Tiger Woods loses Gatorade sponsorship

Energy drink firm Gatorade has ended its sponsorship of Tiger Woods.

Gatorade is the latest major company to cut ties with the sportsman following Woods’s admission that he was unfaithful to his wife.

The drinks company, owned by PepsiCo, had already discontinued a Tiger Woods-themed drink, Tiger Focus. It follows AT&T and Accenture in ending deals.

However, Gatorade said it would continue its partnership with the charitable Tiger Woods Foundation.

Dropped

A spokeswoman for Gatorade said: “We no longer see a role for Tiger in our marketing efforts and have ended our relationship… We wish him all the best.”

Its move comes just one week after the star made a frank public address to a select gathering at PGA Tour headquarters in Florida.

In his statement Woods apologised to his wife, friends and family, as well as to his fans.

“I was unfaithful, I had affairs and I cheated. What I did was unacceptable,” he said.
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Toyota boss Akio Toyoda apologises for faults

Toyota’s president has apologised to the US Congress and American Toyota owners for safety problems that led to deaths and worldwide recalls.

Akio Toyoda said he was “deeply sorry” for any incidents which had occurred as a result of failures with accelerators and brakes on several models.

Mr Toyoda pledged his “full co-operation” with the US investigation.

But, under questioning, he insisted no faults had been discovered with the electronics of any of its vehicles.

He pledged that an independent, outside advisory board would look into the issue.

‘Not safe’

Toyota has recalled about 8.5m vehicles worldwide.
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Toyota president testifies before Congress

Akio Toyoda, the president and CEO of Toyota, and Yoshimi Inaba, president and COO of Toyota Motor North America, answer questions from members of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee on the recall of 8 million vehicles worldwide. All updates are Eastern Standard Time.

(CNN) — 6:50 p.m. — Toyoda tears up and pauses for composure as he thanks the audience for their support. He describes the hearing as an opportunity to remind customers of the company’s commitment to quality and safety. “We have to rethink everything about our operations to regain customers’ confidence,” he says, reading from a statement in English. “We have to reassert the values that have been our hallmark.”

6:45 p.m. — A plant worker from Kentucky and a dealer from Texas join Inaba and Toyoda onstage at the National Press Club, where the two men receive a standing ovation.

5:50 p.m. — Toyoda makes a brief statement after the hearing thanking Congress and again pledging to change how Toyota handles complaints. He then makes his way through a dense crowd to a Toyota Highlander waiting for him outside. He is due to speak to an audience of Toyota dealers at the National Press Club in Washington later in the evening.

5:37 p.m. — Chairman Edolphus Towns thanks the men for coming in voluntarily and says he considers their appearance a sign of their commitment to addressing problems. The panel is adjourned.

5:34 p.m. — Rep. Driehaus reads a letter from a driver who experienced sudden acceleration in his 2005 Toyota Tacoma. The driver said he had no mats and used to race cars. Toyoda says tests conducted so far have not demonstrated the same phenomenon and believes the system is safe, but pledges to continue testing.
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Roaming abroad

India’s biggest mobile-phone operator makes a move on Africa

AS THE orchestra of chirrups and pings in any public place in the rich world attests, the market for mobile phones in developed countries is saturated—and even in some developing ones opportunities for growth are running short. So big mobile operators, including those from emerging economies, are looking for growth wherever it can be found. Bharti Airtel, the biggest Indian operator when measured by subscribers, said on Monday February 15th that it is hoping to expand beyond one of the world’s fastest growing markets and into another. It is in talks with Zain, a Kuwaiti telecoms company, to buy its sub-Saharan assets for $10.7 billion and bring together African and Indian mobile-phone expertise.

Bharti has tried to move into Africa before. Two previous efforts to merge with South Africa’s MTN fell through, the latest in September last year. The deal was blocked by South Africa’s government, which was unwilling to let go of a national champion. If the new deal proceeds Bharti should find a warmer welcome in the 15 countries, including Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania, where Zain provides mobile phones to some 42m customers.

Although the mobile-phone business is still booming in India, growth there is slowing. Competition, not least from operators based in the rich world, has brought the number of mobile operators in the country to 12 and a brutal price war is under way. Recent new arrivals include Norway’s Telenor and Japan’s NTTDoCoMo. Penetration rates in India are at around 50% compared with 40% in much of Africa. Bharti sees a chance to stake a claim in the fastest growing region in the world and to do so profitably.
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Honda extends airbag recall by 437,000 cars

Honda has added 437,700 cars, mainly in North America, to its existing global safety recall over airbag inflation problems.

It broadens a recall announced in late 2008 for less than 4,000 Accord and Civic sedans, then expanded in mid-2009 to cover another 510,000 vehicles.

