Music: Jeff Beck with Tal Wilkenfeld on bass -Jamming

                                               What a talent!!!

GoPro Files For IPO As The Action Camera Maker Prepares To Go Public

Action camera company GoPro has filed the initial documents for its initial public offering, according to a PR from the company this morning and confirmed by GoPro to TechCrunch. The announcement is brief, revealing only that the San Mateo company intends to go public as soon as the Securities and Exchange Commission completes its review process of the IPO submission draft filed today, February 7.

GoPro only just appointed a new Chief Financial Officer February 4, bringing former Qualcomm Atheros SVP Jack Lazar on board to occupy the spot. Lazar has occupied high-ranking financial roles at a number of companies both public and private over the years, and began his career as an auditor at Price Waterhouse. At Atheros, he helped the company IPO back in 2004, a year into his tenure. In hindsight, it seems likely Lazar was brought on to help prepare for this transition.

The camera maker was originally planning an IPO back in 2012 before its $200 million private investment round, but CEO Nicholas Woodman confirmed to TechCrunch back in Septemberthat one was still in the works. When the company raised its $200 million round from strategic partner Foxconn, it was valued at around $2.25 billion.

In an interview at Disrupt SF 2013, Woodman discussed the challenges of fundraising for a hardware startup, and the benefits of bootstrapping even at a time when crowdfunding platforms are prevalent. The founder talked about how he started with $64K of his own startup capital, followed shortly from $100K put in by his father, and how that afforded him the ability to start with a clear and singular vision.

GoPro has seen its sales numbers for its action camera products and accessories double ever year, according to the company. It made over $500 million in gross revenue on the strength of 2.3 million cameras sold in 2012, and racked up over $100 million in sales last January, and Woodman hinted that the company might exceed $1 billion in revenue for all of 2013 in a Bloomberg TV interview last October.

Source: TechCrunch

PINA Exclusive Clip Love Dance

                                          

Dance:Pina Bausch - Bamboo Blues@Spoleto52 Festival dei 2Mondi

                                         Another choreography of Pina Baum.
                                         "It is no so simple to transform an a idea,a feeling
                                          into a dance. A small light is lit.Light is turned on.
                                          Then an adventure with no path begins.
                                           

Message from Pina Bausch - THE 2007 KYOTO PRIZE

                                     
                                How to keep Creativity?
                                 Discipline plays a big role. It is not so simple to transform a                                                                         feeling, an idea into a dance. Sometimes a small event happens
                                and make me open my eyes. Suddenly I see a tiny key but I
                                don't know what it is. It's as if a light has been turned on. a small
                                 light has been lit. But it is an adventure without a map............
                             

                       

U.S. hiring struggles to rebound from winter chill. (A cautious headline for an optimist ending)

 U.S. job creation slowed sharply over the past two months, turning in the weakest performance in three years and raising the prospect that the economy may be losing momentum.

At the same time, however, the unemployment rate hit a new five-year low of 6.6 percent in January even as Americans piled back into the labor market to search for work.

The Jekyll and Hyde report from the Labor Department on Friday whipsawed U.S. markets in early trade. Many economists cautioned against reading too much into it given the extreme weather that has hit much of the nation this winter.

Nonfarm payrolls rose only 113,000 last month after a meager 75,000 gain in December, the report showed. Economists had expected payrolls to rise 185,000 in January and had looked for a big upward revision to December that failed to materialize.

Instead, December's figure was revised upward by just 1,000, although November's count was raised by 33,000 to 274,000, the biggest gain since February.

Taken together, job growth averaged just 94,000 in December and January, a big slowdown from the 204,000 average for the first 11 months of last year.

While weather was believed to have weighed on hiring in December, it did not appear to be a major factor last month.

There were strong gains in the weather-sensitive construction sector, and while a survey of households found 262,000 Americans were unable to work due to the weather, the department said that was in line with historical trends.

The second straight month of weak hiring - marked by declines in retail, utilities, government, and education and health employment - could be a problem for the Federal Reserve, which is scaling back its monthly bond-buying stimulus program.

However, its next policy-setting meeting is not until March 18-19. By then, the economic clouds may have cleared.

Most economists stuck to predictions that the central bank would cut its monthly purchase pace by another $10 billion in March, as it did last month and the month before.

The drop in the jobless rate left it flirting with the 6.5 percent level that the Fed had said would trigger discussions over when to raise benchmark interest rates from near zero.

