Bush-Blair talks disclosure agreed

AN agreement has been reached over disclosing sensitive documents detailing discussions between Tony Blair and George Bush.

Sir Jeremy Heywood, the UK Government's most senior civil servant, who was principal private secretary to Blair in 10 Downing Street in the run-up to the war, has agreed the principles of handing over information, which includes 25 notes from former the UK prime minister to the former US president and more than 130 records of conversations between the two.

Sir John Chilcot's inquiry completed public hearings in 2011, but publication of its report is understood to have been held back by negotiations over the publication of private communications.

Officials said a timing has still not been set for the date of publication.

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Ukrainian journo arrested in Pitt attack

A MAN arrested after rushing up and touching Brad Pitt on a Hollywood red carpet is a Ukrainian journalist with a history of getting too close to celebrities.

Los Angeles Police officer Sally Madera identified the suspect as Vitalii Sediuk who was jailed on suspicion of misdemeanour battery on Wednesday before the premiere of the movie "Maleficent" at the El Capitan Theatre.

After touching Pitt, Sediuk was wrestled away by security guards and led off in handcuffs.

Pitt kept greeting fans and walked into the theatre.

In February, the 25-year-old Sediuk was cited for trespassing after grabbing the microphone before Adele accepted an award at the Grammys. and last year, Will Smith slapped Sediuk after he tried to kiss him on a red carpet.

Sediuk is being held in lieu of $US20,000 ($A21,600) bail.

A man was jailed on suspicion of battery after rushing up and touching Brad Pitt on the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the movie "Maleficent," witnesses and police said, though Pitt was apparently unhurt and soon resumed signing autographs.

Witnesses saw the man from the fan area jump over a barrier onto the red carpet at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood and rush at Pitt, touching him briefly before security guards wrestled him back across the barrier.

Pitt kept greeting fans and walked into the theatre.

Pitt's longtime partner Angelina Jolie stars in "Maleficent," Disney's new live action spin on its animated classic "Sleeping Beauty."

Before the incident, Jolie told The Associated Press that the El Capitan is like a local theatre for herself, Pitt and their kids, who usually don't attend her premieres but did on Wednesday night.

"Well, oddly, we usually go to the El Capitan, that's where we take the kids. That's the closest theatre to us," Jolie said.

"This is the first time they were able to come to mommy's premiere."

The man got to Pitt despite security that was heavy for a movie premiere, with guards keeping a large gap between the stars and the crowd.

Email messages left for representatives for Pitt and Disney were not immediately returned.

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White men dominate at Google

IN a groundbreaking disclosure, Google revealed how very white and male its workforce is; just two per cent of its Googlers are black, three per cent are Hispanic, and 30 per cent are women.

The search giant said on Wednesday that the transparency about its workforce - the first disclosure of its kind in the largely white, male tech sector - is an important step toward change.

"Simply put, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity," Google Inc senior vice president Laszlo Bock wrote in a blog.

The numbers were compiled as part of a report that major US employers must file with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Companies are not required to make the information public.

The gender divide is based on the roughly 44,000 people Google employed throughout the world at the start of 2014.

The company didn't factor about 4000 workers at its Motorola Mobility division, which is being sold to China's Lenovo Group for $US2.9 billion ($A3.14 billion).

The racial data is limited to Google's roughly 26,600 workers in the US as of August 2013.

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg recently said the social networking company is headed toward disclosure as well, but it was important to share the data internally first.

Apple Inc., Twitter, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp. did not respond immediately to queries about possible plans to disclose data.

Bock said Google has been working to diversify, not just its offices, but in the broader tech sector.

Since 2010, the firm has given more than $US40 million to organisations working to bring computer science education to women and girls, he said.

The company also is working with historically black colleges and universities to elevate course work and attendance in computer science, he said.

"But we're the first to admit that Google is miles from where we want to be, and that being totally clear about the extent of the problem is a really important part of the solution," he said.

Earlier this year, the Rev Jesse Jackson launched a campaign to diversify Silicon Valley, asking to meet with leaders of several iconic technology companies about bringing black and Hispanics into their workforce and leadership.

Since then, he's been leading delegations to annual shareholder's meetings at firms including Google, Facebook, eBay Inc. and Hewlett-Packard, but on Wednesday he commended Google.

"It's a bold step in the right direction. We urge other companies to follow Google's lead," he said.

"Silicon Valley and the tech industry have demonstrated an ability to solve the most challenging and complex problems in the world. Inclusion is a complex problem - if we put our collective minds together, we can solve that too."

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Contracts to buy US homes on the rise

THE number of contracts signed to purchase homes in the US is on the rise, with more Americans sealing a deal in April than the prior month.

But the pace of buying is still weaker than last year, as higher prices and relatively tight supplies have limited sales.

The National Association of Realtors says its seasonally adjusted pending home sales index rose 0.4 per cent to 97.8 last month. The index remains 9.2 per cent below its level a year ago.

Pending sales are a barometre of future purchases.

A one- to two-month lag usually exists between a signed contract and a completed sale.

The gain in signed contracts partly reflects the slight decline in mortgage rates and the economic rebound from the brutal winter.

The number of signed contracts increased in the Northeast and Midwest month-to-month, more than offsetting declines in the West and South.

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US economy shrank 1pc in first quarter

THE US economy was battered even more than first suspected by the harsh winter, actually shrinking from January through March, marking the first retreat in three years, but economists are confident the downturn was temporary.

Gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of one per cent in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

That was worse than the government's initial estimate last month that GDP during the period grew by a slight 0.1 per cent.

The economy last posted a decline in the first three months of 2011 when it dropped 1.3 per cent.

This year's weakening reflected slower stockpiling by businesses, a cutback in business investment and a wider trade deficit.

Economists expect a robust rebound in the April-June quarter as the country shakes off the effects of a severe winter.

Dan Greenhaus, chief strategist at BTIG, called the drop in growth "backward looking".

"We knew that weather dramatically impacted growth in the first quarter and we fully expect a bounce back in the second quarter," he said in a note to clients.

Indeed, there are a number of recent signs pointing toward a strengthening economy.

The government released a separate report on Thursday that showed applications for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell by 27,000 last week to 300,000.

The result is nearly a seven-year low.

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that the big drop in unemployment benefit applications was more significant than the latest GDP figure because "it strongly supports the idea that the labour market conditions are improving markedly, despite the weak headline growth during the winter".

The report was the government's second look at first quarter GDP, the country's total output of goods and services.

The data primarily reflected a sharp slowdown in businesses stockpiling, which subtracted 1.6 percentage points from growth, a full percentage point more than the initial estimate.

The trade deficit was slightly larger than previously thought.

Business investment in structures fell at an annual rate of 7.5 per cent in the first quarter, also worse than the initial estimate.

The one per cent decline in the first quarter was only the second negative quarterly GDP reading since the current recovery began in June 2009.

In the fourth quarter, the overall economy had grown at an annual rate of 2.6 per cent.

While one definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of contraction in GDP, there is no concern that a negative reading in the first quarter is a sign the economy is about to topple into a downturn.

The widespread belief among analysts is that the weakness in the first quarter was based on a variety of temporary factors that will be quickly reversed once the weather warms up.

Many economists estimate that GDP will post a sizeable rebound to growth of around 3.8 per cent in the current April-June quarter, fuelled by pent-up demand.

Analysts are also optimistic that growth will remain above three per cent in the second half of this year, giving the economy the kind of momentum that has been lacking for much of the first five years of recovery from the country's worst recession since the 1930s.

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