This is how the EUR/USD looked like just minutes after the NFP Announcement.

As you can see, the bad data released by the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics caused the USD to drop and as a result the EUR/USD to move high up.

Our estimate for the EUR/USD is right at the moment and if nothing suprising will happen, should win by its Expiry Time. 

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As in every first Friday of the month, today there's the NFP announcement.

What is it? It checks the change in the number of employed people during the previous month, excluding the farming industry.

Job creation is an important leading indicator of consumer spending, which accounts for a majority of overall economic activity.

When? October 2th at 8:30am Eastern Time.

Trading Tip: If the actual number is higher than the forecast, you can expect the USD to rise.

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A gunman stalked onto an Oregon college campus on Thursday and opened fire, killing nine people and wounding seven before police shot him to death, authorities said, in yet another burst of U.S. gun violence that ranked as the deadliest this year.

The suspect, who witnesses say fired dozens of shots in a classroom full of screaming students, was slain in an exchange of gunfire with two police officers in Snyder Hall at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, ending the morning rampage.

The gunman was not publicly identified by local authorities. A law enforcement source named him as Chris Harper-Mercer. Other media said he was 26.

In a photo posted on a MySpace profile believed to be his, a young man with a shaved head and dark-rimmed eyeglasses is seen staring into the camera while holding a rifle.

CNN reported the suspect was armed with three handguns, a "long gun" and body armor. According to survivors, the gunman at one point ordered cowering students to stand up and state their religion before shooting them one by one.

Stacy Boylan, the father of an 18-year-old student who was wounded but survived by playing dead, told CNN his daughter recounted her professor being shot point blank as the assailant stormed into the classroom.

"He was able to stand there and start asking people one by one what their religion was," Boylan said, relating the ordeal as described by his daughter. "'Are you a Christian?' he would ask them. ... 'If you're a Christian, stand up. Good. Because you're a Christian, you're going to see God in just about one second,' and he shot and killed them. And he kept going down the line doing this to people."

Another student, Kortney Moore, 18, who was present in the writing class when the gunman entered and survived unhurt, gave a similar account to the local News Review newspaper.

Authorities offered no explanation for the gunman's actions.

"The law enforcement investigation into the shooter and into his motivations is ongoing," Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said at an afternoon news conference. He also said three of the wounded victims were hospitalized in critical condition.

Hanlin refused to name the gunman. "I will not give him the credit he probably sought via his horrific and cowardly act," he told reporters.

The massacre in Roseburg, a former timber town on the western edge of the Cascades some 260 miles (420 km) south of Portland, was the latest in a flurry of lethal U.S. mass shootings in recent years.

Thursday's was the deadliest this year, surpassing the nine killed in a gun battle between motorcycle gangs in Waco, Texas, in May, and the nine who died in the rampage of a gunman at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in June.

Not counting Thursday's incident, 293 mass shootings have been reported this year, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker website, a crowd-sourced database kept by anti-gun activists that logs events in which four or more people are shot.

The violence has fueled demands for more gun control in the United States, where ownership of firearms is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and better care for the mentally ill.

President Barack Obama, speaking just hours after the rampage, said the mass killings should move Americans to demand greater gun controls from elected officials.

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Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) Employment Change is a vital economic data released on the first Friday of every month. The combination of importance and earliness makes for hefty market impacts.

It's crucial data becuase Job creation is an important leading indicator of consumer spending, which accounts for a majority of overall economic activity. This announcment shows the change in the number of employed people during the previous month, excluding the farming industry.

The Announcement can make a big impact on trading markets, especially on the USD and EURO currencies in the FOREX (Foreign Exchange) market, and on Gold and Silver in the Commodities market.

Make sure to speak with our agents now in order to trade before the announcment. 

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Despite the worst three-month period for stocks since the third quarter of 2011, More than three dozen companies in the S&P 500 posted double-digit percentage gains during the third quarter.

Chipotle (CMG) was a market darling in the third quarter, gaining nearly 20%. Strong earnings in July helped. So did the return of its beloved carnitas to all its stores earlier this month.

Google (GOOGL, Tech30) also was up nearly 20% in the quarter, even as shares of rivals Apple (AAPL, Tech30) and Yahoo (YHOO, Tech30) fell. Google outperformed Facebook (FB, Tech30) too.

The company reported strong earnings in July, reassuring investors who had started to worry that its best days are behind it. Profits blew away forecasts, led by healthy growth at YouTube and Google's growing mobile ad operations.

Investors also cheered Google's creation of Alphabet -- a new organizational structure that should hopefully provide more clarity about Google's various non-core businesses, such as health care technology and driverless cars.

Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) avoided the market carnage as well, also ending the third quarter with a nearly 20% gain. Solid earnings (an actual profit!) was a big driver of the stock in the past three months.