But policymakers have made it clear that rates will not rise any time soon even if the unemployment threshold is breached, and they seem certain to revisit their guidance on policy. 

U.S. stock futures dropped sharply when the data was released, but the market opened higher and was trading up in early afternoon. Similarly, money flooded into the safety of the bond market but the flow soon ebbed. The dollar sold off against the euro, but that trade also later eased.

The economy grew at a robust 3.7 percent annual rate in the second half of 2013, buoying hopes that it was kicking into a higher gear after a slow recovery from the 2007-2009 recession.

But that optimism is now being tested. A report on Monday showed a surprise drop in factory activity to an eight-month low in January and automakers have reported slower sales.

The tenth of a percentage point drop in the jobless rate in January, which took it to the lowest level since October 2008, provided a silver lining in the employment report, and kept hopes of stronger growth alive.

Unlike the poll of employers used to calculate the payrolls figures, the household survey from which the jobless rate is derived found more than 600,000 jobs were created in January.

The rise in the number of people in the labor market last month also provided an encouraging sign. The participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one, increased to 63 percent. In December it stood at 62.8 percent, the more than 35-year low it hit in October.

While a decline in participation over the last year played a role in the 1.3 percentage point drop in the jobless rate since January 2013, rising employment has also been a big contributor.

In another bright sign, a broad gauge of the labor market's health - the percentage of working-age Americans with a job - rose to 58.8 percent last month, the highest since October 2012.

In addition, a measure of underemployment that includes people who want a job but who have given up searching and those working part time because they cannot find full-time jobs dropped to 12.7 percent, its lowest level since November 2008.

The report also showed that the long-term unemployed were finding jobs. The duration of unemployment fell to 35.4 weeks last month, the lowest in a year.

"We suspect the labor market recovery is healthier than the headline numbers imply," said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco.

Source: Reuters

A quel point les températures ont-elles augmenté près de chez vous ?

Pour prendre la mesure du changement climatique en cours, les cas concrets valent parfois mieux que les longues théories. C'est en tout cas le pari de l'unité de recherche climatique de l'université d'East Anglia au Royaume-Uni, qui vient de publier une carte interactive des températures mondiales combinée avec Google Earth.

L'outil, présenté dans une étude qui vient de paraître dans la revue Earth System Science Data, est accessible en copiant l'URL du fichier de l'université (que l'on peut trouver ici) dans Google maps ou en l'ouvrant avec le logiciel Google Earth.

Le résultat permet de zoomer sur 6 000 stations météorologiques réparties dans le monde entier et de visualiser les données mensuelles, saisonnières et annuelles de températures. Les utilisateurs peuvent également accéder aux détails de 20 000 graphiques – dont certains des relevés remontent à 1850. Les températures à la surface des terres émergées proviennent du jeu de données CRUTEM4 (Climatic Research Unit Temperature Version 4), l'un des plus utilisés au monde.

A noter toutefois que l'on ne peut pas nécessairement trouver les données d'un point particulier, mais des moyennes au sein de sections de 5° de latitude et 5° de longitude (représentées en rectangles verts et rouges), qui couvrent la quasi totalité du globe – à quelques exceptions près, comme certaines régions de Chine, du Sahara ou de la péninsule arabique.

"La magie de Google Earth, c'est que vous pouvez voir instantanément où se situent les stations météorologiques, zoomer sur des pays spécifiques, et voir les températures plus clairement. Les jeux de données sont gratuitement accessibles", explique dans un communiqué le chercheur Tim Osborn, qui a développé l'outil.

Par exemple, la région du nord de la France montre une élévation des températures depuis près de trente ans (malgré un léger déclin depuis quatre-cinq ans), avec une hausse d'environ 1°C par rapport à la normale météorologique calculée sur la période 1961-1990.

Source: Le Monde

Remember going around my Blog,checkup. 3 ways to do it. 1.access to all posts,2. Mix of posts appropiate for mobile 3.Only Art

ferchepote57blogspot.com, or thru Google+ or thru Youtube for Art.

ICIS reports, Chinese imports of natural gas are expected to grow by 18.9% in 2014

       Source:  ICIS

U.S. jobless rate forces Yellen's hand on Fed guidance

"The rapid drop in U.S. unemployment will make re-crafting the Federal Reserve's easy-money promise a top priority for new Chair Janet Yellen, who will probably avoid tying policy to specific targets in the labor market.

