nternet giant Google has been told to improve privacy for its clients by France's data protection agency, CNIL, or face fines. The agency says Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain plan similar action.

France's data protection watchdog on Thursday gave Google three months to bring its practices into line with French privacy law or risk an initial fine of 150,000 euros ($201,100).

CNIL president Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin said by the end of July all of the six countries within the [EU data protection] task force - formed in April - will have begun coercive action against Google.

BRUSSELS - EU envoys are in talks with Ukraine to let jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko get medical care in Germany at a crucial moment in bilateral relations.

EU diplomatic sources told EUobserver the plan is being discussed at several levels.

One contact said Patrick Cox, a former European Parliament president, and Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former Polish head of state, are the "main channel of communication."

BRUSSELS - The European Commission has fined Danish pharmaceutical firm Lundbeck €93.8 million, saying it paid rival companies to delay production of generic versions of anti-depressant medication Citalopram.

It is the first "pay for delay" case brought by the EU.

The EU's executive arm focused on 2002, when patent protection for the molecule used to make Citalopram lapsed and rival pharmaceutical firms were able to produce generic versions of its drug.

Berlin - Latvia's Financial and Capital Market Commission on Tuesday (18 June) said it has imposed a fine of 100,000 lats (€142,543) - the maximum fine under Latvian law - on a bank involved in laundering over €170 million stolen from the Russian government.

The name of the bank was not made public.

The money laundering scheme was revealed by Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who worked for Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund specialising in Russian assets.

BRUSSELS - A small group of EU countries has again blocked Britain's bid to blacklist Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Diplomatic sources said Austria and the Czech republic led opposition at a meeting of EU countries' counter-terrorism specialists in Brussels on Wednesday (19 June).

Ireland, Italy and Poland also voiced concerns.

A teacher who sparked an international police hunt after he ran off to France with a pupil half his age when their sexual relationship was discovered is expected to be jailed after being convicted of child abduction.

Jeremy Forrest was found guilty after the jury took just two hours to deliver a unanimous verdict - while his former pupil, 16, sat behind him, burying her head in her hands and weeping when he was convicted.

Are workers' rights and environmental protection compatible with profit? Or must companies produce their goods as cheaply as possible to survive? These issues were discussed at the Global Media Forum in Bonn.

Manufacturers of sports shoes and textiles don't have the best reputation: they're often accused of producing their goods cheaply in Asian sweatshops, factories where workers' rights and environmental protection aren't a priority. These products are then marked up and sold with much hype in Europe, the US and elsewhere.

Funding for agriculture, fishing, and economically-weak regions is to be maintained in the EU's next long-term budget. Overall spending, though, has been capped. So how will the member states balance the equation?

For months now, member states have been discussing the the EU's long-term budget for the years 2014 to 2020. Most countries want to spend less than the European Commission and the European Parliament proposed.

Brazil's two largest cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, have revoked price hikes on public transportation. The decisions meet an important demand of protesters, who are staging the largest demonstrations in 20 years.

Sao Paulo state Governor Geraldo Alckmin said on Wednesday that he hoped the move to rescind the price hikes would create "the tranquility needed to debate issues calmly."

Brazil has been gripped by protests since last week, when people took to the streets of Sao Paulo to oppose an increase in fares for the bus and metro. Social media helped turn the protests into a nationwide movement, with more than 200,000 demonstrators turning out across Brazil on Monday.

Rescuers in India's Himalayan state of Uttarakhand say they have located 4,000 people trapped by landslides, but eight villages are feared washed away by unusually heavy monsoon flooding. More than 100 people have died.

The government of India's alpine state of Uttrakhand said on Thursday that troops and medics were still trying to reach eight villages thought washed away by floodwaters in recent days.

State spokesman Amit Chandola put the official death toll at 105 but also said authorities had been unable to reach eight villages.

German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere is in northern Afghanistan. The visit follows another security handover milestone, and gets de Maiziere out of a hostile domestic battle of his own.

Thomas de Maiziere landed in Mazar-i-Sharif on Thursday, two days after Afghan troops took formal control of the last 95 Afghan districts that had been controlled by troops of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It's de Maiziere's 12th trip to the country in almost 28 months as defense minister; he most recently visited in tandem with Chancellor Angela Merkel in May.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah has submitted his resignation, his office has confirmed. This came just two weeks after the highly respected academic had taken office.

The prime minister's office said on Thursday Hamdallah had stepped down because of a "conflict over authority." It was not immediately clear whether President Mahmoud Abbas would accept his resignation.

Hamdallah took over for Salam Fayyad, a US-educated economist, who resigned on April 13.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has acknowledged that it uses drones to conduct surveillance in the United States. Several federal law enforcement agencies have begun expanding their drone capabilities.

FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the bureau had begun deploying drones over US skies, following in the footsteps of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)

Voters in Kuwait are set to go to the polls to elect a new parliament. This is just the latest development in a row over changes to the country's election rules that were implemented last year.

Kuwait's cabinet approved a decree on Thursday confirming that a snap election would be held next month.

"At an extraordinary meeting held today, the cabinet approved a draft decree inviting voters to elect members of the National Assembly on July 25," the country's state minister for cabinet affairs, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah al-Sabah, told the official KUNA news agency.

