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The Development Gateway Award, worth $100 000, has this year been won by a ITC eChoupal, which provides around 5200 internet kiosks in rural India, and trains villagers in internet use.

Google has been scanning the collections at five libraries, bypassing the authors - who hold the copyright on their works - and including selections in search results. The Authors Guild, along with a former US poet laureate, is suing Google for copyright infringement.

The Proposal for a Directive on the retention of communications traffic data would see internet data held for six months, phone data held for one year, and ISPs and telcos compensated for their compliance costs. But it needs the support of the European Parliament and Council of Ministers to become law.

The independent Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has condemned government regulation on pesticides as inadequate and flawed. PAN UK welcomes many of the report’s recommendations. Download the pdf report.

Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help bloggers get round censorship, set up and make the most of a blog, publicise it and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.

UK company demand for palm oil, a vegetable oil found in one in ten products on supermarket shelves, is driving the orang-utan towards extinction, new research from friends of the Earth reveals.

The Open Rights Group (Org) will serve as a hub for other cyber-rights groups campaigning on digital rights issues. Org emulates US's Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) digital rights group. ZDNet reports that Org has centred its focus on the proposed draft EU framework on data retention for ISPs and telecommunications companies which it believes could contravene the European Convention on…

The Home Secretary has published full details of proposed new anti-terror laws against indirect incitement and "glorification" of terrorism and preparing attacks.

A massive global increase in the number of strong hurricanes over the past 35 years is being blamed on global warming, by the most detailed study yet, in the journal Science.

It is alleged that the arms company has been using a front company to channel secret commissions worldwide to agents on arms sales, and may have circumvented laws on corruption and money-laundering.