Twitter said it now has the ability to block tweets from appearing in a specific country if legally required to do so.

"As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," Twitter said in a blog post.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics on Friday reported a record operating profit of 5.3 trillion won ($4.72 billion) in the fourth quarter, thanks largely to booming smartphone sales.

The company also announced a 25 trillion won investment in its chip making and panel-making business.

The European parliament website came under cyber-attack Thursday but hackers failed to penetrate the assembly's internal network, a spokesman said.

"This morning the parliament's site came under attack with massive consultation bids," spokesman Jaume Duch told Agence France Presse.

Google on Thursday opened up Google+ to teenagers, just days after loosening the rules about using real names on the social network.

The age limit had previously been 18, but Google vice president for product management Bradley Horowitz announced on Google+ that users could now be as young as 13.

World-leading mobile phone maker Nokia on Thursday posted deep 2011 losses amid slumping handset sales and as its first Windows-based smartphone, aimed at shoring up its flagging market share, struggled to get off the ground.

For all of 2011, the company posted a net loss of 1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion), compared to a net profit of 1.8 billion euros a year earlier, while the final quarter of the year was hammered with a 1.07-billion-euro net loss after a profit of 745 million in the same period a year earlier.

A group of Israeli hackers said on Thursday they have attacked several Iranian websites, a day after a number of Israeli websites were taken offline in the latest incident in a low-level cyberwar.

In a statement posted on the Pastebin.com, a group calling themselves the "Israel Defense Force Team" said they had hacked the Iranian sites in response to similar attacks on an Israeli newspaper and hospital website a day earlier.

Symantec is recommending that users of its pcAnywhere software disable the product following the theft of source code from the U.S. computer security firm.

"At this time, Symantec recommends disabling the product until Symantec releases a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks," the Mountain View, California-based company said.

Netflix shares surged in after-hours trading Wednesday after the US video service announced earnings better than expected by analysts and that it gained subscribers in the fourth quarter.

The Los Gatos, California-based company posted a quarterly net profit of $41 million and earnings per share of 73 cents, well above the 55 cents per share forecast by Wall Street analysts.

The United States will closely examine the European Commission's online privacy legislation and wants to ensure it will not be too costly for companies to do business, a senior U.S. diplomat said Thursday.

Philip Verveer, the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy, welcomed European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding's focus on this area, but said her plans raised "quite complex" issues.

Japanese game giant Nintendo said Thursday it expected to lose 65 billion yen ($837 million) this year, more than three times the amount it had earlier predicted, citing a strong yen and price cuts.

The Kyoto-based firm also downgraded its annual sales forecast to 660 billion yen for the year to March, from an earlier forecast of 790 billion yen.