5 bites from the latest news

Good afternoon! Here we are on this raining day with your daily quick update from London: five bites from the latest news specially selected for you and your needs.

• MONEY : The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has decided to once again raise food prices. The shop prices rose by 3.2 per cent: the highest rate since it started the index two years ago and up from 2.5 per cent in June. Food prices were 9.5 per cent higher compared with July last year, against 7 per cent in June, says the Timesonline.co.uk. And we, the lucky customers that we are, have to pay the price increase of energy and transport costs for the supermarket!

• MARKETS : European stocks rose for a third day as better-than-estimated earnings, tell us Bloomberg.com. The worst performers are once more energy stocks, as oil prices continue to rise. And the Bank of England is forced to maintain the interest rate unchanged for a fourth month after inflation accelerated and the economy teetered on the brink of a recession.

• OLYMPICS : What is the biggest problem in Beijing: the pollution or the protesters?! Athletes and visitors don’t seem to care about either. Any difficulty in conveying the latest results to the rest of the world has been lessened by a team of 4,000 IT professionals who will be working to communicate competition results to participants, spectators and the media alike within 0.3 seconds. 21,600 journalists are waiting to share their news with four billion TV viewers in their homes.

• TRANSPORT : Passengers prefer cheap airlines over British Airways. The traditional summer travel boom never took off this year as British Airways aircrafts are flying with a quarter of their seats unfilled. The timesonlin.co.uk reports British Airways carried 94,000 fewer passengers than in July last year as higher fares and the worsening economic environment led to weaker demand. In the meantime Ryanair and Easyjet fill up their flights with offers and smart prices, selling millions of cheap tickets.

• CULTURE : Whilst we are waiting for the famous Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, we can enjoy watching stand up comedy and unique performances in Camden Town, where the Camden Fringe Festival is on from 28th of July to 24th of August. During the 4 weeks we will have 316 performances (of 100 different shows) across 3 venues, a collection of experimental new theatre, comedy, musicals, poetry, improvisation and story-telling.