diff --git a/tests/checker/ftpserver.py b/tests/checker/ftpserver.py
index 4c26471a..ea35a99b 100644
--- a/tests/checker/ftpserver.py
+++ b/tests/checker/ftpserver.py
@@ -53,7 +53,11 @@ def start_server (host, port):
         if "kill" in msg:
             raise KeyboardInterrupt()
 
-    from pyftpdlib import ftpserver
+    try:
+        from pyftpdlib import ftpserver
+    except ImportError:
+        pytest.skip("pyftpdlib is not available")
+        return
     authorizer = ftpserver.DummyAuthorizer()
     datadir = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'data')
     authorizer.add_anonymous(datadir)
diff --git a/tests/checker/test_news.py b/tests/checker/test_news.py
index 0be35aea..00a89e39 100644
--- a/tests/checker/test_news.py
+++ b/tests/checker/test_news.py
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 # -*- coding: iso-8859-1 -*-
-# Copyright (C) 2004-2010 Bastian Kleineidam
+# Copyright (C) 2004-2010,2014 Bastian Kleineidam
 #
 # This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
@@ -24,13 +24,13 @@ from . import LinkCheckTest
 # to enable the has_newsserver() resource manually.
 NNTP_SERVER = "news.uni-stuttgart.de"
 # info string returned by news server
-NNTP_INFO = u"201 news.uni-stuttgart.de InterNetNews NNRP server " \
-            u"INN 2.4.4 (20060818 snapshot) ready (no posting)."
+NNTP_INFO = u"200 news.uni-stuttgart.de InterNetNews NNRP server " \
+            u"INN 2.5.2 ready (no posting)"
 # Most free NNTP servers are slow, so don't waist a lot of time running those.
 NNTP_TIMEOUT_SECS = 30
 
 # disabled for now until some stable news server comes up
-class _TestNews (LinkCheckTest):
+class TestNews (LinkCheckTest):
     """Test nntp: and news: link checking."""
 
     def newstest (self, url, resultlines):
diff --git a/tests/test_filenames.py b/tests/test_filenames.py
index 4acf5fa2..77c887fa 100644
--- a/tests/test_filenames.py
+++ b/tests/test_filenames.py
@@ -37,8 +37,8 @@ class TestFilenames (unittest.TestCase):
         path = 'c:\\'
         realpath = get_nt_filename(path)
         self.assertEqual(path, realpath)
-        # Only works on my computer.
+        # XXX Only works on my computer.
         # Is there a Windows UNC share that is always available for tests?
-        path = '\\Vboxsrv\share\msg.txt'
-        realpath = get_nt_filename(path)
-        self.assertEqual(path, realpath)
+        #path = '\\Vboxsrv\share\msg.txt'
+        #realpath = get_nt_filename(path)
+        #self.assertEqual(path, realpath)
diff --git a/tests/test_strformat.py b/tests/test_strformat.py
index 4fbfcf03..75ea0eb6 100644
--- a/tests/test_strformat.py
+++ b/tests/test_strformat.py
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ class TestStrFormat (unittest.TestCase):
         self.assertEqual(wrap(s, -1), s)
         self.assertEqual(wrap(s, 0), s)
         l = len(os.linesep)
-        gap = " "*l
+        gap = " "
         s2 = "11%(gap)s22%(sep)s33%(gap)s44%(sep)s55" % \
              {'sep': os.linesep, 'gap': gap}
         # splitting lines