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South Korea is still recovering from an apparent cyberattack earlier this week that shut down cash machines, froze debit card transactions, and caused computers to go dark at banks and several media outlets. South Korean officials suspect North Korea, but proving that may be difficult. Last week, North Korea had accused the South of getting into its computers.

"All you need is a computer and grudge really to cause tremendous harm to a country's critical infrastructure," says Michael Dubose, head of cyber-investigations at the corporate risk consulting firm Kroll.

North Korea may not be the most technologically sophisticated country, but that's not required for a hack like this, Dubose says.

"On the underground Internet, you can purchase almost any type of software exploit that you can imagine. You can even purchase hackers for the right price," says Dubose.

Reports that the CIA is paying Amazon $600 million to build a private cloud for its top-secret data aren't confirmed. But if it is true, experts say it wouldn't come as a shock to anyone.

"To be one of the top players right now you have to play in a lot of different categories at once, successfully," says Todd Wasserman, business editor at Mashable.com. He says just as Amazon once was strictly an online retailer, Apple used to just sell computers. 

"And now they have to compete, and they have to make watches and things like that," says Wasserman.

Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester, says as Amazon grows, it's becoming harder to define.

"So I think there are a lot of questions of you know what sector does it fall in? Is it competitive with retailers? Is it more competitive with a UPS or Fedex? Is it more competitive with an Apple?" Mulpuru says. 

The answer? Yes, all of them. But Mulpuru says Amazon's real strength is using things it already has, like extra servers and a huge shipping network, to make even more money. 

There are some 19,000 sexual assaults in the military each year, the Pentagon estimates. But many victims say they have nowhere to turn and risk ruining their careers by reporting attacks.

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The Supreme Court hears two gay marriage cases next week. These will be the next major steps on a path the country has traveled for decades. Those who have been affected by the gay marriage battle reflect on the changes so far.

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The company's long-term position in the smartphone market is complicated because of its historical association with hardware. One analyst says that what really matters to consumers are the software and new experiences.

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The first tweet was posted seven years ago. Since then, the social media site has been used as a free speech platform to spread information, report on the Arab Spring and stay connected with millions worldwide. But critics say that as Twitter has grown, it has sometimes compromised its principles.

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Tens of thousands of children are believed to have been taken from their parents, mostly unwed teenagers, from the late-1950s to the 1970s. An Australian Senate committee report issued last year urged the government to take action.

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Jimmy Fallon is on track to replace Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show on NBC in 2014, according to reports in The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter.

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Jimmy Fallon is on track to replace Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show on NBC in 2014, according to reports in The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter.

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The new pontiff has no real record of speaking out about sexual abuse cases, though one prominent priest under his leadership was convicted in 2009 in Buenos Aires.

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Among the things we knew when the sun came up this morning were the following: The European Union would still be a mess. I'd spend way too much time on Twitter. And the Federal Reserve wasn't gonna change interest rates at its meeting today.

We were so sure of that fast fact that we prepared a new version of our popular hit game show, Federal Reserve Time Machine. And you get to guess who said what when. We give you the "who"--Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed. He had one of his four times a year press conferences today.

As for when--well that's up to you.

On the topic of inflation:

Cut 1:

Cut 2:

On the topic of unemployment:

Cut 1:

Cut 2:

So, which of the previous cuts was today and which one was at his briefing three months ago? Post a comment below with your guess or Tweet us @MarketplaceAPM.

The vice president's comments in an interview with NPR come despite signs that such a ban doesn't have enough support, even from members of his own party, to make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

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Most newer cars have recorders that collect data at the moment of a crash and preserve key information. The data is meant to improve safety, but it's also useful in court. The federal government now wants to make the recorders mandatory on all new cars, but privacy advocates say people should have the option of turning their cars' recorders off.

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In the natural gas fracking debate, you don't often get oil and gas companies in the same room with environmentalists, let alone joining the same club.

But in Pittsburgh, a new group has drillers voluntarily agreeing to a set of safety standards that outside auditors will police.

You know LEEDS, the stamp of approval for green buildings?

LEEDS for drillers and frackers is kind of the idea for the new Pittsburgh-area partnership of companies and environmental groups.

The Center for Sustainable Shale Development could go by the acronym kissed. And fracking needs some love from a skeptical public.

"The risks can be managed," says Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. "But that doesn't mean they will be managed. It's going to take a big effort by local citizens, by the state regulators, and by the progressive members of industry."

An industrial industry. It's not just fracking -- sending water and chemicals down a well. It's pipelines, wastewater pits, trucks, odor.

"Well before you get to a fracking location you're likely to be able to smell it," says energy consultant Kent Moors, who also teaches at Duquesne University. "And it's not because of the gas because the gas is odorless. You're really going to be smelling diesel. The huge footprint to run all of that equipment is run on diesel fuel, and that diesel regularly leaks."

The group's new standards call for burning less diesel on wellpads, as well as safe drilling practices, controlling air pollution and taking care of drill fluids and wastewater.

Four companies have volunteered to comply, including Chevron. Regional head Bruce Niemeyer hopes the system wins over nervous western Pennsylvanians who recall the days of coalmining here.

"Many remember prior industrial activities," Niemeyer says, "and have some question in their mind: does this activity take them to a similar place? And understandably we don't want to see any regression."

Critics say they already see regression. Several pollution lawsuits are underway.

It's hard to measure if industry has a community's goodwill. But if it does, Fred Krupp at Environmental Defense Fund argues the product of drilling and fracking -- natural gas -- has upsides.

"There are environmental benefits of using gas over coal," Krupp says. "in terms of cleaner air, less particulates, less sulfur and nitrogen coming out of power plants."

