Measurement of direct CP-violation with the NA48 experiment at the CERN SPS

The NA48 experiment at the CERN SPS uses simultaneous, nearly collinear beams of long-lived and short-lived neutral kaons to measure the direct CP-violation parameter $\epsilon'/\epsilon$ using the double ratio method to an overall accuracy of $2 \times 10^{-4}$, three times better than previous results. The detector has been installed and commissioned in 1995 and 1996. First physics data were recorded during 42 days in fall 1997 yielding more events than the previous experiment NA31. The talk presents the apparatus performance, data quality, the current status of the physics analysis and ongoing activities. The experiment has performed another data run from May to September 1998, which has given a substantial increase in statistics.