Manufacturing activity in the UK dropped unexpectedly in February, giving a major set-back to hopes that the country can return to growth in the next few months.

The recently published Markit/CIPS Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) for the UK showed that manufacturing activity in the country dropped from 50.2 in January to 47.9 in February, well below the reading of 50 that separates growth from contraction.

William Hill bookie's business could reach £5 billion over the next five years, according to the bookmark service's chief executive Ralph Topping.

Topping predicted the huge increase in the company's business in the coming years after it spent £424 million to take full control of its online operation.

William Hill acquired 29 per cent stake in software firm Playtech, which will give it a freer hand to make investment in the online business worth around £1.5 billion. William Hill is presently worth £2.9 billion.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is on track for a partial privatization sometime in 2014, the part-nationalized lender's chairman Sir Philip Hampton said.

The government has acquired 81 per cent stake in RBS after bailing it out at a cost of £45.5 billion at the peak of economic crisis in 2008.

Sir Philip stressed that returning of the government-owned lenders to private hands was crucial, and it should be done as soon as is practically possible.

Despite higher taxes and lower sales, British American Tobacco (BAT) enjoyed an increase of 15 per cent in pre-tax profit to £5.6 billion in 2012.

British American Tobacco, the second-biggest listed tobacco company of the world, offset the adverse effects of higher taxes and lower sales by hiking prices as well as boosting volumes of its four flagship brands: Dunhill, Kent, Pall Mall and Lucky Strike.

Workers at Chivas Brothers' bottling plant in Dumbarton accidentally flushed thousands of liters of whiskey down the drain.

The blunder took place at the plant during the night shift on Tuesday while workers on duty mistook the whiskey for waste water while equipment was being cleaned.

The smell of the drained out spirit was so strong that even sewage workers reported it.

According to the findings of Nielsen's Mobile Consumer Report, 97 percent of the UK population owns a mobile handset, with nearly 61 percent owning a smartphone. More than half of the smartphone users in the country have said that they have never received any adverts when their handset in is use.

The Nielsen report's revelation that nearly 53 percent of the UK smartphone users haven't got adverts while using the phone implies that either mobile advertising is easily ignored by the users or it is apparently an underused marketing channel.

A limited edition £2,000-priced super-pram will be created by Silver Cross, a luxury brand name in baby `carriages', in collaboration with James Bond's favourite car brand Aston Martin.

The luxury pram - which is being touted as "the most exclusive pram in the world" - will be the Silver Cross Surf-Aston Martin Edition pushchair. Only 800 units of the limited edition pram will be manufactured for sale in Harrods.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and some other technology veterans starred in a short film directed by Lesley Chilcott to promote computer code learning in schools.

In the short film titled "What most schools don't teach" Gates, Zuckerberg and others recalled the time when they had first introduced themselves to coding. While some said that they started computer coding as early as in sixth grade, Facebook's first female engineer Ruchi Sanghvi said she started computer coding in college.

Dish Network Corp.'s effort to acquire wireless broadband operator Clearwire Corp may get a major setback as wireless broadband operator is reportedly planning to tap financing from Sprint Nextel Corp.

Dish placed a bid to acquire Clearwire for $3.30 a share. But, Dish also indicated that it would withdraw its offer if Clearwire took financing from Sprint.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple is employing its own Advertising Identifier technology to have more control over the way advertisers gather user information from mobile devices, according to TechCrunch.

Citing unnamed industry sources, TechCrunch reported that Apple's App Review team is preventing apps that make use of "cookie tracking," a move that hints that the tech giant is going to implement its own technology to identify advertising.

Domino's chief executive Lance Batchelor has claimed that the popular pizza delivery service is now fundamentally a digital business.

Batchelor said more than 50 per cent of sales last year were made online, and the figure cross 60 per cent by the final quarter of the last year. He further claimed that some of its stores in the UK saw more than 80 per cent of their delivered sales ordered online.

According to the chief, systems sales jumped nearly 13 per cent to £598.6 million; while online sales grew 46.7 per cent to £268.6 million, from £183.1 million in the previous year.

A Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chaired by Labour MP Margaret Hodge has accused the government's Department for Transport of making fundamental mistakes in handling of the West Coast Main Line franchise deal.

The committee argued that the department's failing to learn from its previous failures would cost taxpayers at least £50 million.

Responding to shouts of "resign" from the opposition benches, Chancellor George Osborne blamed Labour's Ed Balls for Britain's budget deficit.

Ed Balls launched a staunch attacked on Osborne after global ratings agency Moody's stripped the country of its coveted triple-A credit rating. Ed Balls argued that the Chancellor's economic Plan A had failed.

Moody's on last Friday downgraded the Britain's credit rating by one notch from the top triple-A rating, with a warning that the economy would struggle to grow for several years to come.

Mozilla Foundation has announced that its Firefox browser would soon start blocking cookies from third-party advertisers by default.

The move will prevent advertising networks from tracking internet users' online activity.

Advertising networks use cookies to track users' online activity to send more-targeted adverts.

While Firefox users already have the ability to manually disable advertising cookies, the new patch will enable the browser to mechanically block third-party advertisers.

Software giant Microsoft Corp.'s Surface tablet computer will become available in Japan sometime next month, in March, according to a recent Nikkei report.

Citing anonymous sources, the report also says that Microsoft will launch Windows RT-based Surface tablet in the Japanese market. It may be noted here that Windows RT is a cheaper version of Windows 8 operating system.