Amazon's Prime Day event in July -- massive deals for the subscribers to its yearly service -- was also a success. Even though many people complained on social media about the types of products being sold, Amazon still reported huge sales from the promotion.

One share of Amazon costs more than $500. A Google share will put you back about $635. And you need at least seven Benjamins and a Hamilton to afford just one share of Chipotle. So the fact that these stocks thrived in the third quarter shows that investors aren't suffering from sticker shock. They'll gladly pay up for quality.

The biggest winners in the quarter were companies that announced they were being acquired in the past three months, such as utilities Teco (TE) and AGL Resources (GAS), Cablevision (CVC) and insurer Chubb (CB). Brewer Molson Coors (TAP) was also up sharply due to the wave of mergers and acquisitions ... albeit indirectly.

With Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) expected to soon launch a formal takeover of SABMille (SBMRY)r, investors are speculating that this could be good news for Molson Coors since it has a joint venture with SABMiller in the United States.

But there were plenty of well-known stocks not involved in deals that surged this summer too.

Want more proof that video games are big business? Activision Blizzard (ATVI, Tech30) gained more than 25% during the quarter. It has a monster of a hit with its new "Destiny: The Taken King" game.

Best Buy (BBY) continued to show that its turnaround is for real. The electronics retailer's stock benefited from new products from Apple and Samsung. Its stock was up 13% in the quarter.

Athletic apparel is immune to market volatility apparently. Both Nike (NKE) and smaller rival Under Armour (UA) soared during the third quarter thanks to strong earnings and sales.

Low oil prices gave a boost to several travel-related stocks. Southwest Airlines (LUV) and Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL) were each up more than 10%.

Tobacco giants Reynolds American (RAI) and Altria (MO) were also market winners in the third quarter. Steady sales growth, an increased presence in the lucrative e-cig market and big dividends were music to the ears of conservative investors shunning risk.

So there was money to be made even in this hard times, as long as you owned the right mix of stocks.

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The world's largest social networking website will let you use a short video as your Facebook profile picture.

The video clip can only be a few seconds long, and it will play on loop, similar to Vine (which is owned by rival Twitter). And in a sign of our smartphone-addicted times, you'll need to be on Facebook's mobile app for iOS or Android in order to use the feature.

Facebook has placed increasing importance on video lately. With muted, autoplaying video the social network has cracked the code to increasing their online video impressions—skyrocketing from one billion to four times that, according to News.com.au.

Last week, Facebook introduced 360-degree videos that let you spin around and control what you're looking at while a video clip plays. These changes are just the latest and most noticeable to come to Facebook's mobile app.

The company has actually continually improved its apps with less flashy, but still useful features. When friends have liked a post, for example, a slide-in transition shows who of your favorite people have liked or commented on the status.

Other updates can be seen when browsing video within Facebook — after tapping one video, a list of related videos appears underneath, for example.

With Facebook's overall greater emphasis on video across the site, Profile Videos could prove hugely popular. Facebook’s new Profile Video can be recorded within the iOS or Android app by tapping on the video camera icon on the bottom right of your picture, though still images will be supported.

Facebook's new feature comes at a time when other tech companies are increasingly looking to offer users the ability to upload short, looping moving images that are somewhere between still images and movies. Earlier this month at Apple’s fall event, for instance, the company introduced many new improvements included in the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. Among them were "Live Photos," a feature that records the moments before and after a photo is taken, then turns them into a moving image you can use on your iPhone's home screen and lock screen.

While Apple claimed that live photos will be shareable on Facebook, it's still unclear at the moment whether Facebook's new addition of moving profile images will let you upload iPhone Live Photos directly, in place of short movie clips.

Facebook already has over a billion users, over half of whom primarily access the site on mobile devices, but the company clearly does not want to stop there.

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The Model X is finally here.

Shares of Tesla (TSLA) were up a little less than 1% Wednesday morning, while the broader market rallied. The reviews of the Model X have been nothing short of spectacular. Tesla CEO Elon Musk should be pleased.

Chris Ziegler at The Verge wrote that driving the Model X in the so-called Ludicrous Mode left him with a "dumb grin on my face when I smash the accelerator." "My brain is basically unable to mathematically comprehend how a car of this width, height, and girth is able to hustle like that," he added.

Wired gushed that "Tesla's Model X Is Here, and It's as Awesome as We Hoped" -- adding that it's "gorgeous" and "futuristic." "The doors have sensors to detect nearby objects, which should keep them from striking objects or limbs that might be in the way. If that's not cool enough, the driver's-side door can open and close for the approaching driver without a single human touch."

And Greg Kumparak at TechCrunch wrote that "I was hoping I might walk away from my short test drive in Tesla's Model X without the desire to throw down $130,000 I don't have... Alas."

The unveiling of the oft-delayed Model X SUV comes at an interesting time for Tesla and the rest of the industry. Tesla's stock has held up relatively well during a rocky third quarter. Shares are actually up more than 10% this year.

