Bethoveen: Triple Concert & Coral Fantasy. Yo-Yo Ma,Itzhac Perlman, Daniel Barenboim

                                            Listened to Yo-Yo Ma in Lima, wished we had them all
                                          in Lima. Quel dommage!

WeChat users in China can now transfer money to each other

WeChat got a minor update on iOS overnight that adds in the ability for users to transfer money to each other. As with most of the messaging app’s more advanced features, it’s limited to users in China who have tied a bank card to the app (hat-tip to Tencent Tech for spotting this).

The money transfer option in WeChat is a relatively small step in WeChat’s long march to turn itself from being China’s ubiquitous messaging app into a useful mobile wallet service. It already encompasses online payments, ecommerce, an online personal finance fund, and online taxi ordering. This evolution first started last summer with the introduction of WeChat Payments for the app’s Chinese users. See: 5 ways China’s WeChat is more innovative than you think Tencent (HKG:0700), the maker of WeChat, is challenging Alibaba’s Alipay head on as the social app takes on more wallet-like features. The WeChat update comes a few days after the Twitter-like Sina Weibo tested out user-to-user money transfers in a beta version of its mobile app. But since that Weibo update is not yet public, WeChat has beaten it to the punch.

Source: TECHINASIA

The Race To Ubiquitous, Free Cloud Storage

Two interesting things happened today in the realm of cloud storage: Microsoft cut its prices for OneDrive and gave out more free gigabytes, and Box took its editing tool Box Notes mobile.

Both fit neatly into the current market arc relating to cloud storage: The price per gigabyte for consumers and customers is going to zero, and storage companies are looking to diversify their productivity offerings on top of their storage stacks.

It’s worth marking this moment, as it crystallizes the trends we are currently seeing in storage.

The marginal price of cloud storage for the average consumer is dropping quickly, which means that what companies can charge for a gigabyte of cloud storage is low and will continue to fall. Soon, cloud storage will be both ubiquitous and free for consumers. Given that platform companies must compete, we’ll see free, unlimited cloud storage from major players as a sort of table stakes for online services.

Even if you can’t charge for storage, you can charge for what consumers can do with their data. So, if you have to eat the rapidly declining closet of cloud storage, what do you do? You extend your value stack. Hence Box Notes for mobile.

Within two years, consumers will have several options for unlimited, free cloud storage. That’s to say that they will have a few terabytes to play with from a number of providers. The idea that consumers should only have access to a few gigabytes of free storage will quickly become as silly as the idea that an email account only needed a few megabytes of capacity.

Source: TechCrunch

Kerry promises 'intense and sustained' U.S. support for Iraq

Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday promised "intense and sustained" U.S. support for Iraq, but said the divided country would only survive if its leaders took urgent steps to bring it together.

Hours before Kerry arrived in Baghdad, Sunni tribes who have joined a militant takeover of northern Iraq seized the only legal crossing point with Jordan, security sources said, leaving troops with no presence along the entire western frontier which includes some of the Middle East's most important trade routes. [ID:nL6N0P41XO]

U.S. President Barack Obama has offered up to 300 American advisers to Iraq but held off granting a request by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite Muslim-led government for air strikes to counter the two-week advance by Sunni militants.

Officials have meanwhile called for Iraqis to form an inclusive government. The insurgency has been fuelled largely by a sense of marginalisation and persecution among Iraq's Sunnis.

"The support will be intense and sustained and if Iraq's leaders take the necessary steps to bring the country together, it will be effective," Kerry told reporters in Baghdad.

He said Maliki had "on multiple occasions affirmed his commitment to July 1" as the date to start the formation of a new government bringing in more Sunnis and Kurds to share power, a move Washington is keen to see.

Iraqi and Jordanian security sources said tribal leaders were negotiating to hand the Turabil desert border post to Sunni Islamists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who took two main crossings with Syria in recent days and have pushed Iraqi government forces back toward Baghdad.

