U.S. urged to tighten cyber security to counter Chinese hacking

By Mark Hosenball and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States must beef up cyber security against Chinese hackers targeting a broad range of U.S. interests to raise the cost to China of engaging in such activities, America's top intelligence official said on Thursday.

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U.S. intelligence chief: China top suspect in hack of U.S. agency: WSJ

The United States' intelligence chief said on Thursday that China was the top suspect in a hack of a U.S. agency that compromised the personnel records of millions of Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The comments from Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper marked a departure of sorts for the Obama administration, which has avoided publicly pointing to Beijing, even as officials said privately China likely was behind the attack

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Yahoo’s Alex Stamos says to join Facebook as chief security officer

(Reuters) – Yahoo Inc's Alex Stamos will join Facebook Inc as chief security officer from Monday, he said in a Facebook post on Wednesday. Stamos, who joined Yahoo as chief information security officer last year, also updated his profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn

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MTV goes looking for likes with its latest revamp

By Marie-Louise Gumuchian LONDON (Reuters) – MTV, the channel that revolutionized the music industry by playing artists’ videos on rotation, is reinventing itself again, opening up to its social-media-savvy audience by putting their videos on air. By using the hashtag #MTVBump, viewers can see their content from social media sites Instagram or Vine within two hours of its being posted, during the channel’s break windows.

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European police team to take on IS social media propaganda

By Michael Holden LONDON (Reuters) – A Europe-wide police unit is to be set up next month with the aim of shutting down social media accounts used by key Islamic State (IS) militants to spread propaganda and recruit foreigners to their cause, Europol said on Monday. The small police team will scour the internet and try to take down accounts of IS ringleaders within hours of being detected, in a bid to dent a propaganda machine which is reckoned to send out about 100,000 tweets a day.

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Facebook gaining ground on YouTube in video ads, report says

By Eric Auchard and Leila Abboud FRANKFURT/PARIS (Reuters) – Facebook is gaining ground on Google's YouTube as an outlet for big companies to market their products via online videos, the fastest growing category of Internet ads, a report published on Monday said. The competition for video viewers opens up a new front in the clash between the two web giants that already compete in other types of advertising given their appeal to young and international consumers, Ampere Analysis said in a study.

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Virtual reality film aims to raise funds by giving Nepal quake experience

By Nita Bhalla NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A virtual reality film aims to help raise funds for survivors of last month’s earthquake in Nepal by giving viewers a first-hand experience of the disaster’s aftermath, the director said on Friday. Los Angeles-based company RYOT – which produces news stories for audiences to act on – shot the footage in the days following the 7.8 magnitude quake which struck the impoverished nation on April 25, killing more than 8,000 people.

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MI5 chief warns al Qaeda in Syria planning mass attacks on West

By Guy Faulconbridge LONDON (Reuters) – Al Qaeda militants in Syria are plotting attacks to inflict mass casualties in the West, possibly against transport systems or “iconic targets”, the head of MI5 Security Service said on Thursday. Speaking after gunmen killed 12 people in an assault on a French satirical newspaper, MI5 boss Andrew Parker warned a strike on the United Kingdom was highly likely. “A group of core al Qaeda terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West,” Director General Parker said in a rare public speech at MI5 headquarters in London

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