WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Microsoft said on Friday its engineers had added detection and protection against a ransomware attack that had disrupted hospitals in England and infected computers in dozens of other countries around the world.

LONDON (Reuters) - Hospitals and doctors' surgeries across England were forced to turn away patients and cancel appointments on Friday after a nationwide 'ransomware' cyber attack crippled some computer systems in the state-run health service.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Chipmaker Broadcom secured EU antitrust approval on Friday for its $5.5 billion bid for Brocade after pledging to cooperate with competitors and to protect their confidential data.

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal Telecom was hit on Friday by a cyber attack but no services were impacted, a spokeswoman for the company said.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish companies including Telefonica were hit by a so-called ransomware hack into their computer systems on Friday, with Spain's cyber security body warning of a "massive attack" affecting several firms.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said Friday it is recalling more than 1.25 million trucks worldwide to address a software error linked to reports of one crash death and two injuries.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany cleared the way for its giant automotive industry to develop and test self-driving cars, when the upper house of its parliament approved on Friday a law setting out the conditions under which they could take to German roads.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Sprint and its controlling shareholder SoftBank have started preliminary conversations to merge with T-Mobile US, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Facebook Thailand could face legal action next week after Thai authorities warned Facebook Inc to take down content deemed threatening to national security or violating strict lese majeste laws, the telecoms regulator said on Friday.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Overseas business groups are pushing Chinese regulators to delay the June 1 implementation of a controversial cyber law that mandates strict data surveillance and storage for firms working in China, saying the rules would severely hurt business.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's renewed love affair with the bicycle is proving a boon for mobile bike-sharing apps but is causing headaches by congesting city sidewalks.

LONDON (Reuters) - British technology start-up Improbable, which specializes in virtual simulation, has raised $502 million from Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, it said on Friday.

SEOUL (Reuters) - Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Friday it has formed a new division within its semiconductor business for contract chip manufacturing in a move to strengthen its competitiveness.

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Singapore-headquartered Grab is open to further acquisitions after buying an Indonesian online payments startup, one of the co-founders of the Southeast Asia-focused ride hailing service said.

TOKYO (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp said it had agreed to invest $5 billion, or 550 billion yen, in China's ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing, the Japanese company said in its earnings statement.

SEOUL (Reuters) - Netmarble Games Corp stumbled in its market debut on Friday as a regulatory ban on minors playing its mega-hit game spooked some investors who had clamored to buy into the success of the South Korea's largest smartphone games maker.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday rejected Uber's [UBER.UL] bid to send its high-profile trade secret dispute with Alphabet's self-driving Waymo unit to a private legal forum, a setback for the ride services company.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc hired the team behind a Chicago transportation brokerage last fall as part of an effort to break into the long-haul trucking industry.

PARIS (Reuters) - France's central bank on Tuesday said there had been an increase in phishing attempts using its name and logo and email addresses purporting to be Bank of France ones.

WASHINGTON/TORONTO (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials told a Congressional committee on Thursday they are reviewing government use of software from Russia's Kaspersky Lab as senators raised concerns that Moscow might use the product to attack American computer networks.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at strengthening the federal government's cyber security and protecting the nation's critical infrastructure from cyber attacks, a senior administration official told reporters on a call.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sees the U.S. semiconductor industry as still dominant globally but said he is worried that it will be threatened by China’s planned investment binge to build up its own chipmaking industry.

(Reuters) - Twitter Inc said on Thursday it signed a multi-year deal with the U.S. National Football League to live-stream pre-game coverage as well as a 30-minute show on the microblogging website.

LONDON (Reuters) - Sovereign investors are sinking more money into tech start-ups and opening offices in Silicon Valley in the hope of bagging a "unicorn" - the rare private firm that grows in value to over $1 billion.

(Reuters) - Snap Inc shares slumped 22 percent in premarket trading on Thursday after the owner of the wildly popular Snapchat app's user growth and revenue numbers failed to show that it was adequately dealing with rising competition from Facebook.

(Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc , the No.1 U.S. wireless carrier, is buying wireless spectrum holder Straight Path Communications Inc for an enterprise value of about $3.1 billion, ending a bidding war with rival AT&T .

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's federal cyber agency said on Thursday that Yahoo Inc had not cooperated with its investigation into a series of hacks that compromised more than one billion of the U.S. company's email users between 2013 and 2016.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has restored access to Chinese social media app WeChat, developed by Tencent Holdings, Russia's communications watchdog said on Thursday.

(Reuters) - Founders of Indian online marketplace Snapdeal and one of its early investors, Nexus, have reached an agreement with SoftBank Group that would allow the Japanese firm to move ahead with its plan to sell Snapdeal to bigger rival Flipkart, ET Now reported, citing sources.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Panasonic Corp said on Thursday it expects operating profit to rise by one-fifth year-on-year this financial year as investments in advanced automotive parts begin to pay off.