France

German and French leaders have come to a consensus over the second bailout for Greece in a move to avert crisis for the whole Europe and the world.

After 7 hours of talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet was present for part of their talks.

Now their decision will be presented to crisis summit in Brussels on Thursday starting at 1100 GMT of all 17 leaders of the bloc.

The New York Post reported Tuesday that prosecutors in the United States will drop the charges against ex-IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn when he again appears in the court in two weeks, or earlier, because the credibility of the alleged victim is highly doubted.

The New York Post cited an unnamed top investigator in the case who assured the eventual dismissal of charges "a certainty."

"We all know this case is not sustainable," The New York Post quoted its source as saying.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a G20 meeting that tightly controlled exchange rate regimes are the main problem in the international monetary system while the solution to it is rather simple.

Addressing the attendants of the Chinese hosts of the seminar of the Group of 20 wealthy and developing economies Geithner noted that countries should have flexible exchange rates and permit free flows of capital to be major players in the global currency order.

Google has been fined 100,000 euros by the French data protection regulator for collecting private information from wireless networks when Google’s camera-equipped cars were gathering footage for online map service Street View.

In May 2010 Google was told by the Commission nationale de l'information et des libertes to cease tracking users’ data and turn over a copy of the information it had collected. This resulted in the fine announced this week.

Atos Origin has partnered with three major French mobile carriers to form a new joint venture known as “Buyster”. The JV will develop, market and operate a new mobile payment system in France, say the companies in the joint statement.

Bjuyster payment solution will be accessible to customers in France starting mid-2011. To launch the solution the three French mobile operators (Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR) and Atos Origin joined their forces and expertise through Atos Worldline, a European leader in electronic transactions and secure payments.

The stats from comScore showed that Canadians spend more time on the Internet and use social media including Facebook and YouTube than other nations. comScore says that Canada has the highest penetration of Internet access, with around 68% of Canadians routinely surfing online, against 62% in France and Britain. Percentage of Germans account for 60% while Americans make up 59%.

Most decelerating are Italians with only 36% of the population going online, notes comScore.

All 16 euro zone countries along with any other European Union members should coordinate their economic policies more closely in the futures, France Economy Minister Christine Lagarde told a German newspaper.

"The crisis showed us that it is not sufficient to limit public debt as foreseen in the Maastricht Treaty. Ireland stuck to these criteria and finds itself nevertheless in difficulty," Lagarde said in an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

As French Economy Minister Christine Lagard stated last week, speaking about the prospects of euro zone crisis recovery: “We are in the middle of the beginning of the end."

Thus far, it’s too early to claim the end of the euro zone crisis has come; nevertheless, there some good signs that show Europe to may have turned a corner in its struggle to restore financial stability.

According to a new online poll conducted by YouGov among 6200 adults, about 32% of British notebook computers have been swiped from homes.

This data can be compared to UK’s European neighbours France and Germany, where the numbers were 22% and 17%, respectively.

As the pollster added, the proportion of recent laptop thefts that took place in US and Canada homes were only 18% and 17%, respectively.

Still, these figures also show that you're more likely to lose your laptop while it's out and about with you.

Finally, Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger application has become available for iPhone. But, unfortunately, it had landed in certain regions, not everywhere, (iTunes link), just like Microsoft’s Bing for iPhone app.

As it became known, people from UK, Canada and France can enjoy Windows Live Messenger for their iPhones.

People in Belgium and other regions can only download Microsoft’s two other applications, Seadragon and Tag Reader.

As a result of false accusations filed by some person eBay and PayPal exposed the information about several of the payment system users. The French authorities were approached by the individual who accused one of the PayPal users of a crime. This accusation resulted into PayPal disclosing several individual accounts and other private information (IP address, physical address, email accounts, phone numbers, transactions).

On Tuesday budget minister of France told that they will continue using private bank data stolen from Geneva in their struggle against tax evasion. A day before the French officials told that they will return the clients list to Switzerland that threatened to decline ratification of the new treaty with France.

Friday, EU leaders convinced the IMF in a draft statement to consider imposing a global tax on financial transactions following the economic crisis. However, the draft statement did not refer to calls by Britain and France for greater taxation of banker's bonuses.

 Fox Filmed Entertainment on Monday called upon the US to join France in blocking the access to the Internet for the violators who illegally download media files online as it substantially harms the industry especially the owners of independent films.

The Fox CEO Jim Gianopulos said that the Internet piracy is the single biggest threat to the film industry with the challenge posed by the fact that the cyber space allows people to conceal their identity.

BNP Paribas set collaboration with Oberthur Technologies concerning contactless mobile payment project that was designed to turn Nice into France's "NFC city". Thus, Oberthur intends to conduct the m-payment service on behalf of BNP Paribas via an over the air platform.