Europe

Filed under: InvestingGermany Misses Recession Germany confirmed that its first-quarter gross domestic product rose only 0.1%. There was some excitement that the largest economy in Europe had dodged a recession, something its neighbors cannot claim. But the number was so perilously close to zero that calling Germany's predicament a recession is not far off the mark. However, the cloud does have a silver lining. Sentiment about future business prospects in Germany did improve: The Ifo Business Climate Index for industry and trade in Germany has risen again after two consecutive declines. The firms are clearly more satisfied with their current business situation than in the previous month. The outlook for future business is unchanged and slightly positive. The German economy remains on track in a challenging European environment. Retailers Sue Visa, MasterCard Several large retailers accuse MasterCard Inc. (NYSE: MA) and Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) of setting unfair fees that damage the retailers' sales prospects and margins while enriching the credit card companies. Bloomberg reports on the retailers' suit: Target Corp. (TGT) and Macy's Inc. (M) joined with 15 other retailers in suing Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. (MA) over credit-card and debit-card fees after dropping out of a multibillion-dollar settlement of a similar case. The biggest U.S. payment card firms illegally restrained competition for interchange fees by setting default rates and imposing almost identical rules for accepting cards, the retailers said yesterday in a federal court complaint in New York. In the previous antitrust suit pending in Brooklyn federal court, dozens of large retailers including Target and Macy's opposed a $7.25 billion proposed settlement, alleging it gave Visa and MasterCard too much freedom to raise rates in the future. "Plaintiffs have paid and continue to pay significantly higher costs to accept Visa-branded and MasterCard-branded credit and debit cards than they would if the banks issuing such cards competed for merchant acceptance," lawyers for the retailers said in yesterday's complaint. Google Faces FTC Charges Just as Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) battle with European Union regulators has died down, the United States may bring antitrust charges against the company. According to Reuters: U.S. regulators are in the early stages of an antitrust probe into whether Google Inc, the top player in Web display advertising, breaks antitrust law in how it handles some advertising sales, a source told Reuters on Thursday. The source said that it was unlikely that the Federal Trade Commission had sent out civil investigative demands in relation to the probe, which would be the sign of a formal and more serious investigation. The new line of inquiry focuses on tools acquired when Google bought display ad company DoubleClick in 2007; other firms which specialize in helping Web publishers sell ads to put on their websites are complaining to the FTC, the source said. Filed under: 24/7 Wall St. Wire, Market Open Tagged: GOOG, MA, V Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

I'm not much of a forward thinker, and though I've had my fair share of excellent adventures (most documented on this blog), it is rare that I've sat down and wondered what I'd like to do... A long sequence of bad months through 2012 made me think very carefully about the winter of 2013. I didn't want to endure a long, dark winter again, and felt that something to look forward to would both provide an excellent experience in its own right, but which would also literally give me something to look forward to, brightening the months in between.I've long thought I'd make a pilgrimage to the home of cycling, Europe, when Kaitlyn started slamming doors and screaming "I hate you Dad" - a rite of passage of all teenagers, surely?! Whether or not this ever actually happens remains to be seen, of course.Nonetheless, towards the end of 2012, I found myself in the shape of my life, and figured that while waiting for another 6 years for Kaitlyn to finish college would make some sense, the riding opportunities I currently have might not exist then. In the space of a few hours, tossing and turning in bed, I came up with the basic framework which still defines my upcoming trip.I decided I'd head to France, and do a cycle-tour with a few differences. Spurred by the riding I've most loved over the last few years, I conjured up a one-man Brevet. A pre-defined route and schedule, over which I'd travel light and fast, just the way I like it. Being time-poor (work, parenting, volunteer work at Makara Peak, riding, and, of course, depression), I decided not to research and design the route from scratch. Instead, my investigations would focus on pulling together old race routes to form a single loop through France. And, not just any old race routes - I'd draw from the most prominent race of all, and connect historical (and a few future) stages from the Tour de France. The next day, I started planning. Off to the internet...!Le Cycle-Tour de France was born.The official Tour de France website made a good first-port-of-call, and I started by taking notes of the 2012 race. The first sheet in my Google-Docs spreadsheet featured stage number, length, notable details, and a link to the official webpage. I was thorough with the 2012 race, but by the time I'd done the same for the 2011 event, I realised how much data I was compiling, how repetitive it already was, and how daunting my task would be if I continued! I quickly started taking short-cuts, and summarising and linking only the mountain stages.That weekend, Kaitlyn and I went off to Whitcoulls and got a pair of (double-sided) maps of France. I'd been trying to ignore the huge box Simon and my tandem had arrived in, but realised it would make an awesome pin board. That evening I mounted the maps on the board, and started adding coloured pins to it: a flag denoted the start of a stage, and a standard pin (of the same colour) the end.That too quickly got out of control, but it was a good way of getting the lie of the the land, and to start narrowing down some options.There's hills in amongst those pins! In the meantime, I'd had a chat to the boss, and had noted the 5 weeks free of teaching between Saturday 8 June and Sunday 14 July. That was my window of opportunity.The Pyrenees and Alps are the highlights of any Tour de France, and so should they be the highlights of this tour. I also thought it would be cool to visit the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, and maybe cross a border or two. A common feature of the race is long transfers, but since I'd have no team support, I was keen to keep transitions to a minimum. In short, I was looking for a big loop, with as few (and as small) gaps as possible.As with planning for any rogaine, a basic route quickly started to crystalise - anticlockwise, leaving Paris to the south-west, a 1000km blast down the Atlantic coast, the Pyrenees, across to the Alps via Mont Ventoux, a few days in the Alps, and then, north-west back into Paris. After na

