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WASHINGTON • U.S. builders began work on more homes last month, evidence that the battered housing market is slowly healing.

The Commerce Department said today that builders broke ground at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717,000 homes in April from March. That’s 2.6 percent more than March’s total, which was revised higher. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments.

Building permits, a gauge of future construction, fell last month from a 3 ½ year high to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 715,000. But that was because of a 23 percent drop in the volatile apartment category. Permits for single-family homes rose almost 2 percent.

Even with the gains, the rate of construction and the level of permits requested remain roughly half the pace considered healthy. But the increase, along with rising builder confidence and stronger job growth, is a hopeful sign that the home market may finally be starting to recover nearly five years after the housing bubble burst.

Builders have grown more confident since last fall, in part because more people have expressed interest in buying a home. In May, builder optimism rose to the highest level in five years, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo builder sentiment index.

Homebuilders reported improving sales and higher traffic from prospective buyers, the survey showed. A gauge measuring confidence in sales over the next six months also rose to 34 from 31 guaranteed high risk personal loans.

Recent job gains have likely made it easier for more Americans to purchase a home. Employers have added 1 million jobs in the past five months. And unemployment has dropped a full percentage point since August, from 9.1 percent to 8.1 percent in April.

Mortgage rates, meanwhile, have fallen to record lows, making home-buying more affordable. Still, many would-be buyers are having difficulty qualifying for home loans or can’t afford larger down payments required by banks.

Though new homes represent just 20 percent of the overall home market, they have an outsize impact on the economy. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

There are some hurdles to a smooth recovery: Builders are struggling to compete with deeply discounted foreclosures and short sales — when lenders allow homes to be sold for less than what’s owed on the mortgage.

Another reason sales have fallen is that previously occupied homes have become a better deal than new homes. The median price of a new home is about 30 percent higher than the median price for a re-sale. That’s nearly twice the markup typical in a healthy housing market.

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Avon shares are plunging in premarket trading after Coty dropped its $10.7 billion takeover bid for the cosmetics company.

Coty Inc., a privately held rival, had raised its original offer last week by about 6.5 percent, but set a deadline of Monday for the New York company to accept the bid.

Avon asked for more time to consider the bid over the weekend, but it appears that Coty is having none of it. It slammed that door shut on the troubled company Monday and investors are following suite even before the markets open Tuesday in some heavy trading.

If the current prices hold, Avon shares will be worth less than when Coty made its original offer back in April.

Shares are down 14 percent to $18 in premarket trading.

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Avon says it’s considering a sweetened buyout offer of almost $10.7 billion from Coty Inc.

Avon says that it expects to respond to the new offer within a week. The offer was made in a letter on May 9.

Coty sweetened its 2-month-old offer by about 6.5 percent to $24.75 per share and demanded a response from Avon by Monday.

Coty indicated that Avon has said it wouldn’t review any bid until its brand new CEO, Sherilyn McCoy, finishes reviewing all of Avon’s operations instant payday loan.

Coty’s financing sources include Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., German holding company Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH, which controls Coty, and BOT Capital Partners.

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Google’s self-driving car got its license this week as the state of Nevada became the first in the nation to license the company’s vehicles.

And while a computer-driven car may seem unsettling, the technology represents a potential leap forward in auto safety.

More than 30,000 people are killed each year in crashes despite huge advances in auto safety. The overwhelming majority of those crashes are caused by human-driver error.

Computer driven cars could reduce traffic deaths by a very significant degree, said David Champion, head of auto testing at Consumer Reports, but only if all cars are computer-driven.

"I think if all the cars were self-driving, it would be a benefit," he said. "I think a mixture would be a bit chaotic."

That’s because humans are better at predicting the behavior of other humans than computers could ever be, he said.

"When I’m approaching an intersection, I look to see of the other driver is looking at me," said Champion. "If he’s looking somewhere else and inching forward, I’m going to lift off the gas."

For the foreseeable future, human "drivers" will continue to bear the ultimate responsibility even in Google’ (, Fortune 500)s self-driving cars. This means you won’t be able to lounge in the back seat and check email on your way to work. You’ll still have to sit in the driver’s seat and pay attention.

Self-driving cars, like Google’s, use sensors to watch cars, pedestrians and other obstacles. They combine a number of technologies that are already available on cars today — including GPS tracking, wheel motion sensors and radar — with additional technology and sophisticated software that allow the car to read street signs and signals and actually drive itself through traffic.

Google’s cars, modified Toyota Priuses, are still in the testing stages and aren’t available to the public. But some so-called "driver assistance" technologies are already helping to lower traffic deaths in cars you can buy now.

Electronic Stability Control which uses computers to help drivers maintain control during abrupt maneuvers, has been shown to reduce fatal crashes by as much as a third.

Cars of the future: They’re going to be tiny and weird

ESC is now required on all new cars but was first used, on a wide scale, on SUVs. That’s why, last year, statistics showed top-heavy SUVs to be less prone to roll over in real-world crashes than regular cars.

Beyond that, there are various other "driver assistance" technologies.

Blind spot alerts warn drivers of cars in adjacent lanes and forward collision alerts sound an alarm when a driver is closing in too quickly on a car ahead payday loans in one hour.

"We’ll start seeing more features that will migrate from just these alerts and warnings to taking a little more control," said John Capp, director of active safety technology at General Motors (, Fortune 500).

