Apple is expected to unveil its redesigned iPhone next month and may also release a cheaper, emerging market smartphone. [ID:nL2N0GC0DH] Crucially, it also now has Qualcomm Inc chips that can operate even on China's obscure networks. At the same time, Beijing is expected to grant 4G licenses by the year-end that favor the biggest of its domestic mobile operators.

Apple has so far ducked a deal with China Mobile as this would have required a redesign inside the iPhone to work on the operator's inferior TD-SCDMA 3G technology. For its part, China Mobile has been reluctant to commit to the huge cost of marketing and subsidizing sales of the expensive iPhone.

By offering a mid-market Apple smartphone, China Mobile, which has 740 million users, could draw in more sophisticated, data-crunching subscribers to grow net profit that last year was only 15 percent higher than in 2008, when Apple opened its first store in China.

While the 4G licenses are expected to be based on TD-LTE technology, rather than the more widely-used FDD-LTE, the new Qualcomm chips can handle both systems, saving Apple from a major re-design just for the Chinese market, albeit the world's largest.

"The circumstances and the issues that were a hindrance in the past seem to be getting resolved. So I think there's a higher probability that potentially there's something in the works," said Anand Ramachandran, a telecoms analyst at Barclays in Singapore.

Apple CEO Tim Cook met China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua in Beijing last month, his second China visit this year, prompting speculation that a deal could be edging closer.

"We are actively negotiating and both sides are keen," Xi told reporters on Thursday after announcing half-year results. "There are still some commercial and technology issues that need time to resolve," he added, without elaborating.

FALLING APPLE

Two years ago, many commentators were proclaiming the end of the space age. The contention seemed hard to dispute: in 2011, NASA's Space Shuttle program was permanently retired when the Atlantis touched down to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after completing its final voyage. Around the same time, plans for a U.S.-manned mission to Mars were shelved, and steps were put in place to decommission the International Space Station.

But as governmental funds have dried up, amateur space enthusiasts around the world are reviving humanity's interplanetary dreams through crowd-researched and crowd-funded space projects of their own.

The idea of crowd funding, where a large number of individuals pledge a small amount of cash towards a big project, may not be new, but it has been given a new lease on life through websites such as Kickstarter, which help people with innovative ideas reach a global audience. To date, Kickstarter has helped fund films, video games, electronics and more. Recently though, Kickstarter, and other sites like it, have begun to be used to fund missions to the final frontier.

To date, many of these projects have been relatively modest in scale and ambition, with sorties only as far as Earth's low orbit. But some are attempting to recapture the spirit of President John F. Kennedy's potent 1962 speech: "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade."

The most ambitious and headline grabbing of them all is a new crowd-researched venture to send a manned submarine to Jupiter's ice moon, Europa. Yes, you read that right. The fledgling mission hopes to take an amphibious vehicle farther than humanity has ever traveled before, to dive deep into the freezing oceans of Europa. At the moment, the project simply aims to connect people around the world to begin researching the mission -- funding for the operation will come much later.

His colleague offered him some of the pills. Soon Kurt was taking them three to four times a week to get high and relax.

"I had been prescribed Vicodin before so I knew the effects," he said. "I would come home, take a couple and pour myself a drink, to help me unwind."

He is not alone. One in 10 Americans admit taking a prescription drug they have not been prescribed, and a quarter of those people have used them just to get high, according to an ongoing Reuters/Ipsos poll. (link.reuters.com/ban42v)

While about six in ten Americans who used another person's prescriptions did so for pain relief, a fifth took them to sleep or to manage stress and anxiety, the poll showed.

Kurt said his colleague would give him between thirty and forty pills at a time. Usually he would take the Vicodin while alone, but he occasionally shared the pills with friends during an evening out.

After eighteen months he finally kicked the habit. "I just felt like I was using too frequently," he said.

Prescription drug misuse has reached epidemic levels and it is now the second most abused category of drugs in the United States, after marijuana, according to a survey conducted for the U.S. government.

Pharmacies in the United States dispensed more than 4 billion prescriptions in 2012, according to IMS Health, a healthcare research firm.

