Court officials said they have only confirmed that 94 Social Security numbers were obtained and they don't believe the larger number was compromised, but they wanted to alert the public to the possibility as a precaution.

The broader information "just happened to be on a server in an area that was accessed," said Veronica Diseth, director of the courts' information services division.

The breach happened due to vulnerability in an Adobe Systems Inc. software program, ColdFusion, that has since been patched, court officials said. The hack happened sometime after September but wasn't caught until February, they said.

In a written statement, Adobe spokeswoman Heather Edell noted that the issue has been resolved.

"Adobe recommends that users follow security best practices by updating software to the latest version available," she wrote.

Mike Keeling, the courts' information technology operations and maintenance manager, said officials were alerted to the breach by a business on the East Coast that had a similar intrusion.

"They recognized our information in their breach log," Keeling said, which led them to install the patch provided by Adobe and start an investigation.

When court officials were first alerted to the breach, they believed all of the information accessed was public record, and didn't think confidential information was taken, but following an investigation by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the broader breach was confirmed in April, said courts spokeswoman Wendy Ferrell.

Court officials said a law enforcement agency also investigated the case but they declined to say which one. They said the investigation was concluded and there was no information on who might be to blame.

Keeling said he didn't believe the courts were a specific target.

"The hackers were probably opportunistic," he said. "They were more than likely just fishing for data."

Ferrell said that once the breach was confirmed, it took additional time to go through the files and increase security to the website, which is why there was a lag in notifying the public. The 94 known names breached are being contacted by letter, she said. The rest of the people who are potentially affected come from a defined group:

Those booked into a city or county jail within the state of Washington between September 2011 and December 2012 may have had their name and Social Security number accessed.

Names and driver's license numbers may have been obtained from people who received a DUI citation in Washington state between 1989 through 2011, had a traffic case in Washington filed or resolved in a district or municipal court between 2011 and 2012, or had a superior court criminal case in Washington state that was filed against them or resolved between 2011 and 2012.

Keeling acknowledged that confidential information should have been kept in a different area, "and now they are."

"I can say nothing more than it was an oversight on our part," he said.

Keeling said officials have added a number of additional security measures, including isolating anything that could be sensitive into more protected areas, implementing code to prevent hackers from getting to other parts of a server, and new encryption rules.

Ferrell said no one from the Administrative Office of the Courts or any court in Washington state will be asking for personal information over the phone or via email related to the breach.

State officials have set up a website and hotline to answer public questions about the break: http://www.courts.wa.gov/databreach and 1-800-448-5584.

Michael Cockrill, the state's chief information officer, said security experts have determined there were no breaches at state agencies, which are on a separate network.

"Cybersecurity and cyberterrorism attacks continue to rise in number and sophistication every year, affecting the private and public sector, and countless individuals," Cockrill said in a written statement. "The AOC data breach is a sobering reminder for every branch and every level of government that protection of personal and confidential data entrusted to government is a paramount responsibility."

Cockrill said Gov. Jay Inslee has directed his office and Consolidated Technology Services in the executive branch to assist the Office of the Courts to enhance the security of its judicial data.

Washington state Court Administrator Callie Dietz said that if any of the 94 people who are contacted by the court request credit monitoring, "we certainly will provide whatever we can do for them."

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OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- Clorox said Wednesday that its fiscal third-quarter net income climbed slightly as price hikes helped amid bad weather conditions that hindered sales of its Kingsford brand charcoal.

The consumer products company's performance missed Wall Street estimates. It also lowered the high end of its full-year revenue forecast, due to the lower charcoal sales and other issues.

Shares slipped in morning trading.

Clorox earned $133 million, or $1 per share, for the three months ended March 31. That compares with $132 million, or $1.01 per share, in the first three months of 2012.

Analysts, on average, were looking for earnings of $1.05 per share, according to FactSet.

Revenue edged up 1 percent to $1.41 billion from $1.4 billion. Wall Street expected $1.43 billion in revenue.

Charcoal sales fell by more than 20 percent in March because of unusually cold weather across most of the U.S. Elsewhere in the household segment, cat litter shipments fell as prior price increases continued to hurt volume. Prices hikes benefited the unit which also includes Glad bags, wraps and containers but were somewhat offset by unfavorable mix and increased promotional spending.

In the lifestyle division, which includes Hidden Valley Ranch brand dressings and sauces, Brita water filtration and Burt's Bees natural personal care, sales rose 2 percent, mostly because of price hikes.

Overseas sales climbed 2 percent primarily on price increases and lower promotional spending. This was somewhat offset by unfavorable currency exchange rates.

Clorox Co. now expects fiscal 2013 revenue will rise 3 percent to 4 percent, but believes its results will likely be toward the lower end of the range. Its prior guidance was for 3 percent to 5 percent growth. Based on 2012's $5.47 billion in sales, the revised guidance implies revenue of about $5.64 billion to $5.69 billion.

