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• Economists are mostly bullish. They forecast that the economy gained 210,000 jobs in April, according to a survey by FactSet, and that the unemployment rate dipped to 6.6 percent from 6.7 percent.
• The government will release the April employment report at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time Friday.
• If economists' forecasts are accurate, April will have produced the largest burst of hiring since November. That would show that the economy is producing consistently solid job growth. Job gains totaled 197,000 in February and 192,000 in March.
• The steady pace of hiring has encouraged more Americans to start looking for work. That's a hopeful sign that they think their prospects for finding a job have improved. In the first three months of this year, about 1.3 million people began looking for jobs, and most have found them.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are putting on a display of trans-Atlantic unity against an assertive Russia, even as sanctions imposed by Western allies seem to be doing little to change Russian President Vladimir Putin's reasoning on Ukraine.
• Days after the United States and the European Union slapped Moscow with a new round of sanctions, Merkel was to hold meetings, a working lunch and a joint news conference with Obama on Friday. The German chancellor comes to the White House buoyed by a decisive re-election victory late last year but facing pressure from all sides as Europe seeks to toe a hard line against Russia on Ukraine without harming its own economic interests.
• As the crisis in Ukraine has deteriorated, Merkel has spoken to Putin perhaps more frequently than any other European leader. As such, the U.S. sees her as a critical channel of communication with the unpredictable Russian leader, as well as a key player in the effort to prevent other EU nations from going soft on sanctions.
• "There's no question that the situation in Ukraine, the continued failure by Russia to abide by its commitments in the Geneva Agreement will be a focus of the conversation," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a reference to the diplomatic deal struck two weeks ago in the Swiss city to calm tensions between pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and the central government in Kiev.
• U.S. and German officials said ahead of the Obama-Merkel meeting that part of

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