The poll indicated it is not difficult to get hold of such drugs even without a prescription. About two thirds of those who used other people's prescribed drugs were given them by a family member, friend or acquaintance, the poll showed. Only about 14 percent were either taken without permission or purchased.

For some, using other people's prescription drugs is a way to save on healthcare costs.

For the last two years Megan, 28, has had no health insurance after losing a job working in a hotel in Eugene, Oregon.

When she began having muscle pain around her hip last year, she sought help from her mother, not her doctor.

Her mother had recently been involved in a car accident and had been prescribed Flexeril and Vicodin for neck pain, some of which lay unused. Megan took one of each.

"Had I had insurance, I would just have gone to the doctor, but I didn't and if you go into the emergency room they just look at you like you are a drug addict looking for your next fix," she said.

Checking Facebook made people feel worse about both issues, and the more they browsed, the worse they felt, the University of Michigan research said.

The study, which tracked participants for two weeks, adds to a growing body of research saying Facebook can have negative psychological consequences.

Facebook has more than a billion members and half log in daily.

"On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it," said the researchers.

Internet psychologist Graham Jones of the British Psychological Society - who was not involved with the study - said: "It confirms what some other studies have found - there is a growing depth of research that suggests Facebook has negative consequences."

But he added there was plenty of research showing Facebook had positive effects on its users.

Loneliness link

In the survey, participants answered questions about how they felt, how worried they were, how lonely they felt at that moment, and how much they had used Facebook since the last survey.

They received five text messages each day at random times between 10:00 and midnight, containing links to the surveys.

Researchers also wanted to know about how much direct interaction participants had with people - either face-to-face or by phone - between questionnaires.

Results showed that the more people used Facebook, the worse they felt afterwards. But it did not show whether people used Facebook more or less depending on how they felt, researchers said.

The team also found that the more the participants used the site, the more their life satisfaction levels declined.

The pattern appeared to contrast with interacting "directly" with people, which seemed to have no effect on well-being.

But researchers did find people spent more time on Facebook when they were feeling lonely - and not simply because they were alone at that precise moment.

"Would engaging in any solitary activity similarly predict declines in well-being? We suspect that they would not because people often derive pleasure from engaging in some solitary activities (e.g., exercising, reading)," the report said.

"Supporting this view, a number of recent studies indicate that people's perceptions of social isolation (i.e. how lonely they feel) are a more powerful determinant of well-being than objective social isolation."

The Financial Times said its sources had confirmed the technology giant would fund development, but had not commissioned a full series.

The show's producer refused to comment, describing the story as "rumours".

Microsoft is looking to position its Xbox Live service as a competitor to the likes of Netflix and Lovefilm.

'Entertainment hub'

However, the forthcoming launch of its new Xbox One console has hit a setback after the company announced it would be delayed in many countries.

Customers in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland will all have to wait until after Christmas if they want to own the machine.

Microsoft said that the console was still on course for a 2013 launch in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Once on sale, Microsoft will be looking to position the Xbox One as an "entertainment hub" for the living room, and not just for video gaming.

At the May launch of its new Xbox One console, the company announced it would be working with director Steven Spielberg to create a TV series based on the game Halo.

Declined to comment

With Blake's 7, Microsoft would be following in the footsteps of other on-demend competitors in commissioning its own exclusive material.

Netflix's House of Cards, also a remake of a BBC original, was well received by viewers and critics, earning an Emmy nomination for top drama series. Amazon-owned Lovefilm has also commissioned several exclusive series.

Welsh novelist Terry Nation's Blake's 7 is set about 700 years in the future, and follows the exploits of Roj Blake and his band of rebels as they take on totalitarian leaders in charge of Earth and several other planets.

It was broadcast by the BBC in the 1970s and 1980s, and had about 10 million viewers.

The show has since been reincarnated in various guises, including a series on BBC Radio 4.

In April 2000, the rights to the television show were bought by its current producer, Andrew Mark Sewell.

When contacted by the BBC, Mr Sewell would not be drawn on whether any deal with Microsoft had been made, adding: "When we have news to report, we'll let everyone know."

