Reuters

Parents struggling to get their children away from smartphones and tablets for meals, homework, exercise and other activities can arm themselves with new apps to remotely block access to the devices.

Usage of smartphones and tablets among children has tripled since 2011, according to Common Sense Media, a San Francisco based non-profit that studies the effects of media and technology on young users.

A new app called DinnerTime Parental Control, for iPhone or Android smartphones, enables parents to restrict when children can use their smartphones and tablets. “The price of entry level smartphones and tablets have come down a lot, and as a result, more and more kids have their own individual devices,” said Richard Sah, co-founder of DinnerTime, based in San Mateo (CA). With the free app, parents can pause activity on a child’s Android smartphone or tablet so that they can focus on things like homework, exercise and family time.

Once a device has been paused, all functions on their device are blocked, including the ability to text and play with apps. DinnerTime Plus, another free app from the company, lets parents manage the apps their children use and to views the apps they are using in real time. Parents can also purchase detailed reporting, which outlines how much time kids spend on certain apps, and how often they used them.

If Sprint Corp acquires T-Mobile US, it could save up to $6.6 billion on network, equipment and operating costs, but it will have to slash its prices to match the target company's steep discounts, analysts said. Sprint, under Chairman Masayoshi Son, has been hesitant to join other carriers in cutting fees because a decline in revenue would hurt its stock price, analysts say.

Its shares have risen 8 percent since Dec. 12 on speculation it was looking to acquire T-Mobile from Deutsche Telecom AG.

"I think he's realized he's between a rock and a hard place. Sprint’s prices are much too high, but if Sprint cuts prices, its stock will fall," said Craig Moffett, lead analyst at MoffettNathanson. "They don't come close to justifying their stock price."

The price differential is just one hurdle that Sprint, which is 80 percent owned by Japan's SoftBank Corp, would face if it pursues a deal to buy T-Mobile.

Unease about whether Sprint can overcome regulatory hurdles sent its stock down 9.3 percent to $8.77 since details emerged of a potential bid. Sprint customers spend an average of $62 a month, compared with $50 for T-Mobile. "It is not a sustainable situation. If the companies merge, they will need uniform pricing across the company," said Michael McCormack, a lead analyst at Jefferies.

Companies based outside the European Union must meet Europe's data protection rules, ministers agreed on Friday, although governments remain divided over how to enforce them on companies operating across the bloc.

The agreement to force Internet companies such as Google and Facebook to abide by EU-wide rules is a first step in a wider reform package to tighten privacy laws - an issue that has gained prominence following revelations of US spying in Europe.

"All companies operating on European soil have to apply the rules," EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding told reporters at a meeting in Luxembourg where ministers agreed on a position also been backed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ).

Companies based outside the European Union must meet Europe's data protection rules, ministers agreed, although governments remain divided over how to enforce them on companies operating across the bloc.

The agreement to force Internet companies such as Google and Facebook to abide by EU-wide rules is a first step in a wider reform package to tighten privacy laws - an issue that has gained prominence following revelations of US spying in Europe. Under the new rules all EU countries will have the same data protection laws, meaning companies will no longer be able to challenge which laws apply to them in court.

A year after Edward Snowden exposed the National Security Agency's mass surveillance programs, the major US technology companies suffering from the fallout are uniting to shore up their defenses against government intrusion. Instead of aggressively lobbying Washington for reform, Google, Microsoft Corp and other tech companies have made security advancements their top priority, adopting tools that make blanket interception of Internet activity more difficult.

"It's of course important for companies to do the things under our own control, and what we have under our own control is our own technology practices," Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith told Reuters. "I don't know that anyone believes that will be sufficient to allay everyone's concerns. There is a need for reform of government practices, but those will take longer."

As part of a "Reset the Net" campaign now reaching a mainstream audience, Google said it was releasing a test version of a program allowing Gmail users to keep email encrypted until it reaches other Gmail users, without the company decrypting it in transit to display advertising.

Google, Microsoft and Facebook moved to encrypt internal traffic after revelations by Snowden, a former NSA contractor that the spy agency hacked into their connections overseas. The companies have also smaller adjustments that together make sweeping collection more difficult.

"Anyone trying to perform mass surveillance is going to have a much harder job today than they would have even six months ago," said Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney with the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation.

A smartphone app that rids you of acne. Another that monitors your heart rate 24-7. One that detects skin cancer by looking at your birthmarks. If they sound too good to be true, they may be. Patients today use a number of apps that purport to track and treat a panoply of ailments, a headache for regulators and patient safety advocates.

