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Hope, a former British Treasury official and now head of compliance at Hong Kong-based MatrixVision, says that while Mt. Gox's fate is unclear, its troubles form part of a wider shift as more professional players move into the bitcoin mainstream.

"It's good for us as a business, not so good for us as consumers," he said. "Over the longer term it will be good for bitcoin because over time the entire ecosystem will be made more robust."

Steve Beauregard, CEO and founder of Singapore-based GoCoin, is more blunt about Mt. Gox's woes: "It's important in the sense of sweeping away a lot of the early unsophisticated folk who got into this and made a name for themselves, but didn't have the management horsepower to manage a company."

Mt. Gox, at one time the biggest bitcoin exchange, abruptly stopped trading this week amid reports on the internet that more than 744,000 bitcoins - worth around $380 million at prevailing rates - had been stolen. If accurate, that would mean around 6 percent of the world's 12.4 million bitcoins minted would be missing. The exchange's CEO Mark Karpeles told Reuters in an email that his company was "at a turning point" and would issue a statement "soon-ish." His LinkedIn profile reads: "I have a long experience in company creation, and experienced almost any imaginable kind of trouble."

On Wednesday, Japan said its authorities were looking into the Mt. Gox closure, and The Wall Street Journal reported that the virtual currency's exchange had received a subpoena from federal prosecutors in New York. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan did not respond to requests for comment.

Also, the European Banking Authority warned bitcoin users they were on their own when it comes to losses from using unregulated online currencies, noting there is no safety net as with mainstream bank deposits. "Currently, no specific regulatory protections exist in the EU that would protect consumers from financial losses if a platform that exchanges or holds virtual currencies fails or goes out of business," it said in a statement.

The 1,400 gold pieces, dating to the mid- to late 1800s and still in nearly mint condition, were discovered buried in eight decaying metal cans on the couple's land last April, said coin expert David McCarthy of currency firm Kagin's.

"We've seen shipwrecks in the past where thousands of gold coins were found in very high grade, but a buried treasure of this sort is unheard of," McCarthy said. "I've never seen this face value in North America and you never see coins in the condition we have here."

Kagin's has declined to identify the couple, who according to the firm want to remain anonymous for fear treasure hunters will descend on their property in Northern California's so-called Gold Country, named after the state's 1849 Gold Rush.

The couple had been walking their dog when they came across a rusty metal can sticking out of the ground and dug it out. After finding gold coins inside they searched further and found the rest of the cache.

Also unclear is who hid the gold pieces, which were minted between 1847 and 1894, in a variety of 19th-century metal cans on land that eventually became part of the couple's yard.

McCarthy said it was curious that the containers were discovered scattered across one section of the property at different depths, suggesting that they were not all put there at the same time.

The $20 gold pieces appeared to have been new when they went into the ground and had suffered little damage from being in the soil for so long.

McCarthy said the couple wisely refrained from cleaning the coins themselves and brought a sampling of them to him in little baggies, still covered in soil.

"I picked up one of bags. It was an 1890 $20 gold piece. It was covered in dirt," McCarthy said, recalling when he first saw one of the gold pieces. "An area of the coin was exposed and the metal looked as if it had just been struck yesterday."

His company took what became known as the "Saddle Ridge Hoard" to an independent coin-grading service, which found that it was comprised of nearly 1,400 $20 gold pieces, 50 $10 gold pieces and four $5 gold pieces. One of the coins, a so-called 1866-S No Motto Double Eagle, is said to be valued at $1 million on its own.

"The Saddle Ridge Hoard discovery is one of the most amazing numismatic stories I've ever heard," said Don Willis, president of Professional Coin Grading Service. "This will be regarded as one of the best stories in the history of our hobby."

Using computer-generated augmented reality, the patient can see and move a virtual arm controlled by their stump.

Electric signals from the muscles in the amputated limb "talk" to the computer, allowing real-time movement.

