1.30pm BST
Mr Obama is going to Walmart.
The president is expected to visit a store in Mountain View, California, where he will speak about energy efficiency.
President Obama will stand to side by side with a company known for low wages, few benefits, unreliable hours, discrimination against women, violating workers rights and yes, environmental degradation.
Things have always been tight. After four years working at Wal-Mart in Mountain View, I am bringing home about $400 every two weeks (Id like to get more hours, but Im lucky if I work 32 hours a week). Thats not enough to pay for bills, gas and food. All I can afford to eat for lunch is a cup of coffee and a bag of potato chips. Ive always done everything possible to stretch paychecks and scrape by. Sometimes it means not getting enough to eat.
But then I got some bad news that made stretching my budget impossible.
12.29pm BST
Portugal's unemployment rate has fallen for the fourth successive quarter, while the government has been given a nod of approval from the Standard and Poor's rating agency.
Official data showed that the jobless rate was 15.1% in March, down from 17.5% a year earlier.
We think Portugal's real GDP will likely grow on average about 1.4% per year during 2014-2015, chiefly on the back of sustained export growth, after a 1.4%contraction in 2013. We also expect a gradual recovery in domestic demand asprivate sector hiring continues to recover.
11.53am BST
European leaders have declared the eurozone crisis over several times in recent months.
Today is the turn of the outgoing president of the European Commission, Jose´Manuel Barroso.
The existential crisis of the euro, I think we can say is solved now.
No complacency, some problems remain and we know the difficulties that exist mainly in social terms but the reality is that those observers, those analysts in Europe and outside who were predicting the Greek exit, they were predicting the implosion of the euro, they were completely wrong. They are the ones who have to apologise.
11.40am BST
Prices in Greece continue to fall at a steady pace, as wage cuts and unemployment take their toll.
Data from the Hellenic Statistics Agency showed that prices were down 1.6% in April 2014 compared to April 2013.
11.26am BST
Nick Clegg has said the government is not focusing on "wielding vetoes" to block the takeover of Astra Zeneca by US rival Pfizer. But the deputy prime minister wants to ensure that Pfizer's commitments to the UK are binding.
From what I've seen, it's not clear how the government would make those commitments binding, or how long they would last for.
We need to make sure @pfizer commitments are binding. Our focus is not to start wielding vetoes. @nick_clegg http://t.co/urK8tTHk62
Pharmaceutical is... a bit dog-eat-dog. Assurances, however well meaning, will change depending on circumstance. It will not be able to stick to assurances, however well meant.
11.13am BST
Howard Archer, chief economist for Europe at IHS Global Insight, has said the latest ONS data does little to dilute the view that the UK economy is doing well.
However, weak demand in the eurozone and strong imports into the UK are likely to cloud the picture.
The prospects currently look largely encouraging for manufacturers, with April survey evidence from the CBI and the purchasing managers robust. Much improved consumer confidence, higher employment, a robust housing market and improving consumer purchasing power should bolster demand for consumer goods.
Meanwhile, improving global growth should help UK manufacturers export orders as 2014 progresses, although the upside for export orders may well be constrained by domestic demand in the Eurozone improving only gradually. Furthermore, the strength of the pound could become an increasing problem for UK manufacturers. Manufacturers will also be helped by a number of developments in Marchs budget, including measures aimed at limiting energy bills and providing more export finance at cheaper borrowing rates.
10.57am BST
Tougher sanctions on Russia could damage German growth, according to a leaked report from the European Commission.
Light sanctions, such as blocking imports of Russian luxury goods like furs or expanding the list of political and business figures subject to travel bans, would slow German growth by 0.1 percentage points this year and next year, the Stern report said.But the worst-case scenario for the German economy would be prompted by a ban on imports of Russian oil and gas and Russian intermediate goods and a freeze on Russian financial assets and capital movements, according to the report.This would have a big impact on Germany's energy supplies, it said, estimating that Germany gets 46 percent of its gas and 37 percent of its oil from Russia and is even more dependent on it for supplies of certain raw materials like copper.
The full article (in German) can be read here
Mario Draghi, the ECBs president, said the outflows from Russia have been large enough over recent weeks to push up the euro exchange rate, complicating monetary policy for the ECB.
We had very significant outflows that have been estimated by some to be in the order of 160bn out of Russia, he said, without specifying where the information came from.
