Reuters

China's Lenovo Group said first-quarter profit jumped 23 percent, beating estimates, as a surge in smartphone sales showed how quickly the world's biggest personal computer maker is transforming itself into a major player in mobile technology.

Apple has been discussing how its "HealthKit" service will work with health providers at Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic and Johns Hopkins as well as with Allscripts, a competitor to electronic health records provider Epic Systems, people familiar with the discussions said.

While the talks may not amount to anything concrete, they underscore how Apple is intent on making health data, such as blood pressure, pulse and weight, available for consumers and health providers to view in one place.

But some implementations with HealthKit may be a challenge due to a web of privacy and regulatory requirements and many decades-old IT systems, said Morgan Reed, executive director of ACT, a Washington-based organization that represents mobile app developers.

The US government need not turn over a secret surveillance court's orders or the names of phone companies helping it collect call records, because it might reveal methods needed to protect national security, a federal judge decided.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, rejected the Electronic Frontier Foundation's argument that the US Department of Justice should turn over the materials, in the wake of unauthorized disclosures in 2013 by a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden.

Xiaomi said it had upgraded its operating system to ensure users knew it was collecting data from their address books after a report by a computer security firm said the Chinese budget smartphone maker was taking personal data without permission.

The privately held company said it had fixed a loophole in its cloud messaging system that had triggered the unauthorized data transfer and that the operating system upgrade had already been launched.

Alarmed by mounting cyber threats around the world and across industries, a growing number of security experts see aggressive government action as the best hope for averting disaster.

Such fears and proposals on new laws and executive action to counter these threats were core topics in Las Vegas at Black Hat and Def Con, two of the world's largest gatherings for security professionals and hackers.

Long time tech industry researcher Dan Geer said the US government should require detailed reporting on major cyber breaches, in the same way that deadly diseases must be reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Critical industries should be subjected to "stress tests" like the banks, Geer said, so regulators can see if they can survive without the Internet or with compromised equipment.

Geer also called for exposing software vendors to product liability suits if they do not share their source code with customers and bugs in their programs lead to significant losses from intrusion or sabotage.

T-Mobile plans to overtake Sprint as the No. 3 wireless US carrier in subscribers by the end of 2014, Chief Executive Officer John Legere tweeted.

While T-Mobile has been adding record numbers of subscribers through promotions and campaigns, Sprint customers have been leaving in droves due to service problems arising from carrier’s network overhaul.

The National Security Agency is turning to Silicon Valley for topflight talent, but first it has to rebuild trust.

Anne Neuberger, special assistant to NSA Director Michael Rogers, said that, in the long run, the agency might struggle to keep pace with technology. Describing her role as an intermediary between the public and technology sectors, Neuberger promised to "rebuild trust" in the wake of what she called "media leaks."

Some analysts fear that Sprint's decision to give up its dream of merging with T-Mobile US could lead to a wider price war as the top carriers slug it out in a nearly saturated market.

Sprint might follow the lead of T-Mobile, which added more subscribers than all of its competitors combined in the first quarter through aggressive promotions and campaigns that addressed customer frustrations with the industry.

The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), a Chinese anti-trust regulator, conducted new raids on Microsoft and partner in China Accenture.

SAIC raided offices in Beijing, Liaoning, Fujian and Hubei. SAIC also raided the Dalian offices of IT consultancy Accenture, to whom Microsoft outsources financial work.

Apple won preliminary court approval for its $450 million settlement of claims it harmed consumers by conspiring with five publishers to raise e-book prices.

In approving the accord, US District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan overcame concerns she had expressed over a settlement provision allowing Apple to pay just $70 million if related litigation were to drag out.