A plan to expand the number of Internet domain names came under fire in the US Congress on Thursday, a day after the head of the Federal Trade Commission said it could potentially be a "disaster."

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global body which manages the Domain Name System that forms the technical backbone of the Web, will begin taking applications in January for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), the suffixes such as .com, .net or .org.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday warned Internet firms to avoid offering the "tools of oppression" to authoritarian Middle East regimes trying to crush democracy protests.

Clinton urged private companies to "embrace (their) role in protecting Internet freedom" and ensure protection of ordinary people as well as political activists.

Apple has lost a long-running legal battle against a Taiwanese-owned company that it claimed was illegally using its iconic iPad trademark in China, court officials and state media said.

A court in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen ruled Tuesday that Apple lacked "supporting facts and evidence" for its claim that Proview Technology (Shenzhen) was infringing the US company's iconic tablet computer trademark.

South Korea has tightened monitoring of popular social networking sites to curb illicit content including an upsurge in North Korean propaganda, officials said Thursday.

The Korea Communications Standards Commission said an eight-member team was launched on Wednesday to examine Facebook and Twitter posts and smartphone applications.

The Kremlin reacted furiously on Wednesday after an obscene posting mocking liberal blogger Alexei Navalny, who was jailed in this week's protests, reappeared on President Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter feed.

"Last night an inappropriate retweet appeared on Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter account," the Kremlin said in a curt statement.

Japanese electronics giant Panasonic said Thursday it has been fined 7.7 million euros ($10.3 million) for violating European competition law in connection with sales of refrigerator parts.

The firm said it had been "fully cooperating" in a European Commission probe on compressors, which are used to cool refrigerators and freezers, that Panasonic and other manufacturers sold on the continent.

Google on Thursday began construction of a new data center in Hong Kong, the first of three planned for Asia as the Web giant expands to meet the region's growing thirst for information technology.

The facility, Google's first outside the United States and Europe, will cost US$300 million and is being built on 2.7 hectares (6.7 acres) in the Tseung Kwan O industrial estate in Kowloon, the firm said.

Internet-streamed video will overtake cable to dominate home video viewing within three to five years, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings predicted Tuesday, with stiffer competition to come.

Hastings said that the rapid growth in high-volume home internet links over fiber optic cables will boost consumer use of on-demand viewing services over traditional cable viewing.

One of the world's largest Apple stores is opening at the landmark Grand Central Terminal.

The 23,000-square-foot (2,140-square-meter) personal electronics business will start selling to the public on Friday.

A U.S. adversary would currently be unable to bring down the entire U.S. electrical grid using cyber weapons but such a scenario is conceivable within two to five years, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday.

"Today, the likelihood that a nation-state or any actor is going to knock down the entire electrical grid of a country, of the United States let's say, is very remote," retired General James Cartwright said.