Joris Evers

Hitachi Ltd., Japan's largest electronics company, is merging its European home electronics business with its other European operations as part of a global realignment effort, the company announced Tuesday.

Microsoft Corp., the U.S. government and nine U.S. states revised their proposal to settle the long-running antitrust case against the software maker. Filed with a federal court late Wednesday, the revised proposal further restricts Microsoft in its dealings with PC makers and forces it to treat competitors' software in an unbiased manner. nnThe Second Revised Proposed Final Judgement, as the document is officially known, is an update to the proposed settlement reached in November last year between Microsoft, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and nine U.S. states. Nine other U.S. states and the District of Columbia are still pursuing the case against Microsoft; they oppose the settlement and want Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to impose far-reaching remedies on Microsoft.

Microsoft Corp. released three software patches rated "critical" late Thursday. The patches plug holes in Internet Explorer, Windows XP, SQL Server 2000 and Commerce Server 2000.

A two-to-one majority of Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) employees in the Corvallis, Ore., area oppose the company's proposed takeover of Compaq Computer Corp., a survey commissioned by David Packard, has found.

Tapping into a new market, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. will unveil its first product for securing data-centric mobile-phone networks at the 3GSM World Congress in Cannes on Wednesday.

Microsoft Corp.'s latest security patch for Internet Explorer (IE) causes the Web browser to crash when viewing Web pages that contain a certain VBScript directive, several IE users found. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem and says Web site administrators will need to take action.

Selected travelers arriving at London's Heathrow airport may now bypass the customs queue and enter England by glancing into a camera.

Moving into the handheld computing space, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Wednesday announced the acquisition of Alchemy Semiconductor Inc.