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UK retail sales volumes tumbled 1.4% during May – the biggest monthly fall since January 2010 – according to official data yesterday which raised further worries over the state of the consumer sector and the momentum of economic recovery.

The decline in sales during May, revealed in seasonally-adjusted figures from the Office for National Statistics, was much steeper than the 0.6% fall forecast by the City.

Food sales tumbled by 3.7% month-on-month – their biggest drop since June 2008. Non-food sales declined by 0.6%, with the household goods, clothing, footwear, and textiles, and department store categories all showing falls in volumes.

No other ship comes close to rivalling the gigantic shadow cast by the Titanic. A hundred years after its completion, it’s still the most iconic vessel to have set sail.

Its tragic maiden voyage has become shorthand for catastrophic hubris – the “unsinkable” ship that hit an iceberg and sank, causing the deaths of 1,503 passengers and crew. And yet in one corner of the UK, the Titanic is a byword not for disaster but a source of pride and nostalgia.

When its hull was launched at Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard on 31 May 1911, it was the largest ship in the world, measuring 886ft (270m) long.

And in Northern Ireland that’s where the story ends, says Mick Fealty, editor of the news site Slugger O’Toole.

Korea’s central bank governor cautioned companies, individuals and the government yesterday on the danger of taking on an unreasonable level of debt.

During a meeting with corporate executives yesterday, Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong-so said, “corporations, the government and individuals should pay close attention to how much debt they take on.”

The BOK’s 25 basis point rate hike last Friday will increase interest payments for debt holders.

Longtime technology professionals may be excused from exclaiming, “Aw man, now this again!” when it comes to the ongoing debate about IPv6. That’s because it really does look a lot like what many went through throughout the late 1990s in the lead-up to Y2K.

Go back to the months and years before January 1, 2000, and it seemed two equally strong, equally dogmatic and dramatically opposed viewpoints were trumpeted everywhere as loyalists vied for the time, attention and dollars of IT managers.

Longtime technology professionals may be excused from exclaiming, “Aw man, now this again!” when it comes to the ongoing debate about IPv6. That’s because it really does look a lot like what many went through throughout the late 1990s in the lead-up to Y2K.

Go back to the months and years before January 1, 2000, and it seemed two equally strong, equally dogmatic and dramatically opposed viewpoints were trumpeted everywhere as loyalists vied for the time, attention and dollars of IT managers.

In one camp, the entire world was going to plunge into darkness at the stroke of midnight because programmers years ago decided to save only two digits in the date field. Technology as we knew it would stop, planes would fall from the sky, and the very infrastructure of our world would fall apart. In short: Everybody panic!

The International Monetary Fund has called on European banks to boost their capital reserves, in order to protect them against fluctuations in the financial system, which could precipitate another financial crisis.

The IMF described vulnerable European banks as being “caught in a maelstrom of interlinked pressures”, although it did say that global financial stability was returning to the world economy.

Of particular concern were major banks in Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

The results were published as part of the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report, which further added that countries saddled with sovereign debt problems, as well as vulnerable banks, were in significant danger of instability.

These countries include Portugal and Spain, which are both facing difficult debt crises.

According to the report, the world’s banks face a US $3.6 trillion “wall” of debt, which will mature in the next two years.

“Mexico were playing in front of a home crowd in Los Angeles and it’ll be exactly the same in Denver, but that’s great,” Herbert said of the 90,000 fans who attended last year’s match that was won 2-0 by Mexico.

“We could be back in this part of the world in 2013 trying to take that last step to Brazil (2014 World Cup finals) so we want another taste of that type of intimidating environment.”

The Oceania champions qualified for the 2010 World Cup finals by beating the fifth-placed Asian side Bahrain in a two-legged playoff but their route to the 2014 finals could be vastly different.

World governing body FIFA will conduct a draw determining whether the winner of New Zealand’s Oceania group will play off against Asian, North American or South American opposition for a place in Brazil.

The match in Denver comes four days after Mexico face Ecuador in Seattle and will be their last warm up before they defend their CONCACAF Gold Cup title beginning on June 5, NZF said.

Global financial system, mirrored the complex but less disease-resistant ecosystems such as the Amazon rainforests, leading to its rapid decline from 2008. Photograph Getty Images



In the eight centuries from 1000-1800 AD the world’s fish stocks and species numbers were stable and healthy. In the subsequent 200 years, 40% of the species in coastal waters collapsed, showing falls in their population by 90% or more.

There was a pattern to this story of decline. There was a much-less marked attrition in coastal regions with richly diverse marine ecosystems than in regions exhibiting low levels of diversity.



What does this have to do with economics? Quite a lot, as it happens. In recent years, as the limitations of the rigidly mathematical approach to economics have been exposed, there has been interest in what the dismal science can learn from biologists, ecologists, geneticists, physicists and psychologists.

G20 leaders leave Washington on Monday after moving forward with a complex plan to rebalance the world economy and to avoid a 2007-style global financial crisis.

The IMF is attempting to guide major economies like China and India – but after the Asian financial crisis of the last decade many Asian nations are reluctant to let the IMF guide them on managing huge flows of capital into their economies, saying it would hinder rather than help.

Long Yongtu is a Chinese government official who heads a G20 institution, the G20 Research Centre.

He told the BBC’s Juliana Liu that Beijing is wary of interference from the G20 in its domestic economic policy, and is already taking steps to boost domestic consumption.