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Last year China's Communist Party renewed a heavy-handed campaign to control online interaction, threatening legal action against people whose perceived rumors on microblogs such as Sina Weibo are reposted more than 500 times or seen by more than 5,000 people.

Rights groups and dissidents have criticized the crackdown as another tool for the party to limit criticism of it and to further control freedom of expression.

The government says such steps are needed for social stability reasons and says every country in the world seeks to regulate the Internet.

During an approximately 40 minute discussion with Kerry on Saturday, the bloggers focused on the need for internet freedom, human rights, China's territorial dispute with Japan and even President Barack Obama's travel plans, according to a U.S. reporter who attended the session on behalf of journalists travelling with Kerry.

Kerry said he had urged Chinese leaders to support Internet freedom and raised the issue of press freedom, in a country with tight controls on what the media can say and which blocks popular foreign social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

"Obviously we think that the Chinese economy will be stronger with greater freedom of the Internet," he said.

Blogger Zhang Jialong asked if the United States would get together with the "Chinese who aspire for freedom" and help "tear down the great Internet firewall", complaining that U.S. companies were helping Beijing block access to sites like Twitter.

Kerry said it was the first time he had heard complaints that U.S. companies were helping the Chinese government control access to the internet and that he would look into it.

Microsoft Corp denied this week it was omitting websites from its Bing search engine results for users outside China after a Chinese rights group said the U.S. firm was censoring material the government deems politically sensitive.

The United States and China have long clashed over freedom of expression and human rights, with Washington frequently calling for the release of dissidents such as anti-corruption campaigner Xu Zhiyong and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.

Kerry said that he had raised human rights at high levels.

"We constantly press these issues at all of our meetings, whether it is in the United States or here, at every level, and we will continue to do so," he added.

But it was not the United States' role to lecture, he said, as "no one country can come crashing in and say 'do this our way, it is better'".

The 2013 document obtained by the New York Times does not identify the US law firm, but says the Australians offered the intercepts to their allies at the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Previous allegations of Australian spying on Indonesia has led to worsening ties.

The alleged documents have been leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Last month, Mr Snowden alleged that the NSA conducted industrial espionage.

In an interview with Germany's ARD TV channel, the former contractor said the agency would spy on big German companies that competed with US firms.

The February 2013 document says the Australian Signals Directorate monitored a US law firm used by the government of Indonesia for trade talks, according to the New York Times (NYT).

The Australians said that "information covered by attorney-client privilege may be included" in the intelligence they offered to share with the NSA, it says.

It is not clear which trade talks were involved.

Indonesia has recently been embroiled in a number of disputes with the US - one over the US ban of clove cigarettes, another centring on the exports of prawns which the US alleged were being sold at below-market prices.

Chicago-based firm Mayer Brown was identified by the newspaper as having advised the Indonesian government at the time. The firm has not commented, nor has the Indonesian government or the NSA.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot refused to confirm the alleged document, adding that intelligence-gathering was used "to protect our citizens and the citizens of other countries".

"We certainly don't use it for commercial purposes," Mr Abbot said.

In November, Indonesia suspended co-ordinated military co-operation with Australia amid an ongoing row over reports that Canberra spied on Jakarta officials, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The suspension included operations to stop people-smuggling, joint military exercises and intelligence exchange.

The NSA is prohibited from targeting Americans inside the US without warrants, but it can intercept the communications of Americans if they are in contact with a foreign intelligence target abroad.

In August last year, Russia granted Mr Snowden asylum for one year, after he leaked details of US electronic surveillance programmes.

The US has charged Mr Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence.

The family's consent is needed so PSA can announce, alongside 2013 results on Wednesday, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on a recapitalization deal under which the French state and Chinese partner Dongfeng (0489.HK) will both take direct stakes in the group.

Peugeot is also expected to announce a separate European car loans alliance with Spain's Banco Santander (SAN.MC).

Both projects will be on the table of board meetings of the Peugeot family holdings FFP and Etablissements Peugeot Freres on Monday, a source close to the family said.

