April 20 marks the first anniversary of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico—not an occasion for celebration, certainly, but an event that will live in many memories for a good few anniversaries yet.

A news conference will be held at Myrtle Grove Marina, Sulphur, Louisiana at 10.30am Central time in which speakers will urge Congress to dedicate fines collected under the Clean Water Act to restore degraded coastal wetlands.

Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom-Orange have signed an agreement to combine their procurement activities of customer equipment, network equipment, service platforms and IT infrastructure as part of a 50/50 joint venture.

The companies have estimated that after three years, potential global savings could be achieved of between €400 million and €900 million.

US friction management and power transmission company Timken plans to increase its annual steelmaking capacity by 120,000 tons across its steel manufacturing facilities in Canton, Ohio.

This has been made possible by a series of improvements at its Harrison Steel Plant following the $60 million rolling-mill investment completed there in 2008.

Over the last two years, continuous improvement efforts at the Harrison plant have allowed Timken to achieve record output well beyond the new mill's original design.

Gold Fields has agreed to buy an 18.9 per cent stake in the Tarkwa and Damang gold mines in Ghana from IAMGOLD Corporation for $667 million.

The acquisition will increase Gold Fields’ interest in both mines from 71.1 per cent to 90 per cent. The remaining 10 stake is held by the government of Ghana.

Mixed news on the economic front again today, with the release of index figures for industrial production and prices, and consumer prices for March.

Industrial production increased 0.8 percent in March and rose at an annual rate of 6.0 percent for the first quarter as a whole. Manufacturing output increased 0.7 percent in March, its fourth consecutive month of strong expansion, producing an annual rate of 9.1 percent for the first quarter.

The Export-Import Bank of the United States has given preliminary approval for an $805.6 million direct loan to South Africa’s state-owned utility Eskom.

The financing, if eventually approved, will support Eskom's purchase of engineering and construction management services which will be used to construct the Kusile power plant, located in the Emalahleni area of Mpumulanga Province.

The loan includes a business contract for Kansas, US-based Black & Veatch to provide the engineering and construction management services to Eskom.

The first country to discover and develop key nanotechnologies will lead the next technology era, a Congressional committee was told today.

Nanoelectronics is a priority for the US economy, for high paying jobs and for the nation's ability to innovate and compete in the future, was the message put across by Dr. Jeff Welser, director of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) tothe House Committee on Science, Space and Technology's Subcommittee on Research and Science Education.

In 2008, things looked very uncertain for mining company Weatherly Plc. However, as CEO Rod Webster tells Jane Bordenave, overcoming a crisis has led to even greater opportunities.

Weatherly Plc is a British-based copper mining company working primarily in Namibia. It has two mining projects currently in operation—Otjihase and Matchless—both located in central Namibia; and a further two in the north of the country expected to come into production within the next three or four years.

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