Iraq state television said late on Monday that the army had recaptured both the crossing with Jordan and the al-Waleed crossing with Syria. Reuters could not independently confirm reports due to security restrictions.

Ethnic Kurdish forces control a third border post with Syria in the north, leaving government troops with no presence along Iraq's 800-km (500-mile) western border.

For the insurgents, capturing the frontier is a dramatic step towards the goal of erasing the modern border altogether and building a caliphate across swaths of Syria and Iraq.

Kerry said: "Iraq faces an existential threat and Iraq's leaders have to beat that threat with the incredible urgency that it demands. The very future of Iraq depends on choices that will be made in the next days and weeks."

Washington, which withdrew its troops from Iraq in 2011 after an occupation that followed the 2003 invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, has been struggling to help Maliki's administration contain a Sunni insurgency led by ISIL, an al Qaeda offshoot which seized northern cities this month.


PRESSURE ON MALIKI

Washington is worried Maliki and fellow Shi'ites who have won U.S.-backed elections have worsened the insurgency by alienating moderate Sunnis who once fought al Qaeda but have now joined the ISIL revolt. While Washington has been careful not to say publicly it wants Maliki to step aside, Iraqi officials say such a message was delivered behind the scenes.
There was little small talk when Kerry met Maliki, the two men seated in chairs in a room with other officials.

The meeting lasted one hour and 40 minutes, after which Kerry was escorted to his car by Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari. As Kerry got in, he said: "That was good."

In Washington, officials said Iraq has given assurances to the United States that the special operations forces Obama has ordered into the country will be shielded from possible prosecution in Iraqi courts.

The Obama administration has said its decision not to leave a residual U.S. force in Iraq in 2011 stemmed from difficulty in getting a deal from Iraqi leaders to keep American troops from being tried in local courts. 
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Washington on Sunday of trying to regain control of the country it once occupied - a charge Kerry denied.

Iraqis are due to form a new government after an election in April. Maliki's list won the most seats in parliament but would still require allies to secure a majority.

Senior Iraqi politicians, including at least one member of Maliki's own ruling list, have told Reuters that the message that Washington would be open to Maliki leaving power has been delivered in diplomatic language to Iraqi leaders.

Recent meetings between Maliki and American officials have been described as tense. According to a Western diplomat briefed on the conversations by someone attending the meetings, U.S. diplomats have informed Maliki he should accept leaving if he cannot gather a majority in parliament for a third term. U.S. officials have contested that such a message was delivered.

A close ally of Maliki has described him as having grown bitter toward the Americans in recent days over their failure to provide strong military support.

The president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, which has seized on the chaos to expand its northern territory to include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, blamed Maliki's "wrong policies" for the turn of events and joined calls for him to quit.

Massoud Barzani said Iraq was falling apart and reiterated a threat to hold a referendum on independence from the rest of the country.

"The time is now for the Kurdish people to determine their future," Barzani said in an interview with CNN. "We are living in an Iraq that is completely different from the Iraq of two weeks ago."


IRANIAN ACCUSATION

Jordanian army sources said Jordan's troops had been put in a state of alert in recent days along the 181-km (112-mile) border with Iraq, redeploying in some areas as part of steps to ward off "any potential or perceived security threats".

The Jordan border post was in the hands of Sunni tribesmen after government troops fled. An Iraqi tribal figure said there was a chance it would soon be passed to control of the militants, who seized the nearby crossing to Syria on the Damascus-Baghdad highway on Sunday.

He said he was mediating with ISIL in a "bid to spare blood and make things safer for the employees of the crossing. We are receiving positive messages from the militants."

The need to battle the Sunni insurgency has put the United States on the same side as its enemy of 35 years, Iran, which has close ties to the Shi'ite parties that came to power in Baghdad after U.S. forces toppled Saddam.

However, Iran's supreme leader made clear on Sunday that a rapprochement would not be easy.

"We are strongly opposed to U.S. and other intervention in Iraq," IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying. "We don’t approve of it as we believe the Iraqi government, nation and religious authorities are capable of ending the sedition."

