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The acquisition, which comes hot on the heels of its $19 billion deal for messaging service WhatsApp, marks a big bet by Facebook to anticipate the next shift in an evolving technology industry, at a time when consumers are increasingly abandoning their PCs for smartphones.

The world's largest social network was deemed late to recognize the shift to mobile devices and the company's revenue has only recently begun to recover from the late start.

Many in the industry believe that wearable devices could represent the next big platform shift. Google Inc has been testing Google Glass, a stamp-sized electronic screen mounted to a pair of eyeglasses for several years. Last week, it introduced an effort to develop computerized wristwatches.

On Tuesday, Facebook said virtual-reality technology could emerge as the next social and communications platform.

"The history of our industry is that every 10 or 15 years there's a new major computing platform, whether it's the PC, the Web or now mobile," Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a conference call with analysts and media on Tuesday to discuss the acquisition.

"We're making a long-term bet that immersive, virtual and augmented reality will become a part of people's daily life," the 29-year-old Zuckerberg said, noting that wearing the Oculus goggles was "different than anything I've ever experienced in my life."

Zuckerberg said Facebook was not interested in becoming a hardware company and did not intend to try to make a profit from sales of the devices over the long term. Instead, he said Facebook's software and services would continue to serve as the company's underlying business, potentially generating revenue on Oculus devices through everything from advertising to sales of virtual goods.

While Oculus will operate as an independent company, Zuckerberg stressed that Facebook's plans for Oculus extended well beyond games.

"Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face - just by putting on goggles in your home," he said.

In addition to game makers, Oculus has garnered some interest from developers keen on creating apps in areas like architecture, automobiles, marketing and education, the company has said.

As the number and sophistication of cyber-attacks increase, so too does the demand for people who can prevent such digital incursions. Cyber-security is having a jobs boom.

But there aren't enough people with the necessary skills to become the next generation of cyber-cops.

According to the most recent US Bureau of Labor statistics, demand for graduate-level information security workers will rise by 37% in the next decade, more than twice the predicted rate of increase for the overall computer industry.

"Demand for information security analysts is expected to be very high," forecasts the US Department of Labor.

In response, private sector firms and governments have been hurrying to work with universities to fill the gap.

This includes an ambitious project by IBM to create a partnership of 200 universities to produce the missing expertise.

As well as US universities, this talent-raising project is involving students in Singapore, Malaysia, Germany and Poland. Global battle

Marisa Viveros, IBM's vice-president for cyber-security innovation, says it is a response to a changing "threat landscape".

The increase in cloud and mobile computing has introduced more risk, she says. And there are more complex attacks being attempted than ever before. "It's no longer about if an attack is going to happen, but when it's going to happen," she says.

Setting up a global university network with a wide range of skills, she says, is a natural response to a globalised problem.

The students trained in cyber-security will enter a relentless battle, says Ms Viveros.

Even before online products have been launched, there are attempts to hack them. And even relief funds for humanitarian disasters, such as earthquakes or typhoons, are under threat from hackers trying to steal donations, she says.

Mark Harris, an assistant professor at one of the participating universities, the University of Southern Carolina, says there has been a surge of student interest in cyber-security courses - not least because they stand a good chance of getting a job. University threats

But Dr Harris says that it's also going to be a challenge for universities to keep up with the pace of change.

"Textbooks on the subject are out of date before they're published," he said.

According to the most recent monitoring report from IBM on the current levels of cyber-attacks, universities could do with some extra security themselves.

In future, complex and interactive structures could be grown using cells programmed to assemble into intricate patterns, the researchers argue.

They describe patterned biofilms made from proteins tougher than steel, designed to incorporate semiconducting crystals and electrical wiring.

Their research is published in Nature Materials. The living biofilms are the creation of synthetic biologist Timothy Lu and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They are a marriage of advanced techniques in genetic engineering, which reprogramme a cell's function, and the kind of protein chemistry that underlies the biofilm gloss we find on our teeth.

"Our vision is to create living materials, in which living cells grow, lay down biopolymers and control the inorganic compounds around them," Professor Lu explained.

"Just imagine what we could achieve if we could grow physical devices and structures from bottom up using cells and minimal inputs, rather than manufacture and shape them from top down." Zebra stripes

It is, of course, the kind of engineering nature has been doing for more than three billion years.

