European regulators oppose including a sovereign default scenario in stress tests they are conducting on banks, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

Without naming its sources, the news weekly said regulators opposed such a scenario because they felt it would raise doubts over the effectiveness of Europe's bailout mechanism, which was set up to aid states if they are shut out of credit markets.

Ukraine came closer on Saturday to winning a bailout from the International Monetary Fund as an IMF mission said it would recommend lending $14.9 billion (9.8 billion pounds) in a deal to help fill Ukraine's budget gap and boost investor confidence.

The final sum came in at slightly lower than expected as the mission had been discussing a new stand-by facility worth up to $19 billion in negotiations that dragged on for months.

A third of UK pensioners rely solely on the state for income during their retirement years, according to official statistics.

Some 31% of pensioners had no provision other than the state pension and the top-up offered through minimum income guarantee or pension credit.

Charities have reclaimed more than £1bn in a year in Gift Aid from the taxman for the first time, figures show.

There was £1.007bn reclaimed in 2009-10 by charities as a result of people agreeing to give Gift Aid, provisional figures from HM Revenue and Customs show.

The Australian government has reached a deal with mining companies over controversial tax plans.

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had announced plans for a 40% tax on miners' profits.