October 3, 2002

European Commission proposes law on takeovers that it hopes will ease merger process in 15-nation European Union; aim of proposal is to enable takeover bids to be made in union under best possible conditions for all those concerned; commission has tried to avoid confrontation with Germany, union's biggest member (M)

Enron's former chief financial officer Andrew S Fastow is charged with engaging in vast scheme to use off-the-books partnerships to fraudulently disguise company's financial performance while enriching himself with millions of dollars in Enron's cash; charges--including fraud, money laundering and conspiracy--portray Enron as company where fraud and deceit were workaday mechanisms used to disguise failings of corporation secretly spinning out of control; government complaint implicates other executives and financial institutions--notably Merrill Lynch--as having direct involvement in or knowledge of criminal activities; Fastow surrenders to FBI agents in Houston; he is led in handcuffs to federal courthouse, where judge orders him to be released on $5 million bond, secured by $3 million investment account and several homes; Fastow and his wife surrender their passports; photos (L)

Deutsche Telekom plans to cut 29,500 jobs at its fixed-line unit T-Com by 2005 to increase efficiency and reduce costs (S)

Metro Matters column on tentative, serial and multiple candidacies as poll-driven political trend that started, notably, with Andrew Cuomo's withdrawal from New York gubernatorial race and then Sen Robert Torricelli's withdrawal in New Jersey (M)

Technology professionals and executives often find themselves tinkering with recalcitrant computers of their friends and relatives, partly out of sympathy for the technically downtrodden and partly because they are unable to resist challenge of networks that fail to communicate, computers that refuse to boot or printers that will not print; photo (M)