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The plans to store mobile phone and e-mail records throughout the EU came under criticism from the telecommunications industry at an informal EU summit in Newcastle upon Tyne. The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association said: “We think it is a rather unsophisticated approach to a complex problem.”

The ecological cost of Katrina includes petrochemical pollution, vanished islands and a seafood industry facing ruin.

A plan to save the lives of 10 million children in developing countries has been launched by Gordon Brown and his European counterparts. But the World Development Movementsay that it will cost the poor more in the long term.

The journalist was sentenced in April to 10 years imprisonment for "divulging state secrets" partly on the basis of evidence supplied by Yahoo!. Reporters without Borders said it "provided China's state security authorities with details that helped to identify and convict him". Try Jabber- a securer, Open Source, messaging option!

The launch of the UN's World Atlas of Great Apes in London gave a stark warning about the future of higher primates, unless there is sustained international action. Habitat fragmentation, logging, the bushmeat trade and disease are exacerbated by the poverty of the countries where humanity's nearest relatives live. GRASP - UN Environment Programme - P&amp, P

The state is terrorising children of failed asylum seekers by carrying out dawn deportation raids, the Scottish children's commissioner has claimed.

The South Korean government is to take the US to task over Google Earth on the grounds that the globetrotting online service shows sensitive military installations laid bare in a way which might benefit North Korea.

The marshlands of southern Iraq, said to be the inspiration for the biblical Garden of Eden, have recovered rapidly since the fall of Saddam Hussein. The UN Environmental Programme project has achieved more than 50% inundation since May 2003 - see the pictures.

US Copyright Office wants to limit the number of browsers that can submit online forms to its site to MS Internet Explorer or Netscape browsers.

The Home Office has decided to roll out a pilot scheme to tag thousands of asylum seekers across the UK despite the fact that no evaluation has been published.