Google will pay a £4.7 million fine to settle a multi-state investigation into the internet search giant’s interception of e-mails, passwords and other sensitive information sent several years ago over unprotected wireless networks throughout the world.

The agreement announced yesterday covers 38 US states and the District of Columbia.

It closes an inquiry opened in 2010 shortly after Google revealed that company cars taking its Street View photos for its online mapping service also had been grabbing personal data transmitted over Wi-Fi networks that had been set up in homes and businesses without requiring a password to gain access.

It is the largest penalty that Google has paid so far in the US for the snooping. News of the penalty leaked out last week. Google is not acknowledging any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Tiger-leap man denies trespass

A man who was mauled after jumping into a Bronx Zoo tiger den in New York City has pleaded not guilty to trespassing.

David Villalobos entered the plea yesterday, The New York Post reported.

Last September he jumped from a monorail train that tours the zoo’s Wild Asia exhibit. He was attacked and seriously injured by a Siberian tiger.

Workers used a fire extinguisher to chase the animal away and rescue him.

According to the court complaint, he told police it was “a spiritual thing”. He said he wanted to be “at one with the tiger”.

He attended yesterday’s court session with his parents and left without commenting.

His lawyer said he would eventually explain what happened.

Last of Hitler plot officers dies

The last surviving member of the main plot to kill Adolf Hitler has died. Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist was 90 and his wife, Gundula von Kleist, said he died at home on March 8.

As a young German army lieutenant, Von Kleist was asked by the leader of the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt, Col Claus von Stauffenberg, to carry a briefcase packed with explosives to a planned meeting with Hitler. In a change of plans, von Stauffenberg himself placed the bomb but Hitler survived the explosion.

In the wake of the attack, von Kleist was arrested and interrogated for several weeks by the Gestapo before being unexpectedly released while most other conspirators were executed, including his own father.

Drive-by shooter kills baby girl

A six-month-old baby was shot dead after being hit five times in a suspected Chicago gangland attack on her father.

The girl was shot while her father, believed to have links to the city’s gangs, was changing her nappy.

Jonylah Watkins died in hospital. Her father, Jonathan Watkins, was also shot and remained critically ill in hospital.

Police are scouring the city’s South Side district of Woodlawn where the attack happened and looking for security footage that might help them track down the shooter. Witnesses say the attacker fled in a blue van.

The gunman approached Mr Watkins while he was standing outside his van and changing his daughter’s nappy while she was lying in the front seat.