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Comcast and Netflix made the joint announcement on Sunday, marking the first time that Netflix is paying for faster speeds in the U.S. after customers complained about slow service. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The arrangement comes as federal regulators are wrestling with an issue known as "Net neutrality" concerning broadband providers and whether they can slow down traffic to particular websites, potentially forcing content companies to pay for faster Web service.

The Federal Communications Commission said last week it plans to rewrite the rules after a U.S. court struck down the commission's previous version.

The issue is being closely watched as millions of people view movies and TV shows through streaming services offered by such companies like Netflix and Amazon.

Netflix, which got its start as a DVD-by-mail service, has 44 million subscribers worldwide and 34 million in the U.S. alone. About 7 million subscribers pay for mail delivery services.

The companies said in a statement that they have been "working collaboratively over many months" to strike a multi-year agreement. Netflix will not receive preferential network treatment, the companies said.

As part of the deal, Netflix will deliver its movies and TV programs to Comcast's broadband network directly as opposed through third party providers, giving viewers faster streaming speeds for watching movies and TV programs.

It also could force Netflix to strike similar arrangements, known in the industry as interconnect agreements, with other major broadband providers like Verizon and AT&T.

With more than 44 million subscribers throughout the world, Netflix has been making an effort to connect directly with broadband Internet providers. It has struck similar deals with Cablevision and Cox, though Netflix did not pay for these connections.

The arrangement with Netflix comes on the heels of Comcast's agreement to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, a deal that will draw the scrutiny of U.S. antitrust enforcers.

The combined company would have a near 30 percent share of the U.S. pay television market, as well as be the major provider of broadband Internet access.

The console, currently priced in the UK at £429, with a bundled game, will drop to £399 on Friday and will include major title Titanfall in the package.

So far, the drop will only apply to the UK.

The new cost brings the console in line with the price of Sony's PlayStation 4, which is outselling Microsoft's machine.

However, the PlayStation 4 can be bought without a game for £349.

"The reason we're doing this is that we're committed to giving gamers the best value that we can," said Harvey Eagle, Xbox's marketing director in the UK.

"We're only a few months into a generation of consoles that are going to last for many many years to come," he added.

"And now just feels like the right time to make the adjustment on the price."

'Appreciative'

Industry figures suggest that the PlayStation 4 is outselling the Xbox One by around two to one, with 5.3 million of Sony's machines being sold worldwide.

However, Microsoft is keen to point out that compared with their previous console, the Xbox 360, the newer model has enjoyed a "record-breaking" launch, and that sales of games have been strong.

The new, cheaper bundle will include a copy of Titanfall - a major title that Microsoft expects will significantly drive sales of the console.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Eagle defended the price change coming so soon after the console's release - and thanked those who had bought the machine early.

"We're hugely appreciative," he said.

"We would like to thank all of the people that have supported us since launch."

White elephant

The Xbox One's higher launch price was attributed in part to the inclusion of its Kinect hardware - the motion tracker that allows gamers to play without a physical controller.

However, analysts argued that while an impressive piece of technology, the Kinect does not yet offer enough innovative uses to tempt people into the extra cost.

"You've got this Kinect device that has potential to push forward what we expect a games console to do," said Nicholas Lovell, from Gamesbrief.com.

"But without the software to support it it looks like a white elephant."

Microsoft said that they regarded the console war as a "marathon" rather than a sprint - and that it was confident the added hardware would stand the Xbox One in good stead further down the line.

"We're in it for the long haul," Mr Eagle said. "Kinect is absolutely integral to Xbox One."

Microsoft's long-term strategy is to make Xbox One the "hub" of the living room - a device through which people would watch TV and other entertainment as well as play games.

But Mr Lovell had doubts - especially as ever-more-powerful tablets and smartphones put this approach under threat.

With 450 million users worldwide, WhatsApp and its competitors South Korea's KakaoTalk and China's WeChat have punched a hole in telecom operators' revenue in recent years by offering a free alternative to text messaging.

The news that the most powerful of them was adding voice calls to its service will likely be seen as worrying for telecom operators globally, which got about $120 billion from text messaging last year, according to market researcher Ovum.

"We are driven by the mission that people should be able to stay in touch anywhere and affordably. Our goal is to be on every mobile phone in the world," Koum said on Monday, speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Koum said WhatsApp's acquisition by Facebook would not alter his roadmap to develop the product to reach the next 1 billion users. No advertising will added to the service, he said.

Facebook's Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg was also slated to speak at 1700 GMT.

