The report follows revelations by former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden of widespread surveillance, including a program known as PRISM, by the National Security Agency and his assertion that the agency hacked into critical network infrastructure at universities in China and in Hong Kong.

Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has had access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.

"At present, thanks to their technological superiority, many of our core information technology systems are basically dominated by foreign hardware and software firms, but the Prism scandal implies security problems," the newspaper quoted an anonymous source as saying.

China's Ministry of Public Security declined to comment on the reported probe, and the State Council's Development Research Centre, one of the groups reportedly involved, told Reuters they were not carrying out such an investigation.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which oversees China's IT industry, said it could not confirm anything because of the matter's sensitivity. Another MIIT official told Reuters they were unaware of the reported probe.

IBM said in an emailed statement to Reuters that the company was unable to comment. Oracle and EMC were not immediately available for comment.

China, repeatedly accused by the United States of hacking, was given considerable ammunition by Snowden's allegations, which Beijing has used to point the finger at Washington for hypocrisy.

Chinese regulators and the police have begun a series of investigations in recent weeks into how foreign and domestic companies do business in the world's second-biggest economy.

"The Prism scandal certainly provides ample material for real concern," said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based market intelligence firm Marbridge Consulting.

Google has blocked users from watching videos via the app, saying it violated its terms of service.

The search company had requested the app be made using HTML5 code language, but Microsoft said it was unable to.

Microsoft said the issues were "manufactured" and Google was deliberately hindering the Windows Phone platform.

'Inconsistent'

In a blog post entitled "The limits of Google's openness", Microsoft lawyer David Howard requested that Google lift the block, and outlined his company's issues with the stance. "Google's objections to our app are not only inconsistent with Google's own commitment of openness, but also involve requirements for a Windows Phone app that it doesn't impose on its own platform or Apple's."

He added: "It seems to us that Google's reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can't give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting.

"The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it."

In a statement, Google defended its actions: "Unfortunately, Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our terms of service. It has been disabled.

'Odd request'

"We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines."

The Windows Phone platform is, according to some metrics, the third most popular mobile operating system in use worldwide.

However, it lags well behind Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

As a result, there are considerably fewer apps available for Windows Phone. To address this, Microsoft is investing its own resources to bring some key services to its platform.

In May, Microsoft's first attempt at creating a YouTube app was blocked after Google complained it failed to display ads correctly.

The companies agreed to work together to devise a new version, but Google insisted it was created using HTML5, an open web coding standard, rather than code specific to the Windows Phone platform.

Mr Howard said this was an "odd request", and one that was unfair to Microsoft. 'Significant resources' "Neither YouTube's iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5," he wrote.

"Nevertheless, we dedicated significant engineering resources to examine the possibility.

The May 2012 audit found 2,776 incidents of "unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications" in the preceding 12 months, the Post reported in its story Thursday.

"Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure," said the Post article by reporter Barton Gellman. "The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders."

The paper said most incidents involved unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the country.

In one case, the NSA decided it didn't need to report the unintended surveillance. In 2008, a "large number" of calls placed from Washington were intercepted due to a programming error that confused the capitol's 202 area code for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt. The information came from a "quality assurance" review that wasn't distributed to the NSA overnight staff, according to the Post.

Separately, an NSA new collection method went undiscovered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for months. The court, which has authority over some of the agency's operations, ruled it unconstitutional.

Responding to the Post's story, the NSA said, "A variety of factors can cause the numbers of incidents to trend up or down from one quarter to the next." Factors can include implementation of new procedures, technology or software changes and expanded access.

"The one constant across all of the quarters is a persistent, dedicated effort to identify incidents or risks of incidents at the earliest possible moment, implement mitigation measures wherever possible, and drive the numbers down," the agency said.

The agency released another statement Thursday night defending its programs. "NSA's foreign intelligence collection activities are continually audited and overseen internally and externally," it said. "When NSA makes a mistake in carrying out its foreign intelligence mission, the agency reports the issue internally and to federal overseers -- and aggressively gets to the bottom of it."

