The German parliament has passed a controversial law that will force search engines and news aggregators to pay publishers royalties for providing snippets of their articles in results. The Bundestag passed the Leistungsschutzrecht fr Presseverleger, or "ancillary copyright for press publishers" law, on Friday by 293 votes to 243. Germany's coalition government was the driver behind the law, and the main opposition, the SPD, now says it will try to defeat the law in the country's second legislative chamber, the Bundesrat.

The iOS only app has been released this week, developed with the backing of Scotrail, as a trial initially and features new content and photography. Speaking to The Drum, Richard Walker, editor of The Sunday Herald explained that the app had been developed initially as a free-to-dowload trial but should it go ahead as a regularly updated app, an Android version would also be developed, while the second version would include a directory featuring links to advertisers.