Better than expected data from a survey of Chinese manufacturers delivered a boost to world stock markets yesterday.

World stock markets fell today, with trading thinned by year-end holidays and mixed economic news out of the US and Japan.

World stocks rose today amid growing optimism that European leaders will approve aggressive plans by the end of the week to rescue the region from a debt crisis that has rocked financial markets for months.

The Bank of England does not need to print more money to support the economy, according to David Miles, a dovish member of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).

Take your hand, you wanted to say, away from your mouth.

Staff at the News of the World, who may have thought they had hit rock bottom when their company told them their newspaper was "toxic" and closed it, have been shocked again by the offer of work... in Siberia.

Five days after the News of the World rolled off the presses for the last time, Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of its publisher News International, walked out of the company with a severance package estimated by senior colleagues at £3.5m.

Colin Myler, the former editor of the News of the World who conducted the company's internal investigation into the extent of phone hacking at the newspaper, never saw crucial emails suggesting the practice was more widespread, it was claimed last night.

Traded fine wine prices rose 3.7 per cent in February, according to the Bordeaux Index, continuing the asset's strong start to 2011.

The newspaper and media group Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) posted a 2 per cent rise in underlying revenues in the 11 months to the end of August, as both its business-to-business operations and consumer media grew, helped by a gain in market share by its flagship Daily Mail newspaper.

In the graphic accompanying today's article, ' Police to reopen phone hacking investigation as more witnesses emerge' (9 September 2010), we wrongly stated that Les Hinton had died in 2009. We are aware that he is very much alive and is the CEO of Dow Jones Company Inc. We regret our error and apologise to him.

Nigel Mitchell had a very particular kind of dream-home in his mind. For more than a decade, this Bath entrepreneur plotted to demolish his existing house on a site overlooking Bath, and build an ultra-Modernist home on the same site. But delays, legal disputes, and surging steel prices pushed the projected construction cost to more than £1m, and he was forced to think again.