A round up of today's other stories in brief...

Cartrawler in deal with UK tourist body

Dublin firm Cartrawler has been selected by the British tourist authority, VisitBritain, as the sole provider of car rental distribution services on its websites, which have a reach of 20 million users.

The Rathgar company provides an online "dynamic cross-selling" system, which enables airlines and travel agencies to offer car rental from numerous providers to visitors when they are booking flights or holidays.

Next year, the company will also introduce a service for Sita, a Geneva-based group that provides communications services to 95 airlines.

Worldspreads shares rise 9%

Shares in Worldspreads, the Irish spread-betting firm that floated in London in August, rose by 9 per cent yesterday on the back of a positive trading update.

The company said it believed that pretax profits for the six months to the end of September would be "significantly in excess" of management expectations.

Worldspreads said the outperformance was driven by higher client numbers and increased client activity.

Parkmagic signs major US deal

Limerick company Parkmagic has agreed a multimillion-dollar deal that will see its technology being used to collect parking fees in Chicago, the third-largest city in the US.

Details of the deal were announced at the end of this week's Enterprise Ireland-led trade mission to the east coast of the US.

Minco cuts pretax losses by 23%

Exploration firm Minco cut its pretax losses by 23 per cent to $431,000 (€302,000) in the first half of the year, according to results issued yesterday.

The firm said its latest financing exercise would allow it to expedite exploration activities in Mexico and "participate fully" in the development of its zinc interests at Pallas Green, Co Limerick.

Lapp Plats still in acquisition talks

Lapp Plats, the IEX-listed exploration firm, has posted a pretax profit of £7,292 (€10,465) for the first half and says it is still in discussions about an acquisition.

The firm said yesterday that it was still negotiating over the "specific oil and gas opportunity" it first flagged in June, as well as pursuing "a number of other interesting proposals" generated by recent market turbulence. Its shares closed unchanged at 24 cent.

Glencar reports losses of €279,993

Glencar Mining has reported pretax losses of €279,993 in the six months to June, down from €781,312 in the same period last year.

The company said the reduction in its losses was primarily due to the absence of any directors' share option grants during the half-year period.

Following a share placing last April, Glencar said its cash balance of $4.68 million (€3.28 million) was sufficient to carry out all further exploration in its Mali programme.

Its shares closed unchanged at 12.5 cent.

IN&M continues share buyback

Independent News & Media (IN&M) has continued its share buyback with the purchase of 250,000 shares at €2.70. The shares will be held in treasury.

IN&M fell by 11 cent to close at €2.61 last night.

Citylink buys smaller rival

Coach operator Citylink Ireland has bought its smaller competitor, Galway-based Michael Nee Coaches.

Michael Nee operates a daily service between Galway and Clifden.

Citylink, which is owned by Singapore-based ComfortDelGro, said the deal was consistent with its Irish growth strategy.