Economic mood in euro zone sours again in April

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Confidence in the euro zone's economy fell further in April, data showed, strengthening the case for a cut in interest rates this week by the European Central Bank.

The euro zone is facing a difficult road out of recession and has seen a souring of the mood among companies and consumers since March, after an optimistic start to the year was disrupted by turmoil in Cyprus and Italy.

Morale in the 17-country bloc slipped 1.5 percentage points to 88.6, the European Commission said on Monday - worse than the decline to 89.3 expected by economists polled by Reuters.

"We are reaching a trough and the market is betting on the ECB cutting rates to lift the economy," said Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank. "But lower interests won't solve the euro zone's problems, we need structural reforms and for businesses to invest again."

Pessimism set in even in Germany, which has performed better than most during the crisis, with economic sentiment there worsening by 2.3 points. Morale also fell in France and Italy, meaning the euro zone's three largest economies are all witnessing a marked decline in the confidence that is crucial in getting the output in the euro zone growing again.

Confidence fell across the region from industry to retail trade, and sentiment in services fell 4.1 percentage points.

The Commission's measure of the euro zone's business cycle decreased 0.18 points to -0.93, lower than the -0.89 level expected by economists.

Many expect the ECB to cut interest rates to lower the cost of borrowing and help improve morale.

A majority of economists expect a 25 basis point cut this Thursday, according to a Reuters poll last week, to take the bank's main refinancing rate to a record low of 0.5 percent.

RATE CUTS, LESS AUSTERITY

Germany's economic resilience and reforms in southern Europe sowed hope early this year that the bloc could pull out of recession before the end of 2013, but a messy bailout in Cyprus and Italy's inconclusive February election, which failed to yield a government until late April, have weighed on confidence.

France's weak economy and public accounts are also a concern.

Meanwhile, budget cuts have been at the centre of the euro zone's strategy to overcome a three-year public debt crisis but they are also blamed for a damaging cycle where governments cut back, companies lay off staff, Europeans buy less and young people have little hope of finding a job.

Crippling levels of unemployment and outbreaks of violence in southern Europe are now forcing a rethink, but there is division on just how far to soften the targets.

"If the ECB eases monetary policy and the European Commission engineers a slower pace of fiscal consolidation, the euro zone economy may still exit from recession later this year," Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING.

"But the fragility of confidence suggests that any economic recovery would likely be slow, and largely confided to the core countries," he said.

Spain, the euro zone's fourth largest economy, said last week its economy would shrink more than initially expected this year and its budget deficit would be higher than promised.

Growth should return next year, and economic sentiment improved by almost 1 point, the Commission said, in a sign that despite record unemployment, reforms may be helping business.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; editing by Rex Merrifield and Toby Chopra)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/economic-mood-euro-zone-sours-again-april-090511020.html

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CIA gave bags of cash to Afghan leader

(Reuters) - Tens of millions of U.S. dollars in cash were delivered by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade, according to the New York Times, citing current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

The so-called "ghost money" was meant to buy influence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but instead fuelled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington's exit strategy from Afghanistan, the newspaper quoted U.S. officials as saying.

"The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan", one American official said, "was the United States."

The CIA declined to comment on the report and the U.S. State Department did not immediately comment. The New York Times did not publish any comment from Karzai or his office.

"We called it ?ghost money'," Khalil Roman, who served as Karzai's chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, told the New York Times. "It came in secret and it left in secret."

For more than a decade the cash was dropped off every month or so at the Afghan president's office, the newspaper said.

Handing out cash has been standard procedure for the CIA in Afghanistan since the start of the war.

The cash payments to the president's office do not appear to be subject to oversight and restrictions placed on official American aid to the country or the CIA's formal assistance programs, like financing Afghan intelligence agencies, and do not appear to violate U.S. laws, said the New York Times.

There was no evidence that Karzai personally received any of the money, Afghan officials told the newspaper. The cash was handled by his National Security Council, it added.

U.S. and Afghan officials familiar with the payments were quoted as saying that the main goal in providing the cash was to maintain access to Karzai and his inner circle and to guarantee the CIA's influence at the presidential palace, which wields tremendous power in Afghanistan's highly centralized government.

Much of the money went to warlords and politicians, many with ties to the drug trade and in some cases the Taliban, the New York Times said. U.S. and Afghan officials were quoted as saying the CIA supported the same patronage networks that U.S. diplomats and law enforcement agents struggled to dismantle, leaving the government in the grip of organized crime.