Some Iraqi analysts in Baghdad interpreted Khamenei's comments as a warning to the United States to stay out of the process of selecting any successor to Maliki.

Source: Reuters

WSJ: Iraqi Parties Pressure Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to Step Down

       The WSJ reports,"Iraqi parties raised pressure on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to step down, as the U.S. said it drew pledges from the embattled leader and other top Iraqi politicians to begin forming a new government by July 1.

The Obama administration is betting that a new more conciliatory leadership—with or without Mr. Maliki—that unifies Iraq's sparring sectarian parties will help neutralize the mounting threat posed by Islamist insurgents in Iraq by undercutting their political support.

U.S. and Iraqi officials met in Baghdad on Monday as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, made further alarming advances across Iraq".

"On Monday, the Sunni extremists launched an attack on a police convoy just 20 miles from Baghdad's center that left at least 81 people dead, a day after they captured nearly all of Iraq's remaining border crossings with neighboring Jordan and Syria.

"This is clearly a moment when the stakes for Iraq's future could not be clearer," Secretary of State John Kerry said after meeting with Mr. Maliki in Baghdad. "[ISIS's] campaign of terror, their grotesque acts of violence and repressive ideology pose a grave danger to Iraq's future."

Mr. Kerry said President Barack Obama maintained the right to strike ISIS targets at any time now that the U.S. military moved military assets into the region, including U.S. aircraft carriers stationed in the Persian Gulf.

Still, some U.S. officials were skeptical that Mr. Maliki or other Iraqi politicians would respect the July deadline or whether the leader intended to even follow the political process in a quest for a third term.

Mr. Maliki has shown no signs of yielding power after his coalition won a plurality in the April 30 elections. And despite American signals in recent days that the White House would like Mr. Maliki to step aside, U.S. officials stressed that Mr. Kerry didn't ask Mr. Maliki to do so during their meeting".

"Instead, the U.S. secretary of state emphasized the need for a new government in Baghdad to do more to reach out to Sunnis and Kurds, something the Americans have signaled they don't think Mr. Maliki, a Shiite, can do.

However, the political horse-trading expected to come with the formation of a new Iraqi government could breathe even more instability into Iraq by creating a power vacuum, some observers say.

If Mr. Maliki does step aside, it is unclear whether Iraq's fractious political system could produce another viable candidate among the multiple Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish parties to replace him.

Against this backdrop, other Shiite politicians discussed with Sunnis and Kurds ways to find a replacement for Mr. Maliki, said people who are part of the talks.

One figure emerging as a possible Maliki successor is Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician and former businessman who was one of the architects of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq".

Mr. Chalabi was a confidante of many of the war planners inside the George W. Bushadministration ahead of the 2003 invasion. A U.S. congressional probe subsequently accused Mr. Chalabi of feeding bogus intelligence on Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction program to justify his overthrow. Mr. Chalabi denied wrongdoing.

Mr. Chalabi, who won a seat in the recent parliamentary elections, recently held meetings with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Robert Beecroft and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Brett McGurk, said a person familiar with the meetings.

Other possible Maliki successors include senior members of his cabinet, such as National Security Adviser Falih al-Fayadh. Mr. Fayadh's history as a negotiator among different sects has positioned him well as a consensus candidate, said one Iraq politician.

Another potential candidate, lawmakers said, is Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite politician whose party won the most seats in 2010 parliamentary elections.

As Mr. Kerry visited Baghdad on Monday, the U.S. government was preparing to beef up its military support for the Iraqi government, responding to a request from Baghdad. U.S. officials said that more supplies in the form of ammunition, light arms and aerial munitions will be shipped to western Iraq in coming days.

The Pentagon is establishing two new "fusion centers," posts set up to better coordinate the Iraq's army's intelligence gathering and military operations against ISIS.

U.S. officials also said on Monday they had secured legal protections from Iraq's government for 300 American special-operations forces being sent to Iraq to advise the Iraqi military.

