LONDON (Reuters) - State-backed Lloyds Banking Group is cutting another 850 jobs to reduce costs, bringing the total number of jobs axed by the British bank since its 2008 bailout to around 35,000.

Lloyds, 39 percent owned by the British taxpayer, said on Thursday the reductions were part of the 15,000 job cuts it targeted in June 2011 in a plan to deliver annual savings of 1.5 billion pounds by 2014.

It has cut 2,340 roles so far this year.

Banks are looking to reduce costs to make up for slow revenue growth as the industry struggles with challenging economic conditions.

Lloyds, which currently employs around 104,000 people, said the jobs would go at its commercial banking, retail and other units.

The move will be partially offset by the creation of 275 new roles, the majority of which will be in Belfast, Northern Ireland and Pitreavie, Scotland, it said.

British trade union Unite attacked the cuts, saying Lloyds, HSBC and Barclays had shed a combined 5,500 staff since the beginning of 2013.

"The constant job cuts across the banking industry are bad for bank staff, do nothing to support customers and are bad for Britain's economy," it said.

Lloyds said it would only resort to compulsory redundancies as a last result and only a third of job reductions during 2012 had been through redundancies.

Lloyds paid a heavy price for its government engineered takeover of HBOS, requiring a 20-billion-pound state bailout.

(Reporting by Matt Scuffham; Editing by Steve Slater and Mark Potter)

LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) - Ferrari's Fernando Alonso needs to make the most of home advantage when Formula One's European season starts up in Barcelona on Sunday.

The Spaniard has ground to make up on Red Bull's triple champion Sebastian Vettel after four races in Asia and the Middle East.

"If I was to score our overall performance, I would only give it a six out of 10," Ferrari chief designer Nikolas Tombazis told the Ferrari website (www.ferrari.com) ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix.

"We are not yet quite where we want to be," he added. "In the first four grands prix we were not really able to fight for pole position and that is one of our main objectives at the moment."

The days when Alonso could count on the emotional boost of two home grands prix are gone.

The Spaniard won in Valencia last year, but that race in the indebted port city is off the 2013 calendar, and he needs to get back on top of the podium at the Circuit de Catalunya.

This time a year ago, Alonso arrived in Barcelona 10 points adrift of world champion Vettel in a battle that ultimately went down to the wire in the German's favour.

Now, despite Ferrari having a much more competitive car and Alonso winning in China, the gap between them is already 30 points and all the top teams are bringing new developments to the track now that they are back in Europe.

Alonso suffered a retirement in Malaysia in March, after losing his front wing when he tagged Vettel at the start, and finished only eighth in Bahrain last month when his rear wing DRS system failed to function.

That problem has been solved and Ferrari have updates to the bodywork, floor and wings.

"With any new component, the difficulty lies not so much in its development but in deciding whether or not it is working on track as well as we had hoped," said Tombazis.

"By Friday evening in Barcelona, our objective is to have a clear view on what we will take forward to use in the race."

MCLAREN HOPES

There are more questions than answers at this stage of the season and McLaren, regular title challengers who ended last year with the fastest car and started 2013 well off the pace, have plenty to deal with.

"I think returning to a circuit where we undertook two of the pre-season tests will give us a useful benchmark of our progress so far," said McLaren's 2009 champion Jenson Button in a preview of the race.

"I'm pragmatic about what we'll discover next weekend. I'm hopeful that it'll move us a step closer towards the destination."

Vettel has already won twice this season and his form in Bahrain looked ominous. Stopping that momentum is the big challenge.

Kimi Raikkonen, now second overall for Lotus and chasing his 22nd successive points finish this weekend, is 10 points behind and only too aware of what needs to be done.

"It's going to be hard to catch Sebastian if he keeps taking good results so we need to start taking more points from him," said the Finn.

"It's no secret that we want more speed from the car in qualifying. It's so tight up there at the front and we really need to be on the first two rows to fight for victories every time."

That is more than ever the case in Barcelona, where 18 of the last 22 winners have started on pole and only one driver - the now-retired Michael Schumacher - has ever won from anywhere other than the front row.

Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado won last year for Williams, the team's first grand prix success in nearly eight years, but lightning is unlikely to strike twice with the former world champions still chasing their first point of 2013.

