Twitter, championed as a tool of free expression during the Arab Spring, was facing censorship charges on Friday after announcing it can now block tweets on a country-by-country basis if legally required to do so.

San Francisco-based Twitter stressed the move in no way compromised its commitment to free speech, but the backlash was immediate with critics taking to the service by the thousands to tweet disappointment and outrage.

The Internet proved the only true form of free communication during the Arab Spring and yet the West has come to take the freedom it confers for granted, Google boss Eric Schmidt said Friday.

In a stout defense of Internet freedoms at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Schmidt also said that rather than be seen as contributing to job losses, the web was a great opportunity for businesses to grow.

After years of experimenting, the top video destinations on the Web are suddenly flush with original programming: documentaries, reality shows and scripted series.

Over the next few months, YouTube, Netflix and Hulu will roll out their most ambitious original programming yet — a digital push into a traditional television business that has money, a bevy of stars and a bold attitude of reinvention.

Twitter said it now has the ability to block tweets from appearing in a specific country if legally required to do so.

"As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," Twitter said in a blog post.

South Korea's Samsung Electronics on Friday reported a record operating profit of 5.3 trillion won ($4.72 billion) in the fourth quarter, thanks largely to booming smartphone sales.

The company also announced a 25 trillion won investment in its chip making and panel-making business.

The European parliament website came under cyber-attack Thursday but hackers failed to penetrate the assembly's internal network, a spokesman said.

"This morning the parliament's site came under attack with massive consultation bids," spokesman Jaume Duch told Agence France Presse.

Google on Thursday opened up Google+ to teenagers, just days after loosening the rules about using real names on the social network.

The age limit had previously been 18, but Google vice president for product management Bradley Horowitz announced on Google+ that users could now be as young as 13.

World-leading mobile phone maker Nokia on Thursday posted deep 2011 losses amid slumping handset sales and as its first Windows-based smartphone, aimed at shoring up its flagging market share, struggled to get off the ground.

For all of 2011, the company posted a net loss of 1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion), compared to a net profit of 1.8 billion euros a year earlier, while the final quarter of the year was hammered with a 1.07-billion-euro net loss after a profit of 745 million in the same period a year earlier.

A group of Israeli hackers said on Thursday they have attacked several Iranian websites, a day after a number of Israeli websites were taken offline in the latest incident in a low-level cyberwar.

In a statement posted on the Pastebin.com, a group calling themselves the "Israel Defense Force Team" said they had hacked the Iranian sites in response to similar attacks on an Israeli newspaper and hospital website a day earlier.

Symantec is recommending that users of its pcAnywhere software disable the product following the theft of source code from the U.S. computer security firm.

"At this time, Symantec recommends disabling the product until Symantec releases a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks," the Mountain View, California-based company said.