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The world's dominant search engine has been the focus of a Commission investigation since November 2010, when more than a dozen complainants across Europe accused the company of promoting its own services at their expense.

Google has now made three attempts to resolve the case, with the latest moves looking like they will be enough to settle it, although there will still be a chance for Google's competitors to provide further input.

"I believe that the new proposal obtained from Google after long and difficult talks can now address the Commission's concerns," European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement.

The Commission said it would make a final decision after obtaining feedback from Google's rivals. Google's offer only covers Europe and would be valid for five years.

In a statement, Google said it hoped to draw a line under the case soon.

"We will be making significant changes to the way Google operates in Europe," said General Counsel Kent Walker. "We have been working with the European Commission to address issues they raised and look forward to resolving this matter."

Reuters reported on January 29 that the EU's competition authority and Google were close to a deal to resolve the investigation.

Google's success in escaping possibly heavier sanctions mirrors a similar outcome in the United States last year, where Google received only a mild reprimand from the Federal Trade Commission.

Almunia, who has been in charge of antitrust issues at the European Commission since 2009, has developed a track record of resolving cases via settlements rather than fines.

Google's ability to resolve competition issues in two major regions without a fine stands in sharp contrast to rival Microsoft, whose prickly relations with EU regulators landed it total fines of more than 2.2 billion euros over the past decade.

Under its latest proposals, Google, which has a 75 percent share of the European search market according to consultancy comScore, will let three rivals display their logos and web links in a prominent box, and content providers will be able to decide what material Google can use for its own services.

Google will also scrap restrictions that prevent advertisers from moving their campaigns to rival platforms such as Yahoo!'s search tool and Microsoft's Bing.

The pressure to boost security spending comes at a time when merchants are already spending millions to fend off online retailer Amazon.com and facing an October 2015 deadline set by payment networks Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc to accept new payment cards that store information on computer chips rather than on traditional magnetic stripes.

Target, the No. 3 U.S. retailer, said this week it hoped to finish upgrading its payment card network to the more secure "chip and PIN" standard by early 2015, some six months ahead of its previous plan.

The system, already widely used in Europe and Asia, can accommodate cards carrying tiny microprocessors, which makes it harder for cyber crooks to use stolen data.

U.S. retailers have been so focused on cutting costs and expanding their online presence in the past decade that they have not spent enough of their technology budgets on protecting customer data, security experts and IT service providers said.

While retail spending on overall technology was expected to rise 4 percent annually between 2012 and 2017, U.S. stores spend only roughly 2 percent of their tech budgets on security, with the bulk going to improving their e-commerce, technology advisory firm IDC Retail Insights said.

Unlike their peers in other industries, most retailers still focus on just meeting the basic standards set by the payment card industry rather than substantially beefing up safeguards against increasingly sophisticated attacks, security experts said.

"Retailers have to assume that they are constantly being targeted and actually constantly being penetrated," said Eddie Schwartz, a vice president at Verizon Enterprise Solutions, who urged retailers to take a more proactive approach.

Pressure from Congress, consumer groups and the banking industry following recent theft of customer data at Target, Neiman Marcus and others may be the turning point to get the retail industry to spend more on security, experts said.

For example, Dinesh Bajaj, the vice president of retail and logistics practice in Americas for Infosys Ltd, expects retailers to spend more in coming months on encrypting credit card data while storing it in multiple systems.

Whether browsing the Web on Internet Explorer on a PC running Windows or working up a PowerPoint presentation with Microsoft Office before taking a break to game on the Xbox, there are many among us whose entire digital experience have been filtered through products Gates helped create.

On Tuesday, Gates took what may be his final step away from leadership of Microsoft. With the announcement that Satya Nadella, a 22-year veteran of the company, will take over as CEO, the company also said Gates is stepping down as chairman of its board of directors.