"Following a good aero test last week at Idiada (in Spain) and a number of upgrades coming for this race, hopefully Barcelona can be the start of improved performance for us this year," said the team's Finnish rookie Valtteri Bottas. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ken Ferris)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Healthcare reform should be the signature Democratic achievement of President Barack Obama's presidency.

But with "Obamacare" five months from show time, Democrats are worried about whether enough Americans will sign up to make the sweeping healthcare overhaul a success - and what failure might mean for Congress heading into the 2016 presidential race.

Some of the law's main advocates fear that not enough of America's 49 million uninsured will know about health coverage offered in their own states. Even if they do, new insurance plans may not be attractive to young, healthy consumers needed to offset an expected influx of older and sicker patients.

Only a handful of states are beginning campaigns to promote the online health insurance marketplaces created by the law. Known as exchanges, the markets will offer private coverage at federally subsidized rates to individuals and families with low-to-moderate incomes, with enrollment set to begin October 1.

The federal government has kept quiet about its promotion plans, which are expected to begin in earnest over the summer.

While Obama and his administration say they are working nonstop on reform, analysts believe a poor performance could make the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a big enough campaign issue in 2014 to jeopardize Democratic control of the Senate - particularly if insurance costs rise sharply.

"There is reason to be very concerned about what's going to happen with young people. If their (insurance) premiums shoot up, I can tell you, that is going to wash into the United States Senate in a hurry," said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.

Some Democrats are frustrated about the lack of details surrounding administration plans to promote the exchanges.

Senator Max Baucus, a chief architect of the reform law, said federal outreach efforts deserve a failing grade so far and could be heading for a "huge train wreck." [ID:nL2N0DA1A1] He criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for the scant information her department has provided.

FUNDING EMBARGO

"Why in late April can't they show us any of what they've got planned? The rollout plan should already be in existence," an exasperated Democratic Senate aide said separately.

The law is expected to cover 15 million Americans next year through the exchanges and an expansion of Medicaid. The overall number is forecast to jump to 38 million by 2022.

Reform is facing challenges on several fronts. Big insurers appear wary of participating, raising questions about how competitive the exchanges will be. [ID:nL2N0DJ1MU] Businesses are mounting a new legal effort to stop the use of federal subsidies in exchanges run by Washington. [ID:nL2N0DJ1JJ] And most states have balked at the exchanges and the Medicaid expansion.

Meanwhile, the enrollment effort is under threat from months of delay, a congressional Republican embargo on new funding and worries about how affordable the new plans will be, according to analysts, lawmakers, congressional aides and former officials.

"I don't see how what they're planning to do is going to be adequate. The resources are too limited, the (law's) penalties are too weak and elite opposition in much of the country will undermine" enrollment, said Paul Starr, a Princeton professor and former health adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Add to that the challenge of reaching a public that is highly skeptical and often misinformed about the most complex social legislation since Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 77 percent of Americans know little or nothing about exchanges, while 40 percent erroneously think reforms create a government panel to make end-of-life decisions for people on Medicare.

An April survey of 1,003 people by HealthPocket, an online company that helps consumers find insurance, also found that the law's penalty for not buying coverage would not induce most 25-to-34-year-olds or 18-to-24-year-olds to purchase it.

GLITCHES AND BUMPS

Obama this week defended the pace of implementation, telling reporters that the government was working hard to "make sure that we're hitting all the deadlines and the benchmarks" even with the challenge of building the new online exchanges.

"That's still a big, complicated piece of business," Obama said, adding the task was made harder by a dedicated Republican opposition still determined to block the law's implementation.

"Even if we do everything perfectly, there'll still be, you know, glitches and bumps," he said.

The administration is building exchanges in 33 states that are unwilling or unable to do so on their own, and has limited funds for marketing. The remaining 17 states are building their own and have received sizable budgets for outreach.

Among states taking the lead, Vermont has launched radio advertising to raise public awareness. Colorado begins its public outreach this month, while California, Maryland and the District of Columbia will hold off until later in the year.

For the federal exchanges, HHS has a contract worth at least $8 million with public relations firm Weber Shandwick and $54 million to train and pay "navigators," or counselors who will help consumers choose a health plan. It also has a $28 million contract with General Dynamics to set up a call center and will make its Healthcare.gov website consumer-oriented.

