.

Nasdaq devised a plan to compensate firms up to $62 million, and laid out the criteria for how firms can be eligible to file claims.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the compensation plan in March, and FINRA was put in charge of processing the claims for restitution.

Several months after approving the plan, the SEC in May filed civil charges against Nasdaq, saying the exchange's "ill-fated decisions" on the day of the Facebook IPO led to a series of regulatory violations.

If we continue along our current path, the majority of humans will face chronic water shortages within two generations, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots. City managers worldwide will be forced to decide how water should be deployed; and there will not be enough to go round. Nations will become even more vulnerable in the face of drought and extreme weather. And the pursuit of ever-dwindling resources will trigger land-grabbing and conflict, pitting nation against nation, and neighbour against neighbour.

It doesn't have to be this way. If we can focus on strategies that reduce demand and waste, establish practical policies, and apply smart technology for efficient use and monitoring, humankind can more sustainably manage this precious resource. But we must recognise that there can be no one-size-fits-all approach.

History can provide inspiration. Consider the ancient aqueduct system built in the 4th Century that supplied Constantinople with water from 250km away; or the great water systems of the early industrial era, such as the watersheds, tunnels, aqueducts and reservoirs that fed – and continue to feed – New York City. Built between the 1890s and 1940s, this infrastructure still sustains some nine million people with over 1.2 billion gallons of drinking water every day.

At around the same time, in the Netherlands, a massive earth dam project called the Zuiderzee and Delta Works transformed a shallow inland sea of 1,350 sq miles (3,500 sq km) into both fertile agricultural land and a coastal buffer that reduced flooding and provided fresh water. In that ambitious project, pumping stations were able to drain the enclosed land, or polder, within six months.