Day 10 of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival sees the premiere of James Gray’s ‘The Immigrant.’ James Gray will be bringing his fourth film to the Cannes Film Festival in the hope that he will recieve the highly coveted Palme d’Or trophy for his efforts. The film stars the truly talented Marion Cotillard, who plays a Polish immigrant in 1920′s New York City. Marion swiftly falls under the spell of a small-time pimp played by Joaquin Phoenix, a regular in Gray’s cinematic masterpieces. As the plot thickens, Marion seeks out the help of magician, Jeremy Renner, to rescue her from these dark times. ‘The Immigrant’ partially mirrors the story of James gray’s grandparents when they arrived in New York as immigrants from Eastern Europe. This hugely anticipated film premieres on Friday 24th at 8:30, 15:00 and 19:30, 2013. In keeping with the Eastern European theme of James Gray’s eagerly awaited Cannes Film Festival entry, why not charter this luxurious Jeanneau Prestige 46 Fly in Croatia. She boasts 3 grand and well-designed cabins that can easily accommodate up to 6 guests. She is one of the finest in her class that is available to charer without a skipper on the beautiful Croatian coast. The interior of this Prestige 46 oozes style and elegance thanks to her cherry woord furnishings, sprawling leather sofas and spacious open plan.The adjoining 3 bathrooms provide ample room for the guests and are fully fitted with all the latest bathroom accessories. She has a beautifully constructed flybridge that overlooks the crystal blue sea, an ideal spot to marvel at the rugged Croatian coastline. The performance of the 2 x 500 Cummins engines combined with the superb fiberglass hull shape provides an extremely smooth charter. Charter this luxury Jeanneau Prestige 46 Fly in Croatia and you will not be disappointed. At www.boatbookings.com, we are here to help you plan your perfect luxury yachting holiday. We have a team of highly skilled professionals who are extremely knowledgeable in their destinations and will be able to help you bring together the yacht, the crew and all the other aspects that make your charter special.

CANNES 2013 - La soirée de charité organisée à Cannes par l'amfAR réunit chaque année le gratin des people avec une vente aux enchères dont les profits servent à alimenter la fondation américaine contre le Sida. Le gala était mené comme à son habitude par Sharon Stone, maîtresse de cérémonie glamour. Nicole Kidman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Janet Jackson, les Duran Duran et Kylie Minogue... 900 convives dont de nombreuses personnalités et mécènes, ont participé à l'Eden Roc à cet événement de bienfaisance qui fêtait sa 20e édition en France, le plus important en Europe par les fonds récoltés et les célébrités mobilisées.Lots de peopleMore...