"President Obama has not declared that he will wait" for Iraq's political process to play out if he decides military action is warranted, Mr. Kerry said. "The president is prepared to take action when and if the president decides that is important."

Japon-Abe présente la suite de son train de réformes

Le Premier ministre japonais Shinzo Abe dévoilera mardi une nouvelle tranche de son programme de réformes économiques avec notamment des réductions d'impôts pour les entreprises et une refonte de l'énorme fonds public de retraites.

Cette nouvelle salve de ce que le gouvernement appelle sa

"troisième flèche" est cependant déjà critiquée par certains analystes, qui réclament des mesures plus radicales.

En entrant en fonctions il y a 18 mois, Shinzo Abe avait promis d'ambitieuses réformes économiques, budgétaires et monétaires afin de lutter contre une déflation chronique et de relancer la croissance.

Une politique monétaire offensive et un vaste plan de relance budgétaire et fiscale sont les deux premières "flèches" de la stratégie de Shinzo Abe.

Confronté à une dette colossale et près de 15 années de déflation, le Japon a notamment augmenté cette année sa TVA pour la première fois depuis 17 ans, la faisant passer de 5% à 8%.

Parmi les mesures en passe d'être annoncées figure la réduction de la charge fiscale pesant sur les entreprises, l'une des plus fortes au monde, l'objectif étant de la faire passer à moins de 30% sur plusieurs années.

Autre chantier d'envergure, le remaniement du fonds public de retraites, le plus important du monde.

Le Fonds d'investissement gouvernemental de retraites (GPIF) gère l'équivalent de 1.260 milliards de dollars (926 milliards d'euros). Shinzo Abe souhaite le voir adopter une politique d'investissement plus risquée en réduisant la part de son portefeuille consacrée aux obligations d'Etat pour privilégier les actions (voir [ID:nL6N0ON0RI]).


RÉACTIONS MITIGÉES

Certains détails, notamment en ce qui concerne les modalités des réductions d'impôts pour les entreprises, restent à régler. Le gouvernement a également revu sa copie à la baisse pour d'importantes réformes du marché du travail et du secteur agricole, sources de conflits innombrables.

En remisant à plus tard certains sujets qui fâchent, Shinzo Abe espère sans doute éviter la réaction négative des marchés à l'annonce de la première phase de sa "troisième flèche", qui avait fait chuter la Bourse de Tokyo en juin 2013.

La Banque du Japon maintient la pression sur le gouvernement, qui s'est fixé l'ambitieux objectif de faire passer le potentiel de hausse du produit intérieur brut (PIB) de 0,5% à 2%.

Le gouverneur de la banque centrale, Haruhiko Kuroda, a estimé lundi qu'un tel objectif n'était "pas impossible" à la condition que le gouvernement redouble d'efforts.

D'autres, notamment des intervenants de marché, sont plus sceptiques et commencent à se lasser d'effets d'annonce ne produisant, selon eux, que de maigres résultats.

"Je me demande combien de troisièmes flèches le gouvernement va lancer", s'agace Ayako Sera, analyste chez Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank. "Il va faire ça tous les ans ?"
Source: Reuters

String of Chinese Companies Seek Hong Kong Listing

      The WSJ reports,"a fresh spate of Chinese companies, including a drug maker and a real-estate developer, launched Hong Kong initial public offerings seeking to raise up to US$1.2 billion Monday and capitalize on recent gains in the city's stock market.

Luye Pharma Group Ltd., partly owned by a group of private-equity firms, is seeking to raise up to US$764 million in the biggest of the Hong Kong IPOs launched in recent weeks. Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index is up 5% since the start of May.

Sina  Corp-backed social-video platform operator Tian Ge Interactive Holdings Ltd, which is raising up to US$208 million and a Beijing-based property firm Guorui Properties Ltd., which is raising up to US$242 million also began raising funds for IPOs Monday.

Luye Pharma, whose shareholders include CDH Capital, Citic Private Equity and New Horizon Capital, delisted from the Singapore stock exchange in 2012".