Natural gas spews fewer greenhouse gases than coal, and makes cheap American energy and petrochemicals.

The question is whether third-party certifying will help give industry the public trust to drill and frack long-term.

Having a gay friend or family member has led many Americans to change their stance from opposing to supporting same-sex marriage.

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Scientists told a Senate panel that getting caught off-guard by a space rock hurtling toward Earth would lead to devastating consequences.

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It’s official -- as of March 20th, the spring real estate season is upon us.  And with record low interest rates, we’ve been hearing for months now that there’s never been a better time to buy a home.

Trouble is there’s not much to buy, with inventory at its lowest point in over a decade.  The hunt for listings has some realtors trying new tricks and even pulling out some old ones.

In Boston, one of the hottest addresses is the city’s Seaport District.  It’s full of trendy new restaurants and warehouses converted to office space and condos.  There are plenty of units to rent here, but places for sale are rare.  So when a loft opened up in a former bra factory, Realtor Ken Snyder jumped on the listing.

“It’s really huge, just shy of 1500 square feet,” Snyder says, showing off the unit.  “So you’ve got the concrete columns, concrete floors, double-height windows, and the exposed HVAC pipes. A lot of people kind of like that aesthetic.”

Snyder says the owners have been renting the loft but were not planning to sell until they saw a post on his Facebook page about the shortage of homes on the market and bidding wars over new listings.

“I’ve been posting kind of my war stories with buyers, saying ‘Hey, you know what, I’ve had six offers on this, seven offers on that, twenty-five offers on this one.  Sellers, hello?  Where are you?!’” Snyder says.  “There’s such little inventory that my joke is it’s like the last shrimp at the buffet at a cocktail party and everyone’s jumping on it to try and get to it.”

Other realtors in the area are holding classes for first-time home sellers, instead of buyers.  There are half as many homes on the market in Massachusetts this year as there were before the recession.  The National Association of Realtors (NAR) says across the country, inventory hasn’t been this low in 13 years.

“Many of the investors have come into the market, scooped up property at bargain prices hoping to rent it out,” says NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.  “The second part is that home building activity has been greatly suppressed for the past 5 years.”

Yun says new home construction is at a 50-year low.  One silver lining for sellers -- the inventory shortage is driving up home prices.  That’s good news for people whose homes lost value during the housing crisis and the spring market might move some of them to sell.

“There will be some temporary relief, but very temporary, because over the long haul, the true way to add inventory is through new home construction,” says Yun.

So until building picks up, the bottleneck continues.  In the suburbs of Boston, Realtor Gary Rogers estimates there are ten buyers for every seller, and to find new listings he’s using tactics that he hasn’t relied on for a decade. 

“We’re writing letters to sellers,” he says.  “We’re actually going back to snail mail.  We used to have these huge mailing campaigns and I’d drop a thousand dollars a month on mail.  It used to be junk mail. Now nobody else is doing it, and all the sudden I’m getting calls.”

But there’s still one big problem...

Even when Rogers does find potential sellers, he says a lot of them are afraid to go live with their listings; with such low inventory on the market, they’d have no place to go if their homes sold.

Americans wouldn’t normally pay much attention to a British budget.  We have enough budget issues of our own! But when the British Finance Chief  unveiled his public spending plans today, at least one prominent American economist must have been  watching closely. 

Paul Krugman -- Nobel-prizewinning Professor of Economics at Princeton University --  is a keen student of the British economy.  And a stern critic of the way it’s been managed. In Krugman's best selling book, End This Depression Now, he argues that Europeans -- including the Brits -- are obsessed with austerity. And that they’re driving their economies into a death spiral …  cutting public spending when they should be doing the opposite and  boosting  growth.  

"The British economy, like the U.S. economy,  needs to push public investment back up," says Krugman.

"It needs to spend more because this is a special time. This is a once-in-a-three-generations economic crisis. And it’s not a time to be penny-pinching."  

Krugman argues that what the Brits have been doing to cut their debt  is completely counterproductive.  He says that austerity shrinks the economy, reducing tax revenues and increasing  government debt. The British government should borrow more to  spend more, to spark  up the economy.  

British  Finance Minister  Matthew Hancock dismisses that as nonsensical:  

"We have a massive borrowing problem. We have overleveraged banks and they’re a drag on the economy. And the argument  that you can borrow your way out of debt doesn’t make sense," claims  Hancock.   

The government and its supporters concede that the deficit reduction plan has hit a sticky patch. They admit that growth has faltered.  But they deny that has anything to do with austerity. They blame the recession in the eurozone for weakening Britain’s main export market.     

This is not just some academic spat about far-off economies on the other side of the Pond.  With the U.S. sequester, this issue may soon come home to roost in America.   

Philip Booth of  the Institute of Economic Affair says the omens are good.  He  feels that the U.S., with its flexible economy, may weather the coming  austerity better than the Brits.

“You’d expect the U.S. economy to respond pretty well when the government reduces its spending, so that private sector jobs and private sector growth replaced public sector activity pretty quickly,” says Booth.   

Paul  Krugman may not reach the same conclusion if austerity takes hold in own backyard.     

The Gaza Kitchen weaves little-known stories of Gaza food and farming among Palestinian home-cooking recipes. It's an effort not just to document the flavors of modern and historic Gaza, but also to start a new conversation about the place and its people.

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Dr. Frank Dumont never thought of himself as being on the front lines of suicide prevention. But after the death of a patient he was particularly close to, he sees his role changing. He's seeking to reduce suicides by asking his patients about guns in their homes.

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