Renault may have needed a little goading in the form of unfavourable comparisons in Malcolm Kinsey’s annual reports on spares pricing, but the French company has reacted by reducing prices and improving availability of spares considerably.
Microsoft sparred with its rivals on Thursday about how much information it should give them to make servers more compatible as judges questioned both sides about what code could be divulged without giving away trade secrets. The software maker says it has the right to guard its valuable intellectual property.
President Thabo Mbeki has called on all South Africans to commit themselves to work together to help bring prosperity to the country. He told thousands of people attending national Freedom Day celebrations in Kimberley on Thursday that there are a number of key local government priorities that have to be addressed urgently.
A sister of Iraq’s new Sunni Arab vice-president was killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad on Thursday, police said. She died one day after her brother called for the Sunni-dominated insurgency to be crushed by force. In southern Iraq, a bomb hit an Italian military convoy on Thursday morning, killing four soldiers.
One of the co-founders of the Black Consciousness Movement, Strini Moodley, died at the age of 60 on Thursday morning after a brief illness, his family said in a statement. Moodley was convicted on terrorism charges in 1976 following the marathon South African Student Organisation and Black People’s Convention trial in 1976
The editor of a new gay and lesbian travel guide to Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia said on Thursday he hopes the book will foster more acceptance of homosexuality — which is outlawed in all three conservative South-East Asian nations.
Hundreds of people arrived at the Galeshewe Stadium in Kimberley to attend national Freedom Day celebrations and hear President Thabo Mbeki speak on Thursday. Meanwhile, the ruling party’s behaviour in the Western Cape is a ”direct assault” on the Constitution and its freedoms, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said.
Embarrassed by that tattoo with the name of that former lover? Or those characters in Chinese that you believed meant ”eternal love” but later found out to mean ”penguin hairball”? For those prepared to wait a little longer before going under the needle, help is on the way.
Oil prices eased on Thursday after United States government data showed motor-fuel demand weakening, apparently in response to higher pump prices. The data also showed that domestic inventories of gasoline shrank for the eighth consecutive week, and that may have moderated the selling, analysts said.
South American nations will have to choose whether they want continental unity or individual trade agreements with the United States — but not both, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said on Wednesday. ”You either have one or the other … they’re like oil and water,” Chávez said.