According to the FT, the show is to be redeveloped by London-based Motion Picture Capital. It and Microsoft also declined to comment.

However, film and TV news site Deadline Hollywood reported that "negotiations" were under way.

A Reuters witness counted 228 bodies, most of them wrapped in white shrouds, arranged in rows on the floor of the Imam mosque in northeast Cairo, close to the worst of Wednesday's violence between police and demonstrators.

Islamist supporters of former President Mohamed Mursi, ousted by the army on July 3, clashed with police and troops who used bulldozers, teargas and live ammunition to clear two Cairo sit-ins that had become a hub of resistance to the military.

The clashes spread quickly, and a health ministry official said on Thursday that 525 people were killed and more than 3,500 injured in fighting in Cairo, Alexandria and numerous towns and cities around the mostly Muslim nation of 84 million.

The capital and other areas hit by shocking violence were largely calm overnight, after the army-installed government declared a month-long state of emergency and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the capital and 10 other provinces.

But whether the powerful military can keep a lid on the fury felt by millions of Mursi's supporters, most of them from his Muslim Brotherhood movement, is unclear.

The next potential flashpoint comes later on Thursday, after Mursi's Brotherhood movement called for marches in the capital to protest the deaths. In Alexandria, Egypt's second biggest city, protesters were already on the move by early afternoon.

A military source said that while sit-ins like the main one outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo would no longer be tolerated, marches may be in spite of the state of emergency.

Funerals of those killed will also be held throughout the day, and on Friday, the main Muslim day of prayer, anger could spill on to the streets.

"I think tomorrow will be a big day for protests throughout Egypt, with the potential for violence very high," said Yasser El-Shimy, Egypt analyst with the International Crisis Group.

WESTERN ANGER, UAE APPROVAL

The latest crackdown was the third mass killing of Islamist demonstrators since Mursi was deposed six weeks ago, but the scale of the bloodshed took many by surprise and signaled that the military was determined to tighten its grip on the country.

The decision to forcibly clear sit-ins defied Western appeals for a negotiated settlement to the crisis, amid concerns that the country which signed a peace treaty with Israel and straddles the strategic Suez Canal could spiral out of control.

Shares of the world's biggest network equipment maker fell more than 9 percent after hours, their biggest drop in more than a year if reflected on Nasdaq on Thursday.

A lukewarm revenue forecast dashed expectations that Cisco could overcome muted demand for tech infrastructure. Its shares had been up more than 50 percent in the past 12 months.

Cisco has been whittling away at its workforce and selling off consumer businesses such as home networking, in a turnaround begun in 2010, when it started losing ground to nimbler rivals like Juniper Networks and Palo Alto Networks.

The company that once specialized in providing the backbone of the Internet now sees software and equipment for datacenters and corporate cloud networking as its keys to growth. But Wednesday's results suggest the pace of expansion has been slower than anticipated, analysts said.

"The environment in terms of our business is improving slightly but nowhere near the pace that we want," said Chief Executive John Chambers on a conference call following quarterly earnings. "We have to very quickly reallocate the resources."

Cisco said last month it plans to buy cyber security company Sourcefire Inc for $2.7 billion. The company has made it a priority to improve security across its hardware, software and cloud products.

Chambers also said the current business environment was underperforming his expectations. Despite strength in the United States, weakness in Asia and mixed results from Europe continued to dog its business.

The Cisco CEO's take on the global corporate technology environment is closely watched by investors, as Cisco is regarded a strong indicator of the general health of the technology industry because of its broad customer base.

Shares of Microsoft Corp, Oracle Corp, IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co all fell slightly after hours.

INVESTORS HAD HIGH HOPES

Cisco forecast 3 percent to 5 percent revenue growth this quarter, toward the low end of expectations, as it continues to grapple with an uncertain global IT spending environment.

Executives also forecast on Wednesday earnings-per-share of 50 cents to 51 cents in its fiscal current quarter. Earlier, Cisco reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue in line with Wall Street expectations.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was treading a fine line between trying not to inflame tension with China and South Korea and upholding a conservative ideology shared by his supporters.

