London - Britain's ailing Bradford & Bingley building society is about to be nationalized, media reports said Saturday, citing sources within London's financial district.

In order to avert a possible collapse, the country's eighth largest mortgage lender could be merged with Northern Rock, which was itself nationalized earlier in the year when it failed, the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail reported.

On a visit to the United States, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the reports were speculation and he would not comment on them.

Media reports earlier in the week had said that Britain's Financial Services Authority was seeking a buyer for Bradford & Bingley, the latest victim of the global financial crisis.

San Francisco - Whatever feelings you might expect to follow the worst bank failure in US history - trepidation, panic, anxiety, fear - there was barely a hint of concern among customers and staff Friday at a suburban California branch of Washington Mutual.

Sure, there were the usual lines of customers grinding their teeth in frustration as they waited for an available cashier at a WaMu branch in San Jose, California. But there was hardly any serious discussion among customers about the implications of the bank's failure, and certainly no apparent run on the bank.

New York/Frankfurt  - It is a dramatic race against time - while Washington fights a battle over a mammoth rescue plan for the financial sector, the credit crisis is bringing down one US bank after another.

The latest victim was the country's once-leading savings bank, Washington Mutual Inc (WaMu). Federal regulators late Thursday shut down the institution and its assets were immediately sold for a pittance late Thursday to the financial giant JP Morgan Chase in an emergency move.

London - British banking giant HSBC is to cut 1,

Frankfurt - Leading central banks on Friday injected fresh dollars into strained financial markets, the European Central Bank (ECB) said in Frankfurt.

The ECB opened an auction of 30 billion dollars of overnight money, which it said was aimed at curing "elevated pressures in the short- term US dollar funding markets."

It said the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank were also part of the operation, using their reciprocal currency arrangements with the Federal Reserve in Washington.

Tokyo - It has not been so long since the world worried about Japan's financial sector.

After the speculation excesses of the late 1980s and early 1990s Japan's banks moaned under a tremendous burden of non-performing loans.

Even as late as 2003 they sought financial bailout packages from foreign banks, especially from the United States.

Now the situation has changed dramatically as the US financial market has been turned upside down.

Now it is the Japanese banks that are starting to buy out their American counterparts.

Japan's banks have returned with a vengeance internationally, launching a series of major investments in the US financial sector.