Weapons online, judgement day and good news at last

NEWS E-tailers in the weapons trade would, under proposed regulations, be required to register centrally before being licensed to trade on the internet. While the items for sale - missiles, warheads and machine guns - are hardly in keeping with mainstream ecommerce, the move demonstrates both the extent of ecommerce permeation into all aspects of life and the controls that need to brought to bear in a marketplace where regulation is a still a thorny issue... The Guardian also reports that today is the day of judgement for tech stocks on the FTSE 100. The latest reshuffling of the pack is due today and will see a number of high tech companies falling from the list and being replaced by tradition blue chip stocks. The fall from FTSE grace will not come as too much of a surprise for the companies concerned, some of whom will have seen it coming from afar - Baltimore, Bookham and Sema - and it is a natural outcome of a period which has seen investors deserting tech stocks in their droves over the past few months of market upheaval... A ray of light for technology stocks comes in the Financial Times which reports Nokia has injected some life back into the flagging telecoms market with a positive announcement about its prospects and a prediction of a successful future for mobile internet services. The company had already predicted healthy growth of between 25 and 30 per cent until 2002 and has now extended this prediction until 2003. Nokia's shares rose 9.6 per cent on the news and caused similar upturns for Ericsson and Alcatel. The knock-on effect even reached as far as Ifineon, manufacturer of chips for mobile phones, and looks set to prove a much-needed seasonal tonic for a previously ailing market...