By Malathi Nayak and Bill Rigby SAN FRANCISCO/SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is set to make a splash this week with the eagerly awaited unveiling of its new Xbox game console, eight years after the last version, as it seeks a larger share of the $65 billion a year global computer gaming industry. But the small device faces some big competition from the PlayStation 4 by Sony Corp and the Wii U by Nintendo Co Ltd in a shifting market. ...

By Tom Bergin LONDON (Reuters) - Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. will be called back to the British parliament to clarify how its activities in the UK justify its low corporate income tax bill, two lawmakers told Reuters. Amazon will follow search giant Google, which attended another grilling by parliament's Public Affairs Committee (PAC) over its tax affairs on Thursday. A Reuters report earlier this month raised questions over Google's earlier assertions that its UK-based staff don't sell to customers. ...

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators have given some of Google's rivals more time to study its proposals to settle anti-competitive complaints, which could provide more leverage to pry further concessions from the Internet search giant. The European Commission last month told interested parties they had until May 26 to say if they are satisfied with the offer by the world's most popular search engine to mark out its services from rival products in Internet search results. ...

By Li-mei Hoang LONDON (Reuters) - A group of British hackers who "ran riot" causing millions of dollars of damage to computer networks run by Sony, the CIA and other agencies were sentenced to jail terms on Thursday. Police said four men, members of the hacking collective known as "LulzSec", put thousands of internet users' personal data at risk through their high-profile cyber attacks in 2011. ...

By Lucas Shaw NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - YouTube has a new paid channel for horror junkies, adding Screampix as the first subscription channel dedicated to frightful fare. It launched on Wednesday in the US and Canada for $2.99 a month, and will rollout to the U.K., France and Brazil later this year. The channel features more than 200 hours of horror footage, including full-length features, trailers and interviews. Movies are grouped into categories such as "Women on a Rampage" and "Zombiepalooza. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The online shopping sites Newegg and Overstock Inc won a patent battle on Wednesday with telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA, which had accused the companies of infringing its patented technology. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears all patent appeals, upheld a lower court decision which found that Newegg and Overstock did not infringe on a software patent that allows computers to adapt the shopping web sites to their own screen size rather than having a server do the work. ...

By Estelle Shirbon LONDON (Reuters) - Four British hackers who took part in 2011 cyber-attacks on targets ranging from the CIA to Sony were audacious, arrogant men whose motivation was "anarchic self-amusement", a court heard on Wednesday. The men, who have pleaded guilty to a variety of offences, were members of the hacking collective LulzSec that caused millions of dollars of damage to corporate and government computer networks during an online crime spree they boasted about on Twitter. ...

By Swati Pandey and Harichandan Arakali MUMBAI/BANGALORE (Reuters) - A breach of security at two payment card processing companies in India that led to heists at cash machines around the world has reopened questions on the risks of outsourcing sensitive financial services to the Asian nation. Global banks that ship work to be processed in India, either in-house or to big IT services vendors, were already under pressure to step up oversight of back-office functions after a series of scandals last year. Last week, U.S. ...

By Deepa Seetharaman WARREN, Michigan (Reuters) - General Motors Co said it is investing $546 million in two new Michigan data centers in hopes it will free up millions of dollars to boost vehicle quality more quickly. The largest U.S. automaker unveiled a $288 million data center in the Detroit suburb of Warren on Monday, which went online in January. Construction of a $258 million companion center at the GM vehicle proving grounds in Milford, Michigan, will begin this summer. ...

By Ronald Grover LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Disney's ABC network will become the first broadcast network to stream its shows live online through an ongoing service, starting with viewers of its TV stations in New York and Philadelphia on May 14 and expanding to its other stations by the end of the summer. To promote its WATCH ABC service, through the end of June Disney is allowing all viewers of its WABC station in New York and WPVI station in Philadelphia to watch live ABC programs online or on mobile devices by downloading the WATCH ABC app, Disney said in a statement. ...

By Swati Pandey and Supantha Mukherjee MUMBAI/BANGALORE (Reuters) - The Indian government's cyber watchdog is investigating how security at two companies that are part of the country's vast IT services industry was breached in a global ATM heist that saw $45 million stolen from two banks in the Middle East. EnStage Inc, which operates from Bangalore, and ElectraCard Services, based in the Indian city of Pune, processed card payments for the two banks that were hit in the theft, several people familiar with the situation said. ...

By Joseph Ax NEW YORK (Reuters) - Because the sums were large and such attacks are relatively new, the two Middle East banks hit in a $45 million ATM heist face an uncertain path in trying to recover their losses, financial, insurance and legal experts say. Oman-based Bank of Muscat lost $40 million and United Arab Emirates-based National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK) lost $5 million in the global heist, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday. Computer hackers broke into third-party companies that processed transactions for prepaid debit cards issued by the banks, the prosecutors said. ...