The latest announcement also covers Japan, Mexico, Taiwan and Australia.

The fresh blow to Japanese carmakers came as Toyota recalled nearly half a million hybrid cars over faulty brakes.

Toyota has already had to bring millions of other vehicles back to dealerships amid accelerator and floormat problems.
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Coming to Milwaukee: A Chinese mega-mall?

Beijing, China (CNN) — A Beijing-based company will soon open a Chinese-style mega shopping mall in the most unlikely of places: Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“The cost of doing business there is very low,” said Wu Li, president of Toward Group. “The people are friendly, the environment is peaceful and the pace of living is slow. It is a good place for Chinese enterprises to go abroad.”

Loaded with cash, credit and encouraged by the government to expand overseas, Chinese companies have been investing in property abroad at an increasingly rapid clip. While most are purchasing properties in traditional commercials centers like New York, few have ventured into the Rust Belt — until now.

“Americans should be prepared that more Chinese investors will buy up commercial real estate in the United States in 2010 to take advantage of low valuations in an improving economy,” said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, a Shanghai-based market intelligence firm. “It could be a huge trend.”
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US to probe Toyota Prius brake problems

The US Transportation Department has opened an investigation into brake problems in the 2010 Toyota Prius.

The move follows an admission from Toyota that it had had a problem with the brake system in the hybrid, which the carmaker said was fixed in January.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received 124 reports from drivers about the issue, including four of crashes.

There have been no reports of any such accidents in the UK.

The investigation will look into allegations of momentary loss of braking capability while travelling over uneven road surfaces, potholes or bumps. However it will not suspend sales.

This latest alarm for the beleaguered carmaker – the world’s number one – follows worldwide recalls of almost eight million cars due to separate floor mat and pedal problems.

No Prius recall
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Google mystery server runs 13% of active websites

The Google Web Server – custom-built server software used only by Google – now runs nearly 13 per cent of all active web sites, according to the latest survey data from the web-server-tracking UK research outfit Netcraft.

Netcraft data has the Google Web Server (GWS) running nearly 11 million active sites – i.e., sites with recently updated content. This total includes not only sites run solely by Google, but also sites the company operates on behalf of third parties via services like Blogger, Google Docs, and Google App Engine.

Apache is still the most prevalent web server, with nearly 44m active sites, and Microsoft servers are second with nearly 14m. But the Google Web Server tops all others and trails Microsoft by a mere 3m sites – despite being unavailable for use outside what Mountain View has called “the Google Network,” a worldwide proprietary infrastructure that amounts to a private internet.

Apache and Microsoft servers are available to anyone.

Google does not discuss GWS. In the past, some reports have indicated that it’s based on Apache. But in a 2007 web post, über Googler Matt Cutts indicated otherwise. “That’s not correct,” he wrote. “I believe GWS is a custom web server, not a modified version of Apache.”
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Microsoft’s IE 8 misses Windows 7 updraft

Internet Explorer has continued its gentle drift southwards, having missed any boost from last year’s release of IE 8 and the sales onslaught behind Windows 7.

Meanwhile, rival Firefox saw its forward market-share march apparently halted by continued uptake of Google’s Chrome for the month of January.

Netmarketshare numbers for January 2009 reveal that Microsoft’s browser has lost more than seven per cent market share compared a year ago, taking it to a new low of 62.12 per cent for all versions of IE. The browser is also down from 62.69 per cent in December 2009.

IE 8, released in March 2009, has 22.37 per cent market share, just inching past the browser-that-won’t die, IE 6, on 20 per cent. While it was crowing about IE’s growth and overlooking the market share decline, Microsoft repeated past calls for customers to abandon IE 6.
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Japan Orders Toyota to Investigate Complaints Over Prius Brakes

NAGOYA, JAPAN — The Japanese government said Wednesday that it has ordered Toyota to investigate a possible defect in its new Prius hybrid model after receiving 14 reports of brake trouble, another blow for an automaker already embroiled in its biggest-ever recall.

Drivers complained that the brakes on Toyota’s newest Prius momentarily stopped working at low speeds, especially on slippery surfaces, said Kenji Sato, a Transport Ministry official in charge of recall policy.

In one incident in July 2009, a new Prius crashed head on into another vehicle at an intersection, hurting two people in that car. Ten of the 14 complaints about the new Prius, which went on sale in Japan in May, came in January.

A Toyota spokesman, Takanori Yokoi, said dealers in North America and Japan had received “several tens” of reports from customers who said their Priuses had “braked insufficiently” on bumpy or frozen roads.

The automaker is still investigating and is not in a position to release more details, including whether a recall will be necessary, Mr. Yokoi said.
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