Investors have largely shrugged off concerns about sluggish sales in China, the possibility that low gas prices will hurt demand for electric cars and a valuation that could be considered the equivalent of its vehicles' Insane Mode.

So will the Model X push Tesla's stock even higher?

Trip Chowdhry at Global Equities Research wrote in a report early Wednesday that "Tesla just killed every other manufacturer."

Chowdhry raved that Tesla has re-defined the SUV. He's predicting that Tesla could sell 89,000 vehicles overall in 2016 and report revenue of $9.11 billion. Those estimates are higher than Wall Street's consensus forecasts.

And Chowdhry's price target on Tesla's stock is $385 -- more than 50% higher than current levels. Amazingly enough, that price target is conservative compared to some of his fellow analysts. Stifel's James Albertine thinks Tesla could hit $400.

Albertine wrote in a report Wednesday that concerns about further delays to Model X production because of design issues now appear to be "overblown" and that he's also not too worried about the possibility that Model X sales will eat into Tesla's Model S sedan demand.

And then there's Tesla uber-bull Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley. Jonas has a price target of $465 for Tesla.

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Russia has conducted its first airstrike in Syria, near the city of Homs, a senior U.S. official confirmed. The Russians told the United States that they should not fly U.S. warplanes in Syria, but gave no geographical information about where they planned to strike. The senior official said U.S. missions are continuing as normal.

The upper house of the Russian parliament has given President Vladimir Putin approval to use the Russian air force in Syria, according to state media. The vote came after a request by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for military assistance in fighting ISIS, Ivanov said.

Four Russian Su-34 Fullback fighter jets are now at the Latakia air base in Syria, and more than 600 Russian troops are in place. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters Tuesday that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter directed his staff to "open lines of communication with Russia on de-confliction."

The timing of these discussions is to be worked out in the coming days. The purpose of the discussions is "to ensure the safety of coalition air crews," he said. Cook added that the two nations have common ground when it comes to fighting ISIS, also known as ISIL, with Carter making clear that "the goal should be to take the fight to ISIL and not to defend the Assad regime."

Russia continues to position itself to potentially launch airstrikes in Syria, but its movements suggest that its targets are something other than ISIS, according to U.S. officials.

"We see some very sophisticated air defenses going into those airfields. We see some very sophisticated air-to-air aircraft going into these airfields. I have not seen ISIL flying any airplanes that require SA-15s or SA-22s (Russian missiles). I have not seen ISIL flying any airplanes that require sophisticated air-to-air capabilities," Gen. Phillip Breedlove, NATO's supreme allied commander, said on Monday.

"I'm looking at the capabilities and the capacities that are being created and I determine from that what might be their intent. These very sophisticated air defense capabilities are not about ISIL. They're about something else," he concluded.

Separately, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work confirmed to the Senate on Tuesday that Russia has violated a missile treaty with the United States but indicated that the administration didn't plan to take any action at present.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, asked Work at a hearing whether he thought the Russians had breached the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty governing the elimination of medium-range missiles.

"We believe very strongly that they did," he responded. But he also said, "This is still in discussions and we have not decided on any particular action at this point," noting that the United States has been in contact with the Russians over the issue.

Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama were confrontational toward each other in their morning speeches, then met to discuss Syria and Ukraine later in the day. "We have clarity on their objectives," one senior administration official said after the meeting. "Their objectives are to go after ISIL and to support the government."

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Edward Snowden, the fugitive who exposed the mass-surveillance practices at the National Security Agency, is now on Twitter, and he already has more followers on the social network than the NSA.

His account, which has been verified by Twitter as authentic, isn't hard to find: It's @Snowden. His attorney, Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union, confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Snowden himself controls the account.

Snowden gained almost 300,000 followers in less than two hours after he tweeted his first message Tuesday morning. Soon after, he posted a cheeky swipe at his former employer, the NSA, whose account only has 76,000 followers. (The NSA is also the only Twitter account that Snowden follows.)

The NSA did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment about Snowden, a former contractor for the agency who has been granted asylum in Russia to avoid espionage and theft charges in the U.S. related to his 2013 leaks. But Twitter's interim chief executive, Jack Dorsey, responded to Snowden’s first tweet:

Dorsey's welcome is not an outlier. Although Snowden is officially a wanted man in the eyes of the U.S. Justice Department, his voice has been repeatedly amplified by America's most esteemed mass-media institutions.

After the Guardian and the Washington Post published a series of stories about NSA's surveillance practices based on Snowden's disclosures, judges awarded both outlets Pulitzer prizes.

After documentarian Laura Poitras created a film about Snowden's leaks, "Citizenfour," the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave her an Oscar for best documentary. Snowden's story will also be featured in a major Hollywood movie, "Snowden," starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and directed by Oliver Stone.

