German Chancellor Angela Merkel (2nd from left) at a church service on July 31, in the city of Duisburg, for the 21 victims of the fatal crush at the Love Parade dance music festival.

During August, we will not be providing the 'Markets Afternoon' report due to holiday and site development work. Use the relevant links below for the latest data.

The Eurozone is expected to show what ECB president, Jean-Claude Trichet, termed  'really exceptional' growth in the second quarter, when Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, reports on Friday. At his press conference in Frankfurt last Thursday, Trichet said "the second quarter seems to be really exceptional." This suggests that GDP (gross domestic product)  in Q2 may be stronger than Bundesbank's projection of +1.2% q/q made in June 2010.  Trichet said   data for the third quarter are "better than expected."

Germany which accounts for about 30% of the single currency area's output, may have grown by as much as 2% in the quarter, which would be the best performance since reunification in 1990. While German industrial production dipped by 0.6% in June compared with May, according to data published on Friday,  it followed months of rapid growth. Second-quarter industrial production was 5.4% than the previous quarter. On Thursday, it was reported that German manufacturing orders rose by 3.2% on the month in June and 7.7% in Q2. Today, Germany reported that exports increased by 3.8% in June on May 2010.

The VDMA German engineering association reported last week that orders placed with its members in June had been 62% higher than a year before.

Meanwhile, Italy on Friday reported a rise of 0.4% in its Q2 GDP, with rising exports to Germany, its largest foreign market.  The Spanish central bank forecast Spanish GDP rose by 0.2% in Q2.

On Friday, Germany and France will release their GDP data and France has reported dips in household consumption and net exports only being offset by government investment from remaining stimulus programmes. Analysts expect growth of 1.4% over the year to the second quarter.

Aer Lingus: The former State airline today reported that it carried just over one million passengers in July, a fall of 8.7% from the same month last year.

However, the load factor, or percentage of seats filled, rose by 3.5 points from July last year to 85.8%. Passenger numbers on short-haul routes dipped 8.3% to 921,000, while long haul numbers dived 12.4% to 99,000.

The load factor on the long-haul routes however, jumped to 89.8% as the airline had cut routes and flights over the past year. The load factor on short-haul routes dipped 1.6 points to 84%.

For the first seven months of 2010, passenger number are down almost 10% to 5.6m and the load factor is up 1.9 points to 77.3%.

Marshall Mays, chief investment officer of Emerging Alpha - Wallbanck Group, believes Japan is the best long-term bet for conservative growth on fundamentals. He tells CNBC's Oriel Morrison that China's industrial demand will help Japan's recovery:

Economic View: US employment report provides much food for thought ahead of Fed meeting; Goodbody economist, Deirdre Ryan, comments  - - "Although equity markets have regained some ground of late, confidence remains fragile, a fact that was very much evident on Friday with the release of the latest US payrolls report. With the labour market recovery proving sluggish at best, the report will have provided much food for thought for the Fed ahead of their meeting tomorrow. Public sector hiring around the Census remains a distorting factor, but there is no denying the underlying poor health of the US labour market. Downward revisions totalled almost 100K in July and the private sector addition to the headcount has averaged just over 50K in each of the three months to July.

Job gains remain concentrated also, with July’s hiring dominated by manufacturing, health and education. The unemployment rate remains stable at 9.5% but this is largely a reflection of significant labour force outflows. On an annual basis employment was down 0.2%, despite the fact that we are in the fifth consecutive quarter since the US exited recession and growth has rebounded 3.2% from its trough. By all accounts it is a jobless recovery that has emerged in the US economy thus far. The fact that temp employment, a bell weather labour market indicator, dropped in July (by 6K) for the first time since last September is not an encouraging sign either. The current trends certainly push interest rate increases even further into the horizon, while debate continues to centre on whether the Fed will have to engage in further asset purchasing programmes. Last month’s statement did imply a slight downgrade of the economic outlook and rhetoric from Bernanke since that time has hinted at ongoing concerns on this front. Tomorrow’s statement will indicate whether this is seen as enough to move the Fed back into quantitative easing mode."

Construction sector recession still leading to employment cuts and bad debts: Davy chief economist, Rossa White, comments  - - "The latest PMI from Ulster Bank shows that construction is still in recession. The reading of 45.0 is five points below the break-even mark of 50. Yet activity cannot decline too much more: new business is actually expanding for the first time since 2007 from the rock bottom base. But the construction recession in prices and volumes is still affecting macro aggregates. It surely helped lead to the renewed rise in the Live Register in the last few months (after more than six months of stability) and the lagged impact of reduced collateral value and activity is causing ongoing loan impairment for banks.

The PMI construction index is actually at its highest point since July 2007. But it only tells us that output is shrinking at its slowest pace for three years. Much like the services and manufacturing PMIs however, turning points are flagged by the new business components. In construction, new business is back above 50 for the first time in three years. After six or so months of gains, the overall index usually follows. So it will be important to see if that new business level is maintained in the months ahead. Unfortunately, cuts in the public capital programme mean that the barrier for a return to growth is high.

Some people have asked us why the labour market is yet to fully stabilise and have questioned the extent of the impairment problems for the banks in the context of an economy that bottomed in early 2010. Those trends are explained by two variables in particular: first, not every sector has bottomed and second, there are long lags involved. Crucially, construction, which has caused most of the damage in the economy, will not return to growth until 2012 at the earliest. We know that even if private building volumes reach a floor in early 2011, government spending is set to be cut by 10%. Moreover, residential prices will still be falling although commercial prices may trough within 6-9 months. That means the cash value of the sector will decline further: price and volume both matter for bad debts. Lags are important too. There is a lag of about 6-9 months between the bottom in the total economy and the peak in unemployment. But the lag between the end of recession in construction and related industries and the completion of loan impairments may be even longer."

CNBC's John Fortt, Mary Thompson and Herb Greenberg have the details on HP's Mark Hurd stepping down as CEO because of expense claim violations linked to a claim of sexual harassment . The marketing contractor linked to former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive is Jodie Fisher, an actress who most recently appeared in the reality TV show "Age of Love." In a statement Sunday released by her celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, Fisher said she was "saddened" that Hurd lost his job as H-P CEO.