The Oakland, Calif. company still anticipates earnings in a range of $4.25 to $4.35 per share.

Analysts predict full-year earnings of $4.34 per share on revenue of $5.69 billion.

For fiscal 2014, Clorox foresees earnings between $4.55 and $4.70 per share. Revenue is expected to climb 2 percent to 4 percent.

Wall Street expects earnings of $4.69 per share.

Clorox's stock shed 51 cents to $85.74 in morning trading. The shares have traded between $66.72 and $90.10 in the past 52 weeks.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not a "Star Trek" tricorder, but by hooking a variety of gadgets onto a smartphone you could almost get a complete physical without the paper gown or even a visit to the doctor's office.

Blood pressure? Just plug the arm cuff into the phone for a quick reading.

Heart OK? Put your fingers in the right spot, and the squiggly rhythm of an EKG appears on the phone's screen.

Plug in a few more devices and you could have photos of your eardrum (Look, no infection!) and the back of your eye, listen to your heartbeat, chart your lung function, even get a sonogram.

If this sounds like a little too much DIY medical care, well, the idea isn't to self-diagnose with Dr. iPhone. But companies are rapidly developing miniature medical devices that tap the power of the ubiquitous smartphone in hopes of changing how people monitor their own health.

"We wanted to make sure they have all the right tools available in their pocket" is how Joseph Flaherty of AgaMatrix describes his company's tiny glucose monitor. Diabetics can plug the iBGStar into the bottom of an iPhone and check blood sugar on the go without carrying an extra device.

This mobile medicine also might help doctors care for patients in new ways. In March, prominent San Diego cardiologist Eric Topol tweeted "no emergency landing req'd" when he used his smartphone EKG to diagnose a distressing but not immediately dangerous irregular heartbeat in a fellow airplane passenger at 30,000 feet.

And the University of California, San Francisco, hopes to enroll a staggering 1 million people in its Health eHeart Study to see whether using mobile technology, including smartphone tracking of people's heart rate and blood pressure, could help treat and prevent cardiovascular disease.

The question: Do smartphone devices really work well enough for the average patient and primary care doctor to dive in, or are early adopters just going for the cool factor? Many of the tools cost $100 to $200, there's little public sales information yet and it's not clear how insurers will handle the fledgling trend.

"Technology sometimes evolves faster than we're ready for it," cautioned Dr. Glen Stream of the American Academy of Family Physicians. "We're recognizing more and more that not all care needs to be delivered face to face," but only if people measure the right things and have a relationship with a doctor to help make good use of the findings, he stressed.

Addressing a recent TEDMED conference in Washington, Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, UCSF's chancellor, put the challenge this way: "How does mobile monitoring become something more than a toy or something interesting? How does it connect to how I'm cared for by my caregiver?"

About 300 doctors, health policy wonks and others attending that high-tech meeting received what was dubbed a "smartphone physical" from medical students using 10 of the latest devices. The Food and Drug Administration has approved a number of the gadgets for sale; others are experimental prototypes gathered for the demonstration by Nurture by Steelcase and the doctor website Medgadget.

"It's going to be our generation that adopts most of these," noted Shiv Gaglani, a Johns Hopkins medical student who helped organize the project.

The FDA cites industry estimates that 500 million smartphone users worldwide will use some type of health app by 2015. Today's apps mostly are educational tools, digital health diaries or reminders and fitness sensors. The new trend is toward more sophisticated medical apps, some that work with plug-in devices, that provide information a doctor might find useful.

Some of the devices sell by prescription or on drugstore shelves, while others like the diabetes monitor and blood pressure cuff have entered a new venue for medicine the Apple store.

Simplicity is part of the idea. Take the AliveCor Heart Monitor. Snap it on like a smartphone case, place fingers on the sensors no sticky wires on the chest and you've got an EKG recording in 30 seconds. The FDA approved sale of the $199 device in December for doctors to use in exams or to prescribe for patients to use on themselves.

It doesn't measure as much as a full-scale EKG, and patients must email the recording to a doctor for analysis. But heart patients frequently experience palpitations that have ended by the time they reach a cardiologist and emailing an on-the-spot EKG reading might help the doctor figure out what happened, said AliveCor co-founder Dr. Dave Albert.

"This is a brand-new technology. We're trying to understand how people will use it," said Albert, whose company also is seeking FDA permission to sell the device over the counter.

Welch Allyn's iExaminer taps the smartphone's camera to photograph deep inside the eye the orange view of the retina filling the phone's screen.

Similarly, CellScope Inc. is developing an otoscope that magnifier doctors use to peer into the ear that can snap a photo of the eardrum. It's not for sale yet, but might parents one day email that kind of picture to the pediatrician before deciding whether Johnny needs an office visit?

"It was great to see it on the phone, rather than the pinpoints we get to see" through a traditional scope, said Dr. Bertina Yen, a Los Angeles internist-turned-health IT specialist. She turned the tables during her smartphone physical, taking over some of the equipment to try it out herself.

