Reuters

Europe needs to invest close to $800 billion in its digital infrastructure to catch up with the United States and China, said European Union Commissioner Guenther Oettinger. He also urged fellow Austrians to reject populist views that could deter technology experts from migrating to Europe to help drive development. If Europe can’t develop fibre-optic networks and next-generation high-speed 5G wireless applications and networks fast enough “we will lose, because important technological applications will not be possible any longer in our industry”, Oettinger said. Amazon and Google benefit from a US-wide data standard and have been able to collect data that gives them much broader knowledge of their customers’ needs than most European companies, he said. “Investments of €600-700bn ($670-780bn) are needed in the European area, according to our calculations,” Oettinger said.

The FBI is investigating a cyberattack against another US Democratic Party group, which may be related to an earlier hack against the Democratic National Committee, apparently. The previously unreported incident at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, and its potential ties to Russian hackers are likely to heighten accusations, so far unproven, that Moscow is trying to meddle in the US presidential election campaign to help Republican nominee Donald Trump.

The Kremlin denied involvement in the DCCC cyber-attack. Hacking of the party's e-mails caused discord among Democrats at the party's convention in Philadelphia (PA) to nominate Hillary Clinton as its presidential candidate. The newly disclosed breach at the DCCC may have been intended to gather information about donors, rather than to steal money, apparently. It was not clear what data was exposed, although donors typically submit a variety of personal information including names, e-mail addresses and credit card details when making a contribution. It was also unclear if stolen information was used to hack into other systems. The DCCC raises money for Democrats running for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. The intrusion at the group could have begun as recently as June.

Facebook's employees are still mainly white or Asian males as the world's largest social network made little progress in hiring a more diverse talent pool over the past year. The findings in Facebook's annual diversity report reflects the scant progress made by Silicon Valley heavyweights in employing more women and minorities.

In June, Alphabet's Google released data on diversity, saying it had more black, Latino and female employees than in 2015, but still lagged its goal of mirroring the population. Women represented 33 percent of Facebook's global workforce as of June 30, compared with 32 percent a year earlier, the report said. Women held 27 percent of senior leadership roles, up from 23 percent a year earlier. Facebook said 3 percent of its senior leadership in the United States was black, up from 2 percent a year earlier. Among its US technology workers, Facebook made no progress among two groups. In both 2015 and 2016, Hispanics made up 3 percent of tech employees while blacks made up 1 percent. Facebook's overall US workforce includes 4 percent of Latinos and 2 percent of blacks, unchanged from last year, the report said. Asians represented 38 percent of Facebook's U.S. workforce and 21 percent of its senior leadership. The majority of Facebook's global tech employees, at 83 percent, are men, down marginally from last year's 84 percent.

A federal appeals court said Microsoft and other companies cannot be forced to turn over customer e-mails stored on servers outside the United States. The 3-0 decision by a panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York was a victory for privacy advocates, as well as for technology companies hoping to offer cloud computing and other services to customers around the world.

Circuit Judge Susan Carney said communications held by US service providers on servers located outside the United States are beyond the reach of domestic search warrants issued under the Stored Communications Act, a 1986 federal law. "Congress did not intend the SCA's warrant provisions to apply extraterritorially," she wrote. "The focus of those provisions is protection of a user's privacy interests." Microsoft had been challenging a warrant seeking e-mails stored on a server in Dublin, Ireland, in a narcotics case. It was believed to be the first US company to challenge a domestic search warrant seeking data held outside the country. July 14's decision reversed a July 2014 ruling by then-Chief Judge Loretta Preska of the US District Court in Manhattan requiring Microsoft to turn over the e-mails. It also voided a contempt finding against the company.

Judge Lucy Koh of the US District Court, Northern District in San Jose (CA) rejected Apple’s latest bid for a permanent injunction against Samsung in another sign of the diminishing impact of the smartphone patent wars.

In her ruling, Judge Koh said Apple’s reputation as an innovator “has proved extremely robust” despite Samsung’s patent infringement. “Apple has not demonstrated that it will suffer irreparable harm to its reputation or goodwill as an innovator without an injunction,” Judge Koh wrote.

The state of Oregon sued Oracle America and six of its top executives, accusing the software giant of fraud for failing to deliver a working website for the Affordable Care Act program.

The lawsuit, filed in Marion County Circuit Court, claims that fraud, lying and "a pattern of racketeering" by Oracle cost the state and its Cover Oregon program hundreds of millions of dollars.

Oregon paid Oracle about $240.3 million for a system that never worked, the suit said. The Oracle-built site for the Cover Oregon never worked and Oregonians were forced to submit paper applications in a hastily-organized process.

A German regulator handed Google a victory as it said it would not pursue a complaint brought against the company by a group of publishers for giving users access to their news articles.

Several publishers including Axel Springer SE and Burda had banded together in a group called VG Media to demand Google pay them for making their online articles available to the public.

"Sufficient suspicion is always necessary to initiate an abuse procedure. The complaint from VG Media did not establish this," said Andreas Mundt, president of Germany's Federal Cartel Office.

Cox Communications is not interested in merging with wireless carrier T-Mobile US or rival cable providers, Cox President Pat Esser said, dispelling rumors recently swirling about the private company.

Asked whether Cox, the third-largest US cable and broadband company, was considering a merger with one of its smaller cable rivals, such as Charter Communications or perennial takeover target Cablevision Systems, Esser said family-owned Cox was not looking to become a publicly traded company.

Al Jazeera rejected allegations from Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, the founders of Current TV, saying they were false and potentially misleading.

Al Jazeera acquired Current TV for an estimated $500 million in 2013. Gore and Hyatt filed a lawsuit against the company for fraud and material breaches of the acquisition.

Al Jazeera America said that Gore and Hyatt's assurances of contract compliance were inaccurate and that third parties contend that Current TV breached its contracts while the group ran the channel. The company said the Gore-Hyatt group promised to indemnify Al Jazeera if, after the sale, the company was sued for breach of any of these contracts while Gore and Hyatt ran the channel.

International Business Machines said that US regulators had approved the $2.3 billion sale of its low-end server business to Lenovo Group, as the company continues its shift to more profitable software and services like cloud computing and data analytics.

The approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States came despite CIFUS members’ concern that IBM servers used in the Pentagon’s networks could be accessed remotely by Chinese spies and compromised.