"They will decide their position on both the MoU and the Santander project," the source said.

Peugeot, battered by a prolonged slump in demand for cars in Europe and sustained by 7 billion euros of state guarantees, has been in talks with Dongfeng for months over a rescue plan that would see the Chinese automaker and French government take matching stakes.

Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters after a new round of talks in China this week that PSA reached an outline deal with Dongfeng and the French state to raise up to 4 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in fresh capital and deepen cooperation with the Chinese carmaker.

The Peugeot clan, which has controlled the company since the early days of the automobile in the 19th century, currently has a 25 percent stake commanding 38 percent of voting rights.

The deal approved in principle by the board would make its holdings fall to 14 percent, a level equal to those of the French government and Dongfeng, sources said.

A key unknown at this stage is the position of Thierry Peugeot, currently head of the group's supervisory board and a fervent advocate of maintaining the group's independence.

In parallel, Peugeot is close to reaching an agreement with Banco Santander on a European car loans alliance aimed at eventually replacing the French state guarantees that are keeping the carmaker afloat, sources also told Reuters last week.

Under the agreement, Madrid-based Santander would enter 50-50 joint ventures with Banque PSA Finance in European markets and pay cash to acquire a portfolio of loans from the carmaker's financing arm, the sources said.

The planned share sale to Dongfeng and the French government may be the French automaker's last survival hope after the failure of earlier deal talks with U.S.-based General Motors (GM.N).

It would avoid emails and other data automatically passing through the United States.

In her weekly podcast, she said she would raise the issue on Wednesday with French President Francois Hollande.

Revelations of mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) have prompted huge concern in Europe.

Disclosures by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden suggested even the mobile phones of US allies, such as Mrs Merkel, had been monitored by American spies.

Classified NSA documents revealed that large amounts of personal data are collected from the internet by US and British surveillance.

Mrs Merkel criticised the fact that Facebook and Google can be based in countries with low levels of data protection while carrying out business in nations that offer more rigorous safeguards.

"Above all, we'll talk about European providers that offer security for our citizens, so that one shouldn't have to send emails and other information across the Atlantic," she said.

"Rather, one could build up a communication network inside Europe."

Sensitive

There was no doubt that Europe had to do more in the realm of data protection, she said.

A French official was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying that the government in Paris planned to take up the German initiative.

Personal privacy is a sensitive issue in Germany where extensive surveillance was carried out under the Nazis and in communist East Germany.

A foreign policy spokesman for Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats, Philipp Missfelder, recently said revelations about US spying had helped bring relations with Washington down to their worst level since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr he said an independent Scotland would have to apply for membership and get the approval of all current member states.

Scotland's Finance Minister described his comments as "pretty preposterous".

John Swinney said Mr Barroso's view was based on a false comparison.

The referendum on Scottish independence will be held on 18 September, with voters being asked the Yes/No question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"

New state

In his interview with Andrew Marr, Mr Barroso said: "In case there is a new country, a new state, coming out of a current member state it will have to apply."

He said it was important that "accession to the European Union will have to be approved by all other member states of the European Union."

He went on: "Of course it will be extremely difficult to get the approval of all the other member states to have a new member coming from one member state."

Mr Barroso cited the example of the Spanish not recognising Kosovo.

He said: "We have seen Spain has been opposing even the recognition of Kosovo, for instance. So it is to some extent a similar case because it's a new country and so I believe it's going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, a new member state coming out of our countries getting the agreement of the others."

However, Mr Barroso made clear that it was up to the people of Scotland to decide their future, and he said he did not want to interfere in that process.

In its White Paper on independence, launched in November, the Scottish government said the country would look to gain membership through Article 48 of the Treaty of the European Union.

It said such a move could be achieved within 18 months of a "Yes" vote.

'Agreed process'

Speaking on the BBC's Sunday Politics programme, Mr Swinney said: "I think President Barroso's remarks are pretty preposterous.

"He's set out his position linking and comparing Scotland to the situation in Kosovo.

