And from cows to coding. We meet the woman with a remarkable career that began on a farm in rural illinois and has taken her all the way to the shining lights of silicon valley. And with polls now open in the uk General Election, we promise a politics free programme. So let us know what you make of the stories were covering today. Get in touch in the usual way. Use the hashtag bbcbizlive. Hello and welcome to Business Live. When we say politics free, we do refer to the uk election and not the politicking going on at the moment in the middle east. We start in the gulf state of qatar, where concerns are growing about the economic fallout after neighbouring arab states cut off diplomatic and trade ties over its alleged support of terrorist groups, something doha denies. Late wednesday, top Credit RatingAgency Standard and poors cut qatars Credit Rating, with a warning it could be cut further still. Its stock market is down almost 10 in the last three days, and its currency is at an 11 year low. Qatar is a tiny nation, but its a very important one in business terms. It has one of the Worlds Largest reserves of natural gas. It has seen exports of its Liquefied Natural Gas or lng soar in recent years. Thats made the state phenomenally wealthy. It has built up one of the worlds biggest sovereign wealth funds, worth around 335 billion. As its used that money to buy assets across the globe. They range from Paris Saint GermainFootball Club to big stakes in volkswagen, Russian Oil Giant Rosneft and Commodities Trader Glencore to britians barclays bank. Not to mention millions of square metres of london, including canary wharf, the shard and harrods. The success of Qatar Airways has made it a major aviation hub. But more than 50 flights a day have been grounded because of airspace closures. And its a huge employer of migrant workers, many of whom are working on stadiums for the 2022 world cup. Families from india to the philippines depend on the money they send home. There are half a million workers from india alone in qatar. Zeynep kosereisoglu is practice leader, middle east, north africa and turkey at frontier strategy group. Nice to see you. Lets start with some background to this. How are we in this position, and why is qatar looking increasingly isolated 7 in this position, and why is qatar looking increasingly isolated . This is because of long years of tension between qatar and its neighbouring countries, like egypt. We started seeing these problems that in 1985 when we had an attempted coup. We have been watching a lot of these tensions over the last few weeks increase over the Foreign Policy, through mostly soft power but of course the fact that these measures are taking place today, and to such an are taking place today, and to such a n exte nt are taking place today, and to such an extent that it shows us that maybe a change from a us per spett with to the region could also have been the main trigger for such a large move from these countries. remember in 2014 there were some similarities with hot what happened then, but it strikes me that this time it is more severe. We have had a lot of talks between these countries about qatars Foreign Policy, that was more of a short term spat, but this time we are seeing unprecedented levels of measures, so different in terms of the extent and the pressure they will put on the economy. So what does it mean day to day for the economy and People Living in qatar . A few factors are important. The first one, you have seen already some shortages within the economy, it is very much import dependent so we will see domestic prices increasing, but also Economic Activity in the country depends on imports as well so we will be seeing a halt in the construction activity. Qatar airways as you have mentioned as well. But most importantly we will see precious on the peg to the dollar. We will see pressure on the peg to the dollar. They do have reserves to maintain the peg, but as this conflict last longer, we will set pressure on liquidity within the banks. And as sally outlined, so many investments from qatar around the world, it has been active in spreading the wealth around the world so it has a diverse economy. How long does this crisis last . No one really knows. But what are those ripple effects around the world . One really knows. But what are those ripple effects around the world . M is going to be very hard for the qatari authorities to prove to these countries that there will be a change in policy. They are asking for a very big change, so you have to make a big move to showcase and prove that the Foreign Policy is going to change and that will be quite difficult from qatars perspective. So this might last a little longer than we saw in 2014. You mentioned some of the investments within the world, but also a lot of investment in the region, from turkey to egypt, so some of them are in projects that cant be moved out, but the liquid ones that are mostly in stocks can be pulled, and we could see that if this lasts much longer. Zeynep, it is good to here your thoughts on that. For now, thank you very much, zeynep kosereisoglu, thank you for coming in. Lets take a look at some of the other stories making the news. Chinas imports and exports were up strongly last month. Exports in may rose 8. 7 compared to the year before. Imports were up 14. 8 . The latest official trade figures gave the Country A Trade Surplus of 40. 