"This is not a threat: this is actually the declaration of war to my country," Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, head of a pro-Western government that took power when Russian ally Viktor Yanukovich fled last week, said in English.

Putin obtained permission from his parliament on Saturday to use military force to protect Russian citizens in Ukraine, spurning Western pleas not to intervene.

Russian forces have already bloodlessly seized Crimea - an isolated Black Sea peninsula where Moscow has a naval base. On Sunday they surrounded several small Ukrainian military outposts there and demanded the Ukrainian troops disarm. Some refused, leading to standoffs, although no shots were fired.

Russia has staged war games with 150,000 troops along the land border, but so far they have not crossed. However, pro-Russian demonstrators have marched in the east of the country and have raised Russian flags over government buildings in several cities, in what Kiev says is a move orchestrated by Moscow to justify a wider invasion.

Ukraine's security council ordered the general staff to immediately put all armed forces on highest alert.

The Defense Ministry was ordered to stage a call-up of reserves - theoretically all men up to 40 in a country with universal male conscription, though Ukraine would struggle to find extra guns or uniforms for significant numbers of them.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned Russia for what he called an "incredible act of aggression" and threatened "very serious repercussions".

"You don't just, in the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext," Kerry told CBS program Face the Nation.

Kerry said Moscow still had a "right set of choices" to defuse the crisis. Otherwise, G8 countries and other nations were prepared to "to go to the hilt to isolate Russia".

"They are prepared to isolate Russia economically. The rouble is already going down. Russia has major economic challenges," he said. He mentioned visa bans, asset freezes and trade isolation as possible steps. A Kremlin spokesman declined to comment after Kerry's remarks.

THREAT TO EASTERN UKRAINE

[A] self-described conservative think tank was pushing a shareholder proposal that would have required Apple to disclose the costs of its sustainability programs and to be more transparent about its participation in "certain trade associations and business organizations promoting the amorphous concept of environmental sustainability"...

During the question and answer session, however, the NCPPR representative asked Mr. Cook two questions, both of which were in line with the principles espoused in the group's proposal.

The first question challenged an assertion from Mr. Cook that Apple's sustainability programs and goals—Apple plans on having 100 percent of its power come from green sources—are good for the bottom line. The representative asked Mr. Cook if that was the case only because of government subsidies on green energy. Mr. Cook didn't directly answer that question, but instead focused on the second question: the NCPPR representative asked Mr. Cook to commit right then and there to doing only those things that were profitable.

What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR's advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.

"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.

As evidenced by the use of "bloody" in his response—the closest thing to public profanity I've ever seen from Mr. Cook–it was clear that he was quite angry. His body language changed, his face contracted, and he spoke in rapid fire sentences compared to the usual metered and controlled way he speaks.

He didn't stop there, however, as he looked directly at the NCPPR representative and said, "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock."

Obama has made reducing the gap between the rich and the poor a centerpiece of his agenda for his next three years in office. But he is limited in his ability to offer bold new initiatives because of a budget accord he reached in 2011 with House of Representatives Republicans that puts strict curbs on both domestic and military spending.

An agreement reached in December between congressional Republicans and Obama's Democrats allowed a slight easing of curbs on spending in the current 2014 fiscal year, but outlays will be essentially flat in fiscal 2015, which begins October 1.

Because of the caps, spending on programs subject to annual review in 2015 will total $1.014 trillion compared to $1.012 trillion - an increase of less than two-tenths of a percent.

Obama's budget and the coming debate in Congress will focus on how to work within those limits.

"We're on track to having discretionary spending the lowest as a share of the economy since we started recording discretionary spending in 1962," White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman said last week. "With that comes a lot of choices that we'd rather not be making ... there are pretty difficult choices in just about every area of the budget."

Even with only a minuscule spending increase, Obama's budget proposals are unlikely to become law anytime soon.

The divided U.S. Congress controls the government's purse strings and Republicans who hold power in the House of Representatives disagree with policy priorities such as added spending on job training and other programs in Obama's budget.

That means Obama's blueprint is more of a campaign document than a road map to the country's fiscal path over the next year. It will be used to guide messaging in the November congressional elections in which Democrats are fighting to keep control of the Senate and avoid losing seats in the House.

The budget will flesh out a proposal Obama made in his State of the Union address to expand a tax break for the working poor known as the Earned Income Tax Credit. The president wants to increase the size of the credit for workers without children.