Now, the advent of wearable devices bristling with sophisticated biotracking sensors is stirring concern in the medical community about misdiagnoses that could have serious consequences for consumers.

Some are asking whether Apple and Google should do more to police their fast-growing app marketplaces.

"Most of the health apps out there are built by people with zero medical experience," said Paris Wallace, chief executive officer of Ovuline, a popular fertility app. Worse, many developers don't have the resources for legal counsel, Wallace said, and are more likely to make false claims to patients without seeking FDA clearance.

The Food and Drug Administration in 2013 published guidelines on the kinds of mobile apps it will supervise. But industry insiders fear the agency may get overwhelmed as apps mushroom.

"The FDA wasn't designed for post-market surveillance," said Jason Brooke, chief executive officer and general counsel at Vasoptic Medical, maker of a mobile diagnostic that competes with a number of unregulated apps. The FDA needs to act soon to ensure that developers will "comply on their own."

AT&T said it expects to cut programming costs for its U-verse television product by more than 20 percent with its $48.5 billion purchase of satellite television provider DirecTV - savings that will be the biggest portion of the deal's cost benefits.

The acquisition will also enable AT&T, the country's No. 2 wireless carrier, to offer a pay TV and wireless bundle to an additional 45 million US customers, the company said in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing adds details to a bid that has boggled some analysts who see little benefit to the mobile carrier.

Chinese state media lashed out at Google, Apple and other US technology companies, calling on Beijing “to punish severely the pawns” of the US government for monitoring China and stealing secrets. US companies such as Yahoo, Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Facebook threaten the cyber-security of China and its Internet users, said the People’s Daily on its microblog, in comments echoed on the front page of the English-language China Daily.

It is not clear what sparked this latest round of vitriol, nor what information the US firms are alleged to have stolen. But Chinese media have repeatedly attacked American tech companies for aiding the US government’s cyber espionage since US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden revealed widespread spying programs including PRISM. Under PRISM, the NSA seized data from companies such as Google and Apple, according to revelations made by Snowden in 2013.

Chinese state-owned firms have since begun dispensing with the services of US companies such as IBM, Oracle and Cisco in flavor of domestic technology. As a result, Snowden’s revelations may cost US companies billions of dollars, analysts say. “US companies including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. are all coordinating with the PRISM program to monitor China,” the People’s Daily wrote. “To resist the naked Internet hegemony, we will draw up international regulations, and strengthen technology safeguards, but we will also severely punish the pawns of the villain."

Turkey has lifted its ban on video-sharing website YouTube as material deemed insulting to Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has been removed, Turkish state-run news agency Anatolian reported.

Ankara's general attorney ruled the site, blocked since May 2008, should be now freely accessible to Turkish users.

It's too bad women can't computer-generate more of their own participation in the technical side of filmmaking. Digital animation and visual effects are so widespread today that studios can end up using them in nearly every shot. Yet as the trend grows, women may be lagging behind even more in the digital arts than they are in the film and tech industries generally. In tracking women in the film industry, San Diego State University professor Martha Lauzen found that they were "dramatically underrepresented" as visual effects supervisors.

Among the top 250 grossing films in the United States in 2013, women accounted for 5 percent of such positions -- below directors (6 percent), writers (10 percent) and producers (25 percent), according to Lauzen's study, "The Celluloid Ceiling." All 52 people honored in 2014 at the Scientific and Technical Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were men.

The Academy's Visual Effects branch has 322 active members, and while it won't say how many are women, a Los Angeles Times investigation from 2012 put the number at 3 percent; their membership in the Academy overall is 23 percent. Many who spoke to Reuters agree that the problem lies in the workplace, not in any lack of appetite for the field.

But both men and women point to the toll of the industry's brutal hours. Many of the 52 men collecting the Academy's sci-tech awards in February thanked their spouses for putting up with their long days. At the visual effects houses, the regular workweek is around 50 hours, but there are often months of 70-80 hour weeks and even 100 hours in a film's final crunch time. Those demands can prove intolerable for women with children.

Kyodo news agency reported that Deutsche Telekom had agreed to a Softbank plan to buy T-Mobile. But sources familiar with the talks told Reuters that while the two sides are keen to get a deal done, a transaction was complicated, including the issue of getting regulatory approval.

Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG is willing to keep a minority stake in a deal to sell T-Mobile US to Japan’s Softbank, but other details such as price and financing remain to be worked out, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Softbank owns a majority of Sprint, the third largest US wireless carrier. Deutsche Telekom owns 67 percent of T-Mobile, which has a market value of $27.6 billion and is the fourth-largest US wireless carrier.