http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/4136/e--commerce-to-double-year-on-year.html
Confirming a lower court decision, the Paris court of appeal upheld a plea from a French anti-alcoholism body that Heineken was in breach of the so-called Evin Law, which outlawed alcohol adverts on television in 1991.
Under the law, alcohol adverts are only allowed in the print media, on the radio and in sales outlets.
Heineken had argued that the telephone -- and by extension the Internet -- was not covered by the ban.
But the court agreed with the National Association for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Addiction (ANPAA) that alcohol ads on the Internet -- since not explicitly allowed under the law -- were illegal.
During the Rugby World Cup last year, Heineken was ordered to remove branded banners displayed outside Paris bars and cafes because they infringed the Evin Law, which also bans advertising alcohol via an association with sports.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jcR9gUWQNh_PLQCqjWlyhtZplWmw
BT has been talking about this Web 2.0 initiative, which it calls Web21C, for a few years now: The move is part of the ongoing £10 billion (US$19.4 billion) 21CN project that will see BT migrate to a converged, all-IP network sometime around 2011.
BT’s CTO, Matt Bross, has been particularly vocal about the need for BT, and other carriers, to establish service development relationships with third-party developers (including other service providers), and he presented on the issue at last June’s NXTcomm show in Chicago.
http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=21645&email=text
The World Economic Forum has released its latest report, Global Risks 2008, which highlights the need for new thinking and concerted action in a number of problem areas. It expresses fears that the current liquidity crunch will spark a US recession in the next 12 months and calls for new thinking on systemic financial risk in response to the revolution in financial markets over the last two decades. It also warns that food security will become an increasingly complex political and economic problem over the next few years, and recommends a set of principles for country risk management.
The level of economic freedom found throughout the world remained essentially unchanged over the last year, with overall gains in only two of the five regions examined in the 14th annual Index of Economic Freedom, released today by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal.
The 157 nations rated in the new Index received an average economic freedom score of 60.3 (on a scale in which 100 represents the ideal). Global economic freedom has improved 2.6 points since the first Index in 1995.
The Index measures economic freedom within 10 specific categories: labor freedom, business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government size, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights and freedom from corruption. Scores in these categories are averaged to create an overall score.
This year's Index aims to be the most precise measure of economic freedom ever published. The editors fine-tuned a methodology first employed last year to grade each economy in the world. "The methodology has been vetted with an academic advisory board and should now even better reflect the details of each country's economic policies," they write.
The Most Free
Hong Kong (1st)
Singapore (2nd)
Ireland (3rd)
Australia (4th)
United States (5th)
New Zealand (6th)
Canada (7th)
Chile (8th)
Switzerland (9th)
United Kingdom (10th)
The Least Free
Venezuela (148th)
Bangladesh (149th)
Belarus (150th)
Iran (151st)
Turkmenistan (152nd)
Burma (153rd)
Libya (154th)
Zimbabwe (155th)
Cuba (156th)
North Korea (157th)
The 2008 Index, they note, again underscores the central message of past Indexes: Economic freedom is strongly related to good economic performance. "The world's freest economies have twice the average per capita income of the second quintile of countries and over five times the average income of the fifth quintile," they write. They also have lower rates of unemployment and lower inflation.
The new taxes would help fund France's two public television channels, which would be free of advertising.
There would also be a levy on the advertising revenue made by France's private broadcasters.