Luye will also be CDH's first Hong Kong offering since its failed IPO of WH Group, the Chinese pork producer that bought Smithfield Foods Inc. The up-to US$5.3 billion IPO, in which CDH is the single biggest shareholder, was pulled in April due to lack of demand from investors.

Since WH Group's high-profile flop, however, the fate of IPOs in Hong Kong has been improving, partly due to lower pricing. Of 11 IPOs in Hong Kong since the start of May, only two have fallen below their offering prices. Train maker China CNR  Corp is down 1.9% from its float price, and Chinese port operator Qingdao Port International Co.  is down 5.9%.

In contrast, many of the big IPOs that made their debuts in Hong Kong before May are struggling: HK Electric Investments,  the trust IPO holding billionaire Li Ka-shing's electricity unit, is down 3.5% from its IPO price, whileChina Everbright Bank,  which raised $3.2 billion at the end of last year, is trading down 11.3% from its listed level. HK Electric's US$3.11 billion IPO in January remains the world's biggest IPO so far this year.

"Investment sentiment towards IPOs has improved in recent months as most of new firms are listed at reasonable valuations," said Conita Hung, a director at Hong Kong-based Amicus Asset Management Ltd.

The reasonable pricing is working. Chinese property management company Colour Life Services Group raised US$122 million on Monday after pricing its Hong Kong IPO near the middle of its indicative price range at HK$3.78. The firm is scheduled to list in the city on June 30. In contrast, Chinese chemical makerTianhe Chemicals Group Ltd  , which started trading Friday after an IPO that raised US$654 million, priced its deal earlier near the low end of an indicative price range.

Copper near 3-week high; China data fuels gains

 London copper hit its highest in nearly three weeks on Monday, after Shanghai copper rallied to a four-month peak, spurred by tight supply and signs of improved growth in top copper consumer China.

The HSBC/Markit Flash China PMI showed China's factory sector activity expanded for the first time in six months in June, offering new signs the economy is stabilising thanks to Beijing's measures to shore up growth. 

The global refined copper market showed a 205,000 tonnes deficit in the first three months of the year, compared with a 206,000 tonnes surplus in the same period a year earlier, the International Copper Study Group (ICSG) said.

Meanwhile, London Metal Exchange (LME) inventories fell 850 tonnes to 158,575 a tonne, their lowest in nearly six years, while cash copper held on to its premium over the three month price , also indicating supply tightness 

"Copper is being supported by robust demand from China, tight stocks and a market deficit that wasn't expected by most observers. Growth of 7.5 pct is not weak for the world's second largest economy," said Commerzbank analyst Eugen Weinberg.

Three-month LME copper climbed 0.87 percent to $6,879 a tonne in official midday rings, after hitting $6,890 a tonne, its highest since June 3.

The most-traded August copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange rallied 2.3 percent to 49,550 yuan

($8,000) a tonne. It had earlier climbed to 49,610 yuan a tonne, the strongest since Feb. 25.

China imported 282,969 tonnes of copper in May, up 21.89 percent versus a year ago, and bringing annual gains for the year to date to nearly 50 percent, China customs data showed earlier.

Limiting gains in copper was a continuing investigation into suspected fraud at a Chinese port, which has caused banks to take longer to approve loans for copper imports.

"Certainly China will reduce imports because of this financing issue and it will also take a longer time to get cleared," said Helen Lau, senior mining analyst at UOB-Kay Hian Securities in Hong Kong.

But suggesting further gains in the near term, ShFE and LME copper punched through their 200-day and 100-day moving averages respectively, a key buy signal for chart-following strategies.


The London Metal Exchange (LME) will keep its open-outcry trading ring following a review of its future, it said on Monday, bucking a trend by most other markets to shift to all-electronic operations.

LME zinc traded up 0.69 percent in rings at $2,192 a tonne, after hitting a 16-month peak of $2,195 earlier, while lead was last bid up 1.64 percent at $2,165 a tonne, having hit its highest since late April at $2,170.