"Scotland has been a member of the EU for 40 years - we're already part of the European Union."

Mr Swinney said there was no indication any member state would veto Scotland's membership, including Spain where Catalan separatists are pushing for independence.

The Fed, whose board of governors meets on Tuesday, will require overseas banks to hold as much capital in the United States as their local rivals.

The reform is designed to address concerns that U.S. taxpayers will need to foot the bill if European and Asian regulators treat U.S. subsidiaries with low priority if they need to rescue one of their banks.

Foreign banks with sizeable operations on Wall Street such as Deutsche Bank and Barclays have pushed back hard against the plan because it means they will need to transfer costly capital from Europe.

Fed Governor Daniel Tarullo, in charge of financial regulation, has given little sign the Fed will relent, however, and the financial industry expects no wholesale change from when the proposed rule came out in December 2012.

"(He) certainly does not suggest that they're moving toward greater leniency, at least for the largest institutions," said Greg Lyons, a partner working on banking regulation at law firm Debevoise & Plimpton in New York.

The Fed declined to comment.

Europe and the United States have squabbled over how to apply their rules to overseas banking units, and the Fed's plan, as well as its tougher reading of globally agreed capital rules, have widened the rift.

The Fed proposal requires the largest overseas banks to set up an intermediate holding company in the United States that will be subject to the same capital, leverage and other requirements as U.S. bank holding companies.

This would give banks less flexibility to move money around than under the current rules, which allow banks to use capital legally allocated in their home country. In some cases, the U.S. rules are tougher than elsewhere.

TIT FOR TAT

One of the changes the Fed's five-member board may make when it votes on the final rule is to lower the number of banks that need to comply with the strictest requirements, several people working in the industry said.

"We believe ... that they ... carved it back to those foreign banks that have $50 billion in assets here in the U.S.," said one industry source.

The five-year loan will be provided by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia's Samba Financial Group, the sources who both have knowledge of the matter said. They spoke on condition of anonymity as the information is not public.

Du declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

The interest rate which du will pay for the new loan will be 140 basis points over the London interbank offered rate (Libor), the sources said.

Bankers not involved in the deal remarked that the pricing which du ultimately got from the three lenders was extremely cheap, especially as it had managed to negotiate a loan with a five-year lifespan.

"There have been talks for maybe 3-4 months between the company and banks but while they wanted five years, the most that banks were prepared to offer was three years - especially at the pricing levels they wanted," said one of the bankers not involved in the transaction.

By comparison, Commercial Bank of Qatar, the Gulf Arab state's second-largest lender by assets, is currently marketing a $600 million loan, split between a two- and three-year portion, which pays 120 and 140 bps respectively when the margin is combined with the fees a bank will earn.

Du's new loan will replace two existing debt facilities.

The first is a $220 million three-year loan which expires in June. That transaction paid a margin of 145 bps over Libor and was provided by Dubai lenders Emirates NBD and Mashreq as well as NBAD and Samba, according to Thomson Reuters data.

It will also replace a $500 million facility raised in late-2012, which is due to run until 2017 and pays a margin of 175 bps over Libor. The banks who funded that deal were ADCB, Mashreq, NBAD and Samba.

Du joins other companies which are currently raising cash to refinance existing debt, even if those facilities still have a substantial amount of time to run.

Emirates Steel is seeking $1.3 billion from banks to replace debt and fund the purchase of assets from its parent firm, even though the original deal has more than three years to run.

In some apps, the price for free is in-your-face marketing. That means kids are bombarded with banner ads for a variety of products and/or enticed into downloading dubious games as a "reward."

Another form of free apps is called freemium. In this model, you can play the game for free, but the gameplay is set up to get frustrating unless you buy your way out of difficult or time-sucking situations.

The better route to go when kids are involved is free apps that are genuinely free or apps that provide some content for free and then offer more as an in-app purchase presented only to parents. That way kids can enjoy a free app without suffering through hidden or aggressive in-app marketing.