About a quarter of Lebanon's residents are Syrian refugees. The struggle for work and living space is starting to fuel tensions between the locals and those seeking refuge from their war-torn country.

Rana Haidar is on her way to work. The 25-year-old Palestinian from Syria has two jobs. In the mornings she works at a social club in Beirut's Sabra neighborhood, which also cares for Syrian children. In the afternoon she toils away at a social center in the neighboring Shatila district.

A UN human rights body has condemned Israel's treatment of Palestinian children. A new report has accused Israeli forces of torturing Palestinian children and using them as human shields.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed in its report Thursday its "deepest concern about the reported practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested, prosecuted and detained by the military and the police."

Palestinian children are routinely arrested, hands tied painfully and blindfolded during nighttime sweeps by Israeli soldiers, the report said. Authorities also often transfer the youngsters to detention centers without informing their parents.

The US has welcomed Qatar's decision to remove a controversial nameplate from the Taliban's new office. The diplomatic spat had threatened to derail peace efforts after the Afghan president pulled out of negotiations.

The US deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Rosemary DiCarlo told the Security Council on Thursday that her country was "pleased" at Qatar's decision to remove the controversial nameplate from the Taliban's office in the country and revert to calling the building the "Political Office of the Afghan Taliban."

As an emerging superpower, China is undergoing major changes. Still, its new leader seems to be drawing inspiration from the past to deal with one of the country's most pressing issues: corruption among party officials.

President Xi Jinping is harking back to the legacy of late Chairman Mao Zedong in an attempt to "clean up" the ranks of the 80-million-member Communist Party of China (CPC) amid public growing consternation over inequality and corruption.

Locked behind the Iron Curtain for nearly half a century, the pristine Baltic Sea peninsula of Fischland-Darss-Zingst has since re-emerged as one of Germany's prime tourist destinations - but not without a price.

Far northern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern can be as equally confounding as enchanting. Pastures of golden rapeseed meander beyond the horizon, the bucolic undulation only interrupted by the battalion of wind turbines churning indefatigably, in what is the region's most potent symbol of modern economic progress.

One of the world's most important solar power conferences is currently underway in Munich, at a crucial time for the solar industry. The industry's growth in Europe is slowing while other markets are booming.

Until Friday of this week (21.06.2013) over 50,000 guests and experts will visit Intersolar Europe at the Messe München exhibition center in Munich. The expo, which is one of the most important for the solar industry worldwide, will see some 1300 companies demonstrate their products.

In focus at the expo this year are technologies for the world's new solar markets, in Asia and Africa. As well, displays on how to make solar power more affordable and more accessible for households line the exhibition halls.

Scientists have adopted basic rules of management, such as: "You can't manage what you can't measure." This is a truism in climate science. In order to understand where our climate is headed, we need to know where it has been in the past, and where it is now.

Understanding the state of the climate is an immense engineering challenge. Think of trying to measure the energy of the oceans, or the chemistry of the Earth's waters. How about temperatures or chemistry of the atmosphere? What about the extent of ice (including both area and thickness)? How about sea level?

Members of the public are being urged to photograph bees and send the data to scientists via a new smartphone app as part of a national drive to help protect pollinating insects.

The citizen science project is backed by supermarket chain Waitrose, which has worked with environment charity Earthwatch to develop the free app, through which smartphone users can help collect data about the bees, beetles, hoverflies and other pollinating insects in their gardens and which plants they prefer to visit the most.

If the world is to grow enough food for the projected global population in 2050, agricultural productivity will have to rise by at least 60%, and may need to more than double, according to researchers who have studied global crop yields.

They say that productivity is not rising fast enough at present to meet the likely demands on agriculture.

The researchers studied yields of four key staple crops - maize, rice, wheat and soybeans - and found they were increasing by only about 0.9% to 1.6% a year.

Investigative journalist turned prosaic storyteller Svetlana Alexievich has won a special German literary prize for promoting peace. The 65-year-old has written extensively on several key chapters of modern history.

The Board of Trustees of the Peace Prize of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association has awarded its 2013 peace prize to Belarusian journalist and author Svetlana Alexievich.

The board on Thursday praised the investigative journalist, saying she "has consistently and effectively traced the lives and experiences of her fellow citizens in Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine by articulating their passions and sorrows in a humble and generous manner."

The economic crisis has seen revenue streams for the creative industries in Spain dry up. Now, in the capital city of Madrid, a new scheme is encouraging people to support young artistic talent by adopting an artist.

Since visiting a cramped art studio in her neighbourhood during an open house in December 2012, Teresa Navajas has been working on innovative ideas to help support contemporary artists in Madrid. What used to be a large, vacant space on top of a church in downtown Madrid is today a vibrant studio shared by seven young artists.

Scientists have created the highest resolution 3D digital model yet made of a human brain, showing features as small as 20 micrometres across - thinner than a human hair and almost on the scale of individual cells.

At 50 times the resolution of any available anatomical atlas of the brain "BigBrain" will give scientists their closest look yet at the structures that underlie aspects of the organ, ranging from cognition and language to ageing and disease.

There are more than 45 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world, according to the United Nations. That's the most in 18 years. War is the main cause, and the crisis in Syria is a major new factor in global displacement.

On World Refugee Day, DW looks at why people flee their homes and how refugees are treated.