Retail sales fell less than expected in June as a strong showing from grocers offset weakness in clothing and household goods stores, a survey showed on Wednesday.

Chancellor Alistair Darling said in an interview published on Saturday that he was considering reforming the rules governing public finances and expected the economic downturn to last for years.

Fiscal rules may have to be relaxed after data on Friday showed public borrowing at record levels, threatening to breach the restrictions the government set itself on how much debt it can take on.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures on Friday showing a rise in public sector borrowing in June.

Fund managers are gloomier about equities than at any time in at least the last 10 years and aversion to risk is close to what it was during the Bear Stearns crisis in March, a Merrill Lynch poll showed on Wednesday.

A near one year-old credit crunch still has plenty of venom and will sting global financial markets and the economy well into next year or even into 2010, a Reuters poll found.

The Treasury said it would set out fiscal rules for the next economic cycle when the current cycle ends, dismissing a report that it was about to relax its framework to allow more borrowing.

Investors looking for the next shoe to drop in Europe's stock bear market are watching the region's pension funds and insurers uneasily.

A gene variant that emerged thousands of years ago to protect Africans from malaria may raise their vulnerability to HIV infection but help them live longer once infected, researchers said on Wednesday.

Vendors offering mobile services such as ringtones and SMS news alerts could have such services temporarily suspended if they fail to allow users to easily stop subscriptions, regulator PhonepayPlus said on Thursday.

The government should apologise to more than a million policyholders in Equitable Life and offer them compensation, a long-awaited report by the parliamentary ombudsman said on Thursday, almost a decade after the insurer's near-demise.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures on Wednesday showing that unemployment in June rose at its highest pace since 1992.

Islamic equity investments produced positive returns through the past three months, protected by a ban on owning banking stocks even as leading stock indexes fell, index provider Standard & Poor's (S&P) said.

Thousands of dogs and cats face a bleak future in Britain because their owners are being forced to rent homes due to a housing downturn and landlords will not accept pets, a report showed on Wednesday.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Tuesday the inflation reached 3.8 per cent in June thanks to rising food and fuel costs.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said on Tuesday that retail sales in the UK fell 0.4 per cent in June, compared with the previous year. The BRC said that sales were lower than a year ago for three out of the past four months, the worst since summer 2005.

Britain's battered smaller banks and other lenders are ripe for merging to create a bigger, stronger bank, but fragile markets and a grim economic outlook are likely to delay consolidation until some stability returns.

People age 75 or older recover just as well as younger patients from knee or hip replacements to correct the ravages of arthritis, researchers said on Monday.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released figures on Monday showing the first double digit rise in factory gate inflation since records began. Manufacturers' costs were also recorded as rising at record levels.