Associated Press

A botched attempt to break into an activist's iPhone using hitherto unknown espionage software has triggered a global upgrade of Apple's mobile operating system, researchers said Aug 25. The spyware took advantage of three previously undisclosed weaknesses in Apple's mobile operating system to take control of iPhone devices, according to reports published by the San Francisco-based Lookout smartphone security company and Internet watchdog group Citizen Lab.

Both reports pointed to the NSO Group, an Israeli company with a reputation for flying under the radar, as the author of the spyware. Such a compromise would give hackers full control over the phone, enabling them to eavesdrop on calls, harvest messages, activate cameras and microphones and drain the device of its personal data. Apple said it fixed the vulnerability immediately after learning about it, but the security hole may have gone unpatched had it not been for the wariness of a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates. The malware was used to target journalists and activists in some cases, according to Citizen Lab.

An effort to replace obsolete pay phones with Wi-Fi kiosks that offer free web surfing and phone calls has been a hit with panhandlers and the homeless, the least wired people in the city. The city doesn't track who's using the new LinkNYC terminals, but anecdotal evidence suggests many users are living on the streets.

KentuckyWired hit a speed bump when the planned fiber optic network meant to spread high-speed Internet throughout the state became entangled in longer-than-expected efforts to gain access to utility poles, lawmakers were told. As a result, completion of the project’s initial phases could be delayed by 10 to 12 months, said Chris Moore, executive director of the Kentucky Communications Network Authority, which oversees and maintains the KentuckyWired project. Now the target date for completing those first phases is the third quarter of 2017, he said. The entire project could be wrapped up by the first quarter of 2019 — about four to eight months later than anticipated, Moore said.

The slowdown in the initial phases drew concern as a Kentucky legislative panel received an update on the vast project’s progress. “Now why would it take that long?” said state Rep Rita Smart (D-Richmond). Moore said that 85 percent of the fiber optic cables will be attached to utility poles, mostly in rural areas. The rest of the cables will be placed underground, mainly in urban areas. Project managers had to obtain agreements from owners of the poles, he said. “We ran into delays in getting pole attachment agreements with two of the largest pole owners in the commonwealth,” Moore said. Those agreements are now in hand, he said. But another potential slowdown has been obtaining easements from private landowners, he said. Potential cost overruns are “yet to be fully developed,” but project managers are working to minimize any additional costs, he said.

Israeli and American families of victims of Palestinian attacks filed a $1-billion lawsuit against Facebook, claiming the social network is providing a platform for militants to spread incitement and violence, their lawyers said. Shurat Hadin, an Israeli legal advocacy group, filed the suit on behalf of the five families in a New York court, alleging that Facebook is violating the US Anti-Terrorism Act by providing a service to militant groups that assists them in “recruiting, radicalizing, and instructing terrorists, raising funds, creating fear and carrying out attacks.” The lawsuit focuses on the Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and which has fought three wars against Israel since the Palestinian group overran the coastal territory in 2007.

The five families in the lawsuit lost relatives in attacks over the last two years. “Facebook can't sit in its stone tower in Palo Alto while blood is being spilled here on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It has a social responsibility. It can't serve as a social network for Hamas,” said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the Israeli lawyer who is representing the families. She compared Facebook to a bank, saying that just as money may be transferred as a service for terror groups, so can content.

The Islamic State group's Twitter traffic has plunged 45 percent since 2014, the Obama Administration says, as the US and its allies have countered messages of jihadi glorification with a flood of online images and statements about suffering and enslavement at the hands of the extremist organization. Among the images: A teddy bear with Arabic writing and messages saying IS "slaughters childhood," ''kills innocence," ''lashes purity" or "humiliates children." A male hand covering a female's mouth, saying IS "deprives woman her voice." A woman in a black niqab (veil), bloody tears coming from a bruised eye, and the caption: "Women under ISIS. Enslaved. Battered. Beaten. Humiliated. Flogged." US officials cite the drop in Twitter traffic as a sign of progress toward eliminating propaganda they blame for inspiring attacks around the world.

[Commentary] Americans are increasingly engaging in a practice known as television binge-watching -- going through several episodes of a TV show in a single stretch. So why am I unhappy about this new way to watch TV?

The biggest challenge with binge-watching is avoiding mentions of plot twists and other spoilers in the news media, on social networks and in casual conversations. Aware of how it feels to hear about spoilers, I'm careful not to "spoil" others. But it's hard to keep track of what I can say to whom.

I lose the sense of time by binge-watching, whether something I watched just four hours ago really took place four weeks or four months ago. I've also let too much of my life slide trying to catch up on shows. There's a temptation to start from the beginning, even as new episodes air, such that it becomes overwhelming to catch up and keep up.

Gannett is splitting its broadcast and publishing business in two, joining other major media players in allowing fast growing TV and digital operations to operate more freely and not be weighed down by the declining newspaper business.

Gannett also announced that it would take full ownership of Cars.com for $1.8 billion. The publishing company will house USA Today as well as 81 local US daily publications and Newsquest, a regional community news provider in the UK.

Chinese regulators have concluded Qualcomm, one of the biggest makers of chips used in mobile devices, has a monopoly, according to Xu Kunlin, director of the anti-monopoly bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's economic planning agency.

In a move that aims to counter consolidation among TV distributors like Comcast-Time Warner Cable and AT&T-DirecTV, Rupert Murdoch's Fox has made an unsolicited takeover offer for rival media giant Time Warner for about $76 billion in cash and stock.

The more must-have channels like HBO and Fox News Channel are assembled under one company, the stronger that company's bargaining position in demanding licensing fees from the TV distributors, no matter how big they get. Time Warner rejected the bid, but an analyst called it just a first attempt in a courtship that would make the combined company as large as Disney in market value.

The Obama Administration knew in advance that the British government would oversee destruction of a newspaper's hard drives containing leaked National Security Agency documents in 2013, newly declassified documents show.

The White House had said it would be nearly unimaginable for the US government to do the same to an American news organization. The Guardian newspaper, responding to threats from the British government in July 2013, destroyed the data roughly a month after it and other media outlets first published details from the top secret documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The NSA emails, obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that senior intelligence officials were notified of Britain's intent to retrieve the Snowden documents and that one senior US official appeared to praise the effort.