But rather than leaving the inflamed partisan politics at home, many have brought it with them.

The small beach of La Morena, about 25 miles northeast of the capital Caracas, is packed.

While some take refreshing dips in the turquoise Caribbean waters, others relax with a beer. The smell of fried fish wafts in the air, and children roll in the sand.

But not even the reggaeton pop music blasting at full volume drowns out the discussions about inflation, violent crime, and the political differences that divide Venezuelans and have fed the unrest.

"We're never going to stop talking about this," said Carlos Rivero, a 32-year-old security guard with a shaved head and tattooed arms who was visiting from Caracas with his wife.

"Wherever you go, whether it's good or bad, people are always talking about politics."

Hoping to ease tensions after at least 17 people were killed in the country's worst unrest for a decade, Maduro extended the long Carnival weekend by declaring Thursday and Friday holidays too.

Since then, government officials have flooded social media with images of busy shores and happy holidaymakers, and state television has repeatedly reminded Venezuelans not to forget the traditional family break at the seaside.

"Nobody will be able to take Carnival away from us," said Tourism Minister Andres Izarra. "There's no fascist force that can stop the people from enjoying the happiness."

To help them on their way, new Chinese-made buses wait outside Metro stations to ferry Caracas residents to Catia la Mar and the beaches north of the city such as La Morena.

But even with their toes in the sand, Venezuelans remain divided. About half defend tooth-and-nail what they see as the poverty alleviation enjoyed under the self-styled revolution of the late Hugo Chavez, who died from cancer a year ago this week.

Others say they are sick of shortages of basic products such as milk and toilet paper, with the horrific levels of violent crime, and with annual inflation of 56 percent. And they say things have only got worse since Maduro took office.

In some municipalities with opposition mayors, official carnival activities were canceled.

"People come to the beach to de-stress a bit after all that tension we have in the capital," said Jose Luis Vazquez, a supermarket worker from Guarenas town to the east of Caracas, as he sat and drank a beer with his wife, watching the waves.

St David's Day – or Dydd G?yl Dewi Sant – is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March every year.

Saint David was born towards the end of the 5th century and became renowned as a teacher and preacher, founding monastic settlements and churches. The date of his death is recorded as 1 March, though the year of his death is uncertain.

The new 24-7 wrestling subscription video service, is the latest entertainment brand to launch a network that is "over the top," the industry label for content that is delivered over the Net and bypasses traditional pay-TV providers.

And WWE is jumping wholeheartedly into the ring. Almost every night there's live exclusive programming on the new network, which costs $9.99 monthly (there's a free seven-day trial).

Things kicked off Monday with Wrestlemania Rewind, a look at past history, and This is NXT, a special about future stars. Both are now available on demand. Monday night programming bookends the weekly live WWE Monday Night Raw show at 8 p.m. ET on USA — a Monday Night Raw Pre-Show at 7:30 p.m. leads into Raw and another live series, WWE Raw Backstage Pass immediately follows the USA broadcast with analysis and backstage.

Thursday brought a block of new programming, too, with NXT ArRival Pre-Show at 7:30 p.m. ET, followed at 8 p.m ET by NXT ArRival, a live in-ring special event featuring rising WWE stars and appearances by superstars such as John Cena. Then, starting on Thursday March 6, another new weekly online series WWE NXT will begin airing at 9 p.m. ET with more on-the-rise stars and divas.

WWE has wrestled up plenty of more new content — including Friday night broadcasts bracketing weekly SmackDown episodes on Syfy — to keep die-hard fans up to date.

Longtime fans of the sport also will want to know about the immense on-demand library of recent past and classic bouts going back more than three decades. Among the more than 1,500 hours of on-demand video at launch are all the past Wrestlemanias and other pay-per-view events of the WWE, WCW and ECW. And there's a catalog of Raw and SmackDown episodes.

Pay-per-view events could be the feature that gets fans to enter the ring with the new network. With a six-month subscription, you can watch all the live pay events including WrestleMania 30 on April 6. That pay-per-view event alone will cost $60, so WWE Network subscribers basically get that event free with a six-month subscription.

Ultra-Orthodox leaders had called on their men, women and children to attend the protest against new legislation ending the wholesale army exemptions granted to seminary students, which is expected to pass in the coming weeks,

The issue is at the heart of an emotional national debate. Most Israeli Jewish men and women are called up for military service when they turn 18, but most ultra-Orthodox Jews, or "Haredim", a Hebrew term meaning 'those who tremble before God', are excused from army service.