Amputee Ture Johanson says his pain has reduced dramatically thanks to the new computer program, which he now uses regularly in his home. He now has periods when he is free of pain and he is no longer woken at night by intense periods of pain.

Mr Johanson, who is 73 and lives in Sweden, lost half of his right arm in a car accident 48 years ago.

After a below-elbow amputation he faced daily pain and discomfort emanating from his now missing arm and hand.

Over the decades he has tried numerous therapies, including hypnosis, to no avail.

Within weeks of starting on the augmented reality treatment in Max Ortiz Catalan's clinic at Chalmers University of Technology, his pain has now eased.

"The pain is much less now. I still have it often but it is shorter, for only a few seconds where before it was for minutes. "And I now feel it only in my little finger and the top of my ring finger. Before it was from my wrist to my little finger."

Mr Johanson says he has noticed other benefits too. He now perceives his phantom hand to be in a resting, relaxed position rather than a clenched fist.

"Can you imagine? For 48 years my hand was in a fist but after some weeks with this training I found that it was different. It was relaxed. It had opened."

Mr Johanson has also learned to control the movements of his phantom hand even when he is not wired up to the computer or watching the virtual limb.

Max Ortiz Catalan, the brains behind the new treatment, says giving the muscles a work-out while being able to watch the actions carried out may be key to the therapy.

"The motor areas in the brain needed for movement of the amputated arm are reactivated, and the patient obtains visual feedback that tricks the brain into believing there is an arm executing such motor commands. He experiences himself as a whole, with the amputated arm back in place."

Didn't think so. Apparently not many others did, either. So after three-plus years, the world's largest social media outlet is pulling the plug on its little-used e-mail service, the company confirmed Tuesday.

"We're making this change because most people haven't been using their Facebook e-mail address, and we can focus on improving our mobile messaging experience for everyone," Facebook said in a statement.

For those who do have a Facebook mail account, messages will be forwarded to the primary e-mail address listed in a user's account, the company said. The changes are planned to roll out in March, and users can turn off that forwarding option if they prefer not to have their personal inboxes flooded with these messages.

"It's a little bit of bowing to the inevitable," said Justin Lafferty, editor of the trade site Inside Facebook. The e-mail addresses, which showed up as messages for Facebook users, never took off, and when Facebook tried to make them the default e-mail accounts for all users in mid-2012, "a lot of people were unhappy with that," he said.

"It was kind of rolled out to everyone regardless of what they wanted," Lafferty said.

With last week's $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, the fast-growing messaging service, Facebook is focusing more on mobile messaging than e-mail these days.

Facebook ventured into the e-mail field in November 2010, adding the service to the messaging system already used heavily by its 1.2 billion users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time that the system would complement, not compete, with entrenched e-mail giants such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

"We don't expect anyone to wake up tomorrow and say, 'I'm going to shut down my Yahoo account or my Gmail account and switch exclusively to Facebook.' But we do expect a shift to more real-time communication," he said.

Lafferty said the reversal is unlikely to be remembered in the company's annals -- much like the service itself.

Desperate to protect their technology patent advantages and maximise revenues in a fiercely competitive industry, scores of companies, including Apple, Samsung and Google, are embroiled in disputes among themselves and with others.

World No. 3 smartphone maker Huawei took its grievance to the European Commission two years ago, saying InterDigital demanded "exploitative" fees for the use of its 3G mobile phone patents. InterDigital could have been fined up to 10 percent of its revenues if the Commission had found in favour of Huawei.

InterDigital's revenue was $325.4 million last year.

The two companies however resolved their patent licensing disputes in December, agreeing to withdraw lawsuits and antitrust complaints against each other, the Commission said.

"The Commission was informed of the withdrawal of Huawei's complaint on 7 January 2014. The case has therefore been closed. There was no formal investigation," Antoine Colombani, spokesman for competition policy at the EU executive, said.

Speaking at the end of his weekly general audience, the Pope said he hoped that "violence and hostility will cease as soon as possible".

