Quick Overview

• MoM German PPI rose a less than expected 0.4% in March and rose 6.2% YoY.

• Sweden's central bank Wednesday raised its interest rate to 1.75% from 1.50%. This is the sixth consecutive increase.

• The International Grains Council estimates grain stocks at a four-year low of 334m tonnes or 18.4% of consumption, down from 23% two seasons ago. Wheat has been paying attention to dry conditions in the US, the EU, Russia and China, and wet weather in northern America and Canada. India is the only top-five wheat producer with no weather problems. The council lowered world corn inventories by 8m tonnes, and expressed concerns about declining supplies of high-protein milling wheat.

• (Bloomberg) -- Sales of U.S. previously owned homes rose in March as a mounting supply of properties in or near foreclosure lured investors. Purchases increased 3.7 percent to a 5.1 million annual rate, exceeding the 5 million median forecast of economists.

• Half of federal agencies will be in the cloud within 12 months, according to an InformationWeek Government and InformationWeek Analytics survey.
  The Obama administration’s “cloud first” policy requires agencies to use cloud services where possible for new IT requirements. It’s an alternative to capital investment in systems and software, as agencies look to eliminate 800 data centers over the next four years in accordance with the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative.

• ENCODE (Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements), a massive database cataloging the human genome’s functional elements, including genes, RNA transcripts, and other products, has been created by an international team of researchers, with principal investigators at Penn State University and HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology.
  ENCODE is being made available as an open resource to the scientific community, classrooms, science writers, and the public.
  
  
• The DOE said:
  Crude oil stocks fell 2.3 million barrels
  Gasoline stocks fell 1.6 million
  Distillate stocks fell by 2.5 million barrels.
  
  
  
  
• British security researchers have figured out that iPhones keep track of where their owners go.  The data includes the phone's latitude and longitude and is timestamped to the second.
• (Reuters) - Babies exposed to pesticides before birth may have significantly lower intelligence scores by age 7 than children who were not exposed, three separate studies published on Thursday said.