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Forget what Dorothy said about not being in a certain state anymore. It looks like Google is in Kansas. And Missouri too.