And University of Washington researchers are testing a way to measure lung function in people with asthma or emphysema as they blow onto the phone and it captures the sound. Usually patients blow into special machines at the doctor's office, while a use-anywhere version might help someone spot early signs of worsening before they see a doctor.

Insurers are studying what smartphone technology to pay for. For example, health care giant Kaiser Permanente is about to begin a project in Georgia to sell the iBGStar alongside other diabetes monitors in its on-site pharmacies. The project will determine whether patients like the smartphone monitor, if it improves care and if so, whether the readings should beam into patients' electronic health records, in Georgia and in other Kaiser regions.

But ultimately these devices may have a bigger role in developing countries, where full-size medical equipment is in short supply but smartphones are becoming common. Even in rural parts of the U.S. it can take hours to drive to a specialist, while a primary care physician might quickly email that specialist a photo of, say, a diseased retina first to see whether the trip's really necessary.

"These tools make diagnosis at a distance much easier," said Dr. Nicholas Genes, an emergency medicine professor at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who helped with TEDMED's smartphone physical.

"Given the amount of attention that was focused on it, it's better that it should be up than down. But given the margin of error in these things, I don't think it has that much significance," he told reporters.

Broadbent was responding, after a speech at the University of London, to a question about whether the 0.3 percent increase in British gross domestic product in the first quarter had solidified his view that the economy did not need more stimulus.

Broadbent has voted on several occasions against further government bond-buying by the Bank of England.

The bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is due to meet next week and most economists expect a majority of its members to remain opposed to expanding the bond-buying programme.

Broadbent said the British economy remained weak but there were some signs that growth was returning even if some employment readings had weakened a bit.

"If you ask me, are there signs other than just our forecast that the economy is going to grow over the next six months, I'd say yes, and there are probably more of those signs than there were in the middle of last year," he said.

Asked about the impact on the outlook for inflation from a recent fall in commodity prices and the level of sterling, Broadbent said they were relatively small factors.

(Reporting by William Schomberg; Editing by Louise Ireland)

SunEdison will sell the power generated at these plants, the paper said.

Toshiba expects 270 billion yen ($2.75 billion) in orders for construction of power-plant-related facilities by fiscal year end, the business daily said, adding the Japanese company is in talks to build four or five megasolar plants.

Renewable energy sources have found more favor in Japan after the introduction of a new energy law that took effect on July 1, 2012 as the country phases out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

The new law requires utilities to buy all electricity output from solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and small-sized hydro power plants at preset rates for up to 20 years.

(Reporting by Mridhula Raghavan in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

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Pettit, a veteran of one space shuttle mission and two long-duration expeditions aboard the International Space Station, is known for his "Science off the Sphere" videos, which he recorded while conducting experiments in the microgravity environment aboard the space station. He will speak from Houston via NASA's Digital Learning Network with students who participated in the "NASA Explorer Schools 2012-2013 Student Recognition Challenge: Inspire Science" competition. Contestants created their own videos featuring experiments they devised and demonstrated in the normal gravity of Earth.

The 12 winning teams represent six schools. The schedule for the chats and the titles of the winning videos are as follows:

11 a.m. EDT: Orleans Elementary School, Orleans, Vt.; Bethlehem Christian Academy, Simpsonville, S.C.; and Florence E. Smith STEM School, West Hartford, Conn.

Orleans Elementary School's video was "Earth Sound Waves." Bethlehem Christian Academy's video was "Washing Clothes in Space." Florence E. Smith STEM School's video was "Catapults in Space."

1 p.m. EDT: Legacy Christian Academy, Valencia, Calif.; Dr. Albert Einstein Academy, Elizabeth, N.J.; and Amos Hyatt Middle School, Des Moines, Iowa.

Legacy Christian Academy's video was "Viscous Cornstarch." Dr. Albert Einstein Academy's video was "Elements of Rocket Design." Amos Hyatt Middle School's video was "Cornstarch Goo."

2:15 p.m. EDT: Park High School, Livingston, Mont. Park High School's videos were "Slinky Madness"; "Super Siphon"; "Magnet Motion"; "Oil Slicks"; "Bill and Chase's Excellent Buoyancy"; and "Aqua Crane."

The video conversations will take place at each winning school. News media representatives interested in attending the live video chats should contact the schools directly.

During these live video chats, NASA Explorer School teachers and students in grades 4-12 will be able to ask Pettit questions about what he learned from investigating the principles of physical science in microgravity.

The NASA Explorer Schools project is managed by NASA Glenn Research Center's Educational Programs Office. The project is a key part of NASA's Office of Education strategy to help develop the next generation of scientists, engineers and explorers through science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) studies.

For more information on the NASA Explorer Schools project and to join NES, visit:

For more information about Don Pettit's "Science off the Sphere", visit:

For more information about NASA's education programs, visit:

SOURCE NASA