In 2010, Karzai said his office received cash in bags from Iran, but that it was a transparent form of aid that helped cover expenses at the presidential palace. He said at the time that the United States made similar payments.

The latest New York Times report said much of the Iranian cash, like the CIA money, went to pay warlords and politicians.

For most of Karzai's 11-year reign, there has been little interest in anti-corruption in the army or police. The country's two most powerful institutions receive billions of dollars from donors annually but struggle just to recruit and maintain a force bled by high rates of desertion.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Bell and Sarah Lynch in Washington; Writing by Michael Perry; Editing by Mark Bendeich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/millions-cia-ghost-money-paid-afghan-presidents-office-020006835.html

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Pacific Rim's Latest Trailer Is Even Better Than the First

When we first saw Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim back in December, it was just a tease filled with robots, creatures, loud noises and explosions. And now we have a little more insight into both the mechs and creatures from a new trailer cut with scenes from Con-exclusive footage. Pacific Rim drops in theaters July 12.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/pacific-rims-latest-trailer-is-even-better-than-the-fi-484612299

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Black Voters Are Key to a Colbert Busch Win in South Carolina

SUMMERVILLE, S.C. ? South Carolina?s First Congressional District is known for the churning Port of Charleston, growing suburbs to the north, and stately homes with wrap-around porches from Beaufort to Mount Pleasant. The white, well-heeled voters who dominate the district favored Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by 18 percentage points.

This coastal strip is also home to a more blue-collar, solidly Democratic population; about one out of five of the district?s residents are African-American. Their turnout in the May 7 special congressional election is key to an upset by the Democratic nominee, Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

Inside her campaign office here, having come straight from church in their Sunday best, Dot Brown and Ethel Campbell are planning an afternoon of phone banking and door knocking. Local television stations aren?t carrying the only debate pitting Colbert Busch against Sanford on Monday night.

?Most people we come across tend not to understand the importance of a special election, so you have got to get out and let them know,? said Brown, 67 years old, dressed in a marigold suit and bright pink scarf.

Campbell, 62, who immediately kicked off her pumps once she sat down, said she tries to explain to voters that electing another Democrat to Congress will help President Obama. ?I say, ?You had his back in 2012. Do you have his back in 2013?? "

But Colbert Busch has flaunted her independence from a president unpopular in most of the district, assailing his budget plan for raising taxes, not cutting enough spending and meddling with Social Security. ?Not only does President Obama?s plan fail to put our finances back in order, it would cut benefits for our seniors, which is wrong,? she said in a statement. Colbert Busch also declined to say whether she would have supported Obama's economic stimulus plan in his first term.? ?She?s trying to be all things to all people,?? said Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer.

Interviews with black voters on Sunday found few knew much about the businesswoman and political novice -- beyond the fact that she?s the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert. ?If they vote, disgust with her Republican opponent, former Gov. Mark Sanford, is more likely to be the driving force. The governor left office in 2011, over a year?after admitting he disappeared from public view for several days to visit his girlfriend in Argentina.

?We don?t need people like him who set a bad example,? said 78-year-old Virginia Rosemond, her wide-brimmed, red hat shielding her from a drizzly rain as left the Baum Temple AME Zion Church. Will she vote for Colbert Busch? ??If I get a ride,? she responded.

Fellow churchgoer Charles Logan, 67, said he ?might? vote for Colbert Busch. ??I?m not messing with him,? he said of Sanford. ?He left his wife. He left his office. What makes you think he won?t go to Washington and do the same thing??

Colbert Busch?s campaign did not respond to e-mails and phone calls about its outreach to African-American voters. Appealing to moderate Republicans and independents is also crucial to her success, so there is a political risk in appearing eager to court black Democrats. When she campaigned at historically black Burke High School in Charleston last week, the event was billed as a rally for women voters.

But the campaign?s radio ad linking Sanford to allegations of voter suppression makes her intentions clear. With Isaac Hayes? soundtrack from the 1971 movie about a black private detective as backdrop, the ad assails a new South Carolina law that requires voters to show photo identification.? A federal court blocked the law from going into effect until after the 2012 election. ?Somebody doesn?t want African Americans to vote, and it doesn?t take Shaft to figure out who,? a narrator says in the radio spot. ?Tuesday May 7^th is your chance to show them they can?t get away with it.?

The spot doesn?t mention that the ID law was signed after Sanford left office by Gov. Nikki Haley. A spokesman for the Sanford campaign, Joel Sawyer, released a written statement when the ad first aired earlier this month that called it a ?negative radio ad with some very unfortunate overtones.?