Gates co-founded the company with Paul Allen in 1975 but stepped down as CEO in 2000. He then spent eight years as Microsoft's chairman before stepping away from full-time work there in 2008 to focus on his charitable work through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Rather than exiting the stage at the world's largest computer software company, Gates may actually be getting more active. He'll take on a new role as an adviser to Nadella, putting him back on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus more often. It will also put him nearer to the heart of innovation the company will need to keep up with rivals like Apple and Google at the top of the consumer-tech industry.

If he succeeds in helping Microsoft get back its swagger, particularly in a fast-growing mobile world dominated by Apple and Google and in the increasingly important field of cloud computing, it would be a final contribution to a career that has virtually defined an industry.

"Bill Gates is one of the pioneering giants of the information age," said Merv Adrian, a software and hardware analyst at Gartner Research. "Driven by the belief in a computer in every home, on every desktop, he helped to build one of the largest firms in the world to achieve that goal -- and arguably succeeded."

For starters, Microsoft was the world's first real software company. Although there are hours of bare-knuckle geek brawling to be done over whether Gates and Microsoft or rival Steve Jobs and Apple were the true innovators on early computer interfaces, there's no question as to who succeeded in making software for the masses.

The U.N. watchdog for children's rights said the Holy See should also hand over its archives on sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children so that culprits, as well as "those who concealed their crimes", could be held accountable.

The watchdog's exceptionally blunt paper - the most far-reaching critique of the Church hierarchy by the world body - followed its public grilling of Vatican officials last month.

"The Committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators," the report said.

The Vatican was expected to issue a statement on the report later on Wednesday.

The U.N. committee on the Rights of the Child said the Catholic Church had not yet taken measures to prevent a repeat of cases such as Ireland's Magdalene laundries scandal, where girls were arbitrarily placed in conditions of forced labor.

It called for an internal investigation of the laundries and similar institutions so that those who were responsible could be prosecuted and that "full compensation be paid to the victims and their families".

A commission created by Pope Francis in December should investigate all cases of child sexual abuse "as well as the conduct of the Catholic hierarchy in dealing with them," the report said.

Abusers had been moved from parish to parish or other countries "in an attempt to cover-up such crimes," it added.

"Due to a code of silence imposed on all members of the clergy under penalty of excommunication, cases of child sexual abuse have hardly ever been reported to the law enforcement authorities in the countries where such crimes occurred," the U.N. body said.

At a public session last month, the committee pushed Vatican delegates to reveal the scope of the decades-long sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests that Pope Francis called "the shame of the Church".

Overnight trading in Asia had been mixed despite a rebound on Wall Street, but January purchasing manager index (PMI) data helped settle European nerves before the European Central Bank's monthly meeting on Thursday.

The pan-regional FTSEurofirst 300 .FTEU3 was up 0.4 percent after the data. Outperforming Italy, Spain and Portugal bolstered gains of 0.4, 0.3 and 0.2 percent in London .FTSE, Paris .FCHI and Frankfurt .GDAXI.

Markit's euro zone Composite PMI, which gauges business activity across thousands of companies and is seen as a good guide to economic health, climbed to 52.9 in January from 52.1 the previous month. That was the highest final reading since June 2011.

It showed the recovery of the 18-member bloc is broad-based, Markit said, with Germany leading an upswing in peripheral members amid signs of a stabilization in number two economy France.

"The euro zone PMI was down slightly on the earlier flash reading but nevertheless signals a very encouraging start to the year," said Chris Williamson, Markit's chief economist.

It was welcome news following data hiccups from the world's biggest economies, the U.S. and China, earlier this week.

Dealers cautioned, however, that the mood remained brittle and it would only take a poor U.S. payrolls report on Friday to set the bears running again. The ADP reading on private hiring is due later on Wednesday, and investors are likely to react badly to any disappointment.

In Asia, the strain clearly took a toll. Demand for safety in the yen and top-rated bonds grew on a roller-coaster day for Toyko's Nikkei .N225 and more losses for Chinese stocks.

The Nikkei eventually closed up 1.2 percent, but swings throughout the day meant it never got close to testing resistance at the 200-day moving average. The index has shed 14 percent this year following last year's 50 percent boom.

