South Africa’s first black president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela died on Thursday December 5 at the age of 95 finally succumbing to to a lung infection that he had been suffering from for some time. When his death was announced, word spread quickly. South Africans flocked to pay tribute to this the father of the nation, while world leaders paid their tributes. President Obama said: "The world has lost an "influential, courageous and profoundly good man ... he no longer belongs to us. He belongs to the ages."

The 50-50 venture, which will take the name Dongfeng Renault Automotive Co Ltd, plans to build some 150,000 vehicles and engines a year, has been valued at $1.27 billion.

China is the largest car market in the world, where official figures have shown vehicle sales rose by 4.3 percent in 2012 to 19.3 million, however until now Renault has remained one of the few large car makers to lack a facility in the country.

Under Chinese trade laws, foreign carmakers looking to launch manufacturing operations in China must have a local partner.

The Maputo Corridor is a great African success story in terms of regional integration between the regions of Swaziland, southern Mozambique and the industrialised regions of Mpumalanga, Gauteng and Limpopo. And it is a traditional route for people and goods to take when they want to get from South Africa to the sea. In the 1970s 40 percent of South Africa’s exports went out through Lourenço Marques, as the capital of Mozambique was then called. The situation has changed out of recognition since then.

GEG’s fourth acquisition in Australia cements the country as its largest market outside of the UK.

In taking on Cunningham Construction from its New Zealand parent company GEG has not only captured the expertise of a prominent resource management provider to Australia’s mining sector, specialising in scaffolding and rigging, but also added an additional A$13 million in turnover to its A$100 million Australian portfolio.

Hyderabad, the capital city of Andhra Pradesh, sits on the banks of the Musi River to the north of the Deccan Plateau. With a metropolitan population approaching eight million people it is the fifth most populous city in India. India’s cities generally experience the same challenges of traffic, pollution, pressure on services and the like as those in other parts of the world, but they have their unique characteristics as well according to the Managing Director of Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited NVS Reddy.

The situation for obtaining gasoline, diesel oil and other oil products in Costa Rica is not ideal just at present. Following an accident in 2011 it was decided that the country’s refinery at Moin, part of the Caribbean, or east coast, port of Limón, was too expensive to run, and since then the country has relied entirely on imported petroleum products.

It is hard to believe that it is only just 20 years since the Bharti group listed its telecommunications business on the Bombay Stock Exchange, soon after that bringing its cellphone operations together under the Airtel brand. At the time, just ten years from the founding of the business by Sunil Bharti Mittal, it had yet to extend its coverage to the whole of India, let alone the whole sub-continent, though by 2009 it had launched into international operations by launching a network in Sri Lanka.

Phalaborwa in Limpopo Province holds reserves of some 2.5 billion tonnes of phosphate-bearing ore, or five percent of proven world phosphate rock reserves. The Phalaborwa complex, within which Foskor’s operation is situated, is a geological intrusion caused by sub-volcanic activity approximately 2,000 million years ago. The complex is unique as it is host to many valuable minerals, the most relevant of which are phosphate, copper, zirconium, iron and vermiculite.

Topsy, one of only a handful of firms that has access to Twitter’s entire data stream, specialises in using data from the social media site to track customer sentiment. It has recently created a searchable database of all tweets sent - more than 400 billion - since Twitter's launch.

Apple did not say how much it paid for the firm, but it has been suggested the figure comes in at around $200 million.

On 26 December, 2012, Shinz┼ì Abe took office to become Prime Minister of Japan for the second time, and in doing so once again became head of government of the third largest world economy by GDP. In the year since his return to power, Prime Minister Abe has perhaps been most synonymous across the plant with the term ‘Abenomics’.