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NSA officers spied on love interests
The National Security Agency's internal watchdog detailed a dozen instances in the past decade in which its employees intentionally misused the agency's surveillance power, in some cases to snoop on their love interests.
A letter from the NSA's inspector general responding to a request by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, lists the dozen incidents where the NSA's foreign intelligence collection systems were abused. The letter also says there are two additional incidents now under investigation and another allegation pending that may require an investigation.
At least six of the incidents were referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution or additional action; none appear to have resulted in charges. The letter doesn't identify the employees.
Several of the cases involve so-called "Loveint" violations.
Chinese journalist Shi Tao released
A Chinese journalist jailed for eight years for leaking government restrictions on reporting is now free.
Shi Tao's early release was announced by the writers' organization PEN International on Saturday - 15 months before he was scheduled to be freed.
Shi made headlines in 2004 when he sent the media restrictions to a human rights group - an act that China said amounted to "leaking state secrets," PEN said.
What's more: Internet giant Yahoo played a part in his conviction.
In a widely criticized move, Yahoo handed over Shi's e-mail account information, which the Chinese government used in the case against Shi.
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Snowden's lawyer: common ground with U.S.
Edward Snowden is in good health in Russia and his lawyer there is amenable to hammering out an ending that would satisfy all. This, according to his father's lawyer, Bruce Fein, who appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360" on Wednesday night.
He relayed the conversation he had with Russian lawyer Anatoli Cuchara.
"There may be a time, where it would be constructive to try and meet and see whether there can't be common ground that everyone agrees would advance the interest, the United States, Mr. Snowden, Lon, his father and the interest of Russia in trying to resolve this in a way that honors due process and the highest principles of fairness and civilization," Fein said.
Snowden is afraid he would not get a fair trial if he came back to the United States.
Dictionary acknowledges humans can tweet, too
The Oxford English Dictionary has finally gotten around to acknowledging that tweeting isn't just for the birds.
In its latest update, the dictionary that describes itself as "the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium" has revamped the entry for "tweet" to include its social networking usage.
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Boeing: 787 test flight 'uneventful'
A flight labeled the "final" certification test of an improved battery system for the grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliner was "straightforward" and "uneventful," the airplane maker said Friday.
The test was an important one for Boeing, which has billions of dollars riding on the success of the new airliner. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and similar regulators worldwide grounded the Dreamliner in January after two battery-related fires damaged 787s in Boston and Japan. No one was hurt in the fires.
In March the FAA approved a Boeing certification plan to fix the 787's problematic lithium-ion battery system and prove the new design is safe. Friday's nearly two-hour flight was the final certification test of that plan.
SEE ALSO: DREAMLINER MAKES MOVES (VIDEO)
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Invisibility cloak a step closer
Some scientists seem to take their cues from science fiction or fantasy novels.
Physicists in Texas have developed a method to make objects "invisible" within a limited range of light waves. It's not Harry Potter's invisibility cloak just yet, but scientists say it has a lot of potential.
The desire to become invisible dates back to the ancient Greeks, if not further. In mythological literature, gods and goddesses donned a headdress to disappear from sight. Like Potter's cloak, the "cap of invisibility" was imbued with magical powers.
A fixture in magic, the invisibility cloak has now advanced to science.
FULL STORYS. Korea: Hacking traced to IP address in China
The suspected cyber attack that appeared to target South Korean banks and broadcasters Wednesday originated from an IP address in China, South Korea's Communications Committee said in a statement Thursday.
The attack damaged 32,000 computers and servers of media and financial companies, the committee said.
South Korean officials are analyzing the cause and are working to prevent any further damage, the committee said.
The attack infected banks' and broadcasters' computer networks with a malicious program that slowed or shut systems down, officials and the semiofficial Yonhap News Agency said.
FULL STORYHacking attack hits South Korea
[Updated at 11:52 a.m. ET] South Korean investigators now believe computer outages at South Korean banks and broadcasters Wednesday were caused by cyberattackers, though they're still not sure who those attackers were, South Korean officials and the semiofficial Yonhap News Agency reported.
[Posted at 2:42 a.m. ET] South Korean police said Wednesday they are investigating a computer outage that is affecting servers at three leading television broadcasters and a large bank.
Customers of Shinhan Bank are unable to log into the lender's website at the moment, the company said in an online statement.
And the broadcaster YTN reported that 500 of its computers had been disabled by the outage. Police didn't immediately provide a reason for the server failure.
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Company removes 'rape' shirt listed on Amazon
Twitter users erupted in anger Saturday after discovering shirts listed on Amazon with a slogan that appeared to promote rape and violence against women.
The shirt read "Keep Calm and Rape On" and was available on Amazon's UK website. The company that prints the shirts, U.S.-based Solid Gold Bomb, removed the listing after it was notified of the slogan.
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Judge orders new Samsung, Apple court faceoff
Samsung and Apple were ordered Friday to stand off in court once again after a federal judge struck down more than $450 million that a jury last August ordered Samsung to pay Apple.
"Some of the awards rested on impermissible legal theories," U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh wrote in explaining her ruling.
