Local World is claiming a 59 per cent year-on-year increase in monthly unique viewers during January 2014 compared with the previous year. The self-reported figures show that 16.95 million people logged on to Local World websites during last month compared to 9.16 million a year earlier. This followed 14.27 million users in December 2013 compared with 7.35 million in December 2012.

As part of its ongoing quest to beef up its central and eastern European operations, Deutsche Telekom has bought up the 39.23 percent of shares in T-Mobile Czech Republic that it did not already own. The shares, purchased from a private equity-led consortium, cost the carrier group EUR800 million (USD $1.1 billion). Deutsche Telekom bought GTS Central Europe in November, partly for its fixed-line infrastructure in the Czech Republic, and now that plan is coming together.

Breakthrough Breast Cancer has launched its first social media fundraising campaign, the 'Change Challenge,' which encourages users to post a photo or video of them holding a sign saying what they will change if their friends donate. Created by communications agency 1DA, the campaign uses the idea of peer-to-peer fundraising to encourage its followers on Facebook and Twitter to raise money for the cause, rather than just liking or retweeting posts.

The launches respond to the increase in mobile traffic across Hearst's portfolio of brands; growing an impressive 70% over the past six months to 40%, says Hearst. ELLEUK's mobile audience now makes up 30% of its total monthly users, with page views up 82% year on year, while 45% of Company's monthly online users are now from tablet and mobile devices.

A new website featuring journalist Glenn Greenwald and funded by the billionaire founder of eBay was unveiled early Monday, with two stories about US government surveillance. The site, called the Intercept, reported Monday that the National Security Agency has used cell phone geolocation to help pinpoint targets for US drone strikes overseas, and published previously unseen photographs of major US intelligence facilities.

The Huffington Post has signed a three-month deal with Outdoor Plus, which will see content from the news site available across Outdoor Plus' Shopping Centre network though an RSS feed. The campaign will comprise 36 full-motion landscape screens across 14 key shopping malls nationwide.

Absolute Radio is set to bring back its #nowplaying campaign, which will see listeners asked to tweet the song now playing for a chance to win GBP250 every hour. The campaign, which is set to run for two separate week long periods beginning 17 February and 10 March, will look to drive awareness of the station and encourage trial.

Visitor numbers across the company's 196 local websites, which were relaunched in 2013, reached 15.6m, up more than 56% on the same month last year, says Johnston Press. Visitors to all JP sites in January numbered 16.85m, more than 46% up. The enhanced sites, along with attention-grabbing editorial content in January, brought a digital audience across the Edinburgh Evening News and the Scotsman of 3.36m, 71% up on January 2013.

Finland's UpCloud is planning to open a U.S. data center, probably in Chicago. And while it's not the first European cloud outfit to head west, this infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider reckons it's come up with a model that can protect even customers using that facility under Finnish and European data protection laws.

Two of Scotland's biggest newspapers have new editors: Murray Foote has been made editor of the Daily Record and Jim Wilson is editor of the Sunday Mail. It is a return to having dedicated editors for the two titles, which were previously both edited by Allan Rennie. Last week Rennie was promoted to managing director of Trinity Mirror's Media Scotland division following the departure of Denise West to join DC Thomson. Rennie remains editor in chief of the Record and Mail.