Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished after climbing to a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in the early hours of Saturday. Search teams have not been able to make any confirmed discovery of wreckage in seas beneath the plane's flight path almost 48 hours after it took off.

"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet," said the source, who is involved in the preliminary investigations in Malaysia.

If the plane had plunged intact from such a height, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the investigation.

The source was speaking shortly before Vietnamese authorities said a military plane had spotted an object at sea suspected to be part of the missing airliner.

Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical issues.

Malaysian authorities have said they are focused on finding the plane and have declined to comment when asked about the investigations.

However, the source said the closest parallels were the explosion on board an Air India jetliner in 1985 when it was over the Atlantic Ocean and the Lockerbie air disaster in 1988. Both planes were cruising at around 31,000 feet when bombs exploded on board.

Canadian and Indian police have long alleged the Air India bombing was conducted by Sikh extremists living in western Canada as revenge on India for the deadly 1984 assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest shrine.

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie killed 259 passengers and crew and another 11 people on the ground. A Libyan intelligence officer was convicted for the attack.

International police agency Interpol has said at least two of the passengers on board the Malaysian plane, and possibly more, used passports listed as missing or stolen on its database.

Shortly after I don Oculus Rift, the mind-blowing virtual reality 3D headset from Oculus VR that is likely to take the gaming market by storm whenever it finally ships. For 45 seconds I watch the virtual alter ego I just created explore digital worlds. As I move my head around Oculus I visit different parts of these virtual worlds — with the scene alternating between an arctic frozen tundra, a marshy volcanic environment and a desert landscape.

I'm taking part in a pretty awesome computational photography tech demo at South by Southwest, courtesy of Microsoft Research and the guys most responsible for it, James George, a Brooklyn-based media artist and his partner Alexander Porter, an "experimental photographer." Microsoft is housing a showroom during SXSW as a way to show off something really cool, and to promote products including a new game for the Xbox One.

The reconstruction of my body in the Microsoft Research demo is made possible by four Kinect cameras that are paired with four high-end Canon EOS 5D Mark III digital cameras. My body image is captured from all sides.

The Kinect cameras provide a sense of depth; the DSLRs add the color textures on top of your virtual clone, Porter says.

"When you see yourself in the image it's not so abstract," he says. "This is sort of the digital world entering the real world and vice versa."

Every pixel is accounted for in its proper space. Porter compares the experience as a cross between Tron and the Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian. "So many of the techniques and the tools we have now were previously science fiction objects."

Still, the company has no immediate commercial plans for for the technology. But you can easily envision how this might eventually be deployed in cinema, interactive games, possibly even education.

George is mainly interested in the artistic possibilities. "Art has a practical place in the world," he says.

"It's important that we look at these technologies not as products that are coming out but how they make us feel, the stories that we tell through them, the emotions we can have when we share (these) experiences."

That still seems a ways off.

More than 1,000 workers walked off the job last week at the factory in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, after managers on March 3 announced the terms of their transfer to new ownership under Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd.

Lenovo agreed in January to pay $2.3 billion for International Business Machine's low-end server business.

The strike, which continued into Sunday, fits a growing pattern of industrial activism that has emerged as China's economy has slowed. A worsening labor shortage has shifted the balance of power in labor relations, while smartphones and social media have helped workers organize and made them more aware than ever of the changing environment, experts say.

"Chinese workers, after being exploited for so long, are now more and more aware of their rights and united. They have more of an idea of collective action," said labor lawyer Duan Yi.

A report by the advocacy group China Labour Bulletin last month said it had talled 1,171 strikes and protests from the beginning of June 2011 to the end of December 2013.

Many worker protests during that time in Guangdong province, a manufacturing hub where the IBM server factory is situated, were sparked by the closure, merger or relocation of factories.

In November, hundreds of employees stopped work at a Nokia factory in Dongguan, near Shenzhen, complaining of changes following Nokia's sale of its mobile phone business to U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp.

Lawyer Duan is seeking arbitration for a group of 70 Nokia workers who were laid off at the time.

Last August, 5,000 workers in eastern Shandong Province went on strike to protest Apollo Tyres Ltd's proposed $2.5 billion acquisition of U.S.-based Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. The deal was eventually scuttled and Cooper reported this month that the work stoppage in China had cut operating profit by $29 million in the third quarter.

The labor shortage has pushed up wages, impelled employers to cast a wide net to find employees and enhance benefits to retain staff. Workers have gained leverage.

"Workers know they have greater power," said Geoffrey Crothall, a China labor expert with China Labour Bulletin. IBM said last week the terms offered to the workers at the International System Technology Company factory in Shenzhen were "comparable in aggregate to what they currently are receiving" and severance packages would be "equitable".

Putin defended breakaway moves by pro-Russian leaders in Crimea, where Russian forces tightened their grip on the Ukrainian region by seizing another border post.

