Yahoo

A woman is suing her high-flying female Yahoo executive boss for alleged sexual harassment.

Software engineer Nan Shi claims Maria Zhang, a senior director of engineering at Yahoo Mobile, said she would have a 'bright future' at Yahoo if she had sex with her.

Miss Zhang denies the allegations.

A Yahoo representative said: "There is absolutely no basis or truth to the allegations against Maria Zhang. Maria is an exemplary Yahoo executive and we intend to fight vigorously to clear her name."

Internet company Yahoo! has called claims that UK spy agency GCHQ intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of users as a "whole new level of violation".

In its latest report on files leaked by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Guardian newspaper claims a surveillance programme operated by GCHQ, collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk.

In a furious reaction to the report, a Yahoo spokeswoman said: "We were not aware of, nor would we condone, this reported activity.

"This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy that is completely unacceptable and we strongly call on the world's governments to reform surveillance law consistent with the principles we outlined in December.

"We are committed to preserving our users' trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services."GCHQ declined to comment on the claims.

Read: UK spy agency 'intercepted Yahoo webcam images'

UK intelligence agency GCHQ "intercepted and stored" the webcam images of internet users who were not suspected of any wrongdoing, the Guardian claimed, citing secret documents.

Files dated between 2008 and 2010 allegedly show a monitoring programme, known as "Optic Nerve", stored still images from Yahoo webcam chats and saved them to agency databases with the help of its US counterpart the National Security Agency.

GCHQ has consistently said its activities are necessary and "carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework”.

Yahoo has apologised to rival internet giant Google after posting a screen capture on its Twitter account over an earlier disruption to its services.

The company, whose own Web-based email service experienced a massive outage in December, later put it down to "bad judgement".

Read: Google apologises after online services stumble