Jaime Harrison, vice chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, defended the spot.

?Voter ID has been a very hot button issue in the African-American community,? said Harrison, who if elected chairman next month would be the first black to lead the party in South Carolina. ?Many folks who grew up in the civil rights movement have called it modern-day Jim Crow. The ad will help to pique the awareness of African-Americans in that district.?

Sanford is not opposed to the law, Sawyer said, but he did not recall the ex-governor ever speaking publicly about it. Sawyer also noted that Sanford appointed a record number of African-Americans to his Cabinet and joined the state Supreme Court?s chief justice in 2006 in calling for more diverse appointments to the bench. In 2003, Sanford offered an official apology for the ?Orangeburg Massacre,? the 1968 shootings by South Carolina highway patrol officers that killed three black students ?protesting a segregated bowling alley.

The uncertainty of black turnout in the May 7 special election comes on the heels of an Associated Press analysis that found blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and largely surpassed white turnout for the first time. If black turnout had matched 2004, Romney would have won in 2012.

In one of Colbert Busch?s only campaign events aimed at African-Americans, she spoke at a black history celebration in February at Summerville High school. ?I give her credit for that,? said Ava Graham, a 44-year-old child care worker whose daughter sang with her church choir at the event. Colbert Bush spoke about the impact of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy on her life. ?I hope the black community comes out,? Graham said, ?because the Republicans want this seat and are going to do what they have to do.??

CORRECTION: Sanford left office after his second term ended in January 2011; he did not resign from office after the scandal hit.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/black-voters-key-colbert-busch-win-south-carolina-072536368.html

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Shape-shifting mobile devices

Apr. 28, 2013 ? Prototype mobile devices that can change shape on-demand will be unveiled today [Monday 29 April] and could lay down the foundation for creating high shape resolution devices of the future.

The research paper, to be presented at one of the world's most important conferences on human-computer interfaces, will introduce the term 'shape resolution' and its ten features, to describe the resolution of an interactive device: in addition to display and touch resolution.

The research, led by Dr Anne Roudaut and Professor Sriram Subramanian, from the University of Bristol's Department of Computer Science, have used 'shape resolution' to compare the resolution of six prototypes the team have built using the latest technologies in shape changing material, such as shape memory alloy and electro active polymer.

One example of a device is the team's concept of Morphees, self-actuated flexible mobile devices that can change shape on-demand to better fit the many services they are likely to support.

The team believe Morphees will be the next generation of mobile devices, where users can download applications that embed a dedicated form factor, for instance the "stress ball app" that collapses the device in on itself or the "game app" that makes it adopt a console-like shape.

Dr Anne Roudaut, Research Assistant in the Department of Computer Science's Bristol Interaction and Graphics group, said: "The interesting thing about our work is that we are a step towards enabling our mobile devices to change shape on-demand. Imagine downloading a game application on the app-store and that the mobile phone would shape-shift into a console-like shape in order to help the device to be grasped properly. The device could also transform into a sphere to serve as a stress ball, or bend itself to hide the screen when a password is being typed so passers-by can't see private information."

By comparing the shape resolution of their prototypes, the researchers have created insights to help designers towards creating high shape resolution Morphees.

In the future the team hope to build higher shape resolution Morphees by investigating the flexibility of materials. They are also interested in exploring other kinds of deformations that the prototypes did not explore, such as porosity and stretchability.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaZHj9SEzLQ

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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/oQOP2z3HA_Y/130428230421.htm

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U.S. earnings beating forecasts but jury's out on rest of season

By Caroline Valetkevitch and Ben Berkowitz

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. companies have easily beaten expectations for first-quarter earnings so far in the reporting season, but nearly half of the members of the S&P 500 are yet to announce results and they are unlikely to be as robust.

With results in from 271 of the S&P 500 companies, year-over-year earnings growth is projected at 3.9 percent, compared with a forecast for 1.5 percent growth at the start of the earnings season, Thomson Reuters data shows. That figure includes those that have reported and analyst estimates for those who have not.

The companies yet to report are expected to post an aggregate earnings decline of 0.4 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data - whereas the companies that have already reported have posted growth of 6.1 percent.

Among the biggest companies yet to report are Dow components Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Home Depot .