The jury had awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages total after finding Samsung had copied both the design and software features of the iPhone.
Just under $600 million of that award to Apple still stands, according to Koh.
FULL STORYGlitch with SpaceX supply flight appears fixed
[Updated at 5:18 p.m. ET] SpaceX's unmanned Dragon cargo capsule suffered a temporary glitch with its thrusters after it achieved orbit Friday - a development that will delay its arrival at the International Space Station, NASA said.
The Dragon, launched Friday morning atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, had been expected to dock with the space station on Saturday to resupply the station's crew.
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Justices block suit over foreign surveillance
The U.S. Supreme Court has just blocked a lawsuit over the federal government's sweeping electronic monitoring of foreigners suspected of terrorism or spying.
The 5-4 conservative majority on Tuesday morning concluded that the plaintiffs - a group of attorneys, journalists and others - lacked "standing" or jurisdiction to proceed, without a specific showing they have been monitored. The National Security Agency has in turn refused to disclose monitoring specifics, which detractors call "Catch-22" logic.
FULL STORYMicrosoft: Computers hacked as at Apple and Facebook
Microsoft was hacked much like Facebook and Apple, the technology company announced today on its security blog.
Microsoft said that its investigators "found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit ... were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations."
Apple said Tuesday that some of its employees' computers were compromised, and Facebook revealed a similar breach weeks earlier.
Pinterest content-sharing site is hacked
Pinterest said Friday in an e-mail to its users that the pinboard-style photosharing social network site was breached via its vendor Zendesk.
"We recently learned that the vendor we use to answer support requests and other emails (Zendesk) experienced a security breach," said the content-sharing service. Users "pin" images and videos to their pinboards.
"We're sending you this e-mail because we received or answered a message from you using Zendesk. Unfortunately your name, email address and subject line of your message were improperly accessed during their security breach."
Report: Eastern European gang hacked Apple, Facebook, Twitter
Security experts: Times hacking story a wake-up call
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Facebook says it was hacked
The largest social network in the world is the latest high-profile site to say it's been hacked this year - but it says no ndta about its more than a billion users was compromised.
Facebook described the "sophisticated attack" in a blog post on Friday, saying it took place in January when a small number of employees visited a compromised website that installed malware on their machines.
Twitter announced a similar intrusion earlier this month, and major news organizations including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have also admitted to being hacked.
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German education minister loses Ph.D. over plagiarized thesis
Her doctoral thesis dealt with how we form our conscience. Turns out she plagiarized chunks of it.
A university stripped Germany's education minister of her Ph.D. on Tuesday, after a blogger caught the plagiarism and spent months vigilantly presenting the evidence to the public.
Annette Schavan is the second minister in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet who has this embarrassing distinction.
Former defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg stepped down in May 2011, after large passages of his dissertation were found to have been directly copied from other sources.
At the time, Schavan sharply criticized Guttenberg publicly for his shortcomings, according to German media reports.
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Dell to be sold to founder, investment firm for $24.4 billion
Computer company Dell has agreed to be sold to founder Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake for about $24.4 billion.
Want to know more about what this means for the company? Our colleagues at CNNMoney.com break it down for you.
#BlackoutBowl generates social media moment for jokesters, advertisers
Call it the Super Bowl MVP - the most valuable power outage.
For 35 bewildering minutes Sunday night, the Super Bowl showdown between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers ground to a halt when half of the lights in the New Orleans Superdome went out.
Players stretched on the field. The more than 71,000 fans in attendance did the wave.
And with no immediate explanation for the outage, social media lit up.
FULL STORYTwitter hacked; 250,000 accounts affected
Twitter is coming forward as the latest site to be hacked. The social network said in a blog post Friday afternoon that approximately 250,000 user accounts were potentially compromised, with attackers gaining access to information including user names and email addresses.
The company first detected signs of an attack earlier in the week, which led to an investigation and the discovery of a larger breach.
"This week, we detected unusual access patterns that led to us identifying unauthorized access attempts to Twitter user data. We discovered one live attack and were able to shut it down in process moments later," said Bob Lord, Twitter's director of information security, in a post. "However, our investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information."
'Gay' dog gets euthanasia reprieve
A dog whose rejection by his owner caused an Internet uproar has been adopted into a new, and presumably more tolerant, home.
The male pit bull mix, whose name no one seems to know, was left at the Madison County, Tennessee, Rabies Control animal shelter, CNN affiliate WBBJ reported.
According to the irreverent website Gawker, Facebook users had a hissy fit Wednesday when they found out the dog's owner got rid of the animal after he (the dog, not the owner) humped another male dog.
"His owner threw him away (because) he refuses to have a 'gay' dog!" a Facebook user named TN Euthanasia wrote.
The post went semi-viral, with 861 likes, 1,869 comments and 5,048 shares. After Gawker told the rest of the digital world about it, noting that the dog was in imminent danger of being put down, the shelter was swamped with calls offering to adopt the uncloseted canine.
By Thursday morning, shelter workers confirmed to WBBJ that the amorous animal had been adopted by a person associated with a rescue/shelter group.
What would you name this dog if you adopted him? Share your ideas in the comments below.
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