Caroline Criado-Perez helped lobby the Bank of England to make a woman, 19th century novelist Jane Austen, the new face on the country's 10 pound note, to defuse criticism that women were under-represented on the currency.

She was then "targeted repeatedly with rape threats" by ill-wishers objecting to her activity, according to an online petition, which called on Twitter to urgently add a 'report abuse' button to its service.

Some users proposed a one-day boycott of Twitter to protest against what they said was its failure to address the issue.

Twitter's General Manager for the UK Tony Wang promised to suspend all accounts found to be in breach of its rules.

Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek say they will publish detailed blueprints of techniques for attacking critical systems in the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape in a 100-page white paper, following several months of research they conducted with a grant from the U.S. government.

The two "white hats" - hackers who try to uncover software vulnerabilities before criminals can exploit them - will also release the software they built for hacking the cars at the Def Con hacking convention in Las Vegas this week.

They said they devised ways to force a Toyota Prius to brake suddenly at 80 miles an hour, jerk its steering wheel, or accelerate the engine. They also say they can disable the brakes of a Ford Escape traveling at very slow speeds, so that the car keeps moving no matter how hard the driver presses the pedal.

"Imagine what would happen if you were near a crowd," said Valasek, director of security intelligence at consulting firm IOActive, known for finding bugs in Microsoft Corp's Windows software.

But it is not as scary as it may sound at first blush.

They were sitting inside the cars using laptops connected directly to the vehicles' computer networks when they did their work. So they will not be providing information on how to hack remotely into a car network, which is what would typically be needed to launch a real-world attack.

The two say they hope the data they publish will encourage other white-hat hackers to uncover more security flaws in autos so they can be fixed.

"I trust the eyes of 100 security researchers more than the eyes that are in Ford and Toyota," said Miller, a Twitter security engineer known for his research on hacking Apple Inc's App Store.

Toyota Motor Corp spokesman John Hanson said the company was reviewing the work. He said the carmaker had invested heavily in electronic security, but that bugs remained - as they do in cars of other manufacturers.

"It's entirely possible to do," Hanson said, referring to the newly exposed hacks. "Absolutely we take it seriously."

Ford Motor Co spokesman Craig Daitch said the company takes seriously the electronic security of its vehicles. He said the fact that Miller's and Valasek's hacking methods required them to be inside the vehicle they were trying to manipulate mitigated the risk.

With the use of digital technology expanding quickly in schools, headteachers are keen to be at the forefront of new teaching methods that they believe will save money in the long run on equipment such as books.

Now, ahead of the new school year in September, many schools are asking parents to stump up between £200 and £300 for an iPad or other tablet for their child, or pay for a device in instalments that can vary from £12 to £30 a month, as they rush to keep at the head of the information revolution.

While their introduction is popular with youngsters, parents and teaching unions are raising concerns that those from poorer backgrounds could lose out and that supposedly free state education looks destined to come with increasing built-in costs.

Hove Park school, in Hove, East Sussex, for example, has given parents a choice of three ways to acquire iPads as part of what it calls its "learning transformation" project.

They can send their child to school with their own device, rent one from the school for a minimum of £12.40 a month, or buy one from the school, for between £209 to £300. One parent said:

"I'd like to see some evidence that bringing this kind of technology into classrooms is even beneficial to how kids learn. There's an awful lot of information out there on the net that is plain wrong. I feel quite uneasy about what we might be doing to them and to teaching."

The headteacher, Derek Trimmer, has said he expects to get complaints, but insists he wants his pupils to be able "to engage with future employers as fully independent learners confident in their use of modern technologies".

A spokesman for Brighton and Hove city council said: "Hove Park school has been able to negotiate discounts with suppliers. We welcome the fact that the business plan ensures that no child is excluded from the project through inability to pay for the equipment.

Ilya Segalovich set up the web company with business partner and school friend Arkady Volozh in 1997.

He was diagnosed with stomach cancer last year and went into a coma on Thursday, the company said.

Yandex is one of Russia's biggest internet companies - valued at £6.5bn ($10bn) and has more than double Google's market share in the country.

Mr Segalovich went to hospital on Wednesday with head pains before suddenly deteriorating, the Financial Times reported this week.

Yandex director general Mr Volozh said he had been responding well to chemotherapy but developed cancer in his brain, which led to his death.

On Thursday the company announced he had died before saying he was on life support with no brain function.

"The only hope we had was a diagnosis error," Mr Volozh said. "We couldn't make a miracle. We only could offer a chance for it to happen."

A statement on a tribute page set up by the company described Mr Segalovich as: "A scholar and a citizen with an active lifestyle... father of five children, friend, colleague, teacher and hilarious clown".

