Apple, Samsung Back in Court  —  Companies Battle Over $1.05 Billion Damages From Patent Trial's August Verdict  —  Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. return to a Silicon Valley courtroom Thursday, as Samsung fights to get a federal judge to throw out or soften a $1.05 billion patent judgment against the Korean company.

Twitter Loses Ability to Properly Display Instagram Photos  —  Welcome to the Photo Wars.  —  Instagram on Wednesday disabled the ability for Twitter to properly display Instagram photos on its Web site and in its applications.  The move escalates tensions between the two companies …

Guatemala detains software guru McAfee, to expel him to Belize  —  (Reuters) - Guatemalan police arrested U.S. software guru John McAfee on Wednesday for illegally entering the country and said it would expel him to neighboring Belize, which he fled after being sought for questioning over his neighbor's murder.

Apple loses $34.9 billion in market cap in its worst trading day in 4 years, but why?  —  Gene Munster has a target of $900 for Apple's stock, which is a touch awkward today as the company shed 6.43% of its value, to settle at a valuation of a mere $508 billion.

Lack of Distribution Is “Killing” Surface  —  If Microsoft is being coy about revealing Surface sales data, it may be for good reason.  Early demand for the company's first tablet is lousy.  How lousy?  Put it this way: If Microsoft really did manufacture three million to five million Surface tablets …

Google Now takes on Passbook, adds QR code airport check-in and camera search  —  Google promised that it would continue improving predictive search assistant Google Now to make it more powerful, and today it looks like the company has looked to Apple for some inspiration.

Patriot Act can “obtain” data in Europe, researchers say  —  European data stored in the “cloud” could be acquired and inspected by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite Europe's strong data protection laws, university researchers have suggested.

The More Pandora Sells, the More It Loses  —  A tenth of a cent might not sound like a lot of money.  But Pandora Media Inc.'s 18% stock drop Wednesday is a sobering reminder that those fractions add up—especially when advertising sales don't keep pace.  —  Pandora's music royalty costs …

Skype confirms video messaging feature with legal change  —  The service will allow short video messages to be sent between subscribers  —  Skype hasn't officially confirmed rumors of a video messaging service that's supposed to be coming to its platform, but an update to its terms of service on Wednesday did the job.

Blockbuster Is Said to Begin Selling Phones  —  Dish Network Corp. (DISH)'s Blockbuster will begin selling mobile phones in its movie-rental stores as a test for Dish's planned entry into the wireless business, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

U.N. summit votes to support Internet eavesdropping  —  Deep packet inspection standard adopted despite Germany's warning that it will “empower” censorship.  Other uses: detecting BitTorrent transfers and identifying “copyright protected audio content.”  —  A United Nations summit …

Zynga Takes Gambling Step in Nevada  —  Zynga Inc. has taken its first official step toward offering real-money gambling games in the U.S. by filing preparatory paperwork in Nevada, as the embattled firm maneuvers to take advantage of a shifting legal landscape.

Time Spent In Mobile Apps Is Starting To Challenge Television, Flurry Says  —  Now that usage of mobile apps has overtaken browsing on the desktop web, it's starting to challenge television, Flurry says.  The San Francisco-based mobile analytics startup says that consumers are spending 127 minutes per …

Sophisticated botnet steals more than $47M by infecting PCs and phones  —  Behold—the Eurograbber, visualized.  —  Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock  —  A new version of the Zeus trojan—a longtime favorite of criminals conducting online financial fraud—has been used in attacks …

See Trends for 100 more cities  —  Today, we're bringing Trends to 100 more cities around the world including Istanbul, Frankfurt, Guadalajara and Incheon.  With this update, we now surface the ‘most breaking’ news in more than 200 locations.  To view Trends for different locations, just click “Change” in the Trends section.

Casio's iPhone-friendly G-Shock finally out, will adorn wrists for $180  —  It seems Casio's G-Shock GB6900 hasn't been mindful of its own raison d'être, turning up much later than expected.  After making its first appearance way back in March 2011, rolling through FCC in July the same year …

Building a better map of Europe  —  More than a billion people use Google Maps each month to find their way around town and around the world.  To help these people get exactly the information they need, the Google Maps team works constantly to ensure that the geographic data behind our maps is comprehensive and accurate.

Rhapsody tries to steal thunder from Shazam with free SongMatch app  —  Music subscription service Rhapsody launched a free Android app dubbed SongMatch Wednesday that aims to compete with Shazam's music recognition app.  The app, which can be downloaded from Google Play …

Train Wreck: The New York Post's Subway Cover  —  “It all happened so fast.”  —  That's what R. Umar Abbasi, a freelance photographer for The New York Post, said of the fatal subway incident on Monday that he caught with his camera.  One man threw another into harm's way, causing him to be run over by an oncoming train.