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NEW YORK and FRANKFURT, Germany — Dec 13, `07 — JetBlue Airways and Deutsche Lufthansa AG today announced an agreement for Lufthansa to make a minority equity investment in JetBlue. This transaction represents the first significant investment by a European air carrier in a U.S. point-to-point air carrier.

Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by the Boards of both companies, Lufthansa will purchase in a private placement approximately 42 million newly issued common shares of JetBlue, or 19% of JetBlue’s equity after giving effect to the issuance.

Lufthansa is acquiring the shares at a price of $7.27 per share, or a total of approximately $300 million, representing a 16% premium to yesterday’s closing price of $6.25.

The agreement provides that a Lufthansa nominee will be appointed to the Board of Directors upon the closing of the transaction. The Lufthansa nominee will be a Class II director and will be up for election at JetBlue’s annual meeting in 2008.

Both airlines also look forward to exploring potential opportunities for further cooperation for the benefit of their customers. No specific areas of potential cooperation have been agreed. More at JetBlue, Lufthansa.

HAMBURG, Germany — Dec 04, ‘07 — Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile can sell iPhones with a T-Mobile contract and may continue to offer the device with a locked SIM card, a German court ruled on Tuesday, reversing a lower court’s decision that said an unlocked version must be sold in Europe’s biggest economy.

Rival Vodafone had obtained a temporary court injunction preventing T-Mobile from locking the iPhone’s SIM card — thus preventing it from being used on other networks — and offering it only in combination with a T-Mobile contract.

T-Mobile had appealed that injunction, which led to the new ruling, and the wireless operator unveiled an unlocked version of the phone priced at $1,465 (€999), more than twice the $585 (€399) price of a phone sold in combination with a two-year T-Mobile contract.

WASHINGTON –BUSINESS WIRE– Dec 02, ‘07 — Carl Zeiss SMT today introduced the new CENTRA 100 transmission electron microscope (TEM) at the 47th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Cell Biology in Washington D.C.

The CENTRA 100 is a TEM with up to 100 kV accelerating voltage. Specially designed as a sophisticated “imaging system”, the highly compact and robust instrument offers maximum resolution down to 0.2 nm. The ease-of-use and fast specimen exchange capability make this microscope particularly well-suited for biomedical or clinical laboratory environments.

A key technical feature of the system is the choice between two different imaging modes: high resolution and high contrast. This is particularly important for investigating low-contrast biological specimens. The specially developed mini-lens design leads to a very compact size where the electron-optical lens elements exhibit only minimum aberration.

The use of four lens elements in the projection system enables rotation-free imaging while the magnification is being changed. Furthermore, additional deflection systems support the image-fine-shift that enables the generation of panorama images.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Nov 30, ‘07 — EU governments agreed Friday to jointly complete the development of the much-delayed Galileo satellite navigation project after mollifying Spain, which had demanded a bigger stake in the venture, the AP reported.

Spain was the lone holdout in a 26-1 vote at an EU meeting on moving ahead with the $5 billion undertaking.

In seeking unanimity, the EU later won Spain’s approval with a deal that said a secondary ground station - planned for Spain to monitor emergency services on Galileo channels - may one day be a full-blown ground control station if Spain pays for that upgrade.

The European Commission set a Dec. 31 deadline for final approval of the satellite program. When completed, by 2013, it is expected to rival the American global positioning system, which also is satellite-based.

On Nov 23, EU governments agreed to a taxpayer bailout for the project, several months after a consortium of private companies walked away from it in a financing dispute. Most of the €2.4 billion ($3.56 billion) needed to complete the project will come from unspent funds originally earmarked for agriculture

BRUSSELS — Nov 27, ‘07 — Almost one in five European Union households has gone wireless, cutting off their landline cables to use a mobile telephone only, a study by the EU statistical office showed on Tuesday, reports Reuters.

Eurostat said that last year 18 percent of households had mobile phone access only as subscriptions for wireless handsets soared to 95 per 100 habitants in 2005 from eight in 1996.

The study showed that the number of households relying only on a mobile telephone tended to be higher in EU newcomers from central and eastern Europe — 42 percent in the Czech Republic, compared with 11 percent in Germany.

In Finland, home of mobile giant Nokia, 47 percent of households had mobile phones and no fixed lines. Still, in Sweden, where rival Ericsson is based, zero percent of households relied only on mobile telephony.

Luxembourg had the highest number of mobile subscriptions per 100 people — 158, followed by Lithuania with 127 and Italy with 122. More at Reuters, Eurostat (in pdf).