WhatsApp's Koum also sought to cast himself as a partner to telecom operators and not simply a competitor. He announced a partnership with KPN's E-Plus under which it will launch a WhatsApp branded mobile service in Germany.

"We are working with carriers in established markets to bring value to end users," he said.

Reported pre-tax profit was $22.6bn (£13.6bn), compared with $20.6bn in 2012, the bank said.

HSBC said it had also increased its bonus pool for staff by 6% to $3.9bn for last year.

Chief executive Stuart Gulliver also saw his overall pay rise last year. He received a total pay package of £8m, up from £7.5m in 2012.

The bank also revealed that 239 of its staff, 93 of whom are in the UK, had been paid £1m or more last year.

HSBC also said that for 2014, it would offer senior staff higher fixed-pay allowances.

The move will enable the bank to sidestep new European rules, which came into force in January, preventing bankers from being paid bonuses worth more than twice their salary.

TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady criticised the move.

"It would be great if banks put the same effort into lending to small businesses and investing in infrastructure as they do to getting round EU rules on boardroom bonuses," she said.

Cost cutting

HSBC sold or closed 20 non-strategic businesses last year as it streamlined the business.

"The group today is leaner and simpler than in 2011, with strong potential for growth," said chief executive Stuart Gulliver.

Hong Kong and Asia Pacific were responsible for the bulk of the group's profits.

The banking group said it had cut its full-time staff equivalent numbers by 41,000 to 254,000 over the past three years.

Operating expenses also fell by 6% over the year, but the fall was less than analysts had forecast.

Choppy markets ahead

The bank also warned that it expected "greater volatility" and "choppy markets" this year.

"Overall, we remain optimistic about the longer-term prospects of emerging markets," it added.

Shares fell more than 3% after the results.

Gary Greenwood, analyst at Shore Capital, said the results, which were lower than consensus expectations, were "disappointing".

It's no secret that the technology sector currently has a dearth of women in the workforce.

There has already been considerable discussion and research about the fact that girls are not choosing to study STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, how a divide exists between men and women with access to the Internet, how much GDP could increase if the number of digital jobs held by women was on a par with men...the list goes on.

Clearly we need more women working in the mobile and ICT industry, and more women getting connected by mobile.

In other words, we are calling for more mobile women -- empowered by mobile and upwardly mobile as a result. Making women aware of the many opportunities enabled by mobile -- and holding challenging and well-remunerated positions -- is a passion of mine.

I always knew I wanted to work in an exciting and innovative industry. I recognized that computer science and telecoms were burgeoning sectors, and I pursued them knowing that this unchartered territory would be rife with opportunities.

Even at the start of my career, I had a desire to make a difference in an environment that was constantly evolving and pioneering.

Two decades later, the industry is still just as exciting. However, while new generations of women are increasingly embracing technology in their everyday lives, they may not realize just how dynamic it is to work in mobile and ICT.

I will dispel the myth now: hardly anyone I know who works in technology is a "geek" who sits glued to their computer screen for 20 hours a day. Of course there are enormous opportunities for people with deep technological skills, but there are just as many for people who want to support the full potential of mobile, whether it's creating connected cars, advancing mobile commerce, or even designing the master plan for a smart city.

There are opportunities to do almost anything.

In fact, women in the ICT industry earn almost 9% more than those in other parts of the economy. Yet they constitute only 30% of the ICT workforce in Europe, and also often leave the industry early, missing out on the chance to get to the top.

We need to make women in mobile and ICT the norm rather than the exception -- and also encourage those that are on the path not to abandon it.

Russia, Yanukovich's main backer, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian authorities, declaring that Russian citizens' lives were under threat there, and contacted NATO to express concern.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton arrived in Kiev to discuss measures to shore up the ailing economy, which the finance ministry said needs urgent financial assistance to avoid default.

The EU has contacted the United States, Japan, China, Canada and Turkey to coordinate aid for Ukraine, a senior European Commission official said. France's foreign minister said an international donors' conference was being discussed.

Yanukovich, 63, who fled Kiev by helicopter on Friday, was still at large after heading first to his power base in the east, where he was prevented from flying out of the country, and then diverting south to Crimea, acting interior minister Arsen Avakov said.

"An official case for the mass murder of peaceful citizens has been opened," Avakov wrote on his Facebook profile. "Yanukovich and other people responsible for this have been declared wanted."

Yanukovich had left a private residence in Balaclava, in pro-Russian Crimea, for an unknown destination by car with one of his aides and a handful of security guards, Avakov said.

