In the papers 6 September

06-09-2006

by Sylvia Leatham

Vodafone appoints new European chief | Matsushita recalls 6,000 batteries

The Irish Times reports that supermarket giant Tesco is launching Tesco Direct, a home shopping service, in Britain, in its latest assault on the non-food retail market. Stepping up competitive pressure on rivals such as Argos, Tesco will offer a home shopping service with a range of more than 8,000 lines, from electrical products and golf clubs to bicycles and, for the first time, sofas and beds.

The Irish Independent says that iTrips may soon be made legal in Ireland following ComReg's announcement that short-range transmitting devices will soon be legalised. Read the full story on ENN.

The paper also says that Bank of Ireland has said it plans to refund customers who have fallen victims to phishing scams, as reported on ENN. However, the paper adds that the bank is insisting it has a policy of not compensating customers who have been defrauded by phishers. "Customers that have been refunded by the bank recently were done so, having reviewed their cases, on the exceptional basis that phishing was not widely known or understood by customers and was a relatively new phenomenon in internet banking in Ireland."

According to the Financial Times, mobile operator Vodafone has appointed Vittorio Colao, the outgoing chief executive of Italian publishing group RCS MediaGroup, as the new chief executive of its European region. Colao had held senior management positions at Vodafone before he went to work for RCS in 2004. He was chief executive at Vodafone Italy and later had regional responsibility for southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa at the company. Colao will take up his new position in October.

The paper also reports that Japanese electronics firm Matsushita has started to recall 6,000 batteries used in its notebook PCs after it emerged they could overheat if dropped repeatedly. The problem with the lithium ion batteries, which are made by a third party in an original-equipment manufacturing contract with Matsushita, follows faults in Sony-made batteries that in recent weeks have prompted the largest PC recall in the US. Matsushita declined to identify the manufacturer of the batteries, which are used in its Let's Note PCs sold in Japan, but said they were not made by Sony.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google plans to launch a service that allows people to search for news articles dating as far back as the 1700s. The internet company is working with media outlets such as New York Times Co and Washington Post Co, as well as news-retrieval services such as LexisNexis, to make articles available through the Google service. Using the new Google News Archive Search, consumers will be able to search the full text of articles using keywords and to view snippets of the articles grouped chronologically on Google's site, before clicking through to sites operated by the content owners or their licensees to see the entire articles.

The paper also reports that Microsoft has officially announced pricing for its Vista operating system, and said it plans to expand user testing of the software. The company will offer five versions of Vista, with different features. Vista Home Basic will retail for USD199, and Vista Business will sell for USD299. The most expensive version will be Vista Ultimate, at USD399. The software giant said it will make a nearly complete test version of the software available to a broad audience later this week.