The London-based developer, Canonical, has generated $10,288,472 (about £6.6m) in pledges, passing the record set by Pebble smartwatches last year.

But with six days of its campaign left the company is far from reaching its funding goal of $32m.

Canonical would have to return all the money if it does not reach the target.

The developer had said that if its campaign on the Indiegogo crowdfunding website was successful, it would aim to deliver 40,000 handsets to qualifying backers by next May.

'Bringing the future forward'

In an interview with the BBC, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said public interest in the Ubuntu Edge smartphone was high.

"The campaign has sparked a level of interest that has surprised even us," he said, adding that it had seized the attention not only of phone enthusiasts but innovators and futurists as well as manufacturers.

He added that some large manufacturers had come "out of the woodwork" to discuss the device with him. Last week, Bloomberg said it had made an $80,000 contribution to the campaign, explaining that the open-source initiative could benefit its clients and influence the future of mobile computing.

But Mr Shuttleworth conceded the product might be too much of a departure from the current generation of smartphones for many institutional investors, such as major telecom companies, to consider backing it now.

If the Edge managed to find enough funding, "we would have been bringing the future forward a year or two at least", Mr Shuttleworth said.

Programs on the proposed smartphone would look like standard mobile apps when the handset was being used as a standalone device.

But they would change their user interfaces to that of a desktop application when the phone was docked with a monitor, Canonical said.

In addition, the operating system could support apps written in the HTML5 web language, albeit at slower speeds.

Particularly in regions such as Asia, Mr Shuttleworth said, businesses as well as individuals expressed interest in this type of device.

'Naive' strategy

But he acknowledged that, with one week of the campaign left, there was still a long way to go to meet the funding target.

Canonical aimed to raise $32m. Indiegogo's current funding record is $1,665,380, which was raised by Scandu Scout - a scheme to build a Star Trek-style Tricorder medical scanning device.

Its rival Kickstarter's record is $10,266,845 for the Pebble smartwatch.

Republican leaders last week sent letters of protest to both networks complaining that a planned CNN documentary and an NBC miniseries amount to political ads for the former secretary of state, who is seen as a likely 2016 contender for the White House.

The vote is scheduled for the last day of a three-day gathering called "Making it Happen," where Republicans are discussing ways to use technology and other means to connect with a wider range of voters, following Mitt Romney's failure to unseat incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama in November.

CNN officials have said their documentary, due to appear in theaters and on television in 2014, is not yet complete, while NBC said its mini-series is being produced by an entertainment unit, which is independent of the news division.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus had said that if CNN and NBC did not scrap their Clinton programs, he would seek an RNC vote saying the Republican Party would not work with the two networks on its 2016 primary debates or sanction the debates sponsored by them.

In preparation for the next presidential election, Priebus said the party would consider holding its 2016 nominating convention in June or July, rather than August, to reduce the amount of time Republican candidates spend competing against one another. An earlier convention also would allow the Republican nominee to focus on the Democratic opponent.

"Our party should not be involved in setting up a system that encourages the slicing and dicing of candidates over a long period of time with moderators that are not in the business of being at all concerned about the future of our party," Priebus told reporters this week.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, seen as a likely 2016 Republican contender for the White House, addressed the meeting in a closed-door session Thursday. New England Republicans including Maine Governor Paul LePage and former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown also mingled with delegates from state party organizations.

Clinton, the former first lady and U.S. senator from New York, has not yet said if she will run for president in 2016 as she did in 2008 but Republicans at the meeting clearly saw her as a threat.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Wednesday said Republicans needed to change their tone to focus on new ideas, rather than focusing on "anti-Obama" messages, to prepare for 2016.

Abe wants to lift Japan's self-imposed ban on exercising the right of collective self-defense, or coming to the aid of an ally under attack.

Article 9 of the U.S.-drafted, post-war constitution, if taken literally, bans Japan from maintaining a military, but it has already been stretched to allow armed forces as big as France's.