His business partner and friend, Mr Volozh, said he died in a London hospital on Saturday.

Maurice Levy added that he did not expect resistance to the deal from the French government.

Egypt's ambulance service said 72 people were killed in Saturday's violence at a Cairo vigil by backers of deposed President Mohamed Mursi, triggering global anxiety that the Arab world's most populous country risked plunging into the abyss.

Mursi's Brotherhood, which won repeated elections after the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011, accuses the military of reversing the uprising that brought democracy to Egypt and demands his reinstatement.

"They will not be content until they bring back everything from the era of the corrupt, murderous security and intelligence state," senior Brotherhood official Essam el-Erian said on Facebook. "They've stepped up their efforts to do so by committing massacres never before seen in Egyptian history."

The Interior Ministry has rejected eyewitness accounts that police opened fire on the crowds and a public prosecutor has launched a probe into the violence, investigating 72 suspects for an array of crimes including murder and blocking streets.

Although Cairo was quiet on Sunday, violent clashes rattled the Suez Canal city of Port Said, with a 17-year-old youth killed in fighting between the pro- and anti-Mursi camps and a further 29 people injured, security sources said.

The violence has deeply polarized Egypt, with its secular and liberal elite so far showing little sympathy for the Brotherhood or reservations about the return to power of a military which ruled for 60 years before the 2011 uprising.

However, in one of the first signs of doubt from within the interim cabinet installed after the military takeover, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Ziad Bahaa El-Din said the government must not copy the "oppressive" policies of its foes.

"Our position must remain fixed on the need to provide legal guarantees not only for the members of the Brotherhood, but for every Egyptian citizen. Excessive force is not permitted," El-Din wrote on Facebook.

And in another sign of unease, the Tamarud youth protest movement, which mobilized millions of people against Mursi and has fully backed the army, expressed alarm at an announcement by the interior minister that he was reviving the feared secret political police shut down after Mubarak was toppled.

"DEVOTED SON"

Saturday's killings took place the day after mass rallies called by military chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who said he wanted public backing for a crackdown on "terrorism".

The Environmental Audit Committee said this was despite oil companies being unable to prove "they could clean up an oil spill in such harsh conditions".

Members renewed their call for a halt to new drilling, saying it was risky for the climate and the environment.

The government said it was not its place to tell Arctic states which resources they could extract.

Last month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that two-thirds of existing fossil fuel reserves cannot be burned before 2050 if global temperatures are to be kept within the projected danger threshold of a 2C rise.

'Corporate carve-up'

Exploring for new reserves in the Arctic is therefore "needlessly risky", the MPs argued. The committee's report follows its call in September for a halt on drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic until safety is improved, citing fears that a spill could caused unprecedented environmental damage.

MPs said they wanted to see a standard pan-Arctic spill response, unlimited liability for firms and an Arctic environmental sanctuary.

"What happens in the Arctic will affect the UK, impacting our weather systems and biodiversity," committee chairwoman Joan Walley said.

"Yet this government is complacently standing by and watching new oil and gas drilling in the region."

She added: "The rapidly-disappearing Arctic sea ice should be a wake-up call for this government to tackle climate change, not pave the way for a corporate carve-up of the region's resources."

A government spokesman said it disagreed with the call for a moratorium.

"We are very aware of the possible environmental impact of an oil spill in the Arctic and support the use of the highest drilling standards," he said.

"However, the UK is not an Arctic state and it is not for us to tell other countries which resources they can and cannot extract from their own sovereign territory."

He stressed that the government believed "our approach to oil and gas exploration in the Arctic is consistent with our commitment to limit average global temperature increase to two degrees".

And he added: "The UK does have strong environmental, economic, scientific and political interests in the Arctic and this summer we will be publishing an Arctic policy framework for the first time."

'Pristine environment'

Thirteen ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition cabinet voted in favor, seven voted against and two abstained, a government official said.

"The cabinet has authorized the opening of diplomatic talks between Israel and the Palestinians...," said a statement issued by the prime minister's office.

Netanyahu had earlier urged divided rightists in his cabinet to back the prisoner release, and postponed the weekly meeting of ministers by an hour to ensure a majority vote in favor.

"This moment is not easy for me, is not easy for the cabinet ministers, and is not easy especially for the bereaved families, whose feelings I understand," Netanyahu said in broadcast remarks at the start of the meeting, referring to families who have lost members in militant attacks.

"But there are moments in which tough decisions must be made for the good of the nation and this is one of those moments."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded the release of prisoners held since before a 1993 interim peace accord took effect. Israel has jailed thousands more Palestinians since then, many for carrying out deadly attacks.