As thousands staged rival rallies in Crimea, street violence flared in Sebastopol, when pro-Russian activists and Cossacks attacked a group of Ukrainians.

Russian forces' seizure of the Black Sea peninsula has been bloodless but tensions are mounting following the decision by pro-Russian groups there to make Crimea part of Russia.

The operation to seize Crimea began within days of Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich's flight from the country last month. Yanukovich was toppled after three months of demonstrations against a decision to spurn a free trade deal with the European Union for closer ties with Russia.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk will hold talks with President Barack Obama in Washington on Wednesday on how to find a peaceful resolution to the crisis, the White House said.

One of Obama's top national security officials said the United States would not recognize the annexation of Crimea by Russia if residents vote to leave Ukraine in a referendum next week.

"We won't recognize it, nor will most of the world," deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken said.

INTERNATIONAL LAW

Putin declared a week ago that Russia had the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian citizens, and his parliament has voted to change the law to make it easier to annex territory inhabited by Russian speakers.

Speaking by telephone to Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, Putin said steps taken by authorities in Crimea were "based on international law and aimed at guaranteeing the legitimate interests of the peninsula's population," the Kremlin said.

A German government statement, however, said the referendum was illegal. "Holding it violates the Ukrainian constitution and international law."

Merkel also regretted the lack of progress on forming an "international contact group" to seek a political solution to the Ukraine crisis and said this should be done urgently.

On Thursday, Merkel said if a contact group was not formed in the coming days and no progress was made in negotiations with Russia, the European Union could hit Russia with sanctions such as travel restrictions and asset freezes.

The tanker docked on Saturday at the eastern terminal of Es Sider, one of three ports seized by rebels since August to press demands for autonomy and a bigger share of oil revenue. Local daily al-Wasat said the ship had loaded $36 million of crude.

The rebel oil sale illustrates the deepening turmoil in the OPEC producer, which has failed to rein in fighters who helped oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 but who now defy state authority.

In Tripoli, workers at a state oil firm that runs Es Sider port went on strike, urging the government to intervene because their colleagues were under duress from armed protesters.

"We are very angry at what is happening at Es Sider," said Salah Madari, an oil worker in the capital. "The port's control officer is being held at gunpoint," he said, adding that gunmen had also forced a pilot to guide the tanker into dock.

Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said on Saturday the military would bomb the 37,000-tonne Morning Glory if it tried to leave the port, one of Libya's biggest oil terminals.

There was no sign of any immediate military action. But the navy and allied militias have sent several boats to stop the tanker from leaving, said Culture Minister Habib al-Amin.

He and other government officials did not elaborate at a news conference, but Libyan news websites showed some small boats close to a tanker which they said was the Morning Glory.

"Several navy boats have been dispatched. Now the tanker's movements are under complete control and nobody can move it," said Amin, who acts as informal government spokesman. "The tanker will stay where it is."

"All efforts are being undertaken to stop and seize the tanker, if necessary by a (military) strike, if it does not follow orders," he said, adding that state prosecutors would treat the loading of the crude as smuggling.

Libya has been trying to rebuild its army since Gaddafi's overthrow, but analysts say it is not yet a match for battle-hardened militias that fought in the eight-month uprising.

There was no immediate reaction from the protest movement made up of thousands of former state oil guards led by Ibrahim Jathran, who fought Gaddafi troops in 2011 in the east. FEARS OF SECESSION

The Defence Ministry earlier issued orders to the chief of staff, air force and navy to deal with the tanker. "The order authorizes the use of force and puts the responsibility for any resulting damage on the ship owner," it said in a statement.

Customers having one smartphone with no annual service contract will now pay $65 per month instead of $80 for a plan that includes 2GB LTE wireless data, unlimited talk and text messaging, unlimited international messaging and 50 GB cloud storage. Customers with two smartphones will now pay $90.

The latest plan follows price cuts AT&T announced last month for families and customers who share large data plans, as well as its offer of a $200 credit to customers who switch to its network.

AT&T has been fiercely competing with smaller rival T-Mobile U.S. after T-Mobile spent several quarters directly marketing to AT&T customers. T-Mobile, a long-time industry straggler, was able to report three full quarters of customer growth after four years of losses.

Separately on Friday, T-Mobile said it was doubling to 1GB the amount of LTE wireless data it was providing with its flagship Simple Choice plan, which costs $50 a month, and also includes unlimited talk and domestic and international text messaging.

AT&T previously said that T-Mobile's efforts only concerned the most cost-conscious customers, who are not its or market leader Verizon Communications Inc's primary targets.

All four U.S. wireless providers, including Sprint Corp, have made price adjustments as they attempt to sustain growth in a mature market built on stealing growth from competitors.

Two of the gases are accumulating at a rate that is causing concern among researchers.

Worries over the growing ozone hole have seen the production of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases restricted since the mid 1980s.

