Tesco talked up its fledgling American operation ahead of this week’s trading statement by taking analysts and reporters around its new Fresh & Easy stores in the USA. After months of secrecy, including asserting its trial concept store in LA was part of a film set.....

The Government was accused of “rushing” by accepting Virgin Money as the ‘preferred bidder’ for Northern Rock,

Politicians and Church leaders launched a concerted effort to deflect the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill during its second reading in the House of Lords. Centre for Social Justice leader Iain Duncan Smith fired the opening salvo with an article in the Mail on Sunday (Nov 17) where he wrote....

The UK launch of the much-hyped Apple iPhone at the Apple store in Regent St, as well as O2 and Carphone warehouse shops across the country was either “mayhem by exhibitionists keen to get on the telly”

Google let off a rocket of its own on 5th November with the announcement of the 30-strong Open Handset Alliance (OHA). In a move guaranteed to dampen this week’s UK launch of the iPhone, Google went “head to head with Apple”

The so-called ‘sub-prime market crisis’ in America claimed a possible high-profile casualty this week as Merrill Lynch chairman and chief executive Stan O’Neal looked likely to fall on his sword due to huge write-downs on risks in the volatile mortgage securities market.

Four leading business organisations united over a single issue for only the third time when they lobbied the Treasury to reconsider its plans to introduce a flat-rate Capital Gains Tax from April 2008. Led by CBI boss Richard Lambert, the IOD, BCC and FSB

Another publicity stunt or a serious move into the high street banking business?

The appointment of “relatively unknown underdog” Andrew Witty as the successor to Jean-Pierre Garner, described as “one of the UK’s most formidable chief executives”

The spectre of Gordon Brown and the likelihood of a snap general election loomed over the Conservative Party conference and overshadowed David Cameron’s promise that this week was the start of the “great Conservative fightback”

While doors were slamming in Chelsea, Arsenal Football Club put up Not For Sale signs by posting turnover figures that equal those of Real Madrid and put them leagues ahead of UK rivals Manchester United and Liverpool.

Northern Rock, a building society turned bank, along with Bank of England boss Mervyn King, the FSA and most other money lenders, became the latest organisation to be dubbed ‘beleaguered’ by the entire British media.

Used recently by David Cameron to promote Tory policy and Cambridge students to stage a cyber-rebellion against HSBC, social-networking phenomenon Facebook, the “current media obsession du jour” according to John Naughton (Observer, 9 Sept) has opened itself up to accusations of selling out.

Another week, another challenge for Gordon Brown’s first 100 days in charge. Pay staging rules, brought in when he was Chancellor, brought prison officers out on strike for the first time in their union’s 68 year history.

Described as a ‘feral beast’ by the chairman, Jeremy Paxman savaged the television industry at the centrepiece MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival and left no one feeling comfortable.

Protesters managed to break through the lines of the media blockade at last weekend’s Camp for Climate Change long enough to engage in predictable scuffles with an over-zealous police contingent that out-numbered the campers.

August always seems to get uncomfortably hot for the UK’s leading airport operator BAA. In successive years a baggage handlers’ strike, security measures brought on by the liquid bomb plot and now the week-long Camp for Climate Change have meant that the busiest month for air travel has spelled misery for travellers, airlines and BAA.

Leading high street banks were put on the rack again as the OFT went to the High Court last week to resolve the issue of whether overdraft charges were fair or unfair.

The difference between raising a smile or a laugh could be crucially important to Boris Johnson’s campaign to stand for London mayor, announced earlier this week.

The saying that a lie, or in this case hype, gets half way round the world before the truth has had time to put its trousers on was highly relevant in last week’s speculative frenzy over which UK network operator would distribute the iconic Apple iPhone later this year.

The introduction of the smoking ban last weekend provided a news hook for many PRs, not just the inevitable health campaigners, pro-choice spokespeople, and pub trade associations, but also for analysts, insurance companies, and the NHS.

The Royal Mail appeared to be caught between a rock and a hard place last week as the breakdown in negotiations with the Communication Workers Union (CWU) led to a call for strike action on 29th July, the first national strike for over a decade.

Which PR company would want to advise the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA) at the moment? Following the high profile resignation last week of its “defensive, uninformative and politically tone deaf”

Fresh controversy surrounded BAE Systems, as new allegations of corruption surfaced around the Al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

The appointment of Andy Coulson, former News of the World Editor, as the Conservative Party’s Director of Communications rocked Westminster Village, though no one was quite sure what it would mean for the Tories:

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s flamboyant CEO, leapt in to the low-cost “translatlantic dogfight” (Times, 13/4) last week with the headline-grabbing assertion that a Ryanair sister company would be providing flights to the US for just seven pounds by the end of the decade.

With the digital switchover looming, the long awaited report commissioned by the media regulator Ofcom and conducted by consultancy firm LEK predicted that Channel 4 will be “operating at a loss by the end of the decade” (Guardian, 5/4).

Despite being the service with no name, NBC Universal and News Corp’s new video-sharing network was dubbed the ‘YouTube Killer’

The £600,000 compensation paid to Bernard Matthews for culling thousands of healthy birds after the bird flu outbreak at one of its plants certainly put the cat among the pigeons.

Barclay’s tentative takeover approach for Dutch bank ABN Amro over the weekend was enthusiastically reported by a media hungry for a new mega deal.

Rule Britannia! Possibly, one of the most “quintessentially British” (Sky News, 9/3), most “iconic” (monsters&critics.com, 12/3) and frankly one of the “coolest” (DeHavilland, 12/3) brands came home this week.

Damon Buffini, the boss of leading private equity group Permira, spoke out in defence of both his organisation and the industry in general last week “in an effort to calm the growing political storm” over the role of this “burgeoning but secretive industry” (Guardian, 23/2).

 Pre-launch coverage of Microsoft’s long-awaited new operating system Vista showed a distinct lack of journalistic excitement. Comment was mainly confined to the trade press, which was cynical about Vista’s self-marketed ‘wow’ factor .