Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SIMPLICITY is not one the virtues that is readily associated with the institutions of the European Union, so it is refreshing to note that the European Parliament has recently taken a straightforward step to boost its accountability to the citizens of the continent that it serves.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WILL there come a day when a genuine European market in health care takes its place among the other landmark achievements of the European Union?

In terms of economic efficiency and the functioning of the internal market, does it make much sense for a million patients in Britain, say, to have to wait sometimes for a year or more for important operations while people in France or Luxembourg can book them for the next day and some German hospitals have barely half their beds filled?…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GROWTH in the high technology sector means big profits for those that succeed in the race to market ‘the next big thing,’ but that also means high tech criminals are hot on the trail of consumers and manufacturers unaware that their new gadget is a fraudsters new scamming device, reports Monica Dobie, in Montreal, Canada.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a reform of rules on cross-border taxation within the EU, which would give each Member State the responsibility of circulating information about interest paid within their territories to foreign EU nationals. This would have to be provided to tax administrations in the home EU countries of these expatriates.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Union has taken a clear step towards adoption of a law, which would compel the freezing of assets in any of its member countries because of a court order issued in any other EU state. This regulation, which covers “the transfer of property to be used as evidence, for the purpose of confiscation or for restitution to the victim of an offence,” is the first measure in a programme of mutual recognition of law and court decisions in criminal matters, which was decided at the EU’s justice and home affairs summit, held in Tampere, Finland, in 1999.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
GOVERNMENTS may prevent the formation of multi-disciplinary partnerships combining accountants and lawyers under EU law, an Advocate General of the European Court of Justice has suggested. In a formal opinion to the full ECJ, Philippe Léger said that there is a “certain incompatibility” between the two activities, and a law that prohibits collaboration “may be justified.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency has been battling to save face after the launch of its most sophisticated telecommunications satellite went wrong, sending it into an unplanned orbit that would prevent its technology from working properly.

Artemis has had US$850 million lavished upon it, so that it would provide sophisticated communications and global positioning navigations services, especially to transport operations.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
HACKERS and online criminals keen to crack codes and cause cyber-havoc have their eyes set on a new target through the future use of mobile telephone commerce via WAP phone technology, an expert has claimed.

What is known as the “WAP gap” or “white spot” – the fraction of a second when WAP traffic has to be translated to HTTP format to reach content servers on the web – makes hacking possible.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
TRUST SERVICES provider VeriSign has announced that its managed PKI, (public key infrastructure), services will meet the criteria set out by the EU Commission’s Directive for digital signatures. The Directive aims to accelerate the acceptance of digital signatures to provide secure e-commerce and communications.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
THE NEWLY formed HyperTransport Technology Consortium – a coalition of international high-tech corporations including AMD, NVIDIA, Cisco and Sun Microsystems – is to develop a new system enabling microchips within PCs and local area networks to communicate far more effectively.…