It was more than a year ago that the U.S. central bank first promised not to raise interest rates until joblessness fell to at least 6.5 percent, a pledge that policymakers thought would hold until at least mid-2015.

The Fed still wants to assure investors that rates will stay low for at least another year, but there is growing debate among policymakers over how to get this message across now that the jobless rate stands at 6.6 percent but the pace of job creation remains erratic at best. 

Fed officials are likely to drop any reference to a specific rate of unemployment, according to several who have addressed the topic in recent days. They could also renew a pledge not to tighten policy until inflation starts to rise back to more normal levels, and they may reinforce the notion that financial conditions will factor into any decision.

"We will have to reformulate it and provide some qualitative way of providing an assessment of what time horizon we think is most likely," Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond Fed, told reporters in Virginia on Tuesday.

Lacker pointed to one option available to the Fed: relying more on charts the Fed publishes four times a year showing when each individual policymaker expects rates to finally rise, and how high they will be up to four years into the future.

The so-called summary of economic projections, or SEP, last published in December, has 12 of the Fed's 17 policymakers expecting to begin to tighten policy some time next year - an expectation that aligns with traders in rate-futures markets.

"I'd point out that the SEP provides a rich portrayal of the array of views within the committee, and even if we said nothing the SEP would be pretty informative," Lacker said.

At its March policy meeting, the Fed could simply erase an extensive reference to its rate-rise thresholds - including a nod to 6.5-percent unemployment and 2.5 percent inflation - and restate that easy policy will be needed "for a considerable time after the asset purchase program ends and the economic recovery strengthens."

Yellen, at her first press conference as chair after the meeting, could then direct investors' attention to the SEP, which also shows Fed officials' forecasts for unemployment, inflation and economic growth over the next few years.

As it stands, the central bank's policy is to keep rates near zero until "well past the time" joblessness falls to below 6.5 percent "especially" if inflation expectations remain weak.

In a surprise to some, unemployment has swiftly fallen from 7.9 percent a year ago, and from a post-recession high of 10 percent in 2009. On Friday, the Labor Department reported the jobless rate had fallen to a five-year low of 6.6 percent, but the fewer than 200,000 new jobs created over the past two months is insufficient to sustain the current pace of economic growth.

The quick drop in joblessness has soured Fed officials to the idea of simply lowering the unemployment threshold.

Instead, as Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren suggested on Thursday, they could stress that broader measures of the labor market - such as the number of part-time or discouraged workers, or the rate of wage growth - will play a bigger role as they mull a rate rise".

Source: Reuters

US Midday Market Brief

"The U.S. equity markets are tacking onto yesterday's solid gains in late-morning action, despite another softer-than-expected read on domestic job growth. Although the report showed job gains were below expectations and the prior month revision was disappointing, some details of the release showed some bright spots. Treasuries are higher following the employment data, while a read on consumer credit is due out late in the session. Meanwhile, gold is gaining ground, along with crude oil prices, but the U.S. dollar is lower. In equity news, Apple Inc's CEO Tim Cook noted that the tech giant has repurchased $14.0 billion of its own stock on the heels of its disappointing earnings report two weeks ago, while Expedia Inc topped the Street's quarterly expectations. However, Cigna Corp missed analysts' quarterly projections and offered a disappointing outlook. Overseas, Asian stocks finished broadly higher following the positive lead from the U.S. yesterday, while European equities are maintaining their advance despite the disappointing U.S. employment data".

Source: Schwab

The global economy off steroids by Sri Mulyani Indrawati*

"Economic growth is back. Not only are the United States, Europe, and Japan finally expanding at the same time, but developing countries are also regaining strength. As a result, world GDP will rise by 3.2% this year, up from 2.4% in 2013 – meaning that 2014 may well be the year when the global economy turns the corner.

The fact that the advanced economies are bouncing back is good news for everyone. But, for the emerging and developing economies that dominated global growth over the last five years, it raises an important question: Now, with high-income countries joining them, is business as usual good enough to compete?

The simple answer is no. Just as an athlete might use steroids to get quick results, while avoiding the tough workouts that are needed to develop endurance and ensure long-term health, some emerging economies have relied on short-term capital inflows (so-called “hot money”) to support growth, while delaying or even avoiding difficult but necessary economic and financial reforms. With the US Federal Reserve set to tighten the exceptionally generous monetary conditions that have driven this “easy growth,” such emerging economies will have to change their approach, despite much tighter room for maneuver, or risk losing the ground that they have gained in recent years.