Heathrow Airport runway shut after British Airways flight makes emergency landing

Sony’s next generation video game console, the PlayStation 4, will arrive in the United Kingdom before the year’s end, an advert published today in the Metro newspaper has revealed. The company said it was aiming for a ‘holiday 2013’ launch window when it officially unveiled the system at a New York press conference back in February. Sony didn’t confirm, however, whether this would include a simultaneous international release, or a gradual roll-out for its most important territories; Japan, North America and Europe. A 2013 release in the United States is almost certain, but Europe is known to get a bit of raw deal when it comes to video games and the release of new systems. The PlayStation 3, for instance, was originally slated for a release in all three regions in November 2006; the PAL (European) version was delayed until the following March, however, due to a shortage of materials needed to build the Blue-ray drive. Missing Christmas would be a huge blow for gamers in the United Kingdom, but it seems Sony has learned from its mistakes and will be shooting for a near-simultaneous release with the PlayStation 4. The advert published today is also undoubtedly a response to the unveiling of the Xbox One, the new next-generation console from Microsoft, earlier this week.

Dutch authorities have made an arrest related to the recent scandal of mislabeled horse meat throughout Europe.

One of the things that we are planning for Raven 3.0 is the introducing of additional options. In addition to having RavenDB, we will also have RavenFS, which is a replicated file system with an eye toward very large files. But that isn’t what I want to talk about today. Today I would like to talk about something that is currently just in my head. I don’t even have a proper name for it yet. Here is the deal, RavenDB is very good for data that you care about individually. Orders, customers, etc. You track, modify and work with each document independently. If you are writing a lot of data that isn’t really relevant on its own, but only as an aggregate, that is probably not a good use case for RavenDB. Examples for such things include logs, click streams, event tracking, etc. The trivial example would be any reality show, where you have a lot of users sending messages to vote for a particular candidate, and you don’t really care for the individual data points, only the aggregate. Other things might be to want to track how many items were sold in a particular period based on region, etc. The API that I had in mind would be something like: 1: foo.Write(new PurchaseMade { Region = "Asia", Product = "products/1", Amount = 23 } ); 2: foo.Write(new PurchaseMade { Region = "Europe", Product = "products/3", Amount = 3 } ); And then you can write map/reduce statements on them like this: 1: // map 2: from purchase in purchases 3: select new 4: { 5: purchase.Region, 6: purchase.Item, 7: purchase.Amount 8: } 9: 10: // reduce 11: from result in results 12: group result by new { result.Region, result.Item } 13: into g 14: select new 15: { 16: g.Key.Region, 17: g.Key.Item, 18: Amount = g.Sum(x=>x.Amount) 19: } Yes, this looks pretty much like you would have in RavenDB, but there are important distinctions: We don’t allow modifying writes, nor deleting them. Most of the operations are assumed to be made on the result of the map/reduce statements. The assumption is that you don’t really care for each data point. There is going to be a lot of those data points, and they are likely to be coming in at a relatively high rate. Thoughts?

PARIS -- Google gets France’s newest entrepreneurs to think big as they vie for the chance to get a head start.

News Aaron Birch 24 May 2013 - 09:14 EA has spilled the beans on FIFA 14's release, and has lifted the lid on special editions... Seen for the first time at the Xbox One launch, FIFA 14 is the next annual instalment of the world's favourite footy sim. This time the game will utilise EA's new Ignite engine, promising far more realism and better AI. Four editions have been announced for the game in the UK, with the first being the Standard Edition, which will include the game and four FUT gold packs (Adidas Bundle, Pro Boosters, Celebrations pack and Historic Club Kits). The Limited Edition pre-order pack (Exclusive to Game until August 1) will include the above, as well as one premium FUT gold pack per week for 24 weeks, and a collector's steelbook case (Game only exclusive). The Ultimate Edition will be a special pre-order only pack that's also available via Amazon.co.uk from May 23 and then Game from August 1 (pre-orders from Game will include the exclusive steelbock case). It'll include the same content as above. The final, premium Collector's Edition will feature all of the above, including the Game exclusive case if purchased from there, along with a Special Edition Adidas EA Sports glider ball. This pack is exclusive to Game too, but until September 26. FIFA 14 is set to arrive on September 27 in Europe for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, and on Xbox One and PS4 later. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here. FIFA 14