YEN EFFECT

The faltering performance was all the more disappointing as some major corporate names reported upbeat earnings, helped by the yen's recent plunge. Panasonic Corp (6752.T) jumped 17 percent after its quarterly earnings more than tripled. Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) rose 5 percent after it predicted record annual profits.

On Wall Street, the Dow .DJI had ended Tuesday up 0.47 percent and the S&P 500 .SPX added 0.76 percent. But stock futures were trading lower on Wednesday, with the S&P e-mini contract off 0.3 percent.

Red Star OS is the country's "home-grown" software that is installed on computers found mostly in libraries and schools.

It previously had a look that closely mimicked Microsoft's Windows system.

Screenshots were obtained by American computer scientist Will Scott and published on the NorthKoreaTech blog.

Despite living in a country very much shut off from the outside world, many people in North Korea do have access to technology - including mobile phones.

However, devices are heavily restricted. Internet access, for instance, is locked down, with most users able to visit only a handful of sites mostly serving up state-sponsored news.

Year 103 The Red Star OS is peppered with North Korean propaganda, and its calendar tells users it is not 2014, but 103 - the number of years since the birth of former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung.

An earlier version of Red Star OS was made available worldwide in 2010 after a Russian student posted it online.

The latest version is believed to have been released some time in 2013.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been keen to demonstrate his country's technological abilities since coming to power in December 2011.

In August 2013, he visited a factory that was said to have been manufacturing the country's first smartphone.

It cited a "critical vulnerability" in older versions and said it had become aware of reports that cybercriminals had worked out a way to exploit it.

A new version of the multimedia player has been made available for download for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

This is the latest in a series of setbacks for the company.

The California-based software maker acknowledged that usernames and encrypted passwords had been stolen from about 38 million of its active account holders last year.

And Flash vulnerability alerts frequently appear on security firms'warning lists.

"Adobe does seem to have an unfortunate history of people finding security flaws with Flash that require updates," independent security consultant Alan Woodward told the BBC.

"What Adobe seem to have done in this case is put out a warning, but it has not given as much information as other firms would normally do when issuing such a security advisory.

"That might be them trying to avoid giving the hackers too much information whilst still telling people there is a problem."

Adobe only describes the flaw as being an "integer underflow vulnerability" in its report.

Sandboxed software The company thanks two researchers at the Kaspersky Lab for alerting it to the problem.

The Russian security company has not commented on the topic yet, but might reveal more information at a conference it is hosting in the Dominican Republic this weekend. n the meantime, Apple is blocking the use of older versions of Flash on its Safari web browser.

The firm introduced a "sandbox" feature to its Mavericks operating system in October that stops the Flash plug-in from running automatically. Users must first give it permission to activate and Apple can also disable the software remotely.

Adobe had previously worked with Google, Microsoft and Mozilla to offer similar protective measures.

Adobe notes that users of Chrome, Internet Explorer 10 and Internet Explorer 11 should all see their browsers automatically update themselves to include the latest version of Flash.

"This latest Flash 'zero-day' serves as a good reminder of the reasons security professionals urge users to enable browser plug-ins only when necessary," said Craig Young, a researcher at security firm Tripwire.

"It is important to note that browsers such as Chrome and Internet Explorer have Adobe's Flash technology 'baked in' making it necessary to explicitly disable it when not needed."

The move is aimed at preventing users from artificially inflating view counts which, YouTube said, mislead people about the popularity of a video.

There are concerns that some viewers are using tools like "redirects" or "buying" views to boost their count.

YouTube said it will now "periodically" validate the views on videos and remove the fraudulent ones from the total.

"Some bad actors try to game the system by artificially inflating view counts. They're not just misleading fans about the popularity of a video, they're undermining one of YouTube's most important and unique qualities," Google, which owns YouTube, said in a blogpost.

"While in the past we would scan views for spam immediately after they occurred, starting today we will periodically validate the video's view count."