He called on the Venezuelan people "to promote reconciliation through mutual forgiveness and sincere dialogue".

His appeal came after more than two weeks of anti-government protests, some of which have ended in violent clashes. Mounting unrest

Venezuela's Attorney General Luisa Ortega says 13 people have died in protest-related violence, but opposition groups say the number of dead has risen to at least 15 after the death of two more protesters on Monday.

And on Wednesday, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said a Spanish national had been killed during a demonstration in Venezuela's third-largest city, Valencia.

Mr Garcia-Margallo did not say how the Spaniard was killed.

The recent unrest started in the western state of Tachira and neighbouring Merida at the beginning of February.

Students took to the streets, angered by Venezuela's high crime rate and economic woes, including record inflation and shortages of basic goods. After the arrest of dozens of students, the protests spread to the capital, Caracas.

Anti-government protesters have held daily protests since, especially in their stronghold in eastern Caracas, where they have erected barricades.

Roads were also blocked in various locations in the states of Maracaibo, Tachira, Carabobo and Aragua, but the protests seem to have diminished in intensity over the past days. 'Last legs'

In an interview with BBC Mundo, opposition leader Henrique Capriles blamed President Maduro for the poor state of the Venezuelan economy. "Nicolas [Maduro] is the one who has to answer for the economic crisis. And if there's no answer, then this creates a political crisis, and if there's no answer to the political crisis, the regime falls," he told BBC Mundo's Daniel Pardo.

Mr Capriles, who narrowly lost to Mr Maduro in April's presidential election, said the government was "on its last legs".

He said the government was "set on a self-destructive course".

Mr Capriles, who has repeatedly called for peaceful demonstrations and urged his supporters to refrain from erecting barricades, stressed that he "wanted change for my country, but within the constitution".

Meanwhile, supporters of President Maduro have been holding rival rallies over the past weeks to show their backing for the government.

Brady Dougan will tell U.S. senators that Credit Suisse only uncovered "scattered evidence" of improper conduct, and its top managers were not aware that a small group of Swiss-based private bankers helped U.S. customers hide income and assets.

"We deeply regret that - despite the industry-leading compliance measures we have put in place - before 2009, some Credit Suisse private bankers appear to have violated U.S. law," Dougan said in prepared remarks, released before his appearance later on Wednesday in front of a U.S. Senate subcommittee on offshore tax evasion.

"The evidence showed that some Swiss-based private bankers went to great lengths to disguise their bad conduct from Credit Suisse executive management."

Credit Suisse has been accused by U.S. senators of helping American customers dodge taxes with a variety of tactics, including creating offshore shell entities, falsifying visa applications and establishing a branch at Zurich airport, where wealthy U.S. clients could fly in, conduct their banking and leave.

One Credit Suisse banker even handed account statements to a client tucked inside a Sports Illustrated magazine, according to a scathing report released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday.

In his testimony, Dougan disputes some of the methods used and some of the finding of the Senate report, saying the subcommittee improperly assumed every U.S. client account held in Switzerland was hidden from the U.S. government.

The report said that in 2006, Credit Suisse held 22,000 accounts from U.S. customers worth 12 billion Swiss francs ($13.5 billion).

Switzerland's private banking model has been rattled to its core by the U.S. crackdown on tax evasion. Credit Suisse's arch-rival UBS admitted to helping U.S. taxpayers hide money from the tax man and paid a $780 million fine in 2009.

Evidence culled from the UBS probe as well as thousands of Americans coming forward under a tax amnesty in the United States has fed a second wave of investigation, which has ensnared Credit Suisse and 13 other large Swiss banks.

Credit Suisse shares were down 2 percent in Zurich.

Only preschool-age children show signs of a turnaround, with their obesity rates nearly halved in the same period, according to a new federal study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"The rapid increase in obesity we saw in the '80s and '90s has definitely slowed," epidemiologist Cynthia Ogden told Reuters Health. "There's some glimmer of hope in the new data in relation to the 2 to 5 year olds."