Here are five apps that use that better route — they are truly free and good for kids.

NFL Play 60

(American Heart Association, best for ages 4-up, Free, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad)

Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)

Combining real exercise with an endless runner app, The American Heart Association, in conjunction with National Football League, has created a free app that gets kids moving. To make their character run on the screen, kids have to actually run in place and jump while holding their device. Kids earn coins by tilting the device to shift their running character onto different paths. The goal is to run as far as you can without being stopped by an obstacle. By copying the gameplay made popular by well-known endless runners such as Temple Run and Despicable Me: Minion Rush, kids will be drawn to the gaming while getting fit.

Awesome Eats

Whole Foods Foundation, best for ages 6-up, Free, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 3.5 stars

Foods become characters in this fast-paced game about sorting, stacking and packing veggies, fruits and recycling. Sandwiched between fun puzzle levels about flinging anthropomorphized food onto the correct conveyor belt are messages from the Whole Foods Foundation about healthy eating. This app is a winner because it combines quick thinking and fast food flinging into a game that imparts healthy advice.

Alien Assignment

Fred Rogers Center at Saint Vincent College, best for ages 4-8, Free, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

Rating: 4 stars

The princes showed up at 6 a.m. local time in the flood-hit village of Datchet, west of London.

The community is one of several in Berkshire and Surrey to have been hit by flooding in recent days after the River Thames burst its banks.

Nearly 6,000 homes have been inundated along the Thames Valley and elsewhere following England's wettest January in 2½ centuries.

Some communities in low-lying areas of Somerset, in southwest England, have been under water since December.

And there's no letup in sight just yet.

The Environment Agency has warned of more flooding along the Thames over the weekend as the river reaches its highest level in 60 years.

A powerful Atlantic storm that is blowing in on Friday will add to people's woes.

Power outages

It comes only two days after a storm blasted western Wales and northwest England, as well as parts of Ireland, with gale-force winds.

Some 450,000 properties were affected by power outages as a result of Wednesday's storm.

Only 16,000, almost all of them in Wales, were still without power Friday morning, according to the Energy Networks Association, but high winds could cause new problems.

The severe weather has affected travel, with many trains delayed or canceled. A sea wall under one coastal section on the main rail line to the southwest collapsed after high seas pummeled it.

There were 18 severe flood warnings, meaning a danger to life, in place Friday, most of them in southeast England. Warnings of high winds are also in place for parts of southern England.

In the past few days, more than 1,000 homes have been flooded in well-heeled communities along the Thames Valley, including Maidenhead and Windsor, where Queen Elizabeth has a castle.

The Environment Agency warned the area could expect "widespread flooding affecting significant numbers of properties and whole communities and significant disruption to travel" in the coming days.

Climate change role?

Central London has been protected from flooding by the Thames Barrier, which prevents high tides surging up the tidal river when it is already full.

The Met Office, the UK's national weather service, said the recent series of winter storms "has been exceptional in its duration, and has led to the wettest December to January period in the UK since records began."

But it's not yet able to say whether climate change is a factor in the extreme weather, as some observers have suggested.

Rakuten offers services from financing to shopping to online video on its e-commerce platform, the largest in Japan. But in the face of a shrinking population and weak consumer spending at home, Mikitani is trying to re-invent Rakuten as a one-stop-site for a global audience.

Privately held Viber, run from Cyprus by Israeli entrepreneur Talmon Marco, will add 300 million users to Rakuten's existing 200 million users, Mikitani told reporters in Tokyo.

"This acquisition... will take Rakuten to a different level," said Mikitani, who is also the company's chief executive. The all-cash deal was announced after Rakuten reported an 80 percent jump in its 2013 operating profit.

"Developing this messaging system on our own would have been impossible," he added, saying Rakuten users could, for example, use Viber's instant messages to contact an online store while considering a purchase.

Viber is one of the top five most downloaded smartphone phone call and messaging apps, and counts the United States, Russia and Australia among its biggest markets.