But the precise origin of these new, similar substances remains a mystery, say scientists.

Lying in the atmosphere, between 15 and 30km above the surface of the Earth, the ozone layer plays a critical role in blocking harmful UV rays, which cause cancers in humans and reproductive problems in animals. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey were the first to discover a huge "hole" in the ozone over Antarctica in 1985.

The evidence quickly pointed to CFC gases, which were invented in the 1920s, and were widely used in refrigeration and as aerosol propellants in products like hairsprays and deodorants.

Remarkably, global action was rapidly agreed to tackle CFCs and the Montreal Protocol to limit these substances came into being in 1987.

A total global ban on production came into force in 2010.

Now, researchers from the University of East Anglia have discovered evidence of four new gases that can destroy ozone and are getting into the atmosphere from as yet unidentified sources. Three of the gases are CFCs and one is a hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC), which can also damage ozone.

"Our research has shown four gases that were not around in the atmosphere at all until the 1960s which suggests they are man-made," said lead researcher Dr Johannes Laube.

The scientists discovered the gases by analysing polar firm, perennial snow pack. Air extracted from this snow is a natural archive of what was in the atmosphere up to 100 years ago. Grim discovery

The researchers also looked at modern air samples, collected at remote Cape Grim in Tasmania.

They estimate that about 74,000 tonnes of these gases have been released into the atmosphere. Two of the gases are accumulating at significant rates.

"The identification of these four new gases is very worrying as they will contribute to the destruction of the ozone layer," said Dr Laube.

"We don't know where the new gases are being emitted from and this should be investigated. Possible sources include feedstock chemicals for insecticide production and solvents for cleaning electronic components."

"The visit will highlight the strong support of the United States for the people of Ukraine, who have demonstrated inspiring courage and resilience through recent times of crisis," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

The Obama-Yatsenyuk meeting comes less than a week before a referendum in the Crimea region on whether to leave Ukraine and join Russia.

Carney said the leaders "will discuss how to find a peaceful resolution to Russia's ongoing military intervention in Crimea that would respect Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Economic aid and preparation for May elections in Ukraine are also on the agenda, Carney said.

Obama and Yatsenyuk have called the Crimea secession referendum illegal and inappropriate, given Russia's military incursion into the region.

"This is our land," Yatsenyuk told a crowd in Kiev on Sunday. "Our fathers and grandfathers have spilled their blood for this land. And we won't budge a single centimeter from Ukrainian land. Let Russia and its president know this."

Yatsenyuk's office said Wednesday's talk with Obama is about "resolution of the situation in Ukraine."

From the Associated Press:

"Crimea, a strategic peninsula in southern Ukraine, has become the flashpoint in the battle for Ukraine, where three months of protests sparked by President Victor Yanukovych's decision to ditch a significant treaty with the 28-nation European Union after strong pressure from Russia led to his downfall. A majority of people in Crimea identify with Russia, and Moscow's Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol, as is Ukraine's. ...

Conducted over snacks and beer, the late-night festivity was a spontaneous reunion of a security super-group that had come to Koum's aid in 2000 as he grappled with a denial-of-service attack that knocked Yahoo offline when Koum was responsible for security there.

The now defunct collective known as w00w00 (pronounced whoo whoo) had thrived on Internet Relay Chat channels in the late 1990s and early 2000s, between get-togethers at hacking conventions such as Def Con in Las Vegas, where a member said Koum "came across like a big, friendly kid."

Although the elite group was not well known outside hacking circles, its members have spawned more than a dozen companies, mainly in security. The two most famous exceptions are WhatsApp, the messaging service that Koum co-founded, and Napster, the pioneering file-sharing company that was shut down by the music industry in 2001.

The key to w00w00's success, according to interviews with a dozen members, was that it brought together people with widely varying expertise and backgrounds in a meritocratic way that would be tough to replicate in today's more complex and competitive world of security.

Koum was already a senior Yahoo Inc executive in his early 20s when he joined w00w00. Napster Co-founder Shawn Fanning was one of several members still in high school. Both came from poor backgrounds and benefited from the group's welcoming culture, which prized collaboration in the era before computer security became a big business, let alone a major factor in national defense and offense.

"Communication was democratized, and curiosity was rewarded," Koum told Reuters last week. "I had so much fun in early days learning about networking, security, scalability and other geeky stuff."

The w00w00 party at the St. Regis on February 26 came during the peak of the week-long RSA Conference across the street, the largest gathering of tech security professionals in the world. Some w00w00 veterans were attending the show to hawk software or services from their companies, while others were taking pains to avoid the marketing hype powered by a flood of new investment.

Paul Ceglia, 40, is accused of forging a 2003 contract with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that supposedly entitled him to part ownership of the company.