Bone growth, for example, starts with cells that arrange themselves into complex patterns, and excrete specially adapted proteins which template the strong, white calcium phosphate structures we see.

The new work builds on developments in protein engineering, where complex, functional biopolymers self-assemble to make scaffolds onto which other crystals can be templated. What is different is that the proteins in this instance are produced by cells that have been reprogrammed using synthetic biology techniques developed by Timothy Lu and others at MIT, Harvard and Boston Universities.

These techniques are based on the understanding that some genes work like components of electronic circuits - switches, for example, that can turn on or off other parts of the genome.

Prof Lu's group is one of several that have developed living biological computer circuits this way. Other researchers have programmed cells so that they grow into complex patterns, like zebra stripes. Electrical switch

It added that it was working the body responsible for deciding the standardised range of graphic symbols that can be added to text messages to achieve this.

At present the list of characters contains dozens of faces of people that appear to be white.

However, only two of the symbols seem to be Asian and none are black.

Since 2010 a basic list has been developed and maintained by the Unicode Consortium - a Silicon Valley-based non-profit organisation made up of major computer firms, software producers, user groups and others.

It does this to ensure that different devices and mobile carriers can share a basic set.

Although some apps offer to boost the number of emoji that a user can send and receive, users risk their friends being unable to view them if they haven't installed the same software. Despite the fact that emoji first became popular in Japan, Unicode's current list only features two Asian people - a "man with a turban" and a "man with Gua Pi Mao", a type of Chinese hat - although it does include a Japanese ogre and Japanese dolls. Diversity petition

Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech firms design their own versions of how the more than 800 basic emoji characters appear, but they tend to stick to the ethnicities portrayed in the reference list.

"Our emoji characters are based on the Unicode standard, which is necessary for them to be displayed properly across many platforms," Katie Cotton, Apple's vice-president of worldwide corporate communications, told MTV.

"There needs to be more diversity in the emoji character set, and we have been working closely with the Unicode Consortium in an effort to update the standard."

The broadcaster approached the company after a petition was posted to DoSomething.org calling on Apple to increase the ethnic diversity found within its emoji keyboard.

"There's a white boy, girl, man, woman, elderly man, elderly woman, blonde boy, blonde girl and, we're pretty sure, [video game character] Princess Peach," it said. "But when it comes to faces outside of yellow smileys, there's a staggering lack of minority representation."

It added that the keyboard already offered a graphic showing a same-sex couple, and called on the company to present people with a wider range of skin tones. 'Expressive power'

Bernie Hogan is studying the use of emoji as part of his research into how people represent themselves on the net.

US President Barack Obama said "energy is obviously a central focus of our efforts", acknowledging it "will have some impact on the global economy".

He was speaking after talks in Brussels with EU leaders Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy.

At a news conference the three men spoke of the special relationship between the transatlantic partners.

Mr Obama said: "The world is safer and more just when Europe and America stand as one". Mr Van Rompuy, European Council president, called it a "crucial" relationship.

Their talks at the headquarters of the 28-nation EU bloc also covered plans to finalise a transatlantic trade partnership, as well as efforts to tackle Iran's nuclear programme and Syria's chemical weapons. High tensions

Mr Obama praised the EU for the steps it had already taken - along with the US - to penalise Russia. These have included visa bans and asset freezes against a number of Russian officials.

He said those actions were taken after Russian forces moved in to annex Crimea, and they now must consider "the potential for additional, deeper sanctions" should Moscow attempt to do the same in other parts of Ukraine. "We recognise that in order for Russia to feel the impact of these sanctions, it will have some impact on the global economy as well as on all the countries represented here today," Mr Obama said.

Acknowledging that some EU countries are more dependent than others on Russia for energy, he said "this entire event has pointed to the need for Europe to look at how it can further diversify its energy sources".

And he said Nato must remain a "regular presence" in those eastern European countries who are now feeling vulnerable to possible Russian intervention. He also voiced concern at the falling defence budgets of some countries.

Mr Van Rompuy called Russia's actions in Crimea "a disgrace in the 21st century, and we will not recognise it". Ukraine's southern peninsula of Crimea was annexed by Russia earlier this month after a referendum which Kiev and the West considered illegal.

