Lending from private banks and other institutions is likely to prove a key driver of economic recovery from the current downturn, Capital Economics said today.

UK commercial property prices rose 0.2% in July, their first positive reading since the market peaked in June 2007, data from CB Richard Ellis, showed today.

Throughout London, talks and lectures are becoming the new gigs. People are flocking to debates at the Louise T Blouin Foundation, Intelligence Squared, the Royal Geographical Society, the Tate and the ICA to hear inspiring, moving, motivational, practical and fun presentations from interesting people.

This year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the biggest ever with comedy accounting for a full third of the performers with big names including comedian and awards host Frank Skinner, Clive James, Denise Van Outen — and Alistair McGowan.

Facebook is one of the biggest and most popular online social networks in the world, and if you have an account there you can connect it directly to your account at Dopplr. Using the Dopplr: Where Next? app for Facebook, you can find out more about which of your Facebook friends are fellow smart travellers, and which ones have yet to discover Dopplr's features. Your Facebook friends can see a simple summary of your current and planned trips, displayed in an attractive box on your Facebook profile.

Big Brother is upon us once again, Mr Paparazzi has the latest Big Brother news and gossip.

The UK commercial property market is in the best position to recover compared with other key European sectors but the US is still on a downward spiral, according to reports from analysts.

Insurance companies are returning to a previous role as lenders to soothe Britain's property debt famine and turn dealmaking hopes to reality.

Cheyne Capital Management, the London-based hedge fund group led by Jonathan Lourie and Stuart Fiertz, has made a major hire from Morgan Stanley to head the expansion of its equities-focused strategies.

The Dopplr Social Atlas is a new guide of guidebook, compiled and curated by the smart travellers who use Dopplr's web service. Their travel advice pulls together the interesting and useful things they have discovered along the way.

Buy-to-let landlords are losing their properties at over three times the rate of other homeowners.

Lenders to Four Seasons Healthcare, the heavily indebted care homes group, are considering a last-ditch plan for a restructuring that would about halve its £1.5billion debt. If there is no agreement, the company will be sold.

Britain’s least enduring medieval meme, Morris-dancing, sits on the brink of extinction, warns Charlie Corcoran, bagman of the Morris Ring.

I went back to Maranhao, one of many cities that had been devastated by floods last month, to survey the progress after the damage.

T-shirts featuring classic rock groups such as Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, David Bowie amongst others, and which belonged to their crews were auctioned by the well-known New York's auction house Christie's.

The Gold coast has over 60 miles of Atlantic shoreline, and features hundreds of attractions for everyone.

Payer authentication enables all parties in an e-commerce payment transaction to transmit confidential and valid payment data, and provides verification to the merchant that the buyer is the authorized owner of a particular card account.

Celebrities are always the centre of attention and there has been some very hot Celebrity Gossip in April, the most popular topics were Britains got Talent and Susan Boyle, The Katie Price and Peter Andre Split, Rhianna explicit photos and Michael Jackson postpones his tour.

Hedge funds are very similar to mutual funds except for fewer regulations

House repossessions rise in Q1 Nearly 13,000 Britons lost their homes to repossession in the first three months of this year as the recession deepened, but there are tentative signs things could get better as the year wears on.