Electrocomponents' shares were down 3.8 percent at 278.44pence on the London Stock Exchange at 1158 GMT after hitting alow of 271.

UBS analysts cut their price target on the stock to 315pence from 320, mainly due to higher costs related to thecompany's marketing and organisational efforts to win marketshare from smaller competitors around the world.

However, Electrocomponents said sales trends so far in Mayhave improved compared to April.

"What comes into play in the next year is (foreign exchangerates)" Peel Hunt analyst Henry Carver told Reuters. "There isnow a fairly chunky headwind, costs are going up, which is goingto impact the profit margin," he said.

However, Chief Financial Officer Simon Boddie told Reutersthat the strong pound would have a small impact on profit forthe year ending March 2015.

Electrocomponents gets about 70 percent of group revenuefrom outside the UK.

The company said on Thursday its full-year headline pretaxprofit rose 7.4 percent to 101.1 million pounds ($170.6 million)in the year ended March 31, helped mainly by demand in Europeand North America.

Revenue rose 2.1 percent to 1.27 billion pounds.

Electrocomponents - which distributes 500,000 products,sourced from over 2,500 suppliers - said underlying sales in theUK declined 1.8 percent.

" ... We have been surprised that it has not done a bitbetter in the UK, hence we have changed some of the managementthere", Chief Executive Ian Mason told Reuters.

The management changes were implemented in the second halfof last year, the company said.

Electrocomponents, which says it typically supplies electronics design engineers, machine and panel builders andmaintenance engineers, said underlying international sales rose3.8 percent to 898.8 million pounds.

Underlying sales include the impact of foreign exchangerates and the number of trading days.

Electrocomponents, whose brands include RS Components andAllied Electronics, said underlying sales in continental Europeincreased 4.1 percent in the year, while North American salesrose 4.2 percent. Sales in the Asia Pacific region rose 2.1percent.

($1 = 0.5925 British Pounds) (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bangalore; Editing byGopakumar Warrier and Ted Kerr)

PR Newswire

PARAMUS, N.J., Oct. 14, 2014

PARAMUS, N.J., Oct. 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) today announced a series of live webinars and local events that will present best practices and use cases to help organizations improve operational efficiency in their contact center and their back office through call handle time reduction, improved productivity, more efficient scheduling and more.

Leading analysts from Aberdeen, Current Analysis, Opus Research and Ovum, as well as NICE customers and experts will discuss the latest industry trends and technologies to help companies achieve their business results.

These informative sessions will address various roles within the contact center and back office by:

Join our webinar series to learn how you can get closer to your customers with NICE Contact Center and Back Office solutions.

October 15

Workforce Management Scheduling in the Back Office

October 16

Recording for Regulatory Compliance

October 23

Catalyst360°, an Optum company, Builds Retention and Sales ROI with Interaction Analytics

October 29

Aberdeen Shares Secrets for Improved Productivity in Your Back Office

October 30

Current Analysis presents: Capturing the Voice of the Customer with Speech Analytics

November 5

Quality Management: The Good the Better and the Best

November 6

Real-Time Fraud and Authentication: The Truth is in the Moment

November 12

Keith Dawson from Ovum: Cross-pollination of Back Office Best Practices

November 13

Automating Business Processes at IKEA

November 20

Reducing TCO in the Contact Center

December 4

Stopping bad guys in real time with Dan Miller from Opus Research

December 18

Fraud and Authentication Roundtable: A panel discussion by industry experts

NICE will also be hosting a three-city road show in North America together with its customers. The event will reveal how to unleash the power of understanding interactions in real time to change the landscape of customer insights and improve the customer journey. The locations and dates for the road show are as follows:

Join our road show at a location near you by registering here.

October 14

Minneapolis, MN – with eBay Enterprise

October 16

Montreal, Canada – with AIMIA, Desjardins

November 6

Orlando, FL – with eBay Enterprise, Ricoh

About NICE Systems

NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) is the worldwide leading provider of software solutions that enable organizations to take the next best action in order to improve customer experience and business results, ensure compliance, fight financial crime, and safeguard people and assets. NICE's solutions empower organizations to capture, analyze, and apply, in real time, insights from both structured and unstructured Big Data. This data comes from multiple sources, including phone calls, mobile apps, emails, chat, social media, video, and transactions. NICE solutions are used by over 25,000 organizations in more than 150 countries, including over 80 of the Fortune 100 companies. www.nice.com.

Corporate Media Contact Erik Snider, +1 877 245 7448, erik.snider@nice.com

Investors Marty Cohen, +1 212 574 3635, ir@nice.com, ET Yisca Erez +972 9 775 3798, ir@nice.com, CET

Trademark Note: NICE and the NICE logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of NICE Systems. All other marks are trademarks of their respective owners. For a full list of NICE Systems' marks, please see: www.nice.com/nice-trademarks.

Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations of the management of NICE-Systems Ltd. (the Company) only, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results or performance of the Company to differ materially from those described herein, including but not limited to the impact of the global economic environment on the Company's customer base (particularly financial services firms) and the resulting uncertainties; changes in technology and market requirements; decline in demand for the Company's products; inability to timely develop and introduce new technologies, products and applications; difficulties or delays in absorbing and integrating acquired operations, products, technologies and personnel; loss of market share; pressure on pricing resulting from competition; and inability to maintain certain marketing and distribution arrangements. For a more detailed description of the risk factors and uncertainties affecting the company, refer to the Company's reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Annual Report on Form 20-F. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise them, except as required by law.

SOURCE NICE Systems

Pratt, part of United Technologies Corp, developed ageared turbofan that relies on a gearbox and lets the front fanoperate at a different speed than the rest of the engine, whileon GE's traditionally configured engines the fans run at thesame speed.

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference, GE ChiefTechnology Officer Mark Little said the company had "considereda geared approach ... and we chose very consciously not to takethat approach."

"Some other application someday, maybe, but not for thisone," Little said at the conference in Dana Point, California,that was broadcast over the Internet.

Through its joint venture called CFM with France's Safran, GE is competing against Pratt for airline and othercustomers that choose Airbus' new A320neo single-aisleplane. Both engines promise significant fuel savings over oldermodels, and Airbus buyers can choose the Pratt or CFM engine.

CFM's LEAP, among other improvements, uses new materialsdesigned to reduce weight and add durability.

"We thought that the addition of the extra component wouldadd reliability and weight challenges, and durability challengesthat we could avoid by going the path we went," Little said.

"We like the bet that we've made," Little said.

In response to Little's comments, Pratt & Whitneyspokeswoman Sara Banda said: "We are confident in our PurePowerGeared Turbofan engine technology and this is not just us sayingthis," noting that in addition to Airbus, four other aircraftmakers have selected the GTF, including Embraer andBombardier Inc.

Pratt has completed more than 10,000 hours of testing forthe GTF engine family, Banda said in an email, after 20 years ofresearch and $1 billion invested into developing the engine.

Barry Eccleston, president of Airbus Americas Inc, told theReuters Aerospace and Defense summit last week that of A320neocustomers, so far about one-third have chosen the LEAP,one-third have selected the GTF, while one-third remainundecided.

Pratt has had a smaller presence among commercial engines inrecent years, so the GTF engine is its bid to return toprominence. By contrast, CFM has been the dominant engine on thenarrowbody planes, including capturing a major portion of thenew narrow-body market because it is the sole engine on BoeingCo's 737 MAX.

The geared engine architecture won a vote of confidence inFebruary, when Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc also said it waspursuing such an approach for its future engines.

Airbus has said the first A320neo flight, which will usePratt's GTF engine, is expected sometime this month. (Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

PR Newswire

NEW YORK, June 18, 2014

NEW YORK, June 18, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- New technologies and insights in antigen discovery, genomics and immunological monitoring offer tremendous potential that could be collectively leveraged to speed development of vaccines against major diseases, according to leading scientists who met across specializations to explore creation of a Human Vaccines Project and reported their conclusions in today's issue of Nature Immunology.

Vaccines are one of the greatest success stories in the history of public health but remain elusive for persistent global diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which together kill more than 3.5 million people a year and infect millions more, despite impressive advances in treatment and prevention. Previously successful vaccine development strategies don't work against a number of today's complex parasites, bacteria, viruses and cancers.

"A Human Vaccines Project focused on solving the major scientific problems impeding vaccine development could be transformative for efforts to help prevent these devastating infectious diseases as well as certain cancers," said Wayne C. Koff, Chief Scientific Officer of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and lead author of the report.

The 35 experts from industry, academia, government and nongovernmental organizations met Feb. 5-6 in La Jolla, California, and "concluded that the concept for a Human Vaccines Project was meritorious, timely and potentially transformative," the report stated. The group identified three major common challenges in vaccine research and development: an insufficient understanding of how to generate specific, potent, broad and durable immune responses in humans; an insufficient understanding of precise antigens required to produce desired protective immunity, and a need for a deeper appreciation of how best to optimize vaccine efficacy in newborns, the elderly and populations in the developing world.

They recommended that the Human Vaccines Project focus on mapping the human immune system into a "human immunome" to facilitate vaccine discovery, and on a comprehensive series of systematic human immunology-based clinical research studies with experimental vaccines aimed at solving the identified scientific challenges and overcoming the limited predictive powers of animal models.