81 billion for the month. Sony says it has sold more than 1 million Virtual Reality headsets around the world. The Playstation Vr Headset was released in october, and its relatively low price has seen sales grow faster than rival products from facebook and htc. The headset is designed to work with the Playstation 4 rather than requiring new equipment. Three events are Keeping Traders transfixed today. One is the uk election, and of course we wont know the outcome of that until maybe this time tomorrow or earlier. The other one is the European Central bank meeting happening at lunchtime today. No policy change expected, but what will be said at the Press Conference afterwards is critical. And then there is that James Comey Testimony taking place today. What does that mean for the Trump Administration . That is playing a pa rt administration . That is playing a part in markets worldwide, we are seeing a lot of caution in terms of trade. Data out ofjapan seeing a lot of caution in terms of trade. Data out of japan as well, about its growth figures. The final figures showing growth at 1 . But missed estimates by quite a distance, so that the pressure on stocks in tokyo. Lets have a look at europe right now, so a sense of how things are going. The ftse 100 how things are going. The ftse100 pretty flat, sterling still bubbling along. A slight gain for germany, and that is the State Of Play here. Samira hussain has the details about whats ahead on wall street today. All eyes will be on capitol hill, james comey will testify to us lawmakers. This will be his first public appearance since he was fired by president donald trump. Any damaging revelation in his testimony could dampen already flagging momentum for trumps pro business fiscal agenda. In earning the series, james maco will be reporting, and they have warned that four year sales will be lower than previously thought. It faces treasure from rising competition and commodity costs. And a little bit of economics news. Thejobless claims dipped slightly to 240,000 from 248,000 in the week previous. Thank you. Joining us is james hughes, chief market analyst, at gkfx, a trading brokerage. Lets talk about ecb, because we havent talked through at least two days since we talked about the European Central bank at the same time this is happening, greece is rearing its ugly head again in terms of the debt crisis, but lets talk debt first of all. There is no change expected, and this has been the case for a long time. It is not necessarily the rates we are looking at now, it is the Quantitative Easing which is extending to december this year, but there is so much discussion at the moment about the fact that the German Economy is overheating, the German Economy is performing well and this is having stimulus pumped into it. So much pressure coming from germany to the eec beta start to take that back, but it is getting a balancing act, germany much stronger than the other countries. And you have germany in that position, you have greece in a really dire position still. Yesterday we had banks bailed out by santander, the yesterday we had banks bailed out by sa ntander, the whole yesterday we had banks bailed out by santander, the whole banking support system kicking in, and then you have this weekend, parliamentary elections in france. It isjust a mess, isnt it . It isnt a mess, but it is complicated but it is a mess, as it has been for the last ten yea rs, as it has been for the last ten years, and we have known this story for such a long time. You call a spade a spade we talked about greece tenures are going exactly the same situation, and they said, but the imf said, we will deal with your debt later. That doesnt work, because later eventually comes around. Yes, at the time we talked about them kicking the can down the road, and here we are. Yes, we have got to the can, and what will they do . There will be a few more measures, a few more statements from germany about what they will do, and it isa germany about what they will do, and it is a mess, unfortunately, and it doesnt show any signs of changing. We will talk more about that a little later, you will talk as though the papers, but for now, thank you. Lets go to australia now, where special k is a special name. You may think of it as a serial. But in australia, it is all about tennis star who is becoming well known. The top 100 tennis player Thanasi Kokkinakis is trying to use the name commercially. We have seen this sort of row before, but not often between a serial provider and a tennis player it really is a different type of court case the Thanasi Kokkinakis it is over intellectual property. The 21 year old is known as special k, and what he would like to do because he is trying to bank on his fame and his good health at the time being is to create a special tennis line of clothing, and all the stuff that can come with it, kelloggs is saying that special k is one of its best selling cereals, and they are taking him to court in adelaide. Lawyers on both sides of decided not to say nothing, but theyjust showed the crying emoji with the sad words on his account. Dont cry over spilt milk, that is what i say. Thank you for your input. Still to come, we will meet the woman who started out Counting Cows and now ru ns started out Counting Cows and now runs her very own tech firm. It is an Accounting Software company, it has gone from strength to strength. We will hear that story very shortly. You are with Business Live from bbc news. First, lets focus on some more corporate stories. Flybe, europes Largest Regional Airline has announced a pre tax loss of £20 million, compared to a £2. 