After an hour-long hearing in New York, U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter rejected Ceglia's request to throw out the charges, finding he had failed to meet the "high standard" needed to dismiss a grand jury indictment.

Ceglia sued Zuckerberg and Facebook in 2010 in a federal court in Buffalo, New York, claiming that he and Zuckerberg had signed a contract while Zuckerberg was a freshman at Harvard University for Ceglia to invest $1,000 in a planned social networking website.

Zuckerberg had previously done some programming work for Ceglia's company, StreetFax.com. Facebook has argued that the only contract between the two men was related to that company and accused Ceglia of faking various documents as part of his lawsuit.

Last year, a magistrate judge in Buffalo recommended that Ceglia's lawsuit be dismissed, finding that it was "highly probable and reasonably certain" that the contract was fabricated in order to pursue the lawsuit. The federal judge overseeing the case has not yet ruled on that recommendation.

Prosecutors in New York charged Ceglia in 2012, accusing him of forging documents as part of the Buffalo litigation.

Ceglia has since filed a separate lawsuit against Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office is prosecuting Ceglia, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder seeking to halt the criminal case.

On Friday, Ceglia's defense attorney, David Patton, argued that the government should be barred from prosecuting him for allegations he made in the context of a civil lawsuit, warning that it could discourage litigants from filing claims.

He also said the government's allegations do not constitute criminal fraud under federal law.

"They're alleging that it's simply a phony, sham litigation," he said. "That's not fraud."

Carter said the indictment was sufficient to move ahead, though he said he would consider Patton's arguments at a later date if the case goes to trial. Following the hearing, Ceglia vowed to press forward with his claims against Facebook, while his civil attorney, Joseph Alioto, said they would prove the Zuckerberg contract is legitimate.

"Nothing is going to stop me," Ceglia said.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin claims Ukraine has fallen into the hands of far-right fascist groups, and some Western experts have also raised concerns about the influence of extremists. Yet many Ukrainians see the same groups as nationalist stalwarts and defenders of the country's independence.

Two of the groups under most scrutiny are Svoboda, whose members hold five senior roles in Ukraine's new government including the post of deputy prime minister, and Pravyi Sector (Right Sector), whose leader Dmytro Yarosh is now the country's Deputy Secretary of National Security.

Right Sector activists wearing black ski masks, bullet-proof vests and military fatigues still hold several buildings close to Kiev's Independence Square. Activists on the street declined to speak to Reuters about their organization. An individual described as their "commander" directed a reporter to two spokespeople who also declined requests for interviews.

On Tuesday the group called for supporters to patrol Wikipedia. In a posting on Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, Right Sector wrote: "We appeal to people who can make changes to Wikipedia. In the English version (with Russian worse) Right Sector is depicted as an organization that has a fascist and neo-Nazi views, with appropriate consequences. If you have an opportunity - correct this misunderstanding."

According to Wikipedia's logs, on Monday the Right Sector entry described the party as having "borderline fascist or neo-fascist views." On Tuesday the page was modified 174 times, including changes to describe Right Sector as an "organization to protect demonstrators" and a "youth patriot organization."

After the intervention of Wikipedia administrators, the page was locked and reverted to saying that Right Sector was "described by major Western newspapers as having far right or neo-fascist views."

Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto said he had not even heard of the virtual currency until a few weeks ago.

Nakamoto was singled out as the man who wrote the code underpinning Bitcoin by Newsweek.

But he said that quotes attributed to him that seemed to suggest his discontinued involvement with the project had been "misunderstood".

"I got nothing to do with it," Nakamoto told a reporter on Thursday.

He was identified as the "face behind Bitcoin" in an article published online this week. A reporter spent about two months investigating the claim and tracking him down.

When the reporter - flanked by two police officers - found the 64-year-old former physicist at his home in California and asked him if he was involved with Bitcoin, he is reported to have said: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it."

But he told an Associated Press reporter on Thursday: "I'm saying I'm no longer in engineering, that's it. And even if I was, when we get hired, you have to sign this document, contract, saying you will not reveal anything we divulge during and after employment. So that's what I implied.

"It sounded like I was involved before with Bitcoin and looked like I'm not involved now. That's not what I meant. I want to clarify that," he said.

'Unregulated and unstable' Nakamoto said he was born in Japan and moved to America in 1959 and that English was not his first language.

The value of Bitcoin has fluctuated as knowledge of and interest in what was until recently a little-known currency has increased. It is used to bypass financial institutions, making it attractive to people who want to trade directly. That has led to a level of adoption by speculative investors and some criminal enterprises. In 2012, a leaked FBI report showed that the the agency was concerned that Bitcoin could become widely used by criminals.

The report said that the virtual currency was an "increasingly useful tool for various illegal activities beyond the cyber realm".

And, in August the following year, it was announced that the "scale of the risk posed by" Bitcoin was to be investigated by the FBI on behalf of a US Senate committee.