Censorship | featured news

A Pakistani court on Monday lifted a ban on social networking website Facebook which had carried a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammad, but access to any "blasphemous" material will remain blocked, officials said.

Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain "blasphemous" material, officials said on Thursday.

Google Inc said its mobile services have been partially blocked in China for two days, about a week after the company shut its mainland Chinese portal and rerouted Web searches to a Hong Kong site.

China blocks results from Hong Kong-based site after search giant redirected users from mainland.

Google says it has stopped censoring its search results in China, risking confrontation with the country's authorities.

U.S. Internet giant Google will close its business in China next month and may announce its plans next week, Chinese media reported on Friday, after rows over censorship and hacking.

Google said on Monday it remained in talks with the Chinese government about censorship of its Google.cn Chinese-language search portal, despite mounting signs the company could soon shut the site.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Friday said he's optimistic that his search engine will not have to pull out of China over hacking and censorship issues.

Google long has been an advocate of a single Web, one that's free of government censorship and barriers to information access.

A search engine called "Goojje" has come online in China, in an apparent plea to Google not to end operations in the country.