10.25am BST
Some useful charts on the manufacturing data, courtesy of Twitter users.
+1.4%: UK #manufacturing had its best 3 month period of growth since 2010 in Q1, and the best calendar qtr since 1999 pic.twitter.com/crDPCfgPYS
ONS manufacturing production charted against #PMI Output Index below. PR can be accessed here: http://t.co/HawPgvCjYI pic.twitter.com/amWd25UKOf
Good news on UK manufacturing output today. But the long-run chart is sobering. pic.twitter.com/pBrzKoKMad
10.07am BST
A very timely nugget of data is contained in the ONS's latest tranche of economic statistics.
The biggest contributor to growth in manufacturing came from pharmaceutical products, a fact that is bound to add to sceptics' armoury over the proposed takeover of the UK's second biggest drug company.
9.51am BST
The ONS has some good news for George Osborne, with data showing that factory output grew 1.4% in the first three months of 2014.
This is way above expectations and the best quarter since 1999.
This release of data estimates that production rose by 0.7% between Q4 2013 and Q1 2014 and the impact on the previously published Q1 2014 GDP estimate is minimal.
9.38am BST
Here is the rundown of the trade data just released by the Office for National Statistics.
9.33am BST
Breaking news: UK industrial output fell 0.1% in March; trade deficit in goods narrows.
9.23am BST
A former head of the Eurogroup has warned France to stop blaming the euro for its woes.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the centre-right candidate for European Commission, told Reuters that France had better fix its problems at home, before blaming the single currency.
I don't believe France is the sick man of Europe.
But I do caution against looking for the causes of what is partly the result of (its) own mistakes somewhere other than at home.
8.57am BST
Speaking of Astra-Zeneca, there is a great read in the FT by Martin Wolf, the paper's chief economics commentator.
The questions any normal person would ask are three. Would a takeover increase competition? Would it increase investment in life-transforming research? Would assurances given by the bidder about future production and research be credible? The answer to all is no.
Yet the merger is likely to go ahead, because the only people whose interests count are shareholders, whether they have owned their shares for 10 years or 10 seconds. AstraZeneca can be sold and bought like a sack of potatoes.
8.45am BST
Pfizer's £63bn bid for Astra-Zeneca has come under further attack, this time from the United States Senate.
Two leading Democrat Senators are trying to close a loophole that allows US firms to pay less tax by going abroad.
Ive long been concerned about inversions companies moving offshore on paper, for tax purposes, while the management and operations remain in the United States. Its become increasingly clear that a loophole in our tax laws allowing these inversions threatens to devastate federal tax receipts.
We have to close that loophole. I am talking to my colleagues about legislation to close the loophole, which I intend to introduce soon.
Carl intends to introduce bill to close corporate inversion tax loophole. Statement: http://t.co/l6N6fkj3ZU
8.36am BST
So no payday for the mad men of Omnicom and Publicis.
The proposed $35 billion (£20bn) mega merger between advertising giants, US Omnicom Group and French rival Publicis Groupe, has collapsed as the different cultures of the two firms proved impossible to reconcile.
There are a lot of complex issues we havent resolved. There are strong corporate cultures in both companies that delayed us for reaching an agreement. There was no clear finish line in sight and uncertainty is never a good thing when you are in the personal service business.
In the end it was a case of eyes bigger than tummy
Tax driven deals are made in hell, as Publicis-Omnicom proves | Tax Research UK http://t.co/txKrhvv30I
8.13am BST
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and the business world.
The great recession is over, according to a respected economic forecasting group, which says the ground lost since the 2008 financial crisis has almost all been recovered.
The British economy is very close to being bigger than it has ever been. Symbolically, that matters, and it comes out a time when growth is entrenched.
But as far as individuals are concerned what really matters is how rich we are - per capita GDP - and that's well below the level of 2008 and won't get back to its previous level for a couple of years.
In fact, real wages - take-home pay deflated by inflation - is about 6% lower than it was then and won't get back to its previous 2008 peak before, we reckon, another three or four years.
Industrial production is expected to show a decline of 0.2%, down from 0.9% in February, while manufacturing production is expected to slow to 0.3% from 1%. Construction output is expected to expand 0.6% in March and 7.1% year on year.
If these numbers come in any way positive it will add fuel to the belief that the economy is well on the way to recovering back to its GDP peaks, pre financial crisis.
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