The administration is seeking help from major U.S. insurance providers to market aggressively to consumers on the federally run exchanges and help convince healthy citizens between 26 to 45 to pay for insurance instead of a first-year penalty amounting to $95 per person or 1 percent of household income.

BLOWING UP

But reform advocates worry that the HHS budget is too small and the spigot for new funding from Congress is shut off by partisan politics. The "navigator" program allocates just $600,000 each for 13 states including Delaware, Iowa, Kansas and New Hampshire.

"There's a limited amount of money that should be increased. But that's subject to appropriations and Congress is not likely to appropriate additional money," said Ron Pollack of the advocacy group Families USA. "It's going to require a very robust effort in the private sector."

Analysts say reform could be as big an issue in next year's congressional midterm elections as it was in 2010, when dislike for the law among senior citizens helped install a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. This time, failed implementation could end Democratic hopes of recapturing the House and leave enough Senate Democrats vulnerable to give Republicans an edge in that chamber.

"We have to see how bad it is. This issue blowing up on Democrats would make the Republicans' job a lot easier," said Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report.

But Democrats believe implementation will also provide favorable coverage of deserving individuals and families finally being able to secure adequate and affordable health coverage after a long sojourn through the current marketplace.

There has been encouraging news for consumers. Vermont says 2014 premium rates will save money for residents. A family of four with an annual income of $75,000 would pay less than $600 per month for coverage with a federal subsidy, versus $900 for the cheapest small group plan available today.

(Additional reporting by Sharon Begley and Caroline Humer in New York; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Mary Milliken and Lisa Shumaker)

The fighting happened in Bama, a town in northeastern Borno state where insurgents have been fighting the government since 2010.

Lt. Col A.G Laka said Monday that the fighting killed at least seven police officers and 10 insurgents. Journalists accompanying a government convoy to the area Monday did not see any of the corpses and the military routinely downplays casualty figures from fighting.

An Associated Press journalist saw burned homes and businesses burned down, something Laka blamed on insurgents using civilians as cover. The military made a similar claim about violence in Baga, a city where local officials say at least 185 were recently killed.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Zynga Inc's management on Wednesday pleaded for more time for its turnaround effort after the online game maker forecast a steeper-than-expected loss for the current quarter, sending its shares lower.

The embattled publisher behind games such as "FarmVille" and "Words With Friends" reported a surprise profit for its latest quarter through steep cost-cutting, but Chief Executive Mark Pincus said Zynga's business, although stabilized, may not pick up until the latter half of the year.

The company also reported a 13 percent slide in monthly figures for the number of people playing its games.

"We know that 2013 is a year of transition," Pincus told analysts on a conference call. "We continue to expect non-linear, uneven results."

On an adjusted basis, Zynga reported earnings of 1 cent per share, beating analyst expectations of a loss of 4 cents per share. But the company also projected a second-quarter loss between 3 and 5 cents per share, exceeding the 1 cent per share loss analysts had expected.

The results and Zynga's forecast sent its shares 9 percent lower to $3.05 in extended trading.

Over the past 12 months, Zynga's shares have shed two-thirds of their value while investors have watched the company struggle to keep hold of gamers who once flocked to its games on Facebook Inc's website.

"While we recognize the decline in the user base on a macro level, we have the pipeline coming down," Barry Cottle, the company's chief revenue officer, said in an interview. "That's going to happen over a period of time, not something that happens in a quarter."

The company aims to build up its business with gamers on smartphones as it loses users on PCs, but doubts remain over whether this can sustain its revenues and profits.

In recent months, Zynga and Facebook have revised their business partnership, as the game company sought to establish a more independent network even at the risk of getting less visitor traffic from the social media giant.

Over the past year, Zynga's monthly players have fallen to 253 million from 292 million, while its number of monthly paying users shrank to 2.5 million from 3.5 million, the company said.

"The stock is down because of the guidance," said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia.

But in the long term, he added: "We continue to think that any hope for real growth for this nebulous company really depends on what it can do in real-money gaming."

REAL-MONEY POTENTIAL

In past quarters, Zynga has promised investors that it could tap into a potentially lucrative new revenue stream by launching real-money casino games around the world. The effort kicked off in the last quarter in Britain, where such games are highly regulated.

But executives on Wednesday stayed largely mum about the progress of its real-money inroads in other markets, saying that it could be at least months before Zynga could begin any meaningful operations in the United States, where real-money gambling is illegal in many states.