Ogden, a branch chief at the National Center for Health Statistics in Rockville, Maryland, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is lead author of the new study.

Obesity rates among 2 to 5 year old Americans dropped from 13.9 percent to 8.4 percent between 2003 and 2012, her team reports.

Not all the news on the national state of weight was positive, however.

Though the overall obesity rate across all U.S. age groups has been stable since 2003, women 60 years and older have been growing fatter. Their rate of obesity rose from 31.5 percent to 38 percent over nine years, the study found.

Ogden and her colleagues used the annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys to examine obesity trends in representative samples of Americans between the 2003 - 2004 survey year and 2011 - 2012.

The 5.5 percentage point drop in the obesity rate among 2 to 5 year olds mirrored decreases found among preschoolers in previous studies, the authors write.

A report published last year, for example, found that after doubling over 30 years, the obesity rate among low-income preschool children fell in 19 U.S. states and territories (see Reuters story of August 6, 2013 here: reut.rs/OuyauP).

Nonetheless, more than two-thirds of American adults and nearly one-third of youth aged 2 to 19 years old fell into the overweight or obese categories in 2011 - 2012.

For adults, body mass index (BMI) - a measure of weight relative to height - defines obesity. A BMI above 25 is considered overweight, and BMI over 29.5, which is equivalent to a 5-foot, 4-inch adult weighing 174 pounds, is considered obese.

For children, BMI calculations also factor-in the weights of other kids in the same age group.

The report does not discuss reasons for the drop in preschool obesity or the rising obesity among older women.

A software update was released last week to owners of iPhones, iPads and iPods to protect users from "an attacker" who may "capture or modify data".

It was later discovered that the problem also existed on Apple laptops and desktop computers running OS X.

A security fix has not yet been issued.

The problem was first spotted on Apple's mobile devices which run the iOS 7 operating system. It relates to the way secure connections are made between Apple's safari browser and websites, including banking sites, Google and Facebook.

These sites have digital security certificates that allow an encrypted connection to be established between a user's computer and the website. This means any data that is sent over the connection should be secure.

Dropped the ball However, a vulnerability in the code for Apple's iOS and OS X operating systems meant the security certificates were not being checked properly. This meant hackers could impersonate a website and capture the data that was being sent over the connection before letting it continue its journey to the real website. Apple released a fix for mobile devices running iOS 7 last week but a spokesperson issued the following statement about OS X: "We are aware of this issue and already have a software fix that will be released very soon."

According to researchers the security flaw had existed for months but no-one had reported it publicly.

Graham Cluley, a security analyst, said it was a failing by the company that it had not been identified earlier.

"It's pretty bad what Apple have done, they've seriously dropped the ball. How much the problem has been exploited is hard to say. Hackers may now be trying to take advantage while users wait for the security fix."

He advised users to take care when using the web and consider using an alternative browser to Safari until the problem was fixed.

Now that the curtain has been lifted, here's what we know about the successor to the Galaxy S4, which is coming in April to the major U.S. carriers, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless.

The new S5 is water resistant, has a 5.1-inch full HD 1080p display, with technology that Samsung claims takes brightness levels to new highs and dimness levels to new lows. And as rumored, the home button has an embedded fingerprint scanner that not only locks and unlocks the phone but that authenticates purchases made through the likes of PayPal.

This fingerprint scanner, Samsung's answer to a feature introduced by Apple on the iPhone 5s, can also be used to unlock pictures you want to keep private, or to take the place of other Web passwords. It works with up to eight fingers. You swipe down to perform the unlocking function, but I haven't gotten a chance to have it recognize any of my own digits yet.

The phone incorporates an advanced flavor of Wi-Fi, supplementing the fast global LTE bands that are also supported. Samsung says downloads of large files are extra speedy — 1 gigabyte in just 30 seconds, a potential boon to people who like to watch movies on the go.