The prisoner release would allow Netanyahu to sidestep other Palestinian demands, such as a halt to Jewish settlement expansion and a guarantee that negotiations over borders will be based on boundaries from before the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

In any future deal, Israel wants to keep several settlement blocs and East Jerusalem, which it annexed as part of its capital in a move never recognized internationally.

Hundreds of protesters from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) group staged a rally against the resumption of peace talks in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the seat of Abbas's Palestinian Authority. They clashed with police and threw rocks.

PFLP activists also demonstrated in Gaza and chanted: "Listen Abbas, our land is not for sale... The cause will never be resolved except by the rifle."

RELEASED LATER

In an appeal for public support posted on his Facebook page on Saturday night, Netanyahu said the prisoners would be freed in groups only after the negotiations - set to last at least nine months - begin.

Apple Inc this week said its revenue in Greater China, which also includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, slumped 43 percent to $4.65 billion from the previous quarter. That was also 14 percent lower from the year-ago quarter. Sales were weighed down by a sharp drop in revenues from Hong Kong. "It's not totally clear why that occurred," Cook said on a conference call with analysts.

Neither is it totally clear what Apple's strategy is to deal with Samsung - not to mention a host of smaller, nimbler Chinese challengers.

Today, in the war for what both sides acknowledge is the 21st century's most important market, Samsung is whipping its American rival. The South Korean giant now has a 19 percent share of the $80 billion smartphone market in China, a market expected to surge to $117 billion by 2017, according to International Data Corp (IDC). That's 10 percentage points ahead of Apple, which has fallen to 5th in terms of China market share.

Cook said Apple planned to double the number of its retail stores over the next two years - it currently has 8 flagship stores in China and 3 in Hong Kong. But, he added, Apple will invest in distribution "very cautiously because we want to do it with great quality."

Samsung, with a longer history in China, now has three times the number of retail stores as Apple, and has been more aggressive in courting consumers and creating partnerships with phone operators. It also appears to be in better position, over an arc of time, to fend off the growing assault of homegrown competitors such as Lenovo Group Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp, former company executives, analysts and industry sources say.

Apple declined requests for comment for this article.

VARIED MODELS

Samsung's history and corporate culture could hardly be more different than Apple's, the iconic Silicon Valley start-up founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976. Lee Byung-Chull started Samsung in 1938 as a noodle and sugar maker. It grew over the decades into an industrial powerhouse, or chaebol as Koreans call the family owned conglomerates that dominate the nation's economy and are run with military-like discipline.

Apple, by contrast, became the epitome of Californian cool, an image the company revels in. That hip image translates in China - its stores are routinely packed - but hasn't been enough to overcome the more entrenched Samsung.

Jim Wong told Austria's Format that Acer had underestimated the potential of tablet computers, which have led many consumers to ditch their laptops since the launch of the Apple iPad and its followers.

"In the last two years, we have put very much energy into the development of new tablets, notebooks and smartphones. We are recovering," Wong said in an interview published on Friday. "This year we will first of all make a profit again."

Analysts have forecast that Acer will swing to a net profit of T$1.706 billion ($57 million) in 2013 from a loss of T$2.910 billion in 2012, according to a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S poll.

Many investors own the stock only because they believe in the potential of real-money gambling, said Macquarie (USA) Equities Research analysts Ben Schachter, John Merrick and Tom White. Macquarie cut its target for the stock to $2.75 from $3.00.

Zynga's gambling efforts kicked off this year in Britain, but gambling with real money is illegal in many U.S. states. Seeking a license would tie Zynga in regulatory tangles.

The company has up to a year of volatility ahead, Zynga Chief Executive Don Mattrick warned on Thursday in his first public comments since replacing founder Mark Pincus as chief executive on July 1.

Zynga lost 40 percent of its monthly active users in the second quarter. Revenue fell about 20 percent.

In contrast, monthly active users jumped 21 percent to 1.15 billion for Facebook Inc, from which Zynga got 86 percent of its revenue last year.

The games developer has been trying to establish a more independent network, even at the risk of getting less visitors from Facebook.

"As the market has shifted from FB gaming to mobile, Zynga has been unable to replicate its success that was predicated not on great games, but on great network effects and first-mover advantage on FB," Macquarie analysts said.

Zynga CEO Mattrick said on Thursday he intended to take the company "back to basics" with an emphasis on free-to-play games on Apple Inc's iOS and Google Inc's Android platform, as well as tried-and-true franchises like "FarmVille."

Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson said turning away from RMG licenses in the United States may be the right decision, but it will turn away several investors.

"In our view, by exiting RMG (real-money gaming) the company has eliminated much of the potential upside for the stock," Needham & Co analysts wrote in a note and downgraded the stock to "hold" from "buy."