The inventor of the World Wide Web warned Friday that government control is limiting the possibilities of the Internet, as dozens of countries and businesses signed a cybersecurity deal at the Davos forum.

The comments by Tim Berners-Lee at the World Economic Forum plugged into a wider debate among the delegates on the future of the Internet, particularly how to balance openness with privacy and security.

Twitter suspended the account of Somalia's Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents Friday, days after they posted photographs of a French commando they killed and threatened to execute Kenyan hostages.

A message from Twitter on the English-language @HSMPress account read that it had "been suspended", without elaborating. The extremist's Arabic account confirmed the suspension, denouncing it as censorship.

Their name is synonymous with futile attempts to roll back technology — and with fuddy-duddies who can't figure out how to use the iPhone.

The Luddites were British textile artisans who 200 years ago smashed the mechanized looms they thought threatened their jobs.

Facebook on Thursday confirmed that co-founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg will make a foray into politics next month by hosting a fundraiser for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

The mid-February event at Zuckerberg's home in the California city of Palo Alto is to support the re-election bid of high-profile Republican Christie, who is seen as a possible future contender for U.S. president.

Google Books, the doomed project to build the world's biggest library online, provides a powerful lesson in the danger of "blind faith" in technology, according to British director Ben Lewis.

Presenting his new film "Google and the World Brain" in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, Lewis said the failure of the online giant's plan marks a victory over those who believe the Internet can encompass everything.

Internet retail colossus Amazon.com on Thursday announced the purchase of a text-to-speech technology company in a move evidently aimed at ramping up the capabilities of its Kindle Fire tablet computers.

Amazon did not disclose financial terms of the deal to buy Poland-based Ivona Software, which it said already powers text-to-speech, Voice Guide, and Explore by Touch features on Kindle Fire tablets.

A French court ruled Thursday that Twitter, which has steadfastly refused calls to police its millions of users, must hand over data to help identify the authors of racist or anti-Semitic tweets.

In a test case that pitted the right to free speech against laws banning hate speech, the court granted a request lodged in October by France's Union of Jewish Students (UEJF) which argued that many tweets had breached French law.

Toyota Motor Corp. and BMW Group are working together on next-generation batteries for green vehicles called "lithium-air" as their collaboration, first announced in late 2011, moves ahead in fuel cells, sports vehicles and other fields.

But both sides said Thursday the partnership will not involve a capital alliance while spanning a wide range of technologies for green vehicles.

British regulators have fined Sony 250,000 pounds ($396,100) for failing to prevent a 2011 cyberattack on its PlayStation Network which put millions of users' personal information — including names, addresses, birth dates and account passwords — at risk.

Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said Thursday that security measures in place at the time "were simply not good enough." It said the attack could have been prevented if software had been up to date, while passwords were also not secure.

Global Internet connection speeds around the world slowed in late 2012, according to a survey released Wednesday that suggested a temporary stall in broadband gains.

Akamai Technologies' third quarter "State of the Internet" report also showed China remained the biggest source of computer attacks, and that Brazil and China appear to have the biggest surge in Web use.