7 million profit the previous year. The airline recently created an alliance with Eastern Airways to operate its scheduled Route Network under the flybe brand. Theo leggett has been looking at the figures hes in our business newsroom. We have talked about fly be before, auk we have talked about fly be before, a uk regionalairline, it we have talked about fly be before, a uk regional airline, it does all of those routes you dont necessarily want to get a train for but it has not managed to make it a success this year, big turnaround. We knew this year would be bad because in march the company put out a profits warning, saying that there we re a profits warning, saying that there were issues. Some of the problems are beyond its control. For example, bad weather which has forced flight cancellations, strikes among air Traffic Controllers in france, that has had an impact. You say they do routes that people wont necessarily ta ke routes that people wont necessarily take trains for but some of the routes they do, there are Rail Alternatives and the Rail Companies have been discounting so that has had an effect as well. But to a certain extent, flybe has also been a victim of its own actions. When things looked better if you years ago it ordered a lot of planes. It has renegotiated some of those contracts, but other planes had to be brought into the fleet and it had to find something to do with it. That has left it with a problem of overcapacity. It has not been able to fill up the planes quite as well, not been making so much money and there is a lot of competition in this market. That is where some other problems have been. It has been insulated from other issues because it mainly flies of the uk, it hasnt had many problems as other airlines with a fall in the value of sterling. They does have the pay Aircraft Leasing products in dollars but it has hedged against those in done rather well from those hedges. It is struggling at the moment in a broad brush. It thinks it will be able to reduce the size of its fleet when leases come up for renewal later in the year so that should help sort itself out. So it is saying things should get better in the future, on the other hand there are big cost involved as well because it is revamping its it systems and expect over the next year to have £6 million worth of costs associated with cancelling existing contracts. So a mixed picture but the past year has not been particularly good. Thank you very much. A reminder of course, in case you had missed it, it is the General Election today. A reminder, bbc coverage begins on bbc one at five to ten this evening, the first results around midnight. Top story today. Qatar has had its rating cut. Reuters reporting that qatars central bank has asked commercial banks to provide it with details and frequent updates on their Foreign Exchange trading. Lots of people scrabbling to get hold of us dollars. We are also hearing anecdotal evidence ofjust quite how this rift is affecting people. We have heard women the last half hour that the emirates Postal Service is stopping all post a qatar, and says if the posters midway there it will come back. All post to qatar. Lets remind you how market are doing in europe, trading has been underway for nearly 15 minutes. Pretty flat really. Rent crude up nearly 8 , but at 48. 43 a barrel. The ftse100 nearly 8 , but at 48. 43 a barrel. The ftse 100 fairly flat. Keep an eye on the pound, tomorrow, in the wa ke eye on the pound, tomorrow, in the wake of the vote of the uk General Election. And now lets get the inside track on Coding An Industry thats often faced accusations of sexism. It is very male dominated. Therese tucker runs a Financial Software firm black line and is one of only a handful of female Tech Entrepeneurs to take her company public. Originally from a farming town in illinois, she took one of the first ever programming courses offered by apple in the early 1980s. In 2001, she founded blackline, funding the business herself. Shes had to battle sexism in the Tech Industry some funding for the business was only offered on the condition that she was replaced as Chief Executive by a man but shes seen off these challenges and joins us now. Still the boss. Quite an achievement just to be here given all of that, welcome to the programme, good to have you here. Lets start with the business. We said during the programme, your background was very rule, talk us through this course. You went to university and you took the apple course. That is when you fell in love with coding and that is pretty where you are. Focus through that. The beautifulthing pretty where you are. Focus through that. The beautiful thing about programming is that you can direct a computer to do something for you, and you can then run that on a million computers. The power is amazing for what you can do for business with that, and i fell in love with it. And i have spent my entire career doing that. Take me back to the 1980s, and that apple course. We all see at full a certain way now and we see what it has done an transform the business, what was apple like back then . An transform the business, what was applelike back then . It was radically new. At that time, most of the computers were still mainframes with cards, and is terrible to work with. Apple was this amazing new innovation that actually made it fun. Not that different from today, in many ways. Tell us about the journey, it sounds like it has been pretty tough. Any journey journey, it sounds like it has been pretty tough. Anyjourney is tough. But if nutley in the Tech Industry<