Google's I/O event kicks off today, and with it will come a slew of announcements about new products and services. But what are you most excited about?
     |
gerard butler Daylight Savings Time 2013 danielle fishel daylight savings DeAndre Jordan Oz the Great and Powerful elisabeth hasselbeck
By Tricia Wright
LONDON (Reuters) - Upbeat corporate earnings helped nudge the top shares into positive territory on Wednesday, with low-cost airline easyJet leading the way after a robust update.
The UK benchmark was up 13.41 points, or 0.2 percent, at 6,699.47 by 12:02 a.m., pushing up to fresh 5-1/2 year highs.
Easyjet and exchange operator London Stock Exchange topped the FTSE 100 leader board after estimate-beating updates, notching up respective gains of 6.6 percent and 4.9 percent.
Traders said the positive earnings newsflow was very much the focus on a day otherwise marked by gloomy economic data from the euro zone where Germany's economy grew less than expected in the first quarter and France entered a shallow recession.
"The GDP backdrop is largely being ignored... given the fact that we're seeing continually strong corporate numbers," Matt Basi, sales trader at CMC Markets, said.
"I think this has been the case now for probably six to nine months that the macro picture is secondary to the earnings that we're seeing... and the fact obviously that central banks seem fairly content to throw more money into the market."
The FTSE has risen 7.6 percent in the past month as pledges of continued monetary stimulus from global central banks, and especially the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank, underpinned investor appetite for risk assets.
While technical momentum indicators such as the relative strength index (RSI) show the FTSE 100 is in 'overbought' territory, some fund managers see scope for more gains as investors continue to plump for equities over bonds due to better returns.
"The markets generally are actually looking quite good value still," Leigh Himsworth, fund manager of the UK Opportunities Fund at City Financial, said.
The FTSE 100 trades on a 12-month forward price/earnings ratio of 12.31 times and has a dividend yield of 3.9 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
A fall in the value of stocks trading without the attraction of their latest dividend, including supermarket chain Sainsbury and oil major Royal Dutch Shell exerted pressure on the index to the tune of 9.59 points.
(Reporting by Tricia Wright, additional reporting by Francesco Canepa. Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mixed-earnings-leave-ftse-flat-071708176.html
tom benson royals nicole richie lyme disease symptoms esperanza spalding jessica sanchez robert kennedy
If there was any question as to Sebastian Thrun and Udacity's resolve to re-imagine higher education in a more affordable, accessible virtual classroom -- or their ability to actually make any real headway among the Ivory Towers of academia -- we should probably just go ahead and put that to bed. This morning, Udacity continues to push forward with its plans to bring higher education online -- and not just in bits, pieces and homework assignments. Following 2U's lead, which set the ball rolling by pioneering the approach of partnering with graduate programs to go beyond asynchronous video learning to create custom, accredited full-service web and mobile-compatible graduate degree programs.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/k-FpFcYWlbY/
spartacus Jonathan Winters Justin Bieber Anne Frank will ferrell coachella zack greinke zack greinke
By Caren Bohan and Rachelle Younglai
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, who is considered crucial for the success of an immigration law overhaul, on Tuesday vowed to fight for a biometric system to track foreigners leaving the country after a Senate panel rejected the provision, in part because it was too costly.
Rubio and seven other Republican and Democratic senators, known as the "gang of eight," have crafted a sweeping bill that would revamp the immigration system, increase work visas and put millions of illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.
In its second day of examining the legislation, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against the Republican amendment that would have made it easier for the government to track illegal immigrants and other foreigners who have overstayed their visas.
The amendment would have required a biometric system, which uses technology such as iris scans and fingerprinting, at every point of entry in the United States before illegal immigrants would be eligible for permanent residency or a green card.
Citing a $25 billion price tag and saying it would delay citizenship for the unauthorized foreigners, two of the Republicans who helped craft the bill sided with Democrats to defeat the amendment 12-6.
In an effort to keep the legislation intact, the bipartisan gang of eight senators agreed to work together to block amendments that could kill the bill.
But Rubio's office said he was disappointed by the vote and would fight to add biometrics to the exit system when the bill is considered by the full Senate later this year.
"Having an exit system that utilizes biometric information will help make sure that future visitors to the United States leave when they are supposed to," his spokesman said.
Immigration reform advocates hope Rubio's popularity with conservatives will help sell the bill to his party.
The committee has already succeeded in rejecting other Republican attempts to beef up border security in ways that go beyond the bill and could jeopardize the path to citizenship.
On Thursday, lawmakers were due to consider changes to work visa programs and were under pressure from businesses to make it easier to recruit highly skilled workers from other countries and bring in more foreigners to do manual labor.
High-tech companies and other businesses are pushing for changes to provisions that would require firms to seek American applicants first for any job and that would prohibit the displacement of U.S. workers. The companies are backing a series of amendments by Republican Utah Senator Orrin Hatch concerning the skilled worker visa program known as H1-B.
The AFL-CIO labor organization opposes the amendments, saying they would be unfair to American workers.