"We can't tell you when the regulatory environment will let us test that audience," Pincus said.

Other analysts said it was unrealistic to consider the talk about real-money gaming as anything but a long-shot for the coming years.

"They're kind of in dream mode here as they go through the process of trying to materialize the business," said Mike Hickey, an analyst at National Alliance Capital Markets.

"They started with partnering in the UK market, which is probably at least a year from ever being material."

Zynga executives blamed their eroding user base on gamers abandoning computers for mobile devices, but pledged to recapture the market once it releases its slate of mobile games due out later this year.

In the meantime, the company will continue to rely on its brand-name franchises, such as its aging but still-robust "FarmVille" series, to generate sales from both mobile and desktop users.

Executives argued that Zynga, which has been the most popular game publisher for Apple Inc's iPhone, would be better placed than rivals with its independent gaming network to generate game downloads.

"Discoverability becomes such an important factor in how apps are found," Cottle said. "If you look at challenges in mobile, it gives us a distribution advantage in the marketplace."

Still, it was unclear if the company would be able to wring as much revenue from mobile users as it had from desktop gamers, analysts said.

"The majority of their games are lower-monetizing experiences on mobile platforms," Hickey said. "Certainly they've attracted a large audience but it's hard to get much money from that audience."

The company now derives 22 percent of its revenue from its mobile platform, compared with 12 percent a year ago, but that share remains modest compared with similarly sized technology companies such as Twitter Inc, which gets more than half of its revenue from mobile users.

On Wednesday, Zynga reported revenue of $263.6 million, down 18 percent from the year-ago quarter.

For the full year, the company projected that it could be narrowly profitable.

"If we launch the right games and get the right sort of engagement, there's an opportunity that revenues will go up as well," Chief Financial Officer Mark Vranesh said. "2013 is going to be bumpy. It's going to be hard to predict."

(Reporting By Gerry Shih and Malathi Nayak; Editing by Leslie Adler, David Gregorio and Edmund Klamann)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Setting the stage for a constitutional showdown, the Obama administration on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have broad authority to make certain appointments without Senate approval.

If the nine justices agree to hear the dispute over appointments President Barack Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board last year, it will be one of the biggest issues before the court in its next term, which will begin in October and end in June 2014.

In January the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that three appointments to the panel, which normally has five members, were invalid.

The appeals court agreed with Noel Canning, the bottling company that challenged Obama's move, in finding that the president did not have the authority to make the NLRB appointments because the Senate was not technically in recess at the time.

The U.S. Constitution allows the president to make appointments when the Senate is in recess. Such appointments expire at the end of the congressional session.

Backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Noel Canning argued that an NLRB ruling against it was invalid because of the appointments, which meant the board lacked a quorum.

Obama made his NLRB appointments on January 4, 2012, when the Senate was in session but not conducting business. The congressional session began on January 3, according to the Senate website.

In the brief filed on Thursday, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli defended the recess appointment powers of the president, disputing the court's conclusion that it can only be used in the period between formal sessions of the Senate.

Presidents from both parties have used their recess appointment authority to make appointments when the Senate is not conducting business.

If the appeals court ruling was left to stand, it would "dramatically curtail" the president's authority, Verrilli said.

In addition to limiting presidential power, the ruling meant that the NLRB did not have the required quorum to make decisions, casting doubt on all its actions and rulings since Obama made the appointments.

The ruling "threatens a significant disruption of the federal government's operations," Verrilli wrote.

The high court will decide whether to hear the case after lawyers for Noel Canning file a response, which is due within 30 days.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Amanda Becker; Editing by Howard Goller and Xavier Briand)

Secretary of Labor nominee Thomas Perez faced two hours of intense scrutiny at his nomination hearing Thursday morning as he sought to alleviate Republican concerns over his role in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

At issue is a lengthy report released earlier this week in which GOP leaders accuse Perez of attempting to influence the city of St. Paul, Minn., to withdraw a housing discrimination case before it could be brought before the Supreme Court. In exchange, the Department of Justice agreed not to intervene in two whistleblower cases against St. Paul that could have won up to $200 million for taxpayers.

Sen. Lamar Alexander engaged Perez in a heated line of questioning, accusing Perez of doing "an extraordinary amount of wheeling and dealing."

