The Office of Fair Trading has resisted calls to introduce greater protection for consumers from expensive extended warranties. The watchdog should have banned the sale of the cover at the point-of-sale.

Dixons Retail described trading over Christmas as a "rollercoaster ride", but the electricals group's shares jumped as its results were no worse than the City had expected.

Best Buy will start closing down its UK stores on Sunday after throwing in the towel in its battle to shake up the UK electronics market.

The private equity firm Opcapita is leading the race to acquire Comet, the ailing 248-store UK electricals retailer that is owned by Kesa Electricals.

It may be lucky that HM Revenue & Customs was not in charge when the country needed a boost from quantitative easing. The hapless taxman yesterday revealed that it had failed to send out thousands of reminders to citizens to pay their bills on time because it had, er, run out of paper. A red-faced Revenue spokesman admitted that the cock-up had come about due to an "exceptionally high demand this year".

John Browett, the chief executive of Dixons Retail, has pocketed a cash bonus of £122,000 for the year just ended, despite the owner of Currys delivering a loss of nearly £225m.

The gloom enveloping the high street deepened yesterday after the owner of the Currys electrical chain sank to a loss of nearly £225m, an influential survey revealed the worst UK trading figures for a year in June and the spectre of the administrator returned.

With a distinct lack of exciting economic and corporate announcements being released in the UK this week, it could be timely to look beyond British shores for interesting trades.

A farm labourer has been jailed for life over the murders of four people in Pembrokeshire after evading detection for more than 20 years.

A man who murdered two couples with a sawn-off shotgun was jailed for life today after evading justice for more than 25 years.

Mothercare today dealt a fresh blow to the UK high street as it unveiled plans to close 110 outlets and focus on out-of-town superstores.

Dixons Retail, the owner of the Currys and PC World chains, yesterday boasted soaring sales of Apple's latest iPad device and said its UK business had outperformed the market, despite the pan-European group suffering a slump in revenues in its second half.

For a record number of viewers around the world, yesterday's royal wedding at Westminster Abbey provided a few hours of unmitigated escapism.