GM’s new Cadillac XTS, for instance, will brake automatically if a driver fails to respond to an imminent collision. Nissan’s () Infiniti division has a several models that provide slight braking to nudge a vehicle back into its lane if it begins to drift out.

Many luxury cars are now also available with "active cruise control" that allows a car driving at highway cruising speeds to automatically maintain a safe following distance behind the car ahead. In some models, these systems can work even in stop-and-go city traffic.

Systems like these could be helpful, said Champion, but also present the possibility of over-reliance or abuse.

"It all comes down to the person behind the wheel using the system," he said.

Sometimes these systems can cause confusion. For instance, some reports of unintended acceleration in Toyota cars were triggered by drivers failing to understand how an "active cruise control" system worked.

With these systems, drivers set the active cruise control to a certain speed. If there’s a slower car ahead, the cruise control will automatically slow the vehicle down to maintain a safe distance between the two cars. Once the slower car moves away, active cruise control will accelerate to the higher preset speed. This acceleration can be startling to drivers unfamiliar with the system.

There is at least some evidence, however, that "driver assistance technologies" do work. A recent study by the Highway Loss Data Institute, an insurance industry group, indicated that the forward collision avoidance system in the Volvo XC60 helped reduced accident claims by 27%. Volvo’s system warns the driver of an impending collision and applies the brakes if the driver takes no action.

One technology the Google car doesn’t utilize, but which would help make self-driving cars much more effective, Champion said, is vehicle-to-vehicle communication. So called V2V communication uses transmitters to send and receive signals that tell other cars where each car is, where it’s headed and how fast it’s moving. The devices can also communicate with transmitters along the road.

V2V is already in advanced stages of development by a consortium of automakers and the federal government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

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Francois Hollande, who defeated French President Nicolas Sarkozy to become the first Socialist in 17 years to control Europe

Swedish retail sales unexpectedly rose for a sixth month in March as lower interest rates and falling unemployment fueled consumer confidence.

Sales rose a monthly 0.2 percent and climbed an annual 4.5 percent, compared with 3.5 percent the previous month, Stockholm-based Statistics Sweden said today. The median estimate in a survey of six economists by Bloomberg was for a monthly drop of 0.3 percent and an annual gain of 3.4 percent.

WASHINGTON

The Bank of England

France’s foreign minister says an array of international sanctions targeting Syria’s repressive regime have depleted its financial reserves by half _ and Damascus is actively trying to evade them.

Alain Juppe called Tuesday for a solid international response to such “maneuvers” as he opened a Paris meeting of 57 countries to tighten sanctions against President Bashar Assad.

The actual size of Syria’s financial reserves isn’t known, but it was believed to be around $17 billion at the start of the uprising in March 2011. Juppe didn’t specify how much of Syria’s finances were impacted by sanctions, but said “our information” is that they have been cut in half.

Diplomats and finance ministry officials from the Arab world, the West and elsewhere were meeting in Paris to coordinate sanction measures against Assad’s repressive regime.

The Arab League and the European Union are among more than 50 participants who want to keep up pressure on Assad.

Juppe was set to kick off Tuesday’s closed-door talks in Paris under the “Friends of Syria” banner. But two Arab League nations _ Syrian neighbors Iraq and Lebanon _ were not attending.

Diplomats say a string of EU, U.S. and other sanctions are affecting Assad by curbing Syria’s ability to export oil.

Speaking at a separate meeting in Moscow, Syrian opposition members say they have sensed a shift in Russia’s stance on the conflict in their homeland and voiced hope Tuesday that Moscow will crank up pressure on Assad’s regime.

On a visit to Moscow, Haytham Manna, spokesman for the Arab Commission for Human Rights, said Russia has voiced support for democratic changes in Syria and believes the Syrians themselves should determine the country’s future.

“The representatives of the Russian government aren’t inclined to support the idea of preservation of the dictatorial regime,” Manna told a news conference. “They are talking about the need for continuing democratic changes, and it’s very important for us.”

Abdul-Aziz al-Kheir, a spokesman for the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria, said Russia’s position has been changing over the past two months and “particularly fast over the past two weeks payday loan.”

Members of the Syrian opposition said they hoped Russia will apply its power to persuade Assad to observe U.N. and Arab league envoy Kofi Annan’s cease-fire plan to end 13 months of violence in Syria.

“Russia has all the necessary levers to apply pressure on Assad’s government and help Annan’s mission,” Manna said.

Hassan Abdul-Azim, the head of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change who is leading the delegation, said Moscow’s support is essential for the success of Annan’s mission.

“That is the last chance to end the fratricidal massacre and create preconditions for the transfer to a democratic form of government,” he said.

Manna said that while the opposition was encouraged by the talks in Moscow, differences remain. Russia continues to be strongly critical of Assad opponents using force, Manna said, while the opposition views it as a legitimate response to the violence on the part of the regime.

He said that the opposition delegation also sought to assuage Russia’s concerns about the rise of Islamism in Syria and prospects of continuing violence in the country in case of regime change.

The opposition delegation is expected to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later Tuesday.

Lavrov has recently criticized Assad for dragging his feet on reforms and using excessive force. He and other Russian officials have strongly urged their old ally to observe Annan’s plan.

Russia, along with China, has twice shielded Assad’s regime from U.N. sanctions over its deadly crackdown on a popular uprising. But Moscow has strongly supported Annan’s cease-fire plan to end 13 months of violence and begin talks on Syria’s political future.

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner warned Congress against repeating last year