The lowest inflation since the brink of the Kennedy-era economic boom in the 1960s is buying time for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to press on with the central bank's $85 billion in monthly bond purchases.

On a stage shaped like a yacht, Wanda's 59-year-old chairman Wang Jianlin was ably supported by a troop of dancers in glittering dresses as he underlined that a wave of Chinese money is about to hit the UK.

Berkeley Group Holdings Plc (BKG), the U.K. homebuilder focused on London and southeast England, said annual profit rose 33 percent after it sold more homes in areas where house prices are rising.

John Swinney announced an independent Scotland would have the same flat-rate pension of �144 per week planned by the UK but would increase it annually by the highest of earnings growth, inflation or 2.5 per cent.

LOCAL planners have approved plans to to build up to 277 wind turbines in an area of sea off the Caithness coast more than twice the size of Dundee.