Aluminium traded up 0.58 percent in rings at $1,897 a tonne, tin was last bid up 0.33 percent at $22,650 a tonne while nickel traded up 0.54 percent at $18,500 a tonne.

Source: Reuters

EU draft document urges more focus on growth, jobs

European leaders will consider calls for an interpretation of EU budget rules that gives more emphasis to economic growth, according to the draft of a document being circulated before a summit in Brussels this week.

The document, which European Council President Herman Van Rompuy is drawing up in consultation with Italy, the next country to hold the rotating EU presidency, marks an effort to reset the EU agenda away from the budget cuts and tax squeezes that characterised the initial reaction to the euro zone debt crisis.

With much of Europe still struggling to return to sustainable growth and with unemployment rates at record levels in many areas, pressure for a change of course and an easing in austerity was underlined by a surge in support for anti-EU parties in last month's European Parliament election.

The draft, which could still change before the summit on Thursday and Friday, calls for steps to create growth and jobs and to support deeper reform by individual member states. However it does not call for a change to the rules set in the EU Stability and Growth pact or the bloc's 'fiscal compact' and contains few specifics.

"Given the persistently high levels of public debt, growth-friendly and differentiated fiscal consolidation must be continued," the document says.

"Recovery remains fragile and uneven and efforts must continue and be enhanced in order to strengthen Europe's capacity to grow and create jobs," it says.

The proposals form part of a wider deal under which centre-left leaders agreed to support former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission in exchange for policy agreements on growth and jobs.

Germany, long opposed to any relaxation of the EU rules which limit budget deficits to 3 percent of gross domestic product and bind member states to a steady reduction in the public debt, has not openly opposed calls for more flexibility but says the rules must be respected.

"The Stability and Growth pact includes the possibility of a flexible application in individual cases," a German government spokesman told reporters in Berlin.


BROAD AGREEMENT

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, strengthened by a triumphant result in last month's European election, has been one of the main promoters of greater budget flexibility in the EU, intended to complement his pledges for structural reforms at home.

His undersecretary in charge of European affairs, Sandro Gozi, said there was broad agreement on Italy's priorities.

"We think there is an excellent basis for the next six months because I think there is very wide support for our priorities and our methods," he told reporters.

The details of what calls for flexibility might mean in practice have remained sketchy but Italy has in the past sought to have spending on infrastructure investment and research excluded from deficit calculations. It has also sought to win more time to bring its structural budget deficit, adjusted for the effects of the business cycle, into balance.

The discussion has played into horsetrading over the composition of the next European Commission, with Juncker the target of fierce opposition from Britain, which considers him too closely associated with federalist policies that would concentrate power in Brussels.

Renzi initially expressed some scepticism over Juncker but at a meeting at the weekend with other centre-left leaders he agreed to support his candidacy in exchange for a new approach to budget policy.

Gozi also said Italy would secure a "heavyweight" representative on the new Commission which will be appointed later this year.

Renzi, a longstanding critic of rigid EU deficit rules who has called for renewal in both Italy and Europe, was a rare exception among government leaders in the EU poll, winning 40.8 percent of the Italian vote, the best result for any Italian leader since the 1950s.

The draft summit document also calls on the bloc as a whole to assume more responsibility for the southern Mediterranean migrant crisis faced mainly by Italy, Malta, Greece and Spain and to step up measures to ensure energy security.


Source: Reuters

US PMI Index edged higher to a reading of 57.5 in June

The Markit Economics flash manufacturing purchasing managers index for the U.S. edged higher to a 57.5 reading in June from 56.4 in May. The index, similar in design to the Institute for Supply Management manufacturing index, is at its highest level since May 2010. Output picked up for the third straight month and orders and employment also increased. The flash index is based on 85% to 90% of typical monthly responses. 

Source: Marketwatch

Euro zone business growth slows in June as companies keep cutting prices - PMI

The euro zone's private sector expansion has unexpectedly slowed this month even though companies are still cutting prices to drum up business, a survey showed on Monday.