Police said hundreds of thousands took part in the prayer. Israeli media estimated that between 250,000 to 400,000 attended.

The ultra-Orthodox demonstration paralyzed parts of Jerusalem, blocked the main entrance to the city and halted public transport as the streets around swelled with streams of men in black hats and coats, the traditional Haredi garb.

Rabbis wailed prayers over loudspeakers as the standing crowds swayed back and forth, repeating a plea to God to stop the law from being passed.

"We want to show that we are united and we want to stop a bad thing that they are trying to force us into. The army is not our way of life. It is not run by our rabbis," said 18-year-old Mordechai Seltzer.

Haredim say the study of holy scriptures is a foundation of Jewish life, that scholars have a right to devote themselves full time to the tradition, and that army service would deny them fulfillment of that religious edict.

"A CRIME TO STUDY TORAH"

"The (new) law stipulates that a person who studies Torah might end up a criminal. Are we really going to allow it to become a crime to study the Torah?" said Guy, 43.

Seventeen-year-old Israel, a seminary student who came to Israel from the United States, said his community would not give in. "There are so many of us that they cannot fight us. We are not worried. We do not want to fight them, but we are not going to do what they tell us to do," he said.

Haredim make up about 10 percent of Israel's 8 million people. They are a fast-growing and relatively poor social group. Most Haredi men are unemployed and live off state benefits, donations and their wives' often low wages.

The ultra-Orthodox community is resented by many Israelis who accuse the Haredim of burdening the economy and sponging off the state while avoiding the duties that bind others.

"I'm quitting in May and will drive across the country." "Sometimes I secretly wish I would catch my bf cheating just so I'd have a legit reason to break up with him." These are just a few of the confidential posts on a growing number of social apps that encourage nameless users to post anonymous confessions, gripes and gossip. These networks, which include Whisper, Secret, Confide and the forthcoming Rumr, make it possible to share thoughts anonymously with strangers, friends or friends of friends.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, there's no need to worry about offending your friends, harming your career or tarnishing your online persona. "Anonymity can help people be themselves and share what they really feel or think," said David Byttow, co-founder of Secret, which launched in January.

Unburdened by the consequences that come with posting under real identities, posters on these apps can be brutally honest. For many people, anonymity can mean a freedom from maintaining their personal brand, the "self" they carefully edit for their friends and family on Facebook and Twitter.

If Facebook is sipping champagne during an après-ski selfie, Secret is letting it all hang out with a cheap beer and no makeup in your parents' basement. Secrets among friends These startups have taken cues from the original secret sharing service, PostSecret. That blog anonymously publishes select postcards, decorated with images and words, that people mail to founder Frank Warren. The twin barriers of needing a stamp and having to make it past a human curator has kept its confessions interesting without being cruel.

But when PostSecret tried branching out in 2011 with an iPhone app that let anyone publish their own secrets, it had to be shut down less than three months later due to abusive and malicious content.

Fast forward a few years, and social apps are trying again -- this time with a few variations on the formula. Two-year-old Whisper is a popular service for posting anonymous messages that anyone can read. They can be sorted by most recent or nearby, which will display Whispers from anyone within a certain number of miles.

The $2 billion claim involves a patent from IPCom that allows users to access their cellphones in emergencies when wireless networks are overloaded.

IPCom has been described by some as a "patent troll," buying up patents with no intent to use them.

Apple has said it has been sued 92 times by patent companies in the last two years, and it has more than 220 unresolved patent claims, according to Bloomberg News, and has to employ two lawyers to respond to royalty demands its says are frivolous.

Companies such as IPCom have been criticized because they own a portfolio of patents, although they're not using them in industrial processes — making money instead from license fees, royalties and enforcing patents.

However, a spokesman for the firm rebuked the criticism, saying that the value of patents were made transparent by companies such as IPCom, rather than by the technology companies themselves, which used them for "blackmail."

The collapse caps a tumultuous few weeks in which the company has remained virtually silent after halting trades of the crypto-currency, shaking the nascent but burgeoning bitcoin community.

Wearing a suit instead of his customary T-shirt, Mt. Gox's French CEO Mark Karpeles bowed in contrition and apologized in Japanese at a news conference at the Tokyo District Court, blaming his firm's collapse on a "weakness in our system", but predicting that bitcoin would continue to grow.

