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is still awaiting a verdict, four months after his trial for 'incitement to subvert state sovereignty'. This delay is a further violation of Chinese legal codes, says RSF, and it is clear there is insufficient evidence to convict.

are being set up at air force bases at Prestwick (inspection report), Brize Norton (Oxford) and Mildenhall (Suffolk).

Most jeans are still coloured with coal-tar dyes, but a resurgence in plant-based dyes is now possible without use of synthetic chemicals.

Reporters Without Borders have strongly condemned the heightened crackdown on the Internet - for the first time, the Polls site's Internet Content Provider licence was withdrawn.

Gangs of computer hackers are mounting a withering cyber attack on thousands of Israeli and Western websites. Zone-H.org reports nearly 4,000 sites being sabotaged daily, twice the normal number.

A Commons Science and Technology Committee report finds that Home Office consultation on its proposed biometric identity cards programme has been too restricted and its cost estimates may be unreliable.

A new documentary film Who Killed the Electric Car? claims cynical and conspiring car makers and oil firms, as well as apathetic consumers and weak government and regulators, helped end the 1996 electric dream in California.

In a report on arms exports, the Commons Quadripartite Committee says the government does little or nothing proactive to police the internet. They praised comedian Mark Thomas for unearthing evidence of stun batons being sold through websites in the UK.

A website that hosts a network of blogs about Central Asia and the Caucasus has been inaccessible for several weeks. It is thought that local ISPs were orederd to block the Neweurasia.net domain name after it launched Russian and Uzbek-language versions.

The Control Arms campaign – Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) have welcomed the tabling of a draft proposal by seven key governments to achieve an Arms Trade Treaty in the United Nations.