"Creating an enabling environment for and implementing such trials, and ensuring close engagement with the vaccine industry and public sector research agencies, would be keys to the project's success," said report co-author Ian D. Gust, Professorial Fellow, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Melbourne, who chaired the meeting.

The February meeting was the first of three workshops to catalyze the Human Vaccines Project, with an initial focus on identifying key objectives to inform the project's scientific plan. The second workshop, to be held in New York City in July, will focus on organizational, management and financial questions to inform a business plan. The third workshop, projected for late 2014 or early 2015, will bring together key stakeholders and potential donors to review the scientific and business plans and prepare for a projected launch in 2015. The three initial workshops are funded by a grant to IAVI from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

"There was a very strong consensus that we now have the tools to radically change the paradigm for vaccine development and usher in a new era in disease prevention," said workshop participant M.K. Bhan, former Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.

"We are at a pivotal point in the history of biological and vaccine sciences, with an unprecedented opportunity to prevent some of humanity's worst diseases. A Human Vaccines Project has the potential to make that vision a reality," said report co-author Stanley Plotkin, Emeritus Professor of the University of Pennsylvania and Chairman of the Human Vaccines Project Steering Committee.

About IAVIThe International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) is a global not-for-profit organization whose mission is to ensure the development of safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world. Founded in 1996, IAVI works with private companies, academics, and civil society partners in 25 countries to research, design, and develop AIDS vaccine candidates. In addition, IAVI conducts policy analyses and serves as an advocate for the AIDS vaccine field. IAVI supports a comprehensive approach to addressing HIV and AIDS that balances the expansion and strengthening of existing HIV-prevention and treatment programs with targeted investments in the design and development of new tools to prevent HIV. IAVI is dedicated to ensuring that a future AIDS vaccine will be available and accessible to all who need it. IAVI's work is made possible by generous support from many donors including: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark; Irish Aid; the Ministry of Finance of Japan; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands; the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD); the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The full list of IAVI donors is available at www.iavi.org.

Media Inquiries

U.S. and GlobalBarbara RosenTel: +1 212 847 1056BRosen@iavi.org

AfricaLillian Mutengu Tel: +254 719 043000LMutengu@iavi.org

EuropeHester Kuipers Tel: +31 20 521 0343HKuipers@iavi.org

IndiaSmriti BhagiTel: +91 981 124 2140SBhagi@iavi.org

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20131210/DC30761LOGO

SOURCE International AIDS Vaccine Initiative

PR Newswire

LOS ANGELES, July 14, 2014

LOS ANGELES, July 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The top Los Angeles plastic surgeon at Plastic-Surgeon-LosAngeles.com offers an extensive selection of cosmetic procedures to help men and women start the summer season looking better than ever before. Surgical and non-surgical cosmetic procedures can help eliminate unwanted spots, bumps and bulges, trim waistlines and add attractive, youthful contours. Many options are available that can help people take control of their appearance and renew their self-confidence.

Surgical procedures are also available. The skilled Los Angeleseyelid surgery expert at Plastic-Surgeon-LosAngeles.com uses precise techniques to lift and rejuvenate the delicate skin around the eyes. Face lifts, nose jobs, brow lifts, breast lifts and breast augmentations are also available along with tummy tucks and liposuction to prepare for swimsuit season. The Los Angeles hair transplant expert at Plastic-Surgeon-LosAngeles.com offers hair transplant procedures that are known for their high success rates. Most people see significant improvement within a few months. Several procedures can be combined in some cases to achieve the desired results. Visit http://www.plastic-surgeon-losangeles.com for more information.

Non-surgical procedures can include laser resurfacing, Botox and injectable fillers. These procedures can be used alone or in conjunction with other processes. Laser resurfacing can be used to eliminate discolorations, soften the appearance of rough skin and smooth over pores while erasing many early signs of aging. Botox is an excellent option for deep expression lines while fillers can be used to soften fine lines and deep wrinkles and add fullness and youthful contours to different parts of the face, including the lips, cheeks and around the eyes. The Los Angeles plastic surgeon at Plastic-Surgeon-LosAngeles.com can help patients determine the right treatments for their goals.

Many people turn to cosmetic treatments to turn back the hands of time or to help them be the best version of themselves that they can be. The right treatments can help them reach those goals and feel more confident every step of the way. The team at Plastic-Surgeon-LosAngeles.com offers the personalized care and compassionate support that patients need and deserve as they determine the next best step for their appearance in a warm, inviting environment that wraps them in luxury throughout the treatment process.

Website: http://www.plastic-surgeon-losangeles.com

Press Release by http://www.avitalweb.com

SOURCE Plastic-Surgeon-LosAngeles.com