"You have a duty to protect the money, a duty to protect the whistleblower, and at the same time, it seems to me that you're manipulating the legal process to try to get the result you want from the Supreme Court in a way that's inappropriate," Alexander, R-Tenn., said.

Perez defended his actions, saying DOJ chooses not to stay out of "a lot of different things."

"It was in the interest of justice and it was entirely appropriate to do so in the opinion of professional responsibility people and others," he told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "I believe the resolution reached in this case was in fact in the interest of justice."

Democratic senators had kind words for Perez. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., introduced him as "one of Maryland's favorite sons," saying "we believe he is the right man for the job."

Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., joined in the praise, adding "you have a very amazing, impressive, wide range of experience that you are bringing from a number of different agenciesYou're something of a turn-around expert for public sector agencies, so thank you for that."

When asked what his very top priority would be should he be confirmed as Secretary of Labor, Perez had one answer: "jobs, jobs, jobs."

He expanded on his goals and priorities, including reauthorizing the Workforce Investment Act, maintaining pension security, and spending his first 100 days as secretary on a listening tour of America, reaching out to small businesses and workers alike.

"The president has asked all of us to consider three questions in the decisions we make," Perez said. "How do we make America a magnet for jobs? How do we equip our people with the skills they need to succeed in those jobs, and how do we ensure that an honest day's work leads to a decent living?"

Perez concluded, "These questions are at the core of the mission of the Department of Labor, and if confirmed you have my word that I will keep them there."

The committee is expected to vote on Perez's nomination on Thursday, April 25.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Chicago Public Schools ignited a controversy this week by ordering that "Persepolis," a critically acclaimed graphic novel about a girl growing up in Iran at the time of the Islamic revolution, be removed from some classrooms.

CPS Chief Executive Barbara Byrd-Bennett said on Friday that the district was not banning the book, by Marjane Satrapi, but had decided that it was "not appropriate for general use" in the seventh grade curriculum.

"If your seventh grade teachers have not yet taught this book, please ask them not to do so and to remove any copies of the book from their classrooms," Byrd-Bennett said in a statement. She said the book had "powerful images of torture" and that the district was considering whether the book should be included in the curriculum of eighth through 10th grades.

The statement was sent as a clarification, since Chicago public school teachers received different instructions earlier this week telling them the book was to be removed from libraries.

Kristen Starr, librarian at Lane Tech, a selective enrollment school for students in grades seven through 12, said she was told Wednesday that the book must be removed from all classrooms and libraries.

Christopher Dignam, principal of Lane Tech, sent an email to staff Thursday confirming the order. The email said CPS personnel were directed to physically go to each school by Friday and collect the novel from all classrooms and libraries, and even make sure it had not been checked out by a student or teacher. Dignam in his email said he was not given a reason.

"It's an unprecedented event in my career," said Starr, who has been with the school system since 1994. "We've never been instructed to take a book off the shelves."

Robyn Ziegler, a spokeswoman for CPS, said that the original instruction on Wednesday "was simply a poorly written communication. Schools should never have been instructed to remove the book from their libraries."

At a rain-soaked after-school rally organized by opponents of the ban that drew about 50 students, parents and teachers, Neive Espy, a 17-year-old junior at Lane Tech who has read the book, held a sign that read: "Iran + CPS Two Dictators."

"I think CPS should have faith in our intelligence," Espy said. "You need to start informing kids at a young age about the truth about the world."

Steve Parsons, an advanced placement psychology teacher at Lane Tech and a union representative, asked, "What's next? Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'?"

"Persepolis," published in 2003 in the United States and made into a film in 2007, is banned in Iran, Tunisia and Lebanon, said Paul Bogaards, spokesman for Pantheon, the book's publisher.

A statement from Satrapi, who is currently in Germany, was not immediately available.

Starr said she and other librarians contacted CPS after hearing the order and were told Thursday that the books could be kept in the libraries.

"There's no reason it should be removed," said Acacia O'Connor, coordinator of the Kids Right to Read Project of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "It has been taught for a long time and it's an award-winning book."

O'Connor said "Persepolis" was challenged at least once before, in 2009 by a parent in the state of Washington for being too violent and sexually charged, but the book was retained by the school district.

