Four in five adults believe access to the Internet is a fundamental right — with those feelings particularly strong in South Korea and China — and half believe it should never be regulated, according to a global survey.
A poll of 27,000 adults in 26 countries for the BBC World Service showed 78 percent of Internet users believed the Web gave them greater freedom, while nine in 10 said it was a good place to learn.

China has pledged to punish hackers who attacked Google if there is evidence to prove it, but said it has yet to receive any complaint from the world’s top search engine.

Google sent shockwaves across business and political circles in January when it declared it would stop censoring Chinese search results, and threatened to pull out of China — the world’s largest online community with 384 million users at the end of last year — over hacking and censorship concerns.

Google had never filed a report to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology over the cyber attacks or sought negotiations, Vice Minister Miao Wei was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua late on Saturday.

The United States and Britain are threatening to withhold support for a $3.75 billion World Bank loan for a coal-fired plant in South Africa, expanding the battleground in the global debate over who should pay for clean energy.

The opposition by the bank’s two largest members has raised eyebrows among those who note that the two advanced economies are allowing development of coal-powered plants in their own countries even as they raise concerns about those in poorer countries.

China is in consultations with technology giant Google to resolve its dispute with the company, which has threatened to abandon the Chinese market over hacking and censorship concerns, said a Chinese official on Friday.

Microsoft is still seeing a lot of interest in its Windows 7 computer software launched last year and a new budget cycle will help a gradual recovery in business spending, its chief operating officer said.

WASHINGTON – A Google Inc. executive said Tuesday that the company is still considering its next step in China – seven weeks after it pledged to stop censoring search results there and threatened to pull out of the country altogether.

Google Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Nicole Wong told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the company is continuing to investigate a hacking attack that emanated from China and attempts to snoop on dissidents’ e-mail.

Since disclosing the incident in January, Google has called on the Chinese government to stop requiring it to remove links to Web sites that the government deems subversive or offensive. The company is in talks with Chinese officials to try to reach an agreement that would allow it to continue to do business there.

“The attack on our corporate infrastructure and the surveillance it uncovered – as well as attempts over the past year to limit free speech on the Web even further – led us to conclude that we are no longer willing to censor our search results in China and we are currently reviewing our options,” Wong said.

The Chinese cyber attacks that Google Inc. reported last month may have targeted more than 100 companies, a larger number than previously thought, according to security research firm ISEC Partners Inc.

ISEC said it discovered the additional targets while working with victims of the attack, which originated in China. Google initially alerted 30 companies to the problem, San Francisco-based ISEC said.

Google disclosed last month that it suffered “a highly sophisticated” cyber attack on its corporate infrastructure and threatened to withdraw from China. The Mountain View, California-based company said Gmail e-mail accounts of Chinese human-rights activists were targeted by the hackers.

Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said Jan. 21 that Google had begun talks with the Chinese government and would be “making some changes” to its operations in China. The company was still following Chinese laws and censoring its search results locally, he said.

China has issued new restrictions on internet use, requiring those wanting to set up a website to meet regulators and provide identity documents, in a move slammed on Wednesday by one rights group.

The new rules come as the US has stepped up pressure on Beijing to break down its vast system of web controls – the so-called “Great Firewall of China” – for the more than 380 million people now online in the country.

Huge amounts of old computers and discarded electronic goods are piling up in countries such as China, India and some Africa nations, it said.

U.S. government analysts believe a Chinese man with government links wrote the key part of a spyware programme used in hacker attacks on Google last year, the Financial Times reported on Monday.