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LONDON (Alliance News) - The FTSE 100 is up for a fifth consecutive day Tuesday amid a continuing global stock rally, with the London blue chip index helped by strong performances from the retailers and miners.

Retail stocks including Sports Direct International, Marks and Spencer, Debenhams and Dixons Retail are doing well after the British Retail Consortium said UK retail sales were up 5.4% in January, with same-store sales up 3.9%, the strongest increase since April 2011 and up sharply from the insipid 0.4% growth recorded in December.

The strong growth in January comes after major retailers had warned that they expected consumers to retreat again after a splurge in the couple of weeks around Christmas.

Precious metals miners were also doing well as gold prices continue to rally ahead of a highly anticipated appearance by Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen. Fresnillo and Randgold are both top gainers, up 2.8% and 2.6% respectively. The spot gold price is at a three-month high as the dollar has dropped ahead of the Yellen appearance before US lawmakers.

Yellen, in her first public speech since taking over from Ben Bernanke, is expected to offer clues about the direction of the central bank's massive bond buying plan. Her prepared testimony before Congress will be released at 1330 GMT, followed by a Q and A session later in the day.

The consensus among commentators is that the new Federal Reserve Chair will stick to the Fed's current programme of tapering monthly bond buying.

Commodities giant Glencore Xstrata is modestly higher after it increased production across the majority of its of assets in 2013. Copper production increased 26%, ferrochrome production increased 32%, while gold production rose 14%. Coal output was up a more modest 4% while output of zinc and lead fell.

The biggest faller among the few decliners on the FTSE 100 Tuesday was Barclays. The bank had seen its stock rise Monday after it pre-released its key profit figures, but the shares have fallen again Tuesday as it revealed that it is raising its bonus pot despite making slower progress on cost cutting than analysts had expected.

Barclays unveiled plans to cut 10,000 to 12,000 jobs as it tries to accelerate cost cutting, with about 820 senior management set to leave the bank. About 44 jobs will go at its investment bank.

Barclays said it is now targeting a higher leverage ratio of 3.5% by the end of 2015 after reaching its 3.0% target six months ahead of schedule.

There was better news for London's commuters after the 48-hour strike on London Underground that was due to start Tuesday evening was suspended after apparent progress in talks between the unions and London Underground.

However, Southern England is bracing for further flooding, after hundreds more people were evacuated from their homes and 1,600 troops were put on standby to help with flood defences.
Further heavy rainfall over the coming week is expected to worsen what has been one of Britain's wettest winters in years, with thousands of homes flooded and transport networks severely disrupted.

The Environment Agency on Tuesday had 16 severe flood warnings in place, 14 in Berkshire and Surrey, where the River Thames burst its banks, and two in Somerset, one of the counties worst-hit by the flooding.

In the US, several south-eastern US states have braced for another winter storm, less than two weeks after ice and snow paralyzed Atlanta and other cities. The storm will affect parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina through mid-week, the National Weather Service said. Atlanta declared a state of emergency and cancelled school on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In political news, Swiss scientists and university students could be the first to suffer from the tensions that the Swiss referendum vote to curb immigration has created with the EU, Switzerland's President Didier Burkhalter has said. Switzerland has been negotiating with Brussels about its participation in the EU's research programme Horizon2020 and its student exchange programme Erasmus+, but both projects are now in question, Burkhalter said.

Representatives from Taiwan and China have begun their highest-level official talks since the end of the civil war 65 years ago, media reports said. Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council minister Wang Yu-chi met his counterpart, China's Taiwan Affairs Office director Zhang Zhijun, in the city of Nanjing, China's official Xinhua news agency reported. Both sides are hoping to "normalize" relations.

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FTSE 100: up 0.8% at 6,646.40
FTSE 250: up 0.7% at 16,013.80
AIM ALL-SHARE: up 0.3% at 868.51
GBP-USD: 1.6466
EUR-USD: 1.3678
GOLD: USD1,284.60 an ounce
OIL (Brent): USD108.87 a barrel

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KEY UK CORPORATE NEWS:

FTSE 100: Royal Bank of Scotland has appointed Les Matheson as permanent chief executive of its UK Retail Banking division. Matheson has been acting head since September when he stepped in on an interim basis after former head Ross McEwan was promoted to lead the group. Babcock International Group said its bid pipeline has increased by GBP3.0 billion to GBP18.5 billion since the half-year end, making good on its promise at the time that "significant" long-term growth opportunities were being progressed. The engineering group said its higher bid pipeline, as well as significant opportunities it is still tracking, will be the key driver of organic growth over the next few years. Anglo American said headline earnings at its Kumba Iron Ore susidiary rose 4.6% in 2013 and it will contribute USD1.11 billion of cash to the parent, up from from USD1.04 billion. Anglo American reports full-year results on Friday. Vodafone is teaming up with money transfer and global payment services company MoneyGram International Inc to allow customers from around 200 countries to be able to transfer funds directly to M-Pesa mobile banking accounts. ITV, along with STV Group and UTV Media, has had the license for Channel 3 renewed for another 10 years. UK politicians have warned the consortium, including AMEC, that manages the clean-up of hazardous nuclear waste at the Sellafield Nuclear Reprocessing Site over the escalating cost of its operations. A committee of lawamkers said the consortium should be stripped of its contract at the site if it cannot get control over bills which have risen to over GBP70 billion.