The committee delayed some of Hatch's most controversial amendments to give lawmakers time to hash out a compromise.
Hatch, whose support is important because it would increase pressure on the Republican-led House to work on legislation, said he has had conversations with the Senate gang of eight and has made clear the H1-B visa issue may be pivotal to his vote.
"I think they're taking me seriously. Let's put it that way," Hatch said of the Senate gang. "And I hope they do because if they don't, I'm not going to support this bill."
As the committee debated changes to the nearly 900-page bill, a group of conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives vowed to "tear up" and defeat that bill if it reaches their chamber.
They derided the Senate legislation as little more than "amnesty" for those who have come to the United States illegally or overstayed their visas. If enacted, they said it would cost U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars.
Representative Steve King of Iowa told reporters that House conservatives were launching a public relations campaign consisting of floor speeches, opinion articles and other actions to "get the message out that there's another viewpoint here. It's not the one that's being stampeded in the Senate and may be stampeded in the House."
Representative Steve Stockman of Texas, referring to the eight Republican and Democratic senators who wrote the Senate's immigration bill, said, "They have a gang of eight. We're going to have a gang of millions" who, Stockman said, "will rise up against" the bill.
Instead of comprehensive immigration reform, these House conservatives want new steps to secure the southwestern U.S. border against illegal crossings before considering other changes to immigration law.
(Reporting by Caren Bohan, Rachelle Younglai and Richard Cowan; Editing by Vicki Allen and Andrew Hay)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rubio-push-biometric-system-u-senate-immigration-bill-202931591.html
Eclampsia Kendrick Lamar JJ Abrams New Orleans Pelicans chris brown hillary clinton apple stock
By Andrew Osborn
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Britain's ruling Conservatives will unveil a draft bill on Tuesday that could make Prime Minister David Cameron's promise of a referendum on Britain's European Union membership legally binding.
In a political gamble aimed at shoring up Cameron's leadership, the bill would pave the way for an in-out vote by the end of 2017 that will decide Britain's geopolitical and economic destiny for decades ahead.
However, the Conservatives are part of a two-party coalition and do not have a parliamentary majority, so the bill's chances of success aren't guaranteed. Rebels from other parties would need to support it too for it to become law.
Cameron's highly unusual decision to sanction the draft bill was announced in the United States on Monday evening and comes less than four months after he pledged to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership and then hold an in-out vote before the end of 2017.
Many Conservatives say they want to be part of the EU's single market but want to ditch many other aspects of a relationship they fear is becoming increasingly anti-democratic and bureaucratic.
Cameron's referendum promise in January failed to satisfy Conservative critics who have been pressing him to bring forward the vote to before the next national election in 2015 or to pass a law committing the party to holding a vote by the end of 2017.
He decided to partially accede to their demands to try to end a public debate that has made his party look divided, threatening his own re-election chances.
"The Conservative Party will publish a draft bill to legislate for an in-out referendum by the end of 2017," a senior Conservative source told reporters in Washington after Cameron met U.S. President Barack Obama On Monday.
"We will examine all opportunities to bring the bill before parliament, including a private member's bill," the source said.
Conservatives believe the demarche should draw a line under weeks of internal bickering that has damaged the party's image while piling pressure on the opposition Labor party to explain why it doesn't favor such a referendum.
It will be hard for the Conservatives to push any referendum bill through parliament because it will almost certainly be opposed by their pro-EU coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, as well as by Labor.
Despite the move up to 100 Eurosceptic Conservative members of parliament are still expected to back an amendment this week criticizing legislative plans unveiled by the government because they did not include such a bill.
Conservative lawmaker John Baron, one of the two figures behind the amendment, said Cameron's promise of a draft bill would not persuade him to back down.
"I am sticking by what I am saying. They know that this option could very well fail," he told Reuters. "A far better approach would be to have the courage to support our amendment on Wednesday."
Cameron came to power in a coalition government three years ago after telling his party in 2006 to "stop banging on about Europe", an issue that has divided the Conservatives for decades and helped bring down two of his predecessors, Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
But Conservatives in parliament have been rattled by the growing popularity of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which campaigns for Britain's withdrawal from the EU and tighter immigration laws. A Guardian/ICM poll showed on Tuesday that UKIP's support had surged to a record high of 18 percent.
UKIP's poll rating has climbed steadily since Cameron's EU referendum pledge in January, with the party taking a quarter of the vote in local elections earlier this month.
Labor, which has a 10-point lead over the Conservatives, said Cameron had "lost control of the agenda and lost control of his party" at a time when he should be working on reviving Britain's economy.
"This seems to be just the latest panicked response from the prime minister who is now following, rather than leading his backbenchers," Labor foreign affairs spokesman Douglas Alexander said in a statement.
(Writing by Andrew Osborn and Peter Griffiths, Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cameron-publish-eu-vote-bill-bid-defuse-party-233940212.html
Mayans camilla belle instagram Robert Bork mark sanchez christina aguilera Mayan End Of The World