Twitter, one of Silicon Valley's most popular social-media companies, accommodated Snowden's wish to join Twitter by clearing out an old account that had claimed the @Snowden handle but had not tweeted for three years, according to The Intercept.

A Twitter spokesman did not immediately respond to an interview request from The Times seeking more information about the company's decision to give Snowden the blue "verified" checkmark given to public figures and celebrities.

Twitter's policies forbid users from using the service "for any unlawful purposes or in furtherance of illegal activities," which implies the company believes that Snowden using its service while avoiding prosecution doesn't constitute a crime. (U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning also has a verified Twitter account, which is reportedly remotely operated by supporters who relay Manning's messages from prison.)

Snowden himself noted that the government would likely be interested in his presence on Twitter with an allusion to Ft. Meade, Md., the home of the NSA.

Snowden's choice to join Twitter was also notable for security reasons, given that he has shown how the NSA's broad collection of Americans' personal information was made possible by cooperation with the tech and communications companies that often hold that information.

Twitter's terms of service note that the company may collect a user's "IP address, browser type, operating system, the referring web page, pages visited, location, your mobile carrier, device information (including device and application IDs), search terms, and cookie information."

In a recent interview with Fusion, Snowden noted that he was worried about joining social-media services for security reasons.

"Exploit codes [could be embedded] into the transactions I’m receiving from a legitimate service and compromise the security of my devices. I’ve been working for a long time on improving that and creating set-ups that are more robust and survivable when you do get owned," Snowden told Fusion, adding: "How do you limit the damage? How do you recover in the wake of a compromise? I’ve made a lot of strides in that and am looking forward to, hopefully, participating [on social networks] in a more open and active manner in the near future."

One of the tipping points appears to be a recent interview that Snowden conducted with celebrity astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

"I tried to find you on Twitter, and I couldn't find your handle ... you kind of need a Twitter handle, so like, @Snowden, maybe, is this something you might do?" Tyson asked Snowden.

"That sounds good, I think we gotta make it happen," Snowden replied, laughing. "You and I will be Twitter buds ... your followers will be the Internet, me and the NSA, it'll be great."

And sure enough, one of Snowden's first tweets was directed at Tyson, with a nod toward the recent discovery of water on Mars.

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Scientists have confirmed that liquid water flows on Mars. New research suggests the dark streaks that seasonally appear and fade away on the surface of Mars are caused by running, salty water.

"It took multiple spacecrafts over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know there is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet,” Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, said in a press release.

Scientists have long assumed that Mars holds water, based on things like photographs of river flows on the planet and data from rovers, but we've lacked any direct evidence until now. The new research was published today, September 28, in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The dark streaks, some of which reach over 100 meters long, were first noticed in 2010. They're called recurring slope lineae (RSL) and they only appear on slopes near the planet's equator during warm weather, and then fade away when temperatures drop. Now new images and data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show the streaks contain hydrated salts. Scientists already know these salts precipitate out of liquid water.

The data and images don't show the actual liquid water, but the streaks of salt wouldn't be there without some recent influx of water, Mary Beth Wilhelm of NASA's Ames Research Center, said during a press conference.

Mars is extremely cold: the average temperature is about minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit — but these salts are capable of lowering the freezing point of water enough to where liquid water could flow during Mars' warm season.

"The hydrated salts would lower the freezing point of a liquid brine, just as salt on roads here on Earth causes ice and snow to melt more rapidly," according to the NASA press release.

The paper doesn't speculate as to where the water is coming from though. The next step to figuring that out is to survey more of these streaks at the same high resolution, former NASA astronaut John Grunsfeld said during the press conference.

Some scientists suspect it's likely that microbial life exists under the surface of Mars, and this discovery is more support for that hypothesis. "We haven't been able to say whether life exists beyond the Earth, but following the water is a critical element of that," NASA's director of planetary science Jim Green said during the press conference.

Now at least we know the right spots to search for signs of life on Mars, he added. That said, these salty streaks only appear on very steep slopes and rocky terrain, so it will be difficult to investigate them up close.

NASA would need to create a specially designed rover capable of navigating the terrain, Grunsfeld said. There's also concerns about possibly contaminating the Martian water with Earth microbes if we sent a rover to collect samples.

We will send humans to Mars in the near future, and this is more evidence that the resources for humans to eventually live on the surface are already there, Grunsfeld said during the press conference.

"It seems that the more we study Mars, the more we learn how life could be supported and where there are resources to support life in the future," Meyer said in the press release.

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Russia and the United States agreed on Monday to look for a diplomatic end to the Syrian civil war but clashed over the central question of whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should retain power.

During a 90-minute meeting, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that their armed forces should hold talks to avoid coming into conflict in Syria after a Russian military buildup there over the last several weeks.