It follows the ousting of Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych at the end of February following months of bloody protests over his decision to seek greater ties with Moscow rather than the EU.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine remain high. Moscow accused Ukrainian officials on Wednesday of preventing Russian commercial pilots and crew from disembarking at Kiev International Airport. Remembering WW1

This is Mr Obama's first official visit to the EU headquarters in Brussels.

The latest sightings came as searchers stepped up efforts to find some trace of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, thought to have crashed on March 8 with the loss of all 239 people aboard after flying thousands of miles off course.

"We have now had four separate satellite leads, from Australia, China and France, showing possible debris," Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference. "It is now imperative that we link the debris to MH370."

The latest images were captured by France-based Airbus Defence & Space on Monday and showed 122 potential objects in a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) area of ocean, Hishammuddin said. The objects varied in size from one metre to 23 metres (75 ft) in length, he said.

Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, and investigators believe someone on the flight may have shut off the plane's communications systems.

Partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and recrossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.

Malaysia's air force has released few details of its radar tracking beyond saying the plane was last detected off the northwest coast heading towards India.

But the country's deputy defence minister, Abdul Rahim Bakri, told parliament that no action was taken when the unidentified plane was spotted because it was assumed it had been ordered to turn back, local media said.

"It was detected by our radar, but the turn back was by a non-hostile plane and we thought maybe it was at the directive of the control tower," he was quoted as saying.

Asked at the news conference whether air force radar operators thought the plane had been told to turn back by air traffic controllers, Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, said he could not confirm it.

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

A dozen aircraft from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, China, Japan and South Korea were once more scouring the seas some 2,500 km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth in the hunt for wreckage on Wednesday, after bad weather the previous day forced the suspension of the search.

The gloomy assessment, far more negative than Russian government forecasts, came on a day when U.S. President Barack Obama was meeting European Union and NATO leaders to discuss how to reduce Europe's dependence on Russian energy and bolster NATO defenses of east European allies bordering Russia and Ukraine.

Obama and leaders of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations agreed this week to hold off on tougher economic sanctions unless President Vladimir Putin takes further action to destabilize Ukraine or other former Soviet republics.

Western concern has focused on Russian troops massed on Ukraine's eastern border amid Kremlin allegations of attacks on Russian speakers in that industrial region of the country.

But Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday it seemed likely that the firm Western response so far would stop Russia undertaking what he called "other acts of aggression and interference on the territory of Ukraine".

A World Bank report on the Russian economy, compiled before the most recent evidence of the scale of capital flight, made clear Moscow was already set to pay a significant price in lost growth due to the most serious East-West confrontation since the end of the Cold War.

Gross domestic product (GDP) could contract by as much as 1.8 percent in 2014 if the crisis persists, it said. That high-risk forecast assumes that the international community would still refrain from trade sanctions.

"An intensification of political tension could lead to heightened uncertainties around economic sanctions and would further depress confidence and investment activities," the World Bank said.

"We assume that political risks will be prominent in the short-term."

Under a low-risk scenario, assuming only a short-lived impact from the crisis, GDP could grow by 1.1 percent, just half the bank's 2.2-percent growth forecast published in December.

RUSSIAN STOCKS REBOUND

Russia is refusing to recognize the Kiev government chosen by parliament after the overthrow of Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovich on February 22 following months of street protests against his refusal to sign a pact on closer ties with the EU.

Abu Ghaith, 48, a Kuwait-born Muslim cleric, faces life in prison after a federal court jury in New York convicted him of conspiring to kill Americans, conspiring to provide material support for terrorists, and providing such support.

Jurors took just over one day to reach a verdict in a courtroom that is blocks from the site of the World Trade Center destroyed in the hijacked plane attacks nearly 13 years ago.

Abu Ghaith's court-appointed lawyer, Stanley Cohen, said there were several issues he would raise on appeal. They include U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan's decision to bar testimony from Pakistan-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man the U.S. government accuses of masterminding the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

"He was stoic, he was at ease," Cohen said of Abu Ghaith's reaction to the verdict. "I think he feels that it was impossible under the circumstances to receive a fair trial."