Germany and France went their separate ways again, with German business activity expanding robustly, albeit at a slower pace than last month, while France's private sector shrank at the fastest rate in four months.

"The overall picture is one of fairly sluggish growth as opposed to any rip-roaring acceleration," said Chris Williamson, Markit's chief economist.

Markit's Composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), based on surveys of thousands of companies across the region and seen as a good indicator of growth, fell to 52.8 from May's 53.5, missing the consensus for 53.5 in a Reuters poll of analysts and matching the lowest forecast.

Readings above 50 indicate expansion, and Williamson said that with a robust recovery evident in periphery countries the data still point to second-quarter economic growth of 0.4 percent.

Germany, Europe's largest economy, was again the driving force although its composite PMI eased to 54.2 from 55.6.

But the French index slumped to 48.0 from 49.3, its lowest reading since February.

"In France the weakness does seem to be quite set in and there is little prospect for any improvement as we move into the second half," Williamson said.

Also somewhat worryingly for the European Central Bank, a composite PMI sub-index measuring output prices held below the 50 mark for the 27th month, coming in at 49.7 as firms kept cutting prices to lure customers despite soaring input costs.

Inflation slowed to just 0.5 percent in May, pushing the ECB to cut interest rates to record lows and offer a new series of long-term loans.

A PMI survey of the bloc's dominant service industry fell to 52.8 from May's near three-year high of 53.2, confounding expectations for a modest rise to 53.3.

However, some of that activity was driven by service firms running down old orders after building up a small surfeit last month. The backlogs of work sub-index fell to 49.6 from 50.1.

The manufacturing PMI also dipped, dropping to 51.9 from 52.2 and below the median forecast for 52.2 in a Reuters poll. The output index, which feeds into the composite PMI, sank to 52.8 from 54.3.

Still, factories took on staff again to meet demand - the employment sub-index nudged down to 50.4 from 50.5, staying in growth territory. Euro zone unemployment dipped marginally to 11.7 percent in April from 11.8 percent.

Source: Reuters

Kerry presses Maliki as Iraq loses control of Syrian, Jordanian borders

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Iraq's prime minister in Baghdad on Monday to push for a more inclusive government, even as Baghdad's forces abandoned the border with Jordan, leaving the entire Western frontier outside government control.

Sunni tribes took the Turaibil border crossing, the only legal crossing point between Iraq and Jordan, after Iraqi security forces fled, Iraqi and Jordanian security sources said.

The tribes were negotiating to hand the post over to insurgents from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant who took control of two main crossings with Syria over the weekend.

Kurdish forces control a third border post with Syria in the north, leaving central government troops with no presence along the entire Western frontier which includes some of the most important east-west trade routes in the Middle East.

For the insurgents, capturing the frontier is a dramatic step towards the goal of erasing the modern border altogether and building a caliphate across swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Washington, which withdrew its troops from Iraq in 2011 after an occupation that followed the 2003 invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein, has been struggling to help Iraq contain a Sunni insurgency led by ISIL, an al Qaeda offshoot which seized northern towns this month.

U.S. President Barack Obama agreed last week to send up to 300 special forces troops as advisers, but has held off from providing air strikes and ruled out redeploying ground troops.

Washington is worried that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government has worsened the insurgency by alienating moderate Sunnis who once fought al Qaeda but have now joined the ISIL revolt. While Washington has been careful not to say publicly it wants Maliki to relinquish power, Iraqi officials say such a message has been delivered behind the scenes.

There was little small talk when Kerry met Maliki, the two men seated in chairs in a room with other officials. At one point Kerry looked at an Iraqi official and said, "How are you?"

The meeting lasted one hour and 40 minutes, after which Kerry was escorted to his car by Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari. As Kerry got in, he said: "That was good."

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday accused Washington of trying to regain control of the country it once occupied - a charge Kerry denied.

Source: Reuters