FTSE 250: Kazakhmys has jumped after the National Bank of Kazakhstan effectively devalued its currency, the tenge. The central bank said Tuesday it would intervene in the forex market to support the tenge only at KZT185 to the US dollar, a 19% devaluation from Monday's rate. The company generates some 60% of its costs in the country, according to Liberum Capital. Thomas Cook Group reported a wider pretax loss for its fiscal first quarter as revenue declined. Halma is expecting to report a full year pretax profit of GBP139 million to GBP140 million as it saw continued revenue growth in all of its regions and sectors despite the increased strength of sterling. Dunelm Group first-half pretax profit was up 2.9% as revenues and margins increased, buoyed by new store openings and growth in online sales. However, like-for-like sales fell 0.9%. Hansteen Holdings has exchanged contracts to acquire a portfolio of 17 industrial estates across England and Wales for GBP42.3 million. Bellway reported further revenue growth as the UK housing market continued to recover, helped in part by the government's Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme, and maintained its guidance for an operating margin of over 15%. Student accommodation developer Unite Group has secured a new GBP124 million, fixed-rate 10-year debt facility with Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers Europe LLP, bringing an end to its recent refinancing programme that sought to cut the costs of its funding and diversify sources. Cable and Wireless Communications has reiterated its confidence for its full year result after it continued to trade in line with forecasts in its fiscal third quarter. The communications company said it had seen mobile revenue rise 4% in the quarter, boosted by strong subscriber growth in Jamaica.

AIM: African Copper has jumped after it said work completed during a planned shutdown at its Mowana Mine in November has led to higher grades and increasing production. Fitbug Holdings is up after it secured a GBP1.0 million loan from NW1 Investments Ltd to help it fund sales distribution arrangements for its KiK coaching system after a strong response to the product at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. WANdisco is also doing well after it launched Non-Stop HBase, a database for Big Data real-time transaction processing. The firm said it has applied its active-active replication technology to HBase, making it continuously available across multiple data centers, eliminating the single points of failure in HBase. Tricorn Group is a big decliner after the tube manipulation specialist said second-half revenues are expected to come in 15% lower than in the first-half as demand continues to lighten. Although it has been taking steps to restructure the business in order to reduce the impact of the lower revenue levels, the firm said that it anticipates full-year profit before tax will be materially below current market expectations. Sabien Technology Group is also down after its fiscal first-half pretax loss widened to GBP245,000, from a GBP67,000 loss a year earlier. Elektron Technology is down after net debt rose following a "disappointing" financial performance in the year to end-January. It said the disruption to production in Tunisia, restructuring and other exceptional costs led to an increased net debt of GBP8.2 million. Ashley House is another faller after it said it had submitted planning applications for three new development schemes and would meet market expectations for the year if they stick to the scheduled timetable. However, "further significant progress needs to be made by year-end on these schemes to meet our full year estimates", says WH Ireland analyst John Cummins

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AFTERNOON WATCHLIST: US Redbook Index, Janet Yellen Sppech, Japan Machinery Orders

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Wednesday's Key UK Corporate Events

Reckitt Benckiser Full Year Results
Tullow Oil Full Year Results
Telecity Group Full Year Results
WS Atkins Interim Management Statement
Avanti Communications Group Interim Results
Asia Resource Minerals Interim Management Statement
African Barrick Gold Preliminary Results
Town Centre Securities Interim Results
Hyder Consulting Interim Management Statement
Smurfitt Kappa Full Year Results
Manchester United Q2 Results

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Wednesday's Key Economic Events

02:00 China Trade Balance
06:00 Japan Machine Tool Orders
07:45 France Current Account
10:00 EU Industrial Production
10:30 UK Bank of England Quarterly Inflation Report
10:30 UK BOE's Governor Carney speech
12:00 US MBA Mortgage Applications
15:30 EU ECB President Draghi's Speech
15:30 US EIA Crude Oil Stocks change
19:00 US Monthly Budget Statement
23:50 Japan Domestic Corporate Goods Price Index

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By Steve McGrath; steve.mcgrath@alliancenews.com; @stevemcgrath1

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