The judge scheduled September 8 for sentencing.

Prosecutors had accused Abu Ghaith, one of the highest-profile bin Laden advisers to face trial in a U.S. civilian court, of acting as an al Qaeda mouthpiece and using videotapes of his inflammatory rhetoric to recruit new fighters.

They also said Abu Ghaith knew in advance of an attempt to detonate a shoe bomb aboard an airplane by Briton Richard Reid in December 2001, citing in part an October 2001 video in which he warned Americans that the "storm of airplanes will not stop."

Lawyers for Abu Ghaith said the prosecution was based on "ugly words and bad associations," rather than actual evidence that the defendant knew of or joined plots against Americans.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a statement after the verdict, said it bolstered the argument that militants should be tried on terrorism charges in civilian courts, rather than as combatants in military commissions.

That sentiment was echoed by Karen Greenberg, the director of Fordham Law School's Center on National Security, who attended the trial.

"The federal courts are robust and can handle the numerous challenges that terror trials pose, including witnesses taking the stand and classified material," she said on Wednesday.

UNEXPECTED TESTIMONY

In a surprising move, Abu Ghaith testified in his own defense, denying he helped plot al Qaeda attacks and claiming he never became a formal member of the group.

Imaging - both cameras and sensors - is one of three pillars along with Xperia smartphones and PlayStation consoles that the company is leaning on to stop the hemorrhaging at its flagship electronics division. Sony expects its sales of imaging sensor chips to jump 16 percent to 360 billion yen ($3.52 billion) in the year ending this month.

Sony dominates the imaging sensor segment. Its high-end imaging chips are the "film" in the main cameras of both Apple Inc's iPhone 5S and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy 4, according to a break-down analysis of those products.

Sony has had little business selling lower-quality sensors, which are typically used in front-facing cameras, said Yutaka Okamoto, president of the company's device division.

But now, some smartphone makers are upgrading their front-facing cameras for users who want sharper self-portraits, and that has opened up a whole new market for Sony, Okamoto said.

Several fast-growing Chinese smartphone makers, keen to move upmarket, are also beginning to put in orders for Sony's high-spec chips, he said.

The division could get an even bigger profit boost from its nascent business making high-margin camera modules, which include lenses and circuitry as well as sensors, while tablets as well are joining the bandwagon towards more megapixels and higher resolutions.

Despite its lead in sensor technology, however, Sony faces a rising threat from a familiar rival - Samsung Electronics. The South Korean tech giant has hammered Japanese electronics makers in businesses from TVs to memory chips.

Samsung's newest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S5, is due to be fitted with an image sensor developed and manufactured in-house by the South Korean company, with Sony no longer the main supplier.

"Our strength - and Samsung's - is that we can accumulate expertise on our own production lines," Okamoto said.

"The fact that Samsung makes their own products on their own line with their own technology, that's a threat," he told Reuters in an interview last week.

SELFIE-CONSCIOUS

Sony is looking to expand its sensor production capacity next year with a factory in northern Japan it agreed to buy from struggling chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp for a total investment of 35 billion yen ($342 million) including new equipment.

In a statement late on Monday, Luxottica, the world's biggest eyewear maker, said it had agreed to design, develop and distribute Glass eyewear, which so far has only been available as an expensive prototype in the United States.

Google Glass is a small stamp-sized screen attached to a pair of spectacle frames. It can record video, access email, and retrieve information from the Web by connecting wirelessly to a user's cell phone.

The deal will allow Italy's Luxottica to be first to showcase the new technology to millions of potential consumers, although Google has yet to surmount challenges such as battery life and privacy concerns.

"We believe the challenge of convincing consumers to wear computers on their face is a fashion problem as much as it is a technology problem," said UBS analyst Fred Speirs of the logic of the tie-up between Google and Luxottica.

The special glasses can be bought by U.S. residents for $1,500 plus tax, according to Google's website. To reach a wider consumer market, they would have to be put on sale for a much lower price.

Technology experts believe wearable computers such as Google Glass could be the next big market for consumer devices, and mirror the way smartphones evolved from PCs.

However, some express concern over issues such as intrusion into the privacy of other people who may not be aware they are being filmed or recorded, data security and the safety of wearing Internet-connected glasses while performing other tasks.