However, the firm said that it does not expect the new approach to affect "more than a minuscule fraction of videos on YouTube". Assuring advertisers? YouTube is the world's biggest video-sharing website.

With a large number of users watching videos on the site, it has also become an attractive advertising option for firms looking to attract consumers.

Analysts said the site's latest move to clamp down on fraudulent views was also aimed at assuring firms that their campaigns on the portal were reaching a genuine audience.

"A firm would look at the number of views a video is generating and its popularity when it decides to place its advertisement," Sanjana Chappalli, Asia-Pac head of LEWIS Pulse, a firm specialising in digital marketing, told the BBC.

"But if those views have been fraudulently generated - then it is likely to miss the target audience and have little or no return on investment."

'Maintain trust' For its part, YouTube has previously warned users against generating views through automated means or by forcing or tricking viewers into watching videos.

According to YouTube these methods could include:

Purchasing views from third-party websites Deceptive layouts on third party websites that trick viewers into playing a video when they click unrelated elements on the page Serving pop-unders: a new window that appears under a current window Redirects: when the URL changes and sends the viewer to a new page in the middle of a click "A view should be a metric that reflects genuine interest, not a gauge of how many people mistakenly or unknowingly ended up watching your video," the website has said.

Ms Chappalli added that the growing popularity of other social media websites such as Facebook meant that YouTube needed to be even more careful with any fraudulent views.

"YouTube is just one of the many options on the social media that companies looking to advertise have," she said.

The tech industry has pushed for greater transparency on government data requests, seeking to shake off concerns about their involvement in vast, surreptitious surveillance programs revealed last summer by former spy contractor Edward Snowden.

The government said last month it would relax rules restricting what details companies can disclose about Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court orders they receive for user information. Several companies, including Google and Microsoft, sued the government last year, seeking the ability to disclose more of that data.

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said on Monday the latest data showed that the info the government has asked online companies to turn over has not been as vast as some feared.

"We have not received the type of bulk data requests that are commonly discussed publicly regarding telephone records," Smith said. "This is a point we've publicly been making in a generalized way since last summer, and it's good finally to have the ability to share concrete data."

Between 15,000 to 15,999 Microsoft-user accounts were the subject of FISA court orders requesting content during the first six months of 2013, the company said.

Still, Smith cited media reports - based on Snowden's leaked

documents - that the government may have intercepted user information without tech companies' knowledge or cooperation, by tapping into communications cables that link Google and Yahoo datacenters.

"Despite the President's reform efforts and our ability to publish more information, there has not yet been any public commitment by either the U.S. or other governments to renounce the attempted hacking of Internet companies," he said on Microsoft's blog. "We believe the Constitution requires that our government seek information from American companies within the rule of law."

BREAKDOWN Several Internet companies had previously disclosed an approximate number of national security letters, which typically seek customer data without court approval. Now, they have greater leeway also to disclose details around FISA orders.

The world's biggest software firm faces a slow erosion of its PC-centric Windows and Office franchises and needs to somehow challenge Apple Inc and Google Inc in the new realm of mobile computing. At the same time, some investors are campaigning for retrenchment and a bigger cut of the company's massive cash pile.

Most agree that Nadella's background in creating Microsoft's Internet-based - or 'cloud' - computing services makes him a safe pair of hands to take the company forward, but there remains a question over his ability to make Microsoft a hit with consumers, or with impatient shareholders.

"He is the right person to drive safe, right down the middle of the fairway, and continue Microsoft's strengths," said Rajeev Chand, managing director and head of research at tech investment bank Rutberg & Co. "What we don't know is will Nadella help with the consumer revival, or with the mobile revival. Mobile is an open hole in his background."

Microsoft's problem is stark. More than 90 percent of PCs run Windows, but only 4 percent of smartphones do and an even smaller slice of tablets.

The company is still the undisputed king of workplace computing, but it is finding it hard to kindle the affections of consumers at home and on the move. Its Surface devices had some success over the holiday shopping season, but its phones are showing signs of losing momentum.