As the Fed’s monetary-policy tightening becomes a reality, the World Bank predicts, that capital flows to developing countries will fall from 4.6% of their GDP in 2013 to around 4% in 2016. But, if long-term US interest rates rise too fast, or policy shifts are not communicated well enough, or markets become volatile, capital flows could quickly plummet – possibly by more than 50% for a few months.

This scenario has the potential to disrupt growth in those emerging economies that have failed to take advantage of the recent capital inflows by pursuing reforms. The likely rise in interest rates will put considerable pressure on countries with large current-account deficits and high levels of foreign debt – a result of five years of credit expansion.

Indeed, last summer, when speculation that the Fed would soon begin to taper its purchases of long-term assets (so-called quantitative easing), financial-market pressures were strongest in markets suspected of having weak fundamentals. Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia, India, and South Africa – dubbed the “Fragile Five” – were hit particularly hard.

Similarly, some emerging-market currencies have come under renewed pressure in recent days, triggered in part by the devaluation of the Argentine peso and signs of a slowdown in Chinese growth, as well as doubts about these economies’ real strengths amid generally skittish market sentiment. Like the turbulence last summer, the current bout of market pressure is mainly affecting economies characterized by either domestic political tensions or economic imbalances.

But, for most developing countries, the story has not been so bleak. Financial markets in many developing countries have not come under significant pressure – either in the summer or now. Indeed, more than three-fifths of developing countries – many of which are strong economic performers that benefited from pre-crisis reforms (and thus attracted more stable capital inflows like foreign-direct investment) – actually appreciated last spring and summer.

Furthermore, returning to the athletic metaphor, some have continued to exercise their muscles and improve their stamina – even under pressure. Mexico, for example, opened its energy sector to foreign partnerships last year – a politically difficult reform that is likely to bring significant long-term benefits. Indeed, it arguably helped Mexico avoid joining the Fragile Five.

Stronger growth in high-income economies will also create opportunities for developing countries – for example, through increased import demand and new sources of investment. While these opportunities will be more difficult to capture than the easy capital inflows of the quantitative-easing era, the payoffs will be far more durable. But, in order to take advantage of them, countries, like athletes, must put in the work needed to compete successfully – through sound domestic policies that foster a business-friendly pro-competition environment, an attractive foreign-trade regime, and a healthy financial sector.

  Source; Schwab Foundation Daily  * Managing Director of the World Bank Group, and was Finance Minister of Indonesia from 2005 to 2010. 

l’Unione europea, La corruzione in Europa ci costa 120 miliardi di euro

"La corruzione costa all’economia europea 120 miliardi di euro all’anno confermandosi uno dei problemi più gravi che minacciano la stabilità dell’Unione europea (Ue). Da qui la scelta della direzione generale per gli Affari interni, quello che dovrebbe diventare un ministero degli Interni europeo, di approfondire il tema e pubblicare la prima relazione sulla lotta alla corruzione".

La corruzione secondo gli europei

"I risultati cambiano molto da paese a paese, così anche le misure da adottare per affrontare il problema. Il rapporto dedica un capitolo specifico per ognuno dei 28 paesi che fanno parte dell’Ue, anche se secondo un sondaggio condotto da Eurobarometro sull’opinione dei cittadini europei sulla corruzione, il fenomeno è percepito come sempre più diffuso (76 per cento, anche se per gli italiani si raggiunge il 97 per cento), mentre per oltre la metà degli europei la situazione è peggiorata nel proprio paese negli ultimi tre anni.

“La corruzione mina la fiducia dei cittadini nelle istituzioni democratiche e nello stato di diritto, danneggia l’economia europea e priva gli stati di un gettito fiscale particolarmente necessario. Gli stati membri hanno fatto molto negli ultimi anni per combatterla, ma la relazione odierna mostra che è lungi dall’essere sufficiente” ha detto il commissario per gli Affari interni, Cecilia Malmström durante la presentazione della relazione".

Fonte: UE

Equity funds have record week of withdrawals

 Investors pulled a record weekly amount out of U.S. equity funds and put a record amount into U.S. bond funds, according to Citi Research data released Friday. In the week ended Feb. 5, investors withdrew net $28.3 billion from equity funds and put $14.8 billion into bond funds, according to the report, which cites EPFR data. Some 95% of the money yanked from stock funds came out of exchange-traded funds, Citi said. Lipper said the ETF withdrawals included a $7.6 billion net outflow from the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust . Investors also pulled $6.4 billion from emerging markets funds, including the 15th week of outflows for EM equity funds, according to Citi.