"First of all, I'm very sorry," he said. "The bitcoin industry is healthy and it is growing. It will continue, and reducing the impact is the most important point."

Angry investors have been seeking answers for what happened to their holdings of cash and bitcoins on the unregulated Tokyo-based exchange.

Mt. Gox said the exchange, used overwhelmingly by foreigners, had lost 750,000 of its users' bitcoins and 100,000 of its own. At the current bitcoin price of about $565, that would total some $480 million - representing about 7 percent of the estimated global total of bitcoins.

It also said there was a discrepancy of 2.8 billion yen ($27.4 million) in its bank accounts when it checked on Monday. Junko Suetomi, a lawyer with Baker & MacKenzie, said she could not comment on the balances of foreign bank accounts held by the company.

PROBLEM WITH EXCHANGE, NOT BITCOIN

Many bitcoin market participants have said Mt. Gox's problems were specific to the company and were caused by what they said was a lax attitude by Karpeles, while bitcoin itself - free of any central bank control - was still a noble venture.

"If we could agree on legal regulation, we should let (bitcoin and regulators) co-exist," said Keiichi Hida, a bitcoin investor and member of the Japan Digital Money Association. He lost about 100,000 yen worth of bitcoins, but seemed unconcerned as he became interested in the virtual currency as a form of "study".

"We should make it a national project to have bitcoin used nationwide at the time of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics," he said.

Mt. Gox deleted its website on Tuesday after freezing withdrawals earlier this month in the wake of a series of technical difficulties.

El Boeing Black, como se dio a conocer el equipo, funciona con Android y está diseñado para que frente a cualquier intento de modificar el teléfono o de abrirlo, automáticamente destruya todo el contenido almacenado. El celular está ensamblado con resina epoxi de alta resistencia que recubre todas las partes del equipo, lo que, según la compañía, ha demostrado imposible de abrir.

En una línea similar a la de Boeing, y pensando en cuestiones de seguridad a nivel estatal, IBM fue convocado por el gobierno de los EE.UU. para desarrollar un chip que se pueda destruir de forma remota. La idea es que, antes el robo de algún equipo con información comprometedora, los datos se puedan resguardar destruyendo el celular o la PC de forma remota.

Pero la seguridad de los teléfonos inteligentes no es sólo una cuestión de Estado. Ya hay varios fabricantes que están desarrollando equipos con un mayor enfoque puesto en la seguridad de los datos personales de los usuarios. Este tipo de desarrollos parten de cuestiones simples, como desbloquear la pantalla del equipo con un sensor biométrico, que ya tienen el iPhone 5S y el nuevo Galaxy S5, hasta soluciones integrales, como las que ofrece el flamante Blackphone, que se dio a conocer días atrás y se presenta como el primer teléfono pensado para proteger íntegramente la privacidad.

Yanukovich said he would continue the struggle for Ukraine's future as tension soared on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, the only region with an ethnic Russian majority and last major bastion of resistance to the overthrow of the Moscow-backed leader.

More than 10 Russian military helicopters flew into Ukrainian airspace on Friday over Crimea, Kiev's border guard service said, accusing Russian servicemen of blockading one of its units in the port city of Sevastopol, where part of Moscow's Black Sea fleet is based.

The fleet denied its forces were involved in seizing one of the airports, Interfax news agency reported, while a supporter described the armed group at the other site merely as Crimean militiamen.

Moscow has promised to defend the interests of its citizens in Ukraine. While it has said it will not intervene by force, Russia's rhetoric since the removal of Yanukovich a week ago has echoed the run-up to its invasion of Georgia in 2008.

Ukraine's top security official, Andriy Paruby, said the armed men were taking their orders from the top in Russia. "These are separate groups ... commanded by the Kremlin," Paruby, secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, told a televised briefing in Kiev.

One of the options being considered was declaring a state of emergency in Crimea, he added.

The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland, who negotiated a peace deal to end violence in Kiev earlier this month, urged all parties to refrain from any action endangering Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Russia announced war games on Wednesday near the Ukrainian border, involving 150,000 troops on high alert, although U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, had told him the exercises were pre-planned.

Yanukovich - who is wanted by the new government for mass murder after the deaths of protesters in Kiev last week - resurfaced in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday.

Addressing a news conference, he denied he had run away. Yanukovich said he had been forced to leave Kiev due to threats, and denounced "lawlessness, terror, anarchy and chaos" in the country.