2015 LAUNCH

Luxottica said its two major brands, Ray-Ban and Oakley, would be part of the deal, but gave no details about the product nor financial aspects of the deal.

"We believe that a strategic partnership with a leading player like Google is the ideal platform for developing a new way forward in our industry and answering the evolving needs of consumers on a global scale," Luxottica Chief Executive Officer Andrea Guerra said.

Analysts said it was too early to incorporate the impact of the deal into revenue estimates.

"The partnership allows Luxottica to access a technology and a product that could have high upward potential if the product becomes a mass-market one," said Micaela Ferruta, an analyst with Intermonte.

The HTC One (M8) also features a bigger screen and louder speakers than the previous model.

The company said the device should turn around recent weak earnings and help it recover market share.

But experts said Samsung and Apple's bigger marketing budgets would continue to put HTC at a disadvantage.

The Taiwanese company only shipped 6.4 million units of the original HTC One model last year, according to the research firm IDC.

That compares with 43.3 million shipped copies of Samsung's Galaxy S4 and 39.5 million shipped units of Apple's iPhone 5S, which also launched in 2013.

Across its portfolio as a whole, HTC actually sold fewer handsets in 2013 than 2012 despite growth in the wider market. "This is a make or break device for HTC," said Ben Wood, chief of research at tech consultancy CCS Insight.

"Although last year's HTC One was widely considered the best smartphone of 2013, the company failed to capitalise on this." Photo effects

One of the new handset's distinguishing features is a sensor on its back used to record distance.

The information is used by an app to allow the owner to mimic the effect of changing focus after a photo is taken, keeping selected objects sharp but blurring others.

It also allows users to add stylised effects to a photo's background while keeping its main subject unaltered. Another innovation is the ability to activate the phone without having to press its on-button. Swiping the screen in different ways takes the user to either what they were last doing, the home screen or a feed of news stories and social media updates. The company also boasts that battery life is 40% better than before even though it has a bigger, 5in (12.7cm) screen.

However, it lacks a fingerprint scanner despite the firm's inclusion of the security feature on the One Max handset. Production problems

Despite winning several awards, sales of the original HTC One underperformed.

The firm said that part of the problem was production delays caused by its use of a unibody metal case and a new type of camera.

"We just didn't educate our vendors to do the mass-production well," Cher Wang, the firm's co-founder, told the BBC.

HTC's chief financial officer added that this caused a consumer backlash rather than the positive word-of-mouth effect hoped for.

"The first wave of people is actually quite important - they tend to be most vocal," said Chia-Lin Chang.

"They were waiting and couldn't get it and had to vent, and that's unfortunate.

If Congress approves, the Obama administration would stop collecting the information, known as metadata, which lists millions of phone calls made in the United States. The practice triggered a national debate over privacy rights when the extent of the surveillance program was exposed last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Instead, the government would have to get permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review data about the time and duration of telephone calls that it believes may be connected to terror attacks, according to the New York Times, which first reported the plan.

Obama, who on Monday met with world leaders in The Hague, has been grappling with a backlash to U.S. government surveillance programs since classified details about the extent of data-gathering were first leaked by Snowden.

Snowden is currently in Russia under temporary asylum.

Obama has defended use of the data to protect Americans from attacks. His plan seeks to hold on to "as many capabilities of the program as possible" while ending the government's role in controlling the database, the official said on background.

"The president considered those options and in the coming days, after concluding ongoing consultations with Congress, including the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, will put forward a sound approach to ensuring the government no longer collects or holds this data," the official said in a statement.

The Obama administration will renew the NSA's telephone metadata program until Congress passes new authorizing legislation, the official said.

Obama made some decisions about changes to the programs in January, including a ban on eavesdropping on the leaders of friendly or allied nations.

But he had charged his Attorney General Eric Holder and intelligence agencies to make additional proposals for the metadata program by March 28, when it comes up for reauthorization.

The New York Times said the administration will propose that telephone companies keep the data. But companies will not be required to hold on to the data any longer than they normally do, the Times said.

The administration had considered requiring the companies to hold on to data for longer than 18 months. The administration rejected that idea after concluding newer data is most important for investigations, the Times said.