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SINGAPORE, April 19- Gold was little changed in cautious trade on Friday, heading for a fourth week of losses after this week's historic sell-off shattered investors' confidence in the typically safe-haven asset. Gold investors are waiting for the release of U.S.

*Adjusted Q1 earnings $0.73/ share versus Street view $0.71. *Shares rise 0.9 percent to $28.25 on NYSE. April 18- Freeport-McMoRan Copper& Gold Inc sought to shore up shareholder support for its foray into the U.S. energy sector on Thursday by highlighting the benefit of diversifying into oil and gas at a time when metal prices are softening.

*MSCI Asia ex- Japan up 0.6 pct, Nikkei adds 0.7 pct. *Yen falls vs USD as G20 seen accepting Japan reflationary policy. The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.6 percent after falling 0.6 percent the previous session.

April 18- IBM Corp posted a rare quarterly earnings miss as the technology services company struggled with the depreciation of the Japanese yen and a failure to close a number of major deals, especially in Europe and the United States. Much like Oracle Corp last month, IBM blamed a poor performance by its sales force for some of the shortfall.

CHICAGO, April 18- Heavy rains and flooding brought havoc to the Chicago area on Thursday, shutting expressways, delaying commuter trains, cancelling flights, flooding basements and closing many suburban schools. The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings lasting into the evening for the entire Chicago area.

BOSTON/ NEW YORK, April 18- Hedge fund billionaire John Paulson's best-known fund is down 2.4 percent in April, largely due to the sharp selloff in gold, a source familiar with the numbers said on Thursday.

*Revenue down 14 pct to $1.75 billion on weak coal prices. April 18- Peabody Energy Corp, the world's largest private-sector coal miner, reported a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss on Thursday and said it expects thermal coal to claw back much of the U.S. market share it has lost to natural gas.

*Monte dei Paschi's collateral on deal at 1.866 bln euros on Apr.5-document. SIENA/ MILAN, April 17- Italian prosecutors took steps in Germany and Britain on Wednesday to carry out the seizure of up to 1.95 billion euros of assets from Japan's Nomura, which they say is needed to halt further losses from Italy's Monte dei Paschi bank.

SINGAPORE, April 19- London copper dropped below $7,000 for a second day on Friday and was on track for its biggest weekly decline since December 2011, after global growth worries and a historic sell-off in gold turned investors away from commodities.

SEATTLE, April 18- Microsoft Corp Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein is leaving at the end of June after 3-1/ 2 years in the post, as the world's biggest software company struggles with sharply declining personal computer sales and a lukewarm reception for the new Windows 8 operating system.

SEATTLE, April 18- Microsoft Corp Chief Financial Officer Peter Klein is leaving at the end of June after 3-1/ 2 years in the post, as the world's biggest software company struggles with sharply declining personal computer sales and a lukewarm reception for the new Windows 8 operating system.

LONDON, April 16- China's antitrust authorities removed the last obstacle to Glencore's $30 billion takeover of miner Xstrata on Tuesday after the commodities trader agreed to sell a $5.2 billion mining project to ease its grip on copper.

Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz easily cleared his first hurdle in the Senate on Thursday, securing nearly unanimous support from the chamber's energy committee. With a vote of 21 to 1 in favor of the pick, Moniz's nomination will move on for consideration by the full Senate.

*JP Morgan, Wells Fargo shares fall after results. "It's not surprising to see profit-taking here going into the weekend, especially after the run we had this week," said JJ Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago. The CBOE volatility index VIX, Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, rose 6.6 percent to 13.05.

NYSE acknowledged the new feed will compete with the Consolidated Tape Association, a grouping of all U.S. stock exchanges whose creation almost 40 years ago was hailed as a major achievement in providing price transparency across all markets.

CHICAGO, April 18- Heavy rains and flooding brought havoc to the Chicago area on Thursday, shutting major expressways, delaying commuter trains for hours, cancelling flights, flooding basements and closing dozens of suburban schools. The National Weather Service has issued flash flood warnings for the entire Chicago area.

International Business Machines Corp said on Thursday its quarterly non-GAAP income rose 3 percent to $3.4 billion, or $3.00, compared with analyst estimates of $3.05 a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

April 18- Advanced Micro Devices reported first-quarter revenue of $1.09 billion and a net loss of $146 million, or 19 cents a share, as it rushes to find new markets to offset its declining core PC chip business.

April 18- IBM Corp, the world's largest technology services company, reported an increase in first-quarter earnings, but missed estimates due to the depreciation of the Japanese yen.