But at least three cabinet ministers and dozens of lawmakers paid their respects at Yasukuni Shrine, seen as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

"I asked my special aide ... to make the offering on my behalf with a feeling of gratitude and respect for those who fought and gave their precious lives for their country," Abe told reporters at the prime minister's office.

"As for when I might go to Yasukuni Shrine, or whether I will go or not, I will not say as this should not become a political or diplomatic issue," he said after his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) aide conveyed the offering in the name of "Shinzo Abe, LDP leader."

Visits to the shrine by top politicians outrage China and South Korea because the shrine honors 14 Japanese wartime leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal, along with war dead.

China summoned the Japanese ambassador to protest.

"It does not matter in what form or using what identity Japanese political leaders visit the Yasukuni Shrine, it is an intrinsic attempt to deny and beautify that history of invasion by the Japanese militarists," China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"We urge Japan to ... take concrete steps to win the trust of the international community, otherwise Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors have no future.

A retired Chinese general was more blunt.

"Can you imagine what the world would think of Germany if they paid homage to Nazi boss Hitler?" retired Chinese Major General Luo Yuan, one of China's most outspoken military figures, wrote in the influential tabloid the Global Times.

China and Korea suffered under Japanese rule, with parts of China occupied from the 1930s and Korea colonized from 1910 to 1945. Japanese leaders have apologized in the past but many in China and South Korea doubt the sincerity of the apologies, partly because of contradictory remarks by politicians.

HONOURING THE WAR DEAD

South Korea's Foreign Ministry called the visits "deplorable", saying they showed the ministers were "still keeping their eyes shut to history" and urging Japan to offer a sincere apology.

Merkel's chief of staff said on Monday that fears of mass U.S. spying on Germans were unfounded, and Washington had assured Berlin it had upheld German law. But with an election looming in less than six weeks, the government has come under pressure to do more to protect citizens' private data.

"We need a strong European information technology industry which can offer alternatives," said Economy Minister Philipp Roesler. Among ideas to be explored, he listed more secure cloud computing and better links between technology start-ups and established industry.

First results would be discussed at a IT summit in Hamburg in December, he said.

A former U.S. security contractor, Edward Snowden, set off an international furor when he told newspapers in June that the National Security Agency was mining the personal data of users of Google, Facebook, Skype and other U.S. companies under a secret program codenamed Prism.

President Barack Obama last week announced plans to limit the sweep of government surveillance programs and make them more transparent.

Snowden, facing espionage charges back home, has been granted a year's asylum in Russia.

The German cabinet also agreed to negotiate with the European Commission on tightening EU data protection laws, and to pursue a "no-spy deal" with Washington, whose details are as yet unspecified.

Troops opened fire on Islamist demonstrators in clashes that brought chaos to the capital and other cities and looked certain to further polarize Egypt's 84 million people between those who backed Mursi and the millions who opposed his brief rule.

In the streets around the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in northeast Cairo, where thousands of Mursi supporters have staged a sit-in for the last six weeks, riot police wearing gas masks crouched behind armored vehicles, tear gas hung in the air and burning tires sent plumes of black smoke into the sky.

Several television stations ran footage of what appeared to be pro-Mursi protesters firing automatic rifles at soldiers from behind sandbag barricades.

At a hospital morgue nearby, a Reuters reporter counted 29 bodies, including that of a 12-year-old boy. Most had died of gunshot wounds to the head.

Violence spread beyond Cairo, with Mursi supporters and security forces clashing in the cities of Alexandria, Minya, Assiut, Fayoum and Suez and in Buhayra and Beni Suef provinces.

The health ministry put the overall death toll at 95 people, including both police and civilians, with other sources saying at least 17 were killed in Fayoum province and five in Suez.

Mursi supporters besieged and set fire to government buildings and several churches were attacked, state media said.

Mohamed El-Beltagi, a leader of Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood movement that has led the protests, said his 17-year-old daughter had been killed in the clashes.

He warned of wider conflict, and singled out the head of the armed forces who deposed Mursi on July 3 following mass protests calling for his resignation.

"I swear by God that if you stay in your homes, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will embroil this country so that it becomes Syria. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will push this nation to a civil war so that he escapes the gallows."