The United States, France and allied countries are bombing Islamic State militants, who have exploited power vacuums to seize parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq as part of a stated goal of creating an Islamic caliphate.

The reinforcement of the Russian military presence in the country, including the addition of tanks and warplanes, has brought fears of inadvertent or accidental clashes among the forces as well as U.S. questions about Moscow's main goal.

Speaking after his meeting with Obama, Putin told reporters Russia was pondering what more it could do to support Syrian government and Kurdish forces against Islamic State militants.

"We are mulling over what we would really do extra in order to support those who are in the battlefield, resisting and fighting with terrorists, ISIS (Islamic State) first of all," Putin said, ruling out deploying Russian ground troops.

"There is (an) opportunity to work on joint problems together," Putin said of his talks with Obama, which a U.S. official described as "businesslike."

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters after the meeting: "The Russians certainly understood the importance of there being a political resolution to the conflict in Syria, and there being a process that pursues a political resolution."

U.S.-Russian ties have been deeply strained by Moscow's March 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its support of pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.

Earlier in the day, relations between the two leaders appeared frosty - they clinked glasses at a lunch, but Obama had a piercing look as Putin smiled - and they laid out starkly differing positions toward Assad in their addresses before the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering of world leaders.

Obama said he was willing to cooperate with Russia and Iran to try to end the four-year civil war in Syria, in which at least 200,000 people have died and millions have been driven from their homes. But he described Assad as its chief culprit.

In contrast, Putin said there was no alternative to cooperating with Assad's military to fight Islamic State militants, and called for the creation of a broader international anti-terrorist coalition. This appeal may compete with the coalition that the United States has assembled to fight Islamic State.

"The United States is prepared to work with any nation, including Russia and Iran, to resolve the conflict," Obama, who spoke before Putin, told the world body. "But we must recognize that there cannot be, after so much bloodshed, so much carnage, a return to the prewar status quo."

Obama did not explicitly call for Assad's ouster, and he suggested there could be a "managed transition" away from the Syrian president's rule, the latest sign that despite U.S. animus toward Assad it was willing to see him stay for some period of time.

Obama dismissed the argument that authoritarianism was the only way to combat groups such as Islamic State, saying: "In accordance with this logic, we should support tyrants like Bashar al-Assad, who drops barrel bombs to massacre innocent children, because the alternative is surely worse."

Putin differed, suggesting there was no option but to work with Assad, a longtime ally of Russia. "We think it is an enormous mistake to refuse to cooperate with the Syrian government and its armed forces who are valiantly fighting terrorism face-to-face," Putin said in his speech.

"We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad’s armed forces and (Kurdish) militia are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria," he said.

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Here are five things to know about the Russian economy:

1. Economic misery

Russia's economy will shrink by 3.4% this year, and by a further 1% next year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Ordinary Russians are feeling the pain. Prices have shot up by nearly 16% in the year to August, official data show, and around 22 million Russians are now living in poverty.

Falling real wages and high interest rates have hit domestic demand.

"Credit conditions in Russia have tightened substantially over the past six months or so, with households and small businesses being particularly hard hit," Liza Ermolenko, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a recent research note. "We don't expect a significant turnaround anytime soon," she added.

2. Low oil prices

Oil is Russia's biggest earner. Around 70% of its exports are energy-related, and 50% of government revenue comes directly from the oil sector.

Oil has dropped from well above $100 per barrel last summer to around $45 per barrel.

Analysts estimate Russia loses $2 billion for every dollar fall in the global oil price.

The low oil prices are also dragging down the ruble, which has dropped by nearly 20% against the dollar since July.

3. Sanctions pain

Western countries have slapped Russia with tough economic sanctions over Moscow's role in the crisis in Ukraine. The embargo has left Russian companies unable to raise money in Europe, blocked arms trade, and restricted access to oil drilling technology.

Russia has introduced a retaliatory ban on imports of food and agricultural products from the West.

"It's a shock to the confidence of the population, and the confidence of foreign investors, and therefore the investment for the economy," said Ernesto Ramirez Rigo, IMF mission chief for Russia, earlier this month.

The value of imports to Russia dropped by 39% in the first eight months of the year, while exports are down 30%.

4. No new friends

Moscow turned to China last year after being hit with sanctions by the West. But the plan for a deeper economic relationship is not working out.

China's slowdown is making it harder for Beijing to deliver on promises it made to Moscow, and Chinese investors are spooked by Russia's deep economic crisis. Bilateral trade has dropped by a third in 2015, and Chinese investment into Russia is down 25%.

5. It's not just oil and sanctions

Low oil and sanctions are hitting Russia hard, but the country has many other economic problems.

The IMF says Russia needs to get serious about deep economic reforms if it wants to return to growth. The country's aging population is starting to be unable to pay its welfare bills, and a large amount of bureaucratic red tape and corruption is hurting domestic investment and productivity, the IMF said.

