1. In any other situation you are correct - it should really say "UK retail sales surged". Peachey is correct about the "headline English". Usually in headline English the tense is changed in this way. 2. In business, a "slowdown" is when sales decrease (and the business makes less money). As per Tatiana's answer, we can rewrite the phrase as "a slowdown is expected to occur in 2017". 3. Again, Peachey and Tatiana's answers are correct. Where I live I attend a Chinese-English language club. There is one lady who attends regularly - she is from China. She often brings a newspaper with her, and asks questions about words or phrases she doesn't understand. I found that she often reads the headlines, and only sometimes reads the actual stories. When she asks me questions, most of the time the questions are about words in the "headlines". Often the headlines do not comply with normal grammar rules, are a "play on words" or are shortened as much as possible (so that the headline hardly even make senses). They are really bad examples of English and in any other scenario would be considered mistakes. However, newspaper editors like to write these crazy headlines, as it gets people's attention. The newspaper editors are under pressure to sell as many newspapers as possible. So they write crazy headlines that make people curious or confused. This subconsciously forces the reader to start reading the article, so that they can figure out what is going on. Once the reader starts reading, they might find the article interesting, and then "they will be hooked", and they will buy the newspaper. In summary, reading newspaper articles is a good learning experience, but don't pay too much attention to the headlines :)

This is called "headline English", which means some parts of the sentence can be omitted but the meaning is the same.

1. ... slowdown is expected (people expect slowdown). "is" is omitted (left out). 2. Pre-Christmas spending is strong. "is" is omitted again.