By 10 a.m. ET, only a few hundred protesters remained at the Rabaa site. A second, smaller camp near Cairo University was swiftly cleared in the early morning.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

The presidency announced a month-long state of emergency across Egypt and ordered the armed forces to help police enforce security. Rights activists said the move would give legal cover for the army to make arrests.

Any serious bidder would likely be hoping to get Watsa, the Fairfax founder and chairman who is often called Canada's answer to billionaire U.S. investor Warren Buffett, on their side, because he could join in on a private equity deal or at the very least be the bellwether for broader investment sentiment.

"I would imagine that if Fairfax says they are against a particular deal, that would carry a lot of weight, beyond just the 10 percent that they control," said Richard Steinberg, who heads Fasken Martineau's securities and mergers & acquisitions group in Toronto.

Although it remains too early to tell determined buyers from window-shoppers, sources familiar with the situation said some of the world's largest private equity firms, including Bain Capital LLC, KKR & Co LP and Carlyle Group LP, are expected to look at BlackBerry when the company launches a sale process.

Leo De Bever, the chief executive of Alberta Investment Management Corp, said he expected some of the largest Canadian pension funds, including his own, to look at any potential deals for the company.

Analysts said firms ranging from established mobile phone players like Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co to technology giants like Amazon.com Inc, Facebook Inc, Cisco Systems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM Corp, may also be drawn to the beleaguered smartphone maker's assets such as patents or its network or instant messaging platforms.

Watsa stepped down from the BlackBerry board on Monday, citing a potential conflict of interest, as the company said it was exploring the sale of itself and other options.

Jefferies analysts have suggested that Fairfax could team up with Canadian pension funds and banks to take BlackBerry private, possibly for $15 per share.

Watsa hasn't said how much he would want for his stake in BlackBerry. But one guidepost would be $17 per share, the average price Fairfax has disclosed it has paid to build its 9.9 percent stake in the Canadian company over the last three years. BlackBerry shares closed up 1.4 percent at $10.93 in New York on Tuesday.

Fairfax and BlackBerry declined to comment. Representatives of the other companies and private equity firms either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

ABC News revealed how a couple in Houston, Texas, heard a voice saying lewd comments coming from the camera, made by manufacturer Foscam.

Vulnerabilities in Foscam products were exposed in April, and the company issued an emergency fix.

Foscam said it was unable to provide a statement at this time.

ABC reported that Marc Gilbert and wife Lauren were left shaken when they heard a "British or European accent" coming from the camera.

Mr Gilbert said the voice directed offensive, sexualised words at their daughter Allyson, who was asleep in bed.

The family believed the hacker was able to call the child by her name because it was spelt out on the bedroom's wall. The two-year-old is deaf, something the couple described as "something of a blessing" in the circumstances.

It is not clear whether the family had updated the camera with the latest software.

'Kids room'

The BBC has found evidence of hackers sharing information on how to access insecure Foscam cameras via several widely-used forums.

Using specialist search engines, people can narrow their results by location.

On one forum, internet addresses for cameras - not all made by Foscam - were listed with descriptions such as "school/daycare?" and "kids room".

In April, security firm Qualys uncovered a weakness in Foscam's devices.

The company said that various attack techniques exposed the camera's remote monitoring access - the simplest of which was simply scraping Foscam's website for unique identifying codes for each customer.

Around two out of every 10 Foscam cameras monitored by the researchers were insecure, Qualys said - using just "admin" to log in, and requiring no password.

Foscam is not the only company to find itself the target of hackers. Last year, camera company Trendnet had to rush out an update to fix a security hole that left thousands of cameras exposed.

Fix issued

In June, Foscam issued a fix for some of the issues raised by Qualys. In a blog post, the company said it appreciated the "constructive criticisms and advice".

Visitors to the firm's homepage do not see any notice of the critical upgrade.

The company did however publish a blog post to publicise the patch, and users who had signed up to a firmware update newsletter should have been informed by email. Discussion forums on the Foscam website show several other customers having security problems with their devices.

User pianomama00 wrote: "My husband heard something in babies room.