Brussels — November 27, ‘07 — The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of Franco-US company Business Objects, an independent provider of business analytics software, by SAP AG of Germany. The Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any substantial part of it.

SAP provides a wide range of enterprise application software solutions. Business Objects, headquartered in France and the US, offers business analytics software solutions and in particular business intelligence solutions which corporate customers use to analyse, report and visualise data across their organisation to gain better insight into their businesses with a view to optimising organisational performance.

The Commission examined the effects that the proposed merger would have on the overall market for enterprise application software and particularly the business analytics sector. In both instances, the Commission found that the horizontal overlap would not give rise to competition concerns, since the parties’ combined market share would be moderate at EEA level. The combined SAP/Business Object entity would continue to face several strong competitors and customers would find sufficient alternative suppliers of such software products.

More at European Commission.

Targeted online advertising is set to face increased scrutiny from European Union regulators concerned about invasion of privacy, threatening the growth of a potentially big online revenue-booster for media companies. Reports, Astrid Wendlandt of Reuters.

“This is a very hot topic that can be expected to be part of our work programme next year,” Gabriele Loewnau, a senior legal adviser for the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, said on Friday, Nov 23. The German commissioner currently heads the European Union’s advisory body on data protection matters, the so-called Article 29 Working Party.

When an individual makes an online search or purchase, the computer can remember the entry through so-called cookies and pass on the information to advertisers.

Brussels’ heightened awareness comes as more than 13,000 Facebook users have signed a petition protesting against the networking site’s new advertising system which alerts members of friends’ purchases online. Members can opt for their transactions to be kept private but critics say the option is easily missed.

Some Facebook members have even threatened to leave, complaining the new system allowed their friends to find out what they were planning to give them for Christmas. The Facebook petition was led by the civic action group MoveOn.org.

FAST GROWING

Online advertising is the fastest-growing segment of the ad industry, gaining more than 25 percent a year, or more than five times the recent average annual growth all media included.

“Online sites have to make sure they are not intruding people’s privacy, otherwise targeted advertising will backfire,” said Vincent Bonneau from French telecoms research group Idate. More at Reuters.

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Nov 23, ‘07 — The European Union’s troubled Galileo satellite navigation system will be financed from leftover EU funds, EU ministers decided Friday, after Germany and three other countries that had opposed the arrangement relented.

Most of the €2.4 billion ($3.56 billion) the EU says is needed to complete the project will come from unspent funds originally earmarked for agriculture, officials said. Some €300 million (US$445 million) was also earmarked to launch the EU’s new technology and innovation institute, meant to rival the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The decision means Galileo — which nearly folded after a consortium of private companies tasked with developing it failed to make progress — will be completed. It is to give Europe its own satellite navigation, ending its dependency on the U.S.-run Global Positioning System.

Germany got on board after the EU’s executive Commission proposed new tender rules meant to ensure the multibillion-euro project is not dominated by a single company.

In Berlin, a German Transport Ministry spokesman welcomed the Commission proposal, saying it would secure competition and could lead to benefits for German companies.

A source close to EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said the project segments would include satellites, launchers, ground mission infrastructure and control, system software, and other tasks.

There would be the possibility of two tenders to build 26 satellites that make up the system, which is expected to have 30 satellites in total. “The bidder will have to put an offer for all 26, but then we will contract only for a first batch of 10, for example,” the source said.

Nov 21, ‘07 — Apple has been forced to release a version of the iPhone in Germany that is not locked into a specific network or contract, scuppering its exclusive deal with Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile.

Following a preliminary injunction, T-Mobile said that it would sell an unlocked phone for $1465 ( €999 ) until a final decision is reached. It will continue to offer iPhones locked into a two-year contract for $585 ( €399 ). Its announcement comes after rival Vodafone went to a German court to challenge T-Mobile’s exclusive tie-up with the iPhone in Germany.

Vodafone Deutschland won the injunction barring T-Mobile from offering the iPhone exclusively with a so-called SIM lock that stops users from switching the device to any other operator’s network, and with a minimum two year contract.

There is no indication that the case could be replicated in the UK. A Vodafone spokesman said: “This is particular to Germany. The regulatory situation is very different from the UK, so we won’t be doing it here.”

The case is due to come before the courts in around two weeks time, when Vodafone will push for Apple to sell unlocked iPhones at the same, or a similar price as the phone locked into the T-Mobile contract.

