Superior Court Judge Craig Stowers ordered Alaska's attorney general to recover messages contained in a Yahoo email account maintained by Palin.

Friday's court order follows revelations that the Alaska governor has conducted email discussions concerning official state business from a Yahoo email address.

Critics say her use of email accounts outside of the state's official system violate open government laws that require such communications to be available to members of the public.

Members of the Bush administration has also been accused of using private accounts to send emails conducting official White House business.

More recently, Vice President Dick Cheney's office has acknowledged that an entire week's worth of email is missing from White House archives.

A month of primary recounts in the election battleground of Palm Beach County, Florida, has twice flipped the winner in a local judicial race and revealed grave problems in the county's election infrastructure, including thousands of misplaced ballots and vote tabulation machines that are literally unable to produce the same results twice.

The campaign of running mate John McCain condemned their action as "a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of the law".

According to law, all e-mails relating to the official business of government must be archived and not destroyed. However, personal e-mails can be deleted.

St. Paul police fired chemical agents and projectiles into a large crowd of protesters outside the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night.

The incident comes after almost 300 people were set to be formally charged in Ramsey County District Court on Tuesday after they were arrested during protests Monday at the Republican National Convention, police said.

On Monday, police arrested 283 people after firing projectiles, pepper spray and tear gas to disperse a crowd demonstrating near the convention site, St. Paul Police Department Chief John Harrington said.

Fu Ying said Chinese athletes who came to London for the Olympic torch relay last Sunday "were convinced that people here were against them" after "violent attacks on the torch".

"Many who had romantic views of the West are very disappointed at the media's attempt to demonise China."

She said many of those who protested had probably not been to Tibet which she described as a land "loved" by the Chinese people.

"There may be complicated problems of religion mixing with politics, but people are well-fed, well-clothed and and well-housed."

"Many complain about China not allowing enough access to the media. In China, the view is that the Western media need to earn respect."

Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege.

At a House committee hearing last month, a computer expert who previously worked at the White House called the e-mail system "primitive" and said it was set up in a way that created a high risk that data would be lost from White House servers where it was being archived.

Under pressure to provide details about its computer system, the White House told the congressional committee that it never completed work that began in 2003 on a planned records management and e-mail archiving system.

Protests break out in some nation around the globe and one of the first things a media-shy government does - just after sending in riot police - is pull the plug on YouTube.

Scores of other media outlets have been blocked or partially blacked out in China, including broadcasts of CNN, the BBC World, and Google News.

The country's authorities routinely block sites such as Wikipedia, the BBC, and even live TV transmissions to hinder publication of stories on the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, or even stories critical of leaders or governments that China is trying to build better relationships with.

On an Internet connection from a room in a Western-owned hotel, censorship is fairly light. Hundreds of images of the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 pop up on Google Images, particularly images of "Tank Man." News stories, or at least headlines, on controversial subjects come up as well.

Searching for Tiananmen Square on Google's Chinese Image site with Chinese characters reveals no pictures of the riots in 14 pages of images.

China blocked YouTube today, after videos were posted showing the protests in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on Friday, against the ongoing Chinese occupation.

On Saturday, the first images appeared online, along with video streamed foreign news reports, photos, and commentary. But today, any of China's 210 million Internet users who try to access the popular U.S based video site will only get a blank screen.

Chinese censors have been busy rushing around trying to remove the politically motivated comments wherever they are found.

The man early results suggest has won Russia's presidential election, Dmitry Medvedev, has vowed to continue the course of predecessor Vladimir Putin.

Speaking to reporters later, Mr Medvedev said his policies would be "a direct continuation of that path which is being carried out by President Putin".

Mr Putin, who has been in office for eight years, was barred by the constitution from seeking a third term, but has pledged to serve as Mr Medvedev's prime minister.

Ailing revolutionary icon Fidel Castro permanently gave up the Cuban presidency on Tuesday, ending five decades of ironclad rule of the island marked by his brash defiance of the United States.

"I neither will aspire to nor will I accept -- I repeat -- I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the Council of State and commander-in-chief," Castro wrote, almost 19 months after undergoing intestinal surgery and handing power temporarily to his brother Raul Castro.

"Eventually this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections. And I mean free, and I mean fair -- not these kinds of staged elections that the Castro brothers tried to foist off as being true democracy," Bush said, on the road in Rwanda.