Some 69 percent of the S&P 500 have beaten forecasts, once again conforming to the pattern of lowering expectations enough to "surprise" by beating them. The 69 percent figure exceeds the long-term average of 63 percent. This has been the pattern for the last 15 quarters, with growth estimates at the beginning of earnings ultimately being beaten by at least a full percentage point.

From April 1 to April 24, S&P 500 earnings growth expectations fell 170 basis points for the second quarter, 130 basis points for the third quarter and 70 basis points for the fourth quarter.

"If this recent pattern holds, you're going to find that those beats will continue and therefore lead earnings season to be one of continued positive surprise," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia.

So far, this has been good enough for investors. Since earnings season began with Alcoa's report on April 8, the S&P 500 has gained 1.2 percent, and it closed Friday less than 1 percent from its all-time high of 1,593.37 reached on April 11. So far this year, it has climbed nearly 11 percent.

GOING FORWARD, WITH CAUTION

Even though profits have been better than expectations, revenue forecasts have declined, a sign, once again, that companies are exceeding results on the bottom line because of reduced expenses, and not because of stellar sales. So far, just 42 percent of companies are beating revenue expectations, below the long-term average.

First-quarter revenue now is expected to fall 0.3 percent, which is worse than the forecast for 1 percent growth when the season started.

That means companies - yet again - have been able to squeeze out higher profits through cost-cutting and other measures. But that does not bode well for hiring and stands as a potential headwind to the economy in coming quarters.

"It does concern me. It's not sustainable over the medium or the long term. There's only so much companies can do to sustain growth without increasing sales," said Paul Zemsky, head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management, in New York.

There are plenty of examples of major companies that were deeply reserved about the second quarter or the remainder of the year.

Among those were Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc . Apple, until recently the world's biggest company by market value, saw its first quarterly profit decline in a decade and issued a soft outlook for the second quarter that fell short of investor hopes. The stock has lost about 40 percent of its value since September.

"The market was telling you the numbers were too high," BGC analyst Colin Gillis said of Apple's outlook, adding that it was "pretty much even worse than even I was expecting."

(Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos and Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-earnings-beating-forecasts-jurys-rest-season-211946052.html

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Optimizing nanoparticles for commercial applications

Apr. 26, 2013 ? Nanoparticles are used in many commercial products catalysts to cosmetics. A review published today in the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials by researchers in Sweden and Spain describes recent work on the 3 main nanoparticles used in photocatalytic, UV-blocking and sunscreens.

Nanoparticles are currently used in commercial products ranging from catalysts, polishing media and magnetic fluids to cosmetics and sunscreens. A new review by researchers in Sweden and Spain describes recent work to optimize the synthesis, dispersion and surface functionalization of titania, zinc oxide and ceria -- the three main nanoparticles used in photocatalytic, UV-blocking and sunscreen applications.

With the commercial success of self-cleaning glass in the window frames of high-rise buildings, there is growing interest in applying photocatalytic, self-cleaning titania coatings on building facades and other construction materials. These coatings not only can keep building surfaces clean but also reduce concentrations of harmful airborne pollutants. The antibacterial properties of photocatalytic coatings also offer a means of managing persistent bacteria, mainly in hospitals.

Transparent UV-absorbing or UV-blocking coatings currently have two main applications: as a UV-protecting lacquer for wooden surfaces, and as a UV-barrier coating deposited on the surface of polymer-based products or devices to slow down their deterioration.

Published in the journal, Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, this study describes the structural and chemical requirements as well as the various routes for producing transparent photocatalytic and nanoparticle-based UV-blocking coatings and sunscreens. The authors review the main methods for synthesizing titania, zinc oxide and ceria nanoparticles, with a focus on recent research on the generation of non-agglomerated powders. (Agglomeration is often the major cause of poor performance and limited transparency.) The authors also identify organic additives that are efficient dispersants and can improve the compatibility of inorganic nanoparticles with an organic matrix.

In addition to discussing the technical performance of nanoparticles, the authors address concerns related to distributing them in the environment. They conclude by describing future prospects for nanoparticles and identifying promising materials, such as multifunctional coatings and hybrid films.

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Journal Reference:

1. Bertrand Faure, German Salazar-Alvarez, Anwar Ahniyaz, Irune Villaluenga, Gemma Berriozabal, Yolanda R De Miguel, Lennart Bergstr?m. Dispersion and surface functionalization of oxide nanoparticles for transparent photocatalytic and UV-protecting coatings and sunscreens. Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, 2013; 14 (2): 023001 DOI: 10.1088/1468-6996/14/2/023001

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/5iewoNBStdY/130428144955.htm

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