It was an ignominious political end for Yanukovich who has been publicly deserted by some of his closest erstwhile allies, stripped of his luxury residence near Kiev and had to witness the release from prison of his arch-rival Yulia Tymoshenko.

AMBASSADOR RECALLED

Russia recalled its ambassador from Kiev for consultations on Sunday, accusing the opposition of having torn up a transition agreement with the president it supported.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Moscow had grave doubts about the legitimacy of those now in power in Ukraine and their recognition by some states was an "aberration".

"We do not understand what is going on there. There is a real threat to our interests and to the lives of our citizens," Medvedev was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Russia cited a duty to protect the lives of its citizens in 2008 as one justification for military intervention in Georgia, another former Soviet republic, in support of Kremlin-backed separatists in South Ossetia.

On Independence Square in central Kiev, cradle of the uprising, barricades of old furniture and car tires remained in place, with smoke rising from camp fires among tents occupied by diehards vowing to stay until elections in May.

The company introduced the Windows 8 operating system in 2012. It was optimized to allow users on tablets and phones to input commands by touching their screens.

However the changes weren't always helpful to users on computers, where touch wasn't an option. The gesture commands didn't translate well for traditional mouse and keyboards.

"We are making improvements to the user interface that will naturally bridge touch and desktop, especially for our mouse and keyboard users," Microsoft vice president Joe Belfiore posted to his blog on Sunday.

He added, "Don't worry, we still LOVE and BELIEVE IN touch… but you'll like how much more smooth and convenient these changes make mouse and keyboard use!"

The new update to Windows 8.1 will come this spring, Belfiore said Sunday at the Mobile World Congress being held in Barcelona, Spain.

Search, power and settings buttons will be added to the Windows Start page, so that users don't have to figure out how to pull those functions like a sock drawer from the right. There also will be easier, touch-free ways to close apps.

Belfiore said 40% of devices using Windows 8 sold in the United States are touch enabled.

The latest contender is the Blackphone, an Android software-based mobile which encrypts texts, voice calls and video chats and will be launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday.

It aims to tap into the market for so-called mobile security management (MSM) products, which was estimated at $560 million in 2013 and is expected to nearly double in size to $1 billion a year by 2015, according to ABI Research.

Deutsche Telekom is also preparing to launch a smartphone app that encrypts voice and text messages, making it the first major network operator with a mass market-compatible product that will be rolled out to all its users.

Edward Snowden set off a global furor when he told newspapers last year the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was mining the personal data of users of firms such as Google, Facebook and Skype in a secret program codenamed Prism.

Further leaks from the former NSA contractor, who faces espionage charges at home and has temporary asylum in Russia, suggested the United States had monitored phone conversations of some 35 world leaders, including Germany's Angela Merkel.

The Blackphone is the result of cooperation between security software company Silent Circle and Spanish handset maker GeeksPhone and they will launch it at the Barcelona event, Europe's largest annual phone industry conference.

While details about the handset have been closely guarded, analysts expect it to cost less than high-end iPhone models.

The Deutsche Telekom cloud-based app service, which will be officially unveiled at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover next month, will be run with Germany's Sichere Mobile Kommunikation mbH (GSMK), a provider of encrypted phone services and devices.

GSMK, which has seen the number of customer inquiries it receives rise fivefold since the Snowden leaks, has long been offering phones with encryption services to governments and firms willing to fork out 1,300-2,500 euros per handset.

However, such new offerings as the app and the Blackphone mean such secure communications are ready to reach mass-market consumers.

WHATSAPP

Free text messaging service WhatsApp, which Facebook agreed to acquire for $19 billion last week, is a well-known product which has reaped the benefit of growing consumer awareness of privacy issues.

Private communication is one of its appeals - it does not store the names of its more than 450 million users and instead simply uses phone numbers - making it hard to identify who is chatting with whom.

The companies detailed the lack of progress in a court filing Friday. Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court in San Jose has been pushing the two sides to settle the two-year-old case.

While the two sides said they remain willing to work through a mediator, the lack of a settlement points them toward a trial in March.

The world's top two smartphone makers have waged legal battles over mobile devices since Apple accused Samsung of copying the iPhone and the iPad in 2011. Later, Samsung claimed Apple used its technologies without permissions, expanding battles to courts in Asia, Europe and North America.

In November, a Silicon Valley jury tacked on damages that a previous jury said Samsung owes Apple for copying vital iPhone and iPad features, bringing the total award to $930 million.

The previous verdict covered 13 older Samsung devices. Samsung has said it would appeal.

The latest trial will consider Apple's claims that Samsung's newest devices, such as its Galaxy S III, also copied Apple's technology.