The prospect of a more assertive Japanese armed forces raises concern in many parts of the region that suffered under Japanese occupation during World War Two.

The Cabinet Legislation Bureau has for decades maintained that while Japan has the right of collective self-defense it cannot exercise it. Experts say that has been a major obstacle to lifting the ban on an expanded role for the armed forces.

Ichiro Komatsu, the head of the bureau which is known as the "guardian of law" for interpreting the constitution and reviewing bills, said it was up to Abe to make a decision.

"We give our opinions to the cabinet, prime minister and other ministers on legislation matters. But it is the cabinet that ultimately makes decisions ... and the head of the cabinet is prime minister," Komatsu, director-general of the bureau, told Reuters in an interview.

Abe put Komatsu, a career diplomat and specialist in international law, in charge of the bureau this month. Media and analysts cast the appointment as paving the way for the change.

Komatsu's predecessors have for decades opposed any change to the official view that Japan's military cannot exercise the right of collective self-defense since such an act would exceed the minimum use of force allowed under the constitution for self-defense.

U.S. TIES

Komatsu declined to outline his opinion on the matter or elaborate on the bureau's stance. But he also stressed the importance of consistency in formulating a position.

"Several former directors-general have appeared on newspapers and said things should not change because of a personal opinion of a new director-general. I totally agree," he said. "Continuity and consistency with views we have expressed so far are important factors."

Some academics and opposition lawmakers are criticizing Abe's move, which would enable the government to change Japan's security stance without revising the constitution.

Revising the constitution is difficult because amendments must be approved by two-thirds of each house of parliament and a majority of voters in a referendum.

"Sexual assault is a stain on the honor of our men and women who honorably serve our country, as well as a threat to the discipline and the cohesion of our force. It must be stamped out," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement.

Hagel said he would continue to meet weekly with senior Pentagon leaders to review the broad effort to eliminate a problem that has plagued the military for decades.

The Pentagon reported in May that there had been a 37 percent increase in cases of unwanted sexual contact in the military from 2011 to 2012, with 26,000 people reporting everything from groping to rape, up from 19,000 a year earlier.

Sixty people have been removed from jobs as military recruiters, drill instructors and victims counselors since the report. Hagel announced first steps in May.

"The initiatives announced today are substantial, but only a step along a path toward eliminating this crime from our military ranks," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

"The President expects this level of effort to be sustained not only in the coming weeks and months, but as far into the future as necessary," Carney said. "None of our men and women in uniform should ever have to experience the pain and degradation of sexual assault."

Senator Kirsten Gilliband, a New York Democrat, called the Pentagon's announcement a "positive step" and said more work was needed to rebuild trust in a system that resulted in just 302 prosecutions out of 26,000 reported sexual assault cases.

"We have to attack that because, frankly, we want increased, unrestricted reporting," said Lieutenant General Curtis Scaparrotti, director of the Joint Staff. "And we can only get that if we (have) the trust of our victims."

Scaparrotti said the initiatives standardized some best practices already being used by the military, but suggested more could be done.

He acknowledged a strong correlation between sexual assaults and alcohol use, but said the military was not taking steps at this time to standardize measures being implemented at various bases that limited alcohol sales.

In a brief filing on Friday, Judge Steven Rhodes of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ordered Chief District Judge Gerald Rosen, whom he named as mediator between the city and its creditors earlier this week, to handle "negotiation and renegotiation" of collective bargaining agreements.

Rosen on Friday ordered representatives of the city, its two pension funds and several unions, including the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, to attend an initial mediation session on Sept 17.

The judge also ordered representatives of the state of Michigan and the state attorney general's office to attend, stipulating that all parties could have a maximum of two representatives and two attorneys in attendance.

More than 40 unions represent Detroit's 9,000 public sector workers.

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, appointed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr in March to fix the city's finances. Orr has a broad range of powers and filed for bankruptcy on July 18 after offering creditors pennies on the dollar.

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."