The agony of the recorded-music industry as it fights the ”world of free” on the internet may have become a little more painful in Germany this month, with a court ruling that seems to restrict surveillance of web users. The industry in Western Europe’s most populous nation says it employs 98 sleuths working 24 hours a day.
Peek behind the giant screen that shows the action replays at a soccer game, and chances are that you’ll see the badge of an Italian firm that is one of the five leaders of the sector making big outdoor electronic displays. Thriving Milan-based Tecnovision was among nearly 100 Italian companies pitching for business this week at CeBIT.
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/ 2 November 2007
Images of Madeleine McCann, the British four-year old who went missing six months ago in Portugal, have been printed in a spoof supermarket advertisement by a German satirical magazine, outraging her parents. The ”Find Maddie” photo-spread in Titanic has prompted a chorus of complaints in the British media.
Winter failed this year on the lower slopes of Europe’s Alps, prompting fresh orders for electric-powered machines that puff out artificial snow on to the pistes when the weather does not oblige. Higher up the Alps, Europe’s highest mountain chain, there has been natural snow, but the melting of the great glaciers in the past couple of decades tells a clear story.
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/ 25 February 2006
Convicted German confidence trickster Jurgen Harksen describes in a book published in Germany on Friday how he persuaded his rich victims to keep sending him money in South Africa during a nine-year run from the law. Harksen describes how he hired a host of working-class South Africans to act the part of American bankers.
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/ 3 February 2006
Clever electronic features are the make-or-break feature in many new toys on display at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, which entered the second day on Friday of a six-day run. Baby Shark, a toy from Super Grand Enterprise of Hong Kong, exemplifies how makers are taking traditional playthings and giving them a new twist.
London’s entire underground railway network was closed down on Thursday after a series of explosions that caused a ”large number of casualties” and at least 33 deaths, police said. An explosion ripped through a double-decker bus just minutes after blasts rocked the underground. British Home Secretary Charles Clarke said there had been ”terrible injuries” in the attacks.
Explosions rocked the London subway and a double-decker bus on Thursday, causing at least two deaths, injuring scores of riders and sending victims fleeing from blast sites. British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the explosions a "series of terrorist attacks". A group calling itself "The Secret Organisation of al-Qaeda in Europe" has claimed responsibility for the blasts in a web statement, reports said.
South Africans in London spoke to the <i>Mail & Guardian Online</i> immediately after Thursday’s series of blasts that hit the city’s underground railway system and a double-decker bus, describing the chaos and confusion that ensued as news of the explosions spread through the city.
British citizens retired overseas on Wednesday lost their high court battle for the right to have their state retirement pensions increased in line with inflation. A judge rejected accusations that the government was unlawfully discriminating.