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Separatists on Sunday won a clear majority of seats in Catalonia's parliament in an election that sets the region on a collision course with Spain's central government over independence.

"Catalans have voted yes to independence," acting regional government head Artur Mas told supporters, with secessionist parties securing 72 out of 135 seats in the powerful region of 7.5 million people that includes Barcelona.

The strong pro-independence showing dealt a blow to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, three months before a national election. His center-right government, which has opposed attempts to hold a referendum on secession, has called the separatist plan "a nonsense" and vowed to block it in court.

Spain's constitution does not allow any region to break away, so the prospect remains highly hypothetical.

The main secessionist group "Junts pel Si" (Together for Yes) won 62 seats, while the smaller leftist CUP party got another 10, according to official results. They jointly obtained 47.8 percent of the vote in a record turnout of 78 percent, a big boost to an independence campaign that has been losing support over the last two years.

Both had said before the vote that such a result would allow them to unilaterally declare independence within 18 months, under a plan that would see the new Catalan authorities approving their own constitution and building institutions like an army, central bank and judicial system.

Addressing supporters of Junts pel Si in central Barcelona, Mas said a "democratic mandate" now existed to move forward with independence.

The vote in Catalonia, Spain's second-most populous region, is widely expected to influence the course of the Spanish general election in December.

Spain's two dominant parties - the ruling People's Party and the opposition Socialists - lost tens of thousands of votes compared with the last election in 2012, boding ill for their national ambitions, although the PP suffered a much deeper setback than its rival.

"Many have voted for Junts pel Si even if they don't favor secession because they saw the vote as a blank cartridge... and a way to gain a stronger position ahead of a negotiation," said Jose Pablo Ferrandiz from polling firm Metroscopia.

Opinion polls show a majority of Catalans would like to remain within Spain if the region were offered a more favorable tax regime and laws that better protect language and culture.

While investors do not see secession as an immediate material risk, financial markets may react negatively on Monday. The gap between Spanish five-year bond yields and the higher yields on the Catalan equivalents has been hovering near its widest point in two years in the run-up to the vote.

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German prosecutors launched an investigation on Monday into former Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) boss Martin Winterkorn over the rigging of vehicle emissions tests, as the carmaker suspended three top engineers in an attempt to tackle the crisis.

The investigation into Winterkorn, who quit on Wednesday after almost nine years at the helm of Europe's largest carmaker, is into "allegations of fraud in the sale of cars with manipulated emissions data," the prosecutor's office said.

Volkswagen, which has admitted to cheating diesel emissions tests in the United States, is under huge pressure to get to grips with the biggest business scandal in its 78-year history.

It named company veteran Matthias Mueller on Friday as chief executive and agreed to appoint a U.S. law firm to conduct a full investigation.

Sources familiar with the matter said on Monday it had also suspended the heads of research and development at its core VW brand, luxury division Audi and sports car maker Porsche.

But the crisis shows no sign of dying down.

Two German newspapers said on Sunday Volkswagen's own staff and one of its suppliers had warned years ago about the illegal use of so-called "defeat devices" to detect when a car was being tested and alter the running of its diesel engine to conceal their emissions of toxic nitrogen oxides.

Environmental campaign group Transport & Environment (T&E) published new data on Monday showing that some new Mercedes, BMW and Peugeot cars use 50 percent more fuel than laboratory tests show, saying this was evidence of a wider industry problem.

T&E, which works closely with the European Commission, said its data did not prove other firms were using defeat devices. But it said the gap between lab results and road performance had grown to such an extent for emissions of both carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides that further investigation was needed to discover what carmakers were doing to mask emissions.

"The Volkswagen scandal was just the tip of the iceberg," said Greg Archer, clean vehicles manager at T&E, adding the gap between lab tests and real-world performance cost a typical driver 450 euros ($504) per year.

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This weekend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley. Google, Facebook, and Tesla were among those jostling for the Asian premier's attention, and a bevy of new announcements have followed — underscoring the growing importance of the Indian market to the American tech titans.

Of course, there have been efforts underway to tap into India's 1.25-billion-plus citizens (and other developing economies) by tech companies for years now. One of the most high-profile is Internet.org, a cross-company initiative led by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. It aims to bring cheap internet to emerging markets.

The reasoning behind this push is obvious: Every new internet user is a new potential customer. Connecting the unconnected is "not all altruism," Zuckerberg said over the weekend (in relation to project to bring internet to refugee camps). "We all benefit when we are more connected." 

Modi's visit to California this weekend comes hot on the heels of a trip by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. But relationships between American companies and China can be strained by the latter's authoritarian policies — Google does not current operate in mainland China.

In contrast, the New York Times reported, Modi "was on a charm offensive during his own American tour." At a town hall event held with Facebook, the Prime Minister teared up as he discussed his mother. Zuckerberg also shared details of his own spiritual journey to India at the urging of Steve Jobs.

