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/ 17 January 2006
A December sales surge kept Airbus on top of the global passenger jet market in 2005, the company said on Tuesday — bettering Boeing’s orders and deliveries in a record year by both measures. But Airbus also conceded it had lost ground to Boeing in the market for larger, more profitable planes and said it plans to review its A340 jet in the wake of disappointing sales.
European governments have agreed to withhold funding commitments for a new Airbus plane set to be launched on Thursday while negotiations continue to resolve their aircraft subsidies dispute with the United States. ”The deployment of possible aid will not be immediate,” French Minister of Transport Dominique Perben said.
Sophie Guilbaud not only holds down a decent job, she also finds time to help run her son’s nursery and treat herself to regular weekdays of shopping, movies and art shows. The secret to her balancing act is a remarkable piece of social engineering — France’s 35-hour working week.
French trade union activists claimed responsibility for surprise power outages on Monday that delayed hundreds of thousands of rail passengers in Paris. They warned of more protests over plans for the partial privatisation of the country’s utilities. The outages began at 3.30am local time on Monday morning.