"I would advise him (Nadella) to take a fresh look at mobile, or bring in some talent who really understands the space," said David Smith, an analyst at tech research firm Gartner.

Last July, CEO Steve Ballmer outlined Microsoft's new devices and services business model that is intended to marry cloud services with nifty gadgets that can challenge Android phones and Apple's iPad. He backed that up with the $7.2 billion purchase of handset maker Nokia, set to close this quarter.

But that move did not play well on Wall Street and now Microsoft finds itself under pressure from critical investors to give up the hardware business and concentrate instead on getting its software onto as many devices as possible, including the iPad.

It is believed that keyloggers were installed on computers which helped pupils to gain remote access.

Newport Beach police are keen to interview a private tutor 28-year-old Timothy Lai.

Investigators allege that he "assisted the students in compromising school computers and manipulating grades".

The school at the centre of the hacking scandal is Corona Del Mar High School, in Newport Beach. According to court documents, the police were first made aware of the cheating scandal back in June last year when a science teacher, Kim Rapp, told school administrators that someone may have accessed her computer and changed grades.

In a statement to the police, one of the students alleges that he and Mr Lei had gone to the school late at night to place a keylogger on the computer of a chemistry teacher.

It is believed that the hardware keylogger was used to snoop on teachers' logins and password details with the stolen codes used to access information about forthcoming tests and to change grades in previous exams.

The school said that it was looking into the scope of the cheating scandal. It is believed school officials are re-examining 750,000 grades.

'Disappointed' The fate of the pupils allegedly involved was decided at a vote among School District board members on Tuesday.

Six of the students involved had already left the school and the remaining five have been transferred to another local school.

Parents of four of the accused have questioned why their children have been targeted.

The school said in a statement, that it continued "an intensive audit of all teachers' grade books so that we can ensure the integrity and accuracy of all posted grades".

"Despite needing some time to wrestle with the disappointment of this unfortunate incident, we are confident that the school community will rise above this event," it added.

Tech-savvy kids "The ever-increasing use of technology in education keeps raising new problems, from security and privacy viewpoints," said security consultant John Hawes in the Naked Security blog.

"Kids are endlessly inquisitive so it will always be a challenge to keep them out of things they want to pry into, but it shouldn't be beyond our capabilities," he added.

He recommended that schools block all access to test and grade data from terminals accessible to students and provide teachers with access to a segregated network.

Children are increasingly proving themselves more than capable of bypassing security in schools.

BitTag uses wireless technology to connect to the internet and check the value of Bitcoin, altering the tag display once a minute.

Its creator hopes it will allow shops put off by Bitcoin's volatility to adopt the virtual currency.

Bitcoin's value has surged and crashed often in recent months.

Often, this has been down to high-profile hacks, or as a result of governments around the world, particularly China, commenting on the currency's future legal status. Governments are keen to assert some control over a currency that has to date gained most attention as a method of anonymously buying drugs online.

But the currency's backers and enthusiasts have stepped up efforts to show Bitcoin's other uses.

"Bitcoin is becoming more popular," said BitTag's creator, Samuel Cox, who describes himself as a creative technologist.

"But there's a lack of infrastructure for people to buy things in the physical world because the value changes all the time."

'Quirky' In the past 12 months, Bitcoin's value has peaked at over $1000 (£615), but at times was as low as $421.

The prototype BitTag device, which costs about £40, displays local currency as well as the Bitcoin price.

By connecting to a tablet via Bluetooth, the device is able to check the latest value of Bitcoin and change its display accordingly.

From here, a shopper can initiate a sale. "[The] Bitcoin transaction can be activated by a simple 'shake' of the BitTag," the product's website explains. "Enabling a Bitcoin QR code to be displayed on the display and scanned by the user's smartphone."

Due to the much higher cost compared with a standard price tag, Mr Cox conceded that BitTag's appeal was likely to be niche and more suited to "quirky" shops than major stores.

Other attempts to bring the virtual currency into the real world include a Bitcoin cash machine shown off last year.