Samsung has always piled on a bevy features to its devices — sometimes bordering on overkill — with many of those features focused on the camera. Among the tricks Samsung is touting this time around: a "phase detection" feature found on digital SLRs that speeds up auto-focusing (0.3 seconds, which Samsung says is the fastest auto-focusing available on a smartphone).

The HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging technology that has been on other smartphones works with video as well as digital stills on the S5. A new "blur" mode lets you selectively keep part of the picture in focus while blurring another part of the scene, a feature found on rival smartphones. The rear camera on the new Galaxy has a 16-megapixel sensor.

This latest phone might also give a boost to the burgeoning mobile payments space, supporting not only Google Wallet but the rival payments system known as Isis.

And if your children routinely snatch your phone — mine do — you'll appreciate a Kids Mode that lets you display only apps and features deemed appropriate for the youngest members of your household.

Some eight U.S. states are considering regulation of Google Glass, a tiny computer screen mounted in the corner of an eyeglass frame. Law enforcement and other groups are concerned that drivers wearing the devices will pay more attention to their email than the road, causing serious accidents.

So-called wearables such as Google Glass, smart watches and sophisticated health devices may represent the next big shift in technology, just as smartphones evolved from personal computers, and enthusiasts predict billion-dollar markets. Google, which is still testing Glass, charges $1,500 per pair.

Google Inc has deployed lobbyists to persuade elected officials in Illinois, Delaware and Missouri that it is not necessary to restrict use of Google Glass behind the wheel, according to state lobbying disclosure records and interviews conducted by Reuters.

Legislators who introduced similar bills this year in three other states, New York, Maryland and West Virginia, say they have not yet been contacted by Google. Officials in New Jersey and Wyoming did not respond to inquiries from Reuters.

Courts are just beginning to consider the matter. Last month in San Diego, for instance, a woman's traffic ticket for wearing Google Glass behind the wheel was dismissed because there was no proof the device was operating at the time.

Google's main point to legislators is that regulation would be premature because Google Glass is not yet widely available, the state elected officials say.

Illinois state Senator Ira Silverstein, a Chicago Democrat who introduced a Google Glass restriction bill in December, responded that it was clear the merchandise was heading for the broader public. "Who are they fooling?"

Silverstein said he recently met with Google lobbyists trying to "kill" the bill, a position Silverstein suggested is driven by market considerations for the company.

State records show the month after Silverstein introduced his bill, Google retained John Borovicka, a former political director for President Obama's former chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Borovicka visited Silverstein to lobby against the legislation, the state senator said.

Borovicka did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked about its lobbying efforts, Google said tech issues are a big part of current policy discussions in the states. "We think it is important to be part of those discussions," the company said in a statement.

Orange said it would keep a majority stake in Dailymotion, the world's 12th largest video-sharing site, but is looking for partners outside of Europe to develop it internationally, Chief Executive Stephane Richard told BFM Business radio.

"We have ongoing talks, particularly with Microsoft, which doesn't necessarily mean that we'll come to a deal," said Richard, speaking from the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona.

"I think it makes a lot of sense for us, as for Microsoft, to reach an accord that would be above all a partnership," he said, adding that Orange was also talking with other content providers, including in France.

The French state owns 28.4 percent of Orange, so it has some sway over the group's actions and management.

Last year, French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg blocked a plan by U.S.-web giant Yahoo to buy a majority stake in Dailymotion.

Montebourg spurred a public row over state intervention in business affairs after he said that the U.S. group wanted to "devour" its smaller rival, calling it a "golden nugget" that needed to be kept in French hands.

Yahoo, which had planned to acquire a 75 percent stake in a deal that valued Dailymotion at $300 million, eventually walked away from the talks, leaving Orange to seek a new strategic partner to develop its video site.

Richard said that Orange was also in talks with other potential tie-partners for Dailymotion, including ones based in France which were focused on creating content.