Tracking the tracker

The system to ensure that doctors keep their skills up to date will be restructured completely, said the Health Professions Council (HPC). Fraudulent, negligent and malpractising doctors will soon be facing much-more stringent disciplinary procedures, the Health Professions Council said on Tuesday (News24 2004-05-25).

Network Healthcare Holdings (Netcare) is confident it will not be investigated by the competition commission, but management is prepared to defend itself against allegations of competition abuse if necessary. Netcare, the largest player in the private hospital market, could face an investigation into its Netpartner scheme following the submission of a memorandum by the Council for Medical Schemes to the commission last week (Business Report 2004-05-26).

Wild animals are losing their habitat to encroaching urban development and abandoning their natural shyness in search of food. And along with human urbanisation encroaching on wildlife habitats come the people’s pets. Crow rehabilitates wild animals injured in such circumstances and returns them to their natural habitat (Mail & Guardian 2004-05-25).

An Internet service is about to test the frontiers of e-mail privacy. DidTheyReadIt.com, which will launch Monday, allows anyone to secretly track e-mails they send. You'll see whether someone opens your e-mail, how long the recipient keeps it open — even where geographically the recipient is reading it (USA Today 2004-05-28).

United States
Two privacy measures by Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach) – one closing a loophole in the state’s security breach laws, the other taking the same privacy protections people already have when using their office telephone and applying them to e-mail and other electronic communications – passed the Senate Appropriations Committee today and may be voted on by the full Senate as early as Monday (State of California. Senator Debra Bowen - 2004-05-20).

An Internet service is about to test the frontiers of e-mail privacy. DidTheyReadIt.com, which will launch Monday, allows anyone to secretly track e-mails they send. You'll see whether someone opens your e-mail, how long the recipient keeps it open — even where geographically the recipient is reading it (USA Today 2004-05-20).

In Kremen v Cohen, a federal appellate court accepted the view that a domain name is "property" and that domain name registrars should be held liable for the conduct of third-parties when a third-party interferes with the property interests of a domain name registrant by stealing their domain name. What is remarkable about the decision is its far-reaching implications and its potentially severe impact upon domain name registrars (CircleID 2004-05-06).

Two-thirds of divorces after age 40 are initiated by wives, debunking the myth of an older man divorcing his wife for a younger woman, a new survey shows (FindLaw 2004-05-27).