Until now, all Fits sold in North America were imported from Japan. Fit is the smallest car that Honda sells in the U.S. A crossover vehicle is also expected to be made off the same Fit platform at the plant.

Honda is investing $800 million in the assembly plant and $470 million in the adjacent transmission plant in Celaya because of Celaya's lower labor rates and proximity to two port cities, one on the Pacific Coast, the other on the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the latest in a series of new investments automakers are making in Mexico. Chrysler, Nissan and Volkswagen are all either expanding or opening new plants south of the border.

Rick Schostek, a Honda vice president, said Celaya has access to a rail line and highways for shipping parts and finished cars.

Celaya, with a population of more than 300,000, is about three hours by car northwest of Mexico City.

"The officials in Mexico were very great to deal with. We had good cooperation and partnership with them," he said.

The new Fit has been redesigned with more interior and cargo space.

In 2013, Honda sold 53,513 Fits in the U.S., up 8.4% from 2012. The Fit competes with the Ford Fiesta, Nissan Versa, Toyota Yaris and Chevrolet Sonic.

Honda's new Mexican assembly plant will employ 1,600 now and grow to 3,200 when it reaches full production at the end of this year. The plant is capable of making about 200,000 cars annually. The new transmission plant will employ 1,500 when it opens in 2015.

Vienna was followed by Zurich and Auckland, New Zealand. In fourth place was Munich while Vancouver, Canada, placed fifth -- the highest-ranked city in North America. Germany's Dusseldorf and Frankfurt take sixth and seventh place.

Mercer's annual survey is conducted to help employers work out what to pay and compensate their employees when placing them on international assignments.

"European cities enjoy a high overall quality of living compared to those in other regions," wrote Slagin Parakatil, a senior researcher at Mercer.

"Healthcare, infrastructure, and recreational facilities are generally of a very high standard. Political stability and relatively low crime levels enable expatriates to feel safe and secure in most locations."

London did not make the top 10, thanks to poor scores for its air pollution and traffic congestion. Mercer did note that London, which made it to 38th in the survey, did have world-class recreational facilities and a great selection of shops.

Singapore was the highest-ranked Asian city, at number 25, while Dubai took top slot for the Middle East and Africa, although the UAE city was 73rd on the global list.

The highest ranking U.S. city was San Francisco, at 27th in the poll, while New York was at number 43. Bankrupt Detroit was the lowest-ranked U.S. city at 70th in the global list.

Baghdad in Iraq was once again last in the rankings, with Bangui in the war-torn Central African Republic and Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince placing in 222nd and 221st places respectively. Mercer's report provides information on over 460 cities while the rankings cover just 223.

Emerging metropolises

Aside from the cities at the top and the bottom, Parakatil said that the 2014 survey recognized "second tier" or "emerging" cities around the world. "These cities have been investing massively in their infrastructure and attracting foreign direct investments by providing incentives such as tax, housing, or entry facilities," Parakatil wrote in the report.

"Emerging cities will become major players that traditional financial centres and capital cities will have to compete with."

Although figures are scarce, analysts think selling data on mobile users' locations, movements, and web browsing habits may grow into a multi billion-dollar market for the business.

Big carriers like Telefonica, Verizon, Orange and Singapore's Starhub warn that they are only just starting to test the waters and pledge to market only anonymous crowd information to protect customers.

They are also promoting their big data products as being helpful well beyond the realms of advertising - for credit card companies wanting to detect fraud, for ambulance operators plotting routes to avoid traffic, and for public health officials responding to outbreaks of flu.

But while some carriers have decided to press on with developing their data business since former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's disclosures, others have started pitching themselves as their customers' best allies in seeking to hide from any prying eyes.

Verizon's Precision Marketing Insights product, which offers businesses statistics about mobile users in a given area, was in commercial trials with sports teams and billboard owners when the Snowden allegations hit. After fresh debate by top management and the board on whether selling even anonymous data on customers was a good move, the company decided to go ahead with it, said Colson Hillier, a Verizon executive.

"Privacy is a hot button issue right now, but we think we can take a leadership stance," Hillier said. "It's not a reputational risk if you do it right and are pro-active in communication with consumers and policy makers."

Other telecom companies took the opposite tack, casting themselves as better guardians of customer data than internet companies like Google, which use it to target advertising.

Deutsche Telekom, for example, last year launched an encrypted "Email made in Germany" service and a secure communications link for small businesses to ward off hackers or spooks. "Protection of the private sphere is a valuable commodity," its CEO said.