Its chief executive Marco told the same media conference Rakuten's acquisition would help his company become a platform for digital content, not just a provider of free voice calls and messages.

A plethora of messaging apps, including the likes of Viber, are seeking to capitalize on the appeal of their free services, especially in emerging markets.

Viber is funded from the pockets of its founders and several private investors from the United States. It competes with instant messaging apps such as WeChat, a unit of Chinese Internet firm Tencent Holdings Ltd, U.S. rival WhatsApp, and Line, owned by Korean company Naver Corp.

Viber recently launched an instant messaging app for personal computers that allows users to make outgoing mobile calls to other Viber users and non-registered mobiles, making it a rival to Skype.

The acquisition by Rakuten is expected to be completed by the end of March, both companies said.

Remember when we loved technology? I like it not just for all the great things it can help us do, but also for that ineffable feeling of wonder that a bright technological idea can sometimes give us. Remember when you first started to play with the Internet? The first time you Skyped with a loved one far away? The first text from someone who claimed all this digital stuff was too hard?

What we need is a tech pick-me-up. I've collected a few little apps to remind us that tech can still have the capacity to amaze. Are they moon shots? No, but they all brought a smile to my face.

Vyclone is one of the first indications of what can be done with the mass of filmed material out there. A few years back, Microsoft Labs debuted an amazing program, Photosynth, which stitched together photos on the Internet to give us amazing 3D visualizations of massively photographed sites like the Notre Dame cathedral.

Vyclone is on the trail of something similar, except with video. The program takes different snatches of film from the same event — a wedding, say, or a music concert — and creates a crude but passable edited chronicle of it.

Are the results perfect? No. But think about it. There are all sorts of public events these days being filmed by dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people. The potential here — instant, 360-degree filmed coverage of certain events — is mindboggling.

Next, did you know your smartphone could be a metal detector? There are several metal detector apps available at the Apple App Store or Google Play. I tried Metal Detector from the App Store.

Fire it up and turn the knob on your screen to the right to bring it to maximum intensity.

Move around your house and you'll see that the app does indeed work as advertised. Like most metal detectors, it's looking for magnetic fields, so it won't register nonferrous metal — i.e. not iron or steel. Still, it's a fun app. (Spoiler alert: The app uses the same magnetic detector used by the phone's compass app, which is worth playing with in and of itself.)

Here's another: I'm sure you've heard about the new driverless cars Google is pioneering. Just imagine the technology the company has stuffed into each of those. Tellingly, your phone can already begin to perform some of those tricks.

The reason?

If the giant cable merger announced today is approved by regulators without any conditions to protect consumers, the deal will be a disaster both for users who want access to low-cost, Web-based entertainment and for the companies that want to deliver it.

The acquisition could put a major hurt on Apple CEO Tim Cook and the company's shareholders, who've been hoping for more than a year that a digital entertainment device might help revive the company's fading revenue growth.

The Comcast offer came amid reports this week that Apple was once again negotiating with Time Warner to license movies and TV programs for the long-rumored Apple TV platform.

Without that type of premium content, any future Apple device will likely be a poorly-selling box that consumers can't watch much with.

But in the wake of the Comcast's announcement, any leverage Apple may have gained in those talks by playing America's two largest cable rivals against each other has evaporated.

It's as if Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has told the Apple CEO, "Here's what I think of your latest proposal to Time Warner, Mr. Cook!"

Roberts is no fool. He and others in the cable industry have seen how Apple's iTunes store has eviscerated the profit margins of the music business.

Cable companies aren't about to let another new technology from Apple -- or any other innovative company -- destroy their business model, at least not without a fight.

And the cable giants have a weapon which the large music companies lacked in their lost war: a near-monopoly on customers in their respective geographic regions.

Consumers who've seen their access to television networks such as CBS and cable channels such as The Weather Channel blocked by pay TV operators during contract negotiations can attest to who has the power in today's market for TV news and entertainment.

The same fate may now await Netflix and its users in any future negotiations the on-demand video service has with cable companies.

And those negotiations will be about more than just content.