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News Headlines:    US investors sold stocks Tuesday, after a sharp drop in consumer confidence cast doubts on the rate of economic recovery. A late-morning rumour that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had been captured temporarily lifted the market,

Talks to end the British Airways trade union dispute have adjourned with the prospect of an imminent settlement

George Wimpey has reported a 42 percent jump in half-year profits and says it is well positioned to achieve full-year results at the top end of expectations. They increased its interim dividend payout by 19 percent to 3.8 pence per share as it adopted a strategy aimed at boosting dividend growth.

Unilever has reported  first-half net profit to 1.265 billion euros below the consensus expectation for the net profit of 1.36 billion euros but has maintained its earnings target for the full year. Sales of the top 400 brands were up 3.1 percent bit overall a 14% decline in proft.

Abbey National has said it lost 144 million pounds in the first half of the year before tax, compared with profit of 412 million in the first half of 2002.The firm's personal financial services unit made a profit of 588 million pounds, down from 663 million, and the bank said it plans to pay an interim dividend of 8.33 pence. Figures much worse than Analyst ForecastsFriends Provident Life assurer has reported a first-half pre-tax operating profit of 135 million pounds. The figure is down from the same period in 2002, when it made 161 million pounds, but slightly higher than analysts' forecasts of 108-132 million pounds.

Bookham worryingly extends its run of losing money to 3 years in a row.

Calendar All GMT	United Kingdom (F)inals (I)nterim	United States (Click Flag)	Europe & World
Wed 30th	Abbey National (I)  102m exp, Alliance Unichem (I)  90.1m exp. Unilever (Q2)  925m exp,  TDG (I),  Arc International (Q2), Ashanti GoldFields (Q2),  Bookham Technology (Q2), Croda International (I),  Friends Provident (I), Homestyle Group (F), RAC (I), mmO2 (AGM),  Severn Trent (AGM), United Utilities (AGM), V odafone (AGM), AWG (AGM), British Energy (AGM) 10.30 July Gfk Consumer Confidence 1.0 exp. Europe: 11.00 June CBI Distributive Trades	19.00 Fed Beige Book	Credit Lyonnais (I), Hugo Boss (Q2)
	Associated British Foods (4.75), Burndene Investments (1.25), Cranswick (8), Domino Printing (1.66), Gen(5.5), GlaxoSmithKline (9), Greene King (21.3), ICAP (23), RPC (4.25), Reuters (3.85), Scottish Power (4.75), Speedy Hire (5.7), Warner Estates (8.25), Whitehead Mann (2.5)
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