BRUSSELS/VIENNA, Sept 13 (Reuters) – EU regulators object to
Hutchison 3G’s agreed 1.3 billion euro ($1.7 billion) takeover
of France Telecom’s Orange Austria and will carry out a
full probe, Hutchison said on Thursday, in a move likely to
force more concessions to win approval.

The European Commission, which has been examining the
takeover since June, has said it is worried the deal would cut
the number of telecoms operators in Austria to three from four
and lead to higher consumer prices. The commission declined to
comment On Thursday.

VIENNA, July 31 (Reuters) – The European Union is testing a
proposal from Hutchison aimed at alleviating
competition concerns about its planned takeover of Orange
Austria, indicating broad support for the proposal,
according to a document seen by Reuters.

The EU has moved to a phase-two, in-depth probe of the
proposed 1.3 billion-euro ($1.6 billion) merger, which would
combine the two smallest players in Austria’s mobile market and
reduce the number of network operators to three from four.

VIENNA/DUBLIN, July 30 (Reuters) – An Irish watchdog says it
will determine by early October whether Facebook, the
world’s biggest social network, will face legal action under
European privacy laws.

Ireland is the headquarters of Facebook’s non-U.S. business,
and the data regulator there is responsible for ensuring that
the company complies with European and Irish data protection
law, which is generally tougher than in the United States.

VIENNA (Reuters) – Felix Munk gets stung up to 20 times a day but that doesn’t stop him from regularly clambering up to the roof of the Vienna Opera and other city landmarks to check on the bees living above the heads of unsuspecting music lovers and government ministers.

Munk is a member of Vienna’s Stadtimker, one of a growing number of urban beekeepers’ associations who are trying to encourage bees to make their homes in cities, as pesticides and crop monocultures make the countryside increasingly hostile.

BRUSSELS/VIENNA (Reuters) – EU regulators are to step up their probe into a bid by Hong Kong’s Hutchison 3G to buy France Telecom’s (FTE.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Orange Austria on concerns that the 1.3 billion euros ($1.62 billion) deal would shrink the number of players in Austria to three.

Hutchison, a unit of Hutchison Whampoa (0013.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which is controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, unveiled the takeover plan in February.

LONDON/VIENNA (Reuters) – Telekom Austria AG (TELA.VI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) shareholder Ronny Pecik is in advanced talks to sell his 21 percent stake to Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, who is seeking to expand his telecom empire into Europe, according people familiar with the matter.

If the talks are fruitful, it would be a big step in Slim’s effort to expand the footprint of his company America Movil’s (AMXL.MX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in Europe. Slim already owns 4.1 percent of Telekom Austria.

LONDON/VIENNA, June 14 (Reuters) – Telekom Austria AG
shareholder Ronny Pecik is in advanced talks to sell
his 21 percent stake to Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, who is
seeking to expand his telecom empire into Europe, according
people familiar with the matter.

If the talks are fruitful, it would be a big step in Slim’s
effort to expand the footprint of his company America Movil’s
in Europe. Slim already owns 4.1 percent of Telekom
Austria.

LONDON, June 13 (Reuters) – An unprecedented land grab for
new Web addresses began in earnest on Wednesday with fierce
competition for new internet real estate including .app, .blog
and .web from applicants hoping to break the near-monopoly of
the .com top-level domain.

The ambitious plan to liberalise internet addresses
attracted 1,930 applications, almost half of them from north
America, with Web giants Amazon and Google
applying for dozens of domains including .cloud, .buy and .book.

LONDON (Reuters) – Home viewing of movies in three dimensions will be slow to catch on until technology improvements deliver high-quality viewing without special 3D glasses, according to James Cameron, director of films including “The Terminator”, “Titanic” and “Avatar”.

Cameron, a fervent believer in 3D, said a lack of high-quality content was also a barrier to wider adoption, but a poor technology to accommodate groups of people watching from different angles without glasses was the main obstacle.

LONDON, May 22 (Reuters) – A project to allow companies to
set up a website with almost any address has relaunched after a
software glitch exposed sensitive details of applications last
month, forcing it to shut down.

In the most ambitious expansion of the Internet so far, the
body that oversees domain names has now given organisations
until May 30 to apply for their own Web address endings – for
example .london, .eco or .canon – provided they have a
legitimate claim to the domain name and can pay a hefty fee.