Technology Top Stories from Associated Press (AP)

LONDON (AP) , The mood in financial markets remained buoyant Thursday after an improvement in weekly jobless claims figures in the U.S. and as the main Wall Street stock indexes eyed new highs. On Wednesday, both the S and P 500 and the Dow Jones hit all-time closing highs, giving a positive tone to trading in Asia and Europe.

Opponents of a bill to let private companies share cybersecurity information with the federal government vowed Thursday to continue their fight, saying the proposed law would lead to broader government monitoring of the Internet.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) , The ailing personal computer market is getting weaker, and it's starting to look as if it will never fully recover as a new generation of mobile devices reshapes the way people use technology.

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii (AP) , The United States sent its most powerful airplanes to the Korean peninsula in recent weeks in part because it wants North Korea to know what the American military is capable of doing, the top U.S. Air Force commander in the Pacific said.

WASHINGTON (AP) , President Barack Obama has proposed a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2014 that aims to slash the deficit by a net $600 billion over 10 years, raise taxes and trim popular benefit programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

LAS VEGAS (AP) , The key weapon in TV broadcasters' fight with Internet video upstart Aereo is something inelegantly known as a dongle. The miniature TV antenna picks up free, mobile broadcast signals. It attaches to iPhone and iPad power ports and extends about 7 inches, allowing users to view live local TV channels at not-quite-high-definition quality.

NEW YORK (AP) , Bitcoin, the virtual currency composed of digital bits, is based on cutting-edge mathematical schemes that guard against counterfeiting. But it's also based on an old idea, now dismissed by mainstream economists, about how a currency should operate , an idea that could be setting bitcoins up for an abrupt plunge.

NEW YORK (AP) , Stocks rose sharply on Wall Street Wednesday, pushing the Standard and Poor's 500 index to an all-time high. Technology stocks, which have lagged the broader market this year, surged after network communication company Adtran reported earnings that were double what Wall Street analysts expected.

WASHINGTON (AP) , President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.8 trillion spending blueprint on Wednesday that strives to achieve a "grand bargain" to tame runaway deficits, raising taxes on the wealthy and trimming popular benefit programs including Social Security and Medicare.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) , South Korea said Wednesday that an initial investigation has found that North Korean government agents were behind a March cyberattack that shut down about 32,000 computers and servers at South Korean broadcasters and banks.

CROWNSVILLE, Md. - Steve Barnett has been flying unmanned aerial systems for more than 30 years , long before the word "drone" started making global headlines. But now, the 65-year-old Army veteran and model-airplane enthusiast finds himself answering new questions as his hobby gets dragged into a white-hot national debate.

LAS VEGAS (AP) , Television stations that relay Fox programming are "on board" with a threat to transition the over-the-air network to cable and satellite TV if Internet startup Aereo keeps reselling Fox's signal without paying for rights, the chairman of a Fox group said Tuesday.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) , Google Inc. picked tech-savvy Austin on Tuesday as the next city where the search giant will wire homes with ultra-fast Internet connections, but did not say how much customers will pay or when the fiber-optic experiment might expand elsewhere in the U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) , Microsoft is skewering Google again with ads and regulatory bashing that say as much about the dramatic shift in the technology industry's competitive landscape as they do about the animosity between the two rivals.

CHICAGO (AP) , Robotic surgery is being done more and more often for a variety of operations. But experts say there's a lack of strong evidence that it's any better than standard surgery in most cases , and it's usually costlier. Q: What exactly is robotic surgery?