Source: Marketwatch

US Bureau of Labor Statistics PR. Nonfarm payroll employment January 2014

 THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- JANUARY 2014


Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 113,000 in January, and the unemployment rate
was little changed at 6.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported  today.
Employment grew in construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and mining. 

Household Survey Data

Both the number of unemployed persons, at 10.2 million, and the unemployment rate, at
6.6 percent, changed little in January. Since October, the jobless rate has      decreased by
0.6 percentage point. 

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (6.2 percent), adult
women (5.9 percent), teenagers (20.7 percent), whites (5.7 percent), blacks (12.1 percent),
and Hispanics (8.4 percent) showed little change in January. The jobless rate for Asians
was 4.8 percent (not seasonally adjusted), down by 1.7 percentage points over the year.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more), at 3.6 
million,
declined by 232,000 in January. These individuals accounted for 35.8 percent of 
the
unemployed. The number of long-term unemployed has declined by 1.1 million over  the year.


After accounting for the annual adjustment to the population controls, the       civilian labor
force rose by 499,000 in January, and the labor force participation rate edged up to 63.0
percent. Total employment, as measured by the household survey, increased by 616,000 over
the month, and the employment-population ratio increased by 0.2 percentage point to 58.8
percent. 

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as
involuntary part-time workers) fell by 514,000 to 7.3 million in January. These  individuals
were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to
find full-time work. 

In January, 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force,     little changed
from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals   were not in
the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job    sometime in
the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not    searched for
work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. 

Among the marginally attached, there were 837,000 discouraged workers in January, about
unchanged from a year earlier. Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for
work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.8 million persons
marginally attached to the labor force in January had not searched for work for  reasons such
as school attendance or family responsibilities. 


Establishment Survey Data

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 113,000 in January. In 2013,       employment growth
averaged 194,000 per month. In January, job gains occurred in construction,      manufacturing,
wholesale trade, and mining.

Construction added 48,000 jobs over the month, more than offsetting a decline of 22,000 in
December. In January, job gains occurred in both residential and nonresidential  building
(+13,000 and +8,000, respectively) and in nonresidential specialty trade contractors
(+13,000). Heavy and civil engineering construction also added 10,000 jobs.

Employment in manufacturing increased in January (+21,000). Over the month, job  gains  
occurred in machinery (+7,000), wood products (+5,000), and motor vehicles and   parts
(+5,000). Manufacturing added an average of 7,000 jobs per month in 2013.

In January, wholesale trade added 14,000 jobs, with most of the increase         occurring in
nondurable goods (+10,000).

Mining added 7,000 jobs in January, compared with an average monthly gain of     2,000 jobs
in 2013.

Employment in professional and business services continued to trend up in January (+36,000).
The industry added an average of 55,000 jobs per month in 2013. Within the       industry,
professional and technical services added 20,000 jobs in January. 

Leisure and hospitality employment continued to trend up over the month (+24,000). Job
growth in the industry averaged 38,000 per month in 2013. 

Employment in health care was essentially unchanged in January for the second consecutive
month.  Health care added an average of 17,000 jobs per month in 2013. 

Employment in retail trade changed little in January (-13,000). Within the        industry, sporting
goods, hobby, book, and music stores lost 22,000 jobs, offsetting job gains in the prior 3
months. In January, motor vehicle and parts dealers added 7,000 jobs.




In January, federal government employment decreased by 12,000; the U.S. Postal   Service
accounted for most of this decline (-9,000).

Employment in other major industries, including transportation and warehousing,   information, 
and financial activities, showed little or no change over the month.

In January, the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls   was unchanged
at 34.4 hours. The manufacturing workweek declined by 0.2 hour to 40.7 hours, and factory
overtime edged down by 0.1 hour to 3.4 hours. The average workweek for production and
nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.5 hours. 
Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 5  cents to
$24.21. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 46 cents, or 1.9    percent. In
January, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees
increased by 6 cents to $20.39. 

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for November was revised from     +241,000 to
+274,000, and the change for December was revised from +74,000 to +75,000. With  these
revisions, employment gains in November and December were 34,000 higher than     previously
reported. Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses since
the last published estimates and the monthly recalculation of seasonal factors 
The annual
benchmark process also contributed to the revisions in this news release.