While in Silicon Valley, he also visited the offices of Google and attended a dinner with the likes of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and 350 other business leaders. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, visited Modi at his hotel, Reuters reports.

We're now seeing a bevy of announcements from tech companies attempting to capitalize of this visit. Google, for example, says it will install Wi-Fi in 400 train stations across the country. More ambitiously, Microsoft plans to bring cheap broadband internet to 500,000 villages across the country.

There are still hurdles to overcome, however — Along with basic connectivity, the language barrier being a key one.

Only one in six Indians knows enough English to surf the web in the language. But there are few web pages in Hindi or India’s 21 other official languages. “There are more web pages in Estonian than in Hindi,” Mr. Menon said.

Still, India has vast potential — an untapped well of hundreds of millions of new internet users. American tech companies are taking note.

"(India) has moved on from scriptures to satellites," Modi said this weekend, according to Reuters. "The world has started to believe that the twenty-first century belongs to India."

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Pope Francis goes to the United Nations on Friday to address global leaders on the need to help refugees fleeing wars and plea for greater attention to the world's poor and downtrodden.

The pope arrived in New York on Thursday night from Washington after urging Congress to help heal many of the nation's divisive wounds such as the current heated political battle over immigration.

A brass band from a Catholic high school greeted his plane with the classic tune "New York, New York," and the pope accepted flowers from the crowd of about 200 at the airport.

Apart from addressing the General Assembly, he will also lead an inter-religious prayer service at the site where al Qaeda militants brought down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people.

He will also visit a Catholic elementary school in Harlem whose students are mostly immigrants or refugees, parade through Central Park, and say Mass in New York's famed Madison Square Garden.

Two years into his papacy, Francis has won the admiration of many in the United States, with liberals captivated by his focus on meeting the needs of the poor and addressing the excesses of capitalism, while some conservatives have expressed dismay that he has given less emphasis to the Roman Catholic Church's longstanding opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

The 78-year-old leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics offered a hint of the issues he would address at the UN's 70th anniversary in a wide-ranging speech to Congress on Thursday.

"Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion," Francis said. "Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War. This presents us with great challenges and many hard decisions."

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing years of fighting in the Middle East have attempted to cross into Europe this year, raising tensions within the European Union as member states argue about their obligations to harbor newcomers.

The pope early this month called on every European parish to take in a refugee family, a move that could provide shelter for tens of thousands of families.

The pope's arrival in New York on Thursday resulted in a heavier security presence throughout midtown Manhattan at a time when police are normally out in force for the United Nations General Assembly, which brings dozens of world leaders to the city.

The New York Police Department warned that it expected to set up some 37 miles (60 km) of barriers along roadways during Francis' visit. He is the third pope to visit New York City in the last 20 years.

The city's transit agency urged commuters not to drive into Manhattan on Friday and one company advertised $95 cross-town helicopter rides for people hoping to escape the resulting gridlock.

Juanita Jara, a 58-year-old nanny, said she would be among the crowd at the Madison Square Garden Mass and that she hoped Francis would continue his message of support for immigrants a day after he urged Congress to avoid an attitude of "hostility" to newcomers.

"I am a citizen, but a lot of people suffer separation from the family. I, for a long time, suffered that," said Jara, who emigrated from Paraguay a quarter-century ago. "I hope he pushes that."

The pope is also expected to repeat his plea for governments to take action to stem climate change, a call he made most prominently in "Laudato Si" the first papal encyclical dedicated to the environment, which was published in July.

That document has proven controversial in U.S. politics. Republicans, who in recent decades have embraced popes for their public opposition to abortion and gay marriage, criticizing the paper.

The pope will conclude his U.S. visit on Sunday with an open-air Mass in Philadelphia for 1.5 million people.

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Can Volkswagen survive the diesel emissions cheating scandal? Probably. Will its stock ever get back to where it was before? That's another story.

Shares of Volkswagen have plunged nearly 30% since the news of the automaker's Clean Air Act violations first surfaced last Friday. The stock is now more than 50% below the 52-week high that it hit in March.

The departure of CEO Martin Winterkorn on Wednesday is helping VW in the short-term. The stock has rebounded from the 52-week low it hit Tuesday. But one brand reputation expert said that VW has to act quickly to find new leadership.

"This is a mess. The CEO's resignation makes it more of a mess because it's a rudderless ship," said Richard Torrenzano, CEO of the Torrenzano Group, a firm specializing in crisis management for corporations.

It's important to remember that Volkswagen was already in trouble before the term "defeat device" started trending on Google and social media.

There was tension brewing between former VW chairman Ferdinand Piech and Winterkorn ealier this year. (Piech resigned in April.)

Excitement about VW's China business has also quickly turned into apprehension. VW car sales in China helped it surpass Toyota (TM) to become the biggest automaker in terms of global auto sales in the first half of the year.