Apple has offered the iPhone exclusively to one operator in each of the countries that it has launched, in a bid to secure a percentage of phone usage revenues from the mobile operators.

Nov 21, ‘07 — The discovery of a giant fossilised claw from an ancient sea scorpion indicates that when alive it would have been about two-and-a-half meters long, much taller than the average man.

This find, from rocks 390 million years old, suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought.

Dr Simon Braddy from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, co-author of an article about the find, said, ‘This is an amazing discovery. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realised, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were.’

The research is published online today in the Royal Society’s journal Biology Letters. The claw was discovered by one of Dr Braddy’s co-authors, Markus Poschmann, in a quarry near Prüm in Germany.

Poschmann described finding the fossil: ” I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realised there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw. Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilise it.”

The claw is from a sea scorpion (eurypterid) Jaekelopterus rhenaniae that lived between 460 and 255 million years ago. It is 46 centimetres long, indicating that the sea scorpion to which it belonged was around 2.5 metres (8 feet) long – almost half a metre longer than previous estimates for these arthropods and the largest one ever to have evolved.

Eurypterids are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of scorpions and possibly all arachnids.

Some geologists believe that giant arthropods evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others, that they evolved in an ‘arms race’ alongside their likely prey, the early armoured fish.

‘There is no simple single explanation’, explains Braddy. ‘It is more likely that some ancient arthropods were big because there was little competition from the vertebrates, as we see today. If the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere suddenly increased, it doesn’t mean all the bugs would get bigger.’ More at University of Bristol.

Dusseldorf, Germany — Nov 19, ‘07 — The German unit of Vodafone said Monday it had won a court order requiring its rival, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile, to sell the Apple iPhone in Germany without a mandatory calling plan.

The restraining order was issued by a regional court in Hamburg Monday. Vodafone is questioning Deutsche Telekom’s iPhone sales practices, the spokesman said. Deutsche Telekom is marketing the iPhone exclusively in Germany.

Specifically, Vodafone is questioning the iPhone’s exclusive use in T-Mobile’s network and the use of the device being limited to certain fees within T- Mobile’s subscription offerings.

Vodafone Germany chief executive Friedrich Joussen said in Dusseldorf Vodafone did not want to halt iPhone sales. ‘We want it to be available to buyers without a mandatory calling plan,’ he said. ‘If I had wanted to halt sales, I could have, but I didn’t.’ Joussen said he expected a substantive ruling within two weeks.

A spokesman for T-Mobile Monday confirmed the restraining order has been issued, adding that the company is examining the issue. So far, it is too early to comment on possible consequences for the company, he said.

Nov 09, ‘07 — Apple’s iPhone goes on sale in the UK and Germany on Friday with thousands expected to snap up the device. Eager customers have begun queuing outside the Apple Store in Regent Street, London, despite the poor weather conditions.

But there are concerns that consumers are only able to use the phone with one mobile network. In the UK the phone will only work on O2’s network, while in Germany T-Mobile will support the device. The phones can be unlocked for use on other networks but this voids the warranty and could break the device if software updates from Apple are loaded.

As many as 250,000 users in the US have unlocked the device using free and paid-for software to make the phone work on different networks, and to load third-party software not supported by Apple.

Lacks technology: Critics have pointed out that the device, while boasting an innovative user interface which makes it simple to use, lacks technology found in rival phones. The iPhone only works on slower 2G networks, limiting its usefulness as a mobile web browser, but it does also connect to wi-fi hotspots.

Customers have to pay in advance for the iPhone and cannot get it free on a mobile contract. The Apple phones costs £269 and the minimum monthly contract with O2 is £35More at BBCNews.

Berlin, Germany – October 26, ‘07 — Seven police cars chased a go-cart at high speed for three miles through the winding streets of the western German town of Moenchengladbach but were not able to keep up with the teenage speedster.

“We were chasing him across town, but the squad cars couldn’t keep up because the go-cart was able to take the corners faster and he was able to get away,” police spokesman Willy Thevissen said on Friday.

Police later discovered the go-cart driver hiding in a garage. The 18-year-old driver admitted he had taken refuge there after seeing the garage door open while fleeing the police. ”He told us he knew driving a go-cart on the street is illegal,” the spokesman said. “But he had purchased the vehicle from a friend and said he had no other way of getting it home.”

Moenchengladbach is the home of two Formula One racers: Nick Heidfeld of BMW/Sauber and former driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen. GuardinUnlimited/Reuters