A South Korean intelligence official has been found dead in an apparent suicide amid a growing political scandal over a covert hacking program used by the country's spy agency, police said Sunday.

The 45-year-old from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) was discovered dead in his car Saturday on a mountain road in Yongin, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Seoul.

Yahoo on Friday formally notified U.S. regulators that it is spinning off its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to an independent new company called Aabaco Holdings.

Aabaco will wind up owning approximately 384 million shares of Alibaba Group, representing an interest of about 15 percent, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Google Inc. revealed Thursday that one of its self-driving car prototypes was involved in an injury accident for the first time.

In the collision, a Lexus SUV that the tech giant outfitted with sensors and cameras was rear-ended in Google's home city of Mountain View, where more than 20 prototypes have been self-maneuvering through traffic.

South Korea's dominant Samsung conglomerate -- run by the country's wealthiest family -- secured shareholder approval Friday for the crucial merger of two affiliates, seeing off a formidable challenge from investor activists led by a combative US hedge fund.

The victory, following a bitterly contested proxy battle, will come as an enormous relief to the Samsung Group's founding Lee family as it seeks to restructure the multi-headed corporation ahead of a generational transfer of power from ailing patriarch Lee Kun-Hee.

Google shares soared on Thursday after the Internet titan beat second quarter earnings expectations by riding hot growth of mobile search and advertising on YouTube.

The Silicon Valley-based company said that second-quarter net income climbed two percent to $3.4 billion on an 11 percent rise in revenue to $17.7 billion.

A dramatic breach at an Italian surveillance company has laid bare the details of government cyberattacks worldwide, putting intelligence chiefs in the hot seat from Cyprus to South Korea. The massive leak has already led to one spymaster's resignation — and pulled back the curtain on espionage in the iPhone age.

More than 1 million emails released online in the wake of the July 5 breach show that Hacking Team sold its spy software to the FBI and to Russian intelligence. It worked with authoritarian governments in the Middle East and pitched to police departments in the American suburbs. It even tried to sell to the Vatican — all while devising a malicious Bible app to infect religiously minded targets.

Although the iPod's popularity has waned, Apple is updating its music player for the first time in nearly three years by giving the flagship Touch model a faster processor and better cameras.

The new iPod Touch also enables Apple Music, a $10-a-month service that offers unlimited playback of millions of songs. Apple Music launched June 30 as music fans increasingly embrace subscriptions over pay-per-song services such as Apple's industry-leading iTunes.

From drones to smartphone apps, Indonesia is harnessing technology to tackle traffic chaos during the annual mass exodus before the Muslim Eid holiday, when the potholed roads of overpopulated Java become clogged with millions of slow-moving cars and crashes are frequent.

Cities in the world's most populous Muslim-majority country empty every year at the end of the holy month of Ramadan as people head to villages to celebrate Eid with their families. 

A South Korean appeals court on Thursday rejected the latest effort by U.S. hedge fund Elliott Associates to block the $8.0 billion merger of two Samsung affiliates.

The ruling by the Seoul High Court clears any final obstacle to the convening of a shareholders' meeting on Friday which will see a vote on the proposed takeover of construction company Samsung C&T by affiliate Cheil Industries.

A man suspected of belonging to a network of Islamist hackers responsible for attacks on more than 3,500 websites worldwide was arrested in Bulgaria, the interior ministry announced Wednesday.

The man, whose identity was not revealed, was part of a group using the acronym MECA (Middle East Cyber Army), the ministry said.