But China is now the financial equivalent of one of George Carlin's dirty words. China's stock market mess and economic slowdown started to take its toll on the stock over the summer.

So what now? It's hard to imagine how VW can quickly recover. On Wednesday, credit ratings agency Fitch warned that it may downgrade Volkwsagen's debt due to the scandal.

Fitch said its biggest concerns were the "reputational damage" to the VW brand, a likely hit to the company's profits and that the company's corporate governance is weaker than its main rivals.

It's also unclear just how much the emissions scandal will cost VW. The potential of 11 million vehicles worldwide will be ridiculously expensive. And the lawsuits against VW are predictably starting to pile up.

JPMorgan analyst Jose Asumendi downgraded VW's stock to neutral on Tuesday. He warned in his report that it's possible VW's liabilities associated with the scandal could be as high as 40 billion euro ($45 billion) -- although he noted that's the most pessimistic forecast.

Still, a quick look at some other companies that have had to deal with big scandals (including two other major automakers) in the past few years shows that it's possible to rebound. It will just take some time.

GM's (GM) stock is still below the level it was trading at last February before it issued its first recall tied to faulty ignition switches -- although shares have been highly volatile in the past few months along with the broader market.

The stock peaked at $39 this March -- which is actually 20% above where it was trading before GM's recall problems began. So you could argue that GM has recovered from the worst of that scandal already.

Toyota's stock tumbled shortly after it started recalling cars in November 2009 due to a problem with unintended acceleration from sticky gas pedals. But shares were back at pre-November 2009 levels by early 2011 .

And it's worth noting that people actually died because of the problems in GM and Toyota vehicles. VW's scandal essentially amounts to trying to get one over on regulators. There are no safety concerns as of yet with its diesel engines.

Other scandal stocks outside of the auto industry have bounced back too. There were a lot of people who thought BP (BP) would never recover after the Deepwater explosion in the Gulf Of Mexico that killed 11 workers and led to a massive oil spill.

But BP eventually climbed back to its pre-Deepwater levels by June 2014. Of course, oil prices have since collapsed. And so has BP's stock again.

Finally, Goldman Sachs (GS) only needed a few months to recover from the hit its stock took in April 2010 after the SEC accused it of fraud for how it sold and marketed supbrime mortgage securities.

So VW is not necessarily doomed. But it needs to act swiftly and decisively. GM CEO Mary Barra, for example, has won praise for taking responsibility early on in last year's recall crisis. VW needs a new leader to do the same.

"How can VW polish themselves off and move on? It's not a simple matter," Torrenzano said. "They need a strategy to move through this carefully. It's a matter of credibility. Cheating is a terrible sin."

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this happens once in a... maybe never - Facebook is down 

It's on — again.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Wednesday he won’t be appearing on Fox News Channel any more because the “fair and balanced” network isn’t fair and balanced with him.

“@FoxNews has been treating me very unfairly & I have therefore decided that I won’t be doing any more Fox shows for the foreseeable future,” Trump tweeted.

The bombastic billionaire, who for weeks blasted the network for its treatment of him during the first GOP debate in August before agreeing to a truce, has in recent days escalated the feud.

On Tuesday evening, Trump again took aim at Megyn Kelly, the Fox anchor who moderated the first GOP debate and questioned him about his treatment of women.

“Do you ever notice that lightweight @megynkelly constantly goes after me but when I hit back it is totally sexist. She is highly overrated!” he tweeted.

Fox and Trump have been on shaky ground since the Aug. 6 debate, when Kelly asked the mogul pointed questions about his personal insults against women.

Afterward, Trump said Kelly had “blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever,” during the debate, a meanspirited barb that many assumed was a reference to her menstrual cycle.

Later Wednesday, Trump, who has been blasted for his disparaging remarks about minorities, touted his popularity among black voters.

Speaking at a black business conference in South Carolina, Trump cited a poll from SurveyUSA that showed him getting 25% of the black vote against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

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IBM is adding new smarts to its Watson artificial intelligence system, including the ability to scour photos on social networks to see what you've been up to.

Watson began life as a hardware system built to win the TV quiz show Jeopardy, but it’s evolved into more than a dozen cloud services that developers can use to add cognitive capabilities to applications.

IBM says there are now more than 100 commercial applications making use of Watson, and at an event in San Francisco Thursday it's showing off new computing services to encourage more developers to get on board.

The services are offered in the form of APIs (application programming interfaces) that are accessed via IBM’s Bluemix cloud development platform. Companies that use them in commercial applications pay IBM a share of revenue, while businesses that use them internally pay by the number of API calls they make.

The new services include Visual Insights, which analyzes images and videos posted to services like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, then looks for patterns and trends in what people have been posting.

The stock might fluctuate a lot today due to the news.

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