Coming after a set of healthy figures from the high street and the manufacturing sector, the trade figures showed the UK economy had steadied ahead of the EU referendum, following a wobble in the first three months of the year.
The latest figures from the high street last week showed sales rose in December as motorists rushed to fill up cars with cheaper petrol and food shopping was strong ahead of Christmas.
UK consumers are continuing to put less money into savings accounts, according to new figures from the High Street banks.
Recent figures from the High Street have shown rising consumer confidence has indeed boosted sales, but whether this is linked to house prices is far from clear.
When he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in early November, Holbrooke propped up a chart showing that only 36 American soldiers were serving in United Nations peacekeeping forces -- one-tenth the figure from the high-water mark of six years earlier.
According to the latest figures from Eurostat, the highest rates of unemployment in the EU are in the new Member States.
Figures from the Ucas higher education admissions service showed that applications to train as physics teachers were 20% lower than last year.
More than 1.1 million refugees and migrants came to Europe in 2015, including about 363,000 Syrians who lodged asylum applications, while 143,634 people have arrived in Greece from Turkey this year so far, according to figures from the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR).
BBC South East Today has learned that Southeastern trains would have failed to meet its punctuality targets last year if it had not included figures from the new high-speed Javelin trains.
But it is not an accurate or comprehensive measure of comparing employment growth on a national scale; his figure comes from the highest end of the calculation possible.
But no one, he said, was really prepared for a $115 million opening (actual ticket sales figures from the weekend were higher than the initial estimates of $114 million on Sunday).