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - To mark the Cinco de Mayo holiday this year, Domino's Pizza festooned its Facebook page with a string of posts, including an image of a Mexican-themed guacamole pizza that garnered over 2,000 "likes". But visitors to Domino's companion Google+ page on that day found less festive fare: The most recent post was from October 2012. Two years after introducing its social network, Google Inc is struggling to win over the brands and businesses that have been its most loyal customers in the Internet search market. ...

By Manuel Jimenez SANTO DOMINGO (Reuters) - An alleged leader of the New York arm of a global cyber crime ring, which stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks, was shot dead during an attempted robbery in the Dominican Republic last month, Dominican police said on Friday. Alberto Lajud-Pena, 23, was killed on April 27 in a house in the city of San Francisco de Macoris about 100 miles northeast of the capital, Santo Domingo, according to police. ...

By Soyoung Kim and Olivia Oran NEW YORK (Reuters) - SoftBank Corp is playing it rough in its attempt to keep Dish Network Corp from breaking up its $20.1 billion deal to take control of Sprint Nextel Corp. The Japanese telecom company, which owns 33 percent of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, has told banks that their financing of Dish's $25.5 billion rival offer for Sprint could hurt their chances of landing a role in a highly anticipated public offering of the Chinese e-commerce giant, two sources familiar with the situation said. SoftBank, Dish and Sprint declined to comment. ...

By Alexander Hübner FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German prosecutors said on Friday they had arrested two Dutch citizens suspected of taking part in a $45 million global cyber heist unveiled the previous day by U.S. authorities. A 35-year-old man and a 56-year-old woman were caught on February 19 withdrawing 170,000 euros ($220,500) in Düsseldorf using Bank of Muscat credit cards. In total, $2.4 million dollars was withdrawn in seven German cities, the prosecutors said. On Thursday, U.S. ...

By Sarah McBride and Alina Selyukh SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Billionaire environmentalist Elon Musk has quit a Silicon Valley advocacy group formed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg after the group funded ads for senators touting their support for an oil pipeline and oil drilling in Alaska. Musk leads one of the world's best known "green" companies, electric carmaker Tesla. A Tesla spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday that the South African-born entrepreneur preferred not to elaborate on his reasons for leaving FWD.us. Zuckerberg announced the formation of FWD. ...

By Soyoung Kim and Olivia Oran (Reuters) - SoftBank Corp has asked investment banks not to finance a rival bid for Sprint Nextel Corp by Dish Network Corp, saying this could hurt the banks' chances of gaining a role in the highly anticipated public offering of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Japanese telecom company SoftBank, which is a big shareholder in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba with a 33 percent stake, is locked in an escalating bidding war with Dish, after the U.S. satellite TV provider made a $25. ...

By Esteban Israel SAO PAULO (Reuters) - While Brazil struggles to finish its stadiums in time for the 2014 World Cup, Twitter is already working to cash in on what the U.S. company's head of revenue, Adam Bain, sees as a potentially huge business opportunity. Robust consumer spending, growth potential from still-low Internet penetration and fast adoption of smart phones have turned this nation of 194 million people into an attractive market for Twitter and other online giants. ...

By Tim Kenneally LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Justin Bieber is once again airing his thoughts on history-making figures. With about as much success as he did last time. "Boyfriend" singer Bieber, who caught heat last month when he wondered whether Anne Frank would have been a fan of his, has now turned his gaze toward anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela. Bieber's deep thoughts on Mandela? He's "the man. ...

By Jessica Dye, Joseph Ax and Jim Finkle NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into their credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday. New York federal prosecutors accused eight men of allegedly forming the New York-based cell of the organization, and said seven of them have been arrested. The eighth defendant was reported to have been murdered in the Dominican Republic on April 27, according to U.S. prosecutors. ...

By Kim Dixon WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The political goal is the same as it was in the mid-1980s: grassroots support for an overhaul of the U.S. tax code. But lawmakers' approach this time is thoroughly modern. The chairmen of Congress's tax-writing committees on Thursday launched a website they hope will boost public support for overhauling the tax code in the same way that a "Write Rosty" letter-writing campaign did a quarter-century ago. TaxReform.gov, created by U.S. ...

By Tom Bergin LONDON (Reuters) - A panel of UK lawmakers will next week grill representatives from Google Inc and its auditor, Ernst & Young, following a Reuters report that highlighted inconsistencies in Google's statements about its UK activities. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said on its website that the representatives would testify on May 16. Google has attracted the ire of British lawmakers for the way it pays almost no income tax on billions of dollars of UK sales each year. ...