Samsung's latest flagship Galaxy smartphone goes on sale this week, as the South Korean giant seeks to cement its lead over faltering rival Apple in an increasingly saturated market.

The Galaxy S4, armed with eye motion control technology that will pause a video when the user looks away, comes with a faster chip and is thinner and lighter than the previous S3 model.

More than 10 million Dutch citizens were unable to use their official online signature to pay bills and taxes because of a cyberattack, officials said Wednesday.

The national DigiD system "is no longer accessible since Tuesday evening because of a DDoS attack," the interior ministry said in a statement.

A self-proclaimed leader of the LulzSec international hacking group has been arrested in Australia, police said on Wednesday, after charging him with attacking and defacing a government website.

The 24-year-old IT professional, who went by the online identity "ozshock", was seized at his office in a town 76 kilometers (47 miles) north of Sydney on Tuesday.

Hackers spooked markets Tuesday after breaking into the Associated Press's Twitter account and falsely reporting President Barack Obama had been injured after two blasts at the White House.

A brief alert on the news agency's @AP account read: "Breaking: Two explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured."

The sails of one of the world's most iconic buildings, the Sydney Opera House, were lit up with images shot by ordinary Australians Tuesday for the glitzy "blue-carpet" launch of Samsung's new phone.

Samsung announced that Australia would be among the first countries to get the new Galaxy S4, which goes on sale globally this weekend in the latest high-tech salvo of its smartphone battle with Apple.

Yahoo! on Monday released an iPhone app that weaves in story summarizing software bought from a London schoolboy last month for a sum reported to be around $30 million (£20 million).

The Yahoo! app that was made available in the United States for use on iPhones and iPod touch devices uses natural-language algorithms and machine learning from freshly-acquired Summly "to deliver quick story summaries."

The U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday tossed out a Motorola Mobility patent claim that threatened to block the import of some Apple iPhone models into this country.

The commission dismissed a complaint by Google-owned Motorola Mobility accusing Apple of infringing on patented technology that makes touch screens ignore fingers when people are holding smartphones to their ears for calls.

German authorities said Monday they had fined Google for illegally collecting massive amounts of personal data including emails, passwords and photos while setting up its disputed Street View service.

The data protection office in the northern city of Hamburg said it had slapped the U.S. Internet giant with a 145,000-euro ($189,000) penalty for privacy violations on what it called a nearly unprecedented scale.

Some illuminating books already have been written about Google's catalytic role in a technological upheaval that is redefining the way people work, play, learn, shop and communicate.

Until now, though, there hasn't been a book providing an unfiltered look from inside Google's brain trust.

Yahoo! on Friday announced it is getting rid of coupon service Deals and the "Yahooligans" Internet guide for children while it cleans house.

"Today, we are shutting down a few more products," Yahoo! platforms executive vice president Jay Rossiter said in a blog post.