The Chicago Teachers Union, which has been battling CPS over expected school closings, issued a statement noting that while CPS now says the book will be available in libraries, 160 elementary schools don't have libraries.

"Enough with the Orwellian doublespeak," said CTU spokeswoman Stephanie Gadlin. "We support our educators who are fighting to ensure their students have access to ideas about democracy, freedom of speech and self-image. Let's not go backward in fear."

(Reporting By Mary Wisniewski; Editing by James B. Kelleher, Cynthia Johnston, Steve Orlofsky and Leslie Adler)

The next big question for David Bowie and his remarkable comeback is whether the element of surprise and subsequent acclaim will turn into record sales.

"The Next Day" is in stores on Monday in Britain, where industry watchers are confident it will top the album charts, and on Tuesday in the United States, where the "Space Oddity" singer has enjoyed more patchy success in the past.

It is already available in other key markets, and the early signs are that the 66-year-old master of reinvention has a hit on his hands.

According to his official website, the deluxe version of the recording went to No. 1 on the digital iTunes album charts in 11 of 12 countries where it was released on Friday, including Australia, Germany and Sweden.

"There has been a lot of interest in both the social and traditional media which will connect not only with the established fan base but also with younger fans," said Gennaro Castaldo, head of press at British music retailer HMV.

"As a campaign, I can't think of many that have been more brilliantly orchestrated," he added.

Ironically, part of that "campaign" has been for Bowie to remain invisible, allowing collaborators like producer Tony Visconti to tell the media about how the star's first studio album since 2003's "Reality" came about.

So rare had sightings of the "Starman" become in New York, where he lives, that articles appeared in the British press late last year speculating the "recluse" had unofficially retired.

"GRETA GARBO OF POP"

Simon Goddard, author of new Bowie book "Ziggyology" published by Random House imprint Ebury, said his mystique was a part of the appeal, and showed that his interest in music far outweighed any appetite for the trappings of celebrity.

"He released two albums in the very early 70s featuring covers of himself in poses inspired by Greta Garbo," Goddard told Reuters.

"Fast forward three or four decades and he becomes a rarely-sighted paparazzi quarry living in New York ... He engages with the media on his strict terms because he's surpassed any desire to engage otherwise. His art is all the engagement he needs."

Bowie, who has shunned the limelight since he suffered a heart attack on tour in 2004, last performed on stage in 2006. It was with a sense of shock that his fans woke up on January 8, his 66th birthday, to the news he had released a new song.

"Where Are We Now?", a melancholic look back to the time Bowie spent in Berlin in the 1970s, was the first single from "The Next Day", followed weeks later by "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)".

Both came with inventive videos which baffled as much as they entertained, affirming that Bowie was still the enigma who wowed the pop world in the late 1960s, 70s and 80s with glam-rock, androgynous alter egos and a radical sense of fashion.

Critics had barely a bad word to say about the 14-track album, with the Independent's Andy Gill calling it possibly "the greatest comeback in rock'n'roll history" in a five-star review.

Alexis Petridis, writing in the Guardian, said: "Listening to it makes you hope it's not a one-off, that his return continues apace.

Whether the return will include live performances remains to be seen, although Bowie's guitarist Gerry Leonard whetted appetites when he told Rolling Stone magazine he thought it was "50-50" Bowie would tour again.

Author Goddard attempted to sum up the level of excitement that has accompanied Bowie's return.

"Bowie's appeal has lasted because his influence is fundamental to everything that we in the 21st century understand as pop music," he said. "Remove Bowie and pop's whole house of cards as built up over the last 40 years or so collapses."

Bowie's impact on modern music matched that of The Beatles - and the only contemporary star to combine music and art to the extent he did in the 70s was Lady Gaga, said Goddard.

"The hysteria is justified," he added.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced the extension on the cap to January 2021 and a requirement that payments toward the deficit average C$200 million ($194 million) a year for seven years, with a minimum of C$150 million each year.

"We do plan on supporting it," said Bruce Aubin, who heads the pension committee for Air Canada's retirees.

"I think it's reasonably fair. I think both Air Canada and the government did a good job in coming to a supportable agreement, and it should provide a period of stability and an opportunity for the current solvency deficiencies that exist in the plan to recover as hopefully the economy improves. And the problem at that stage may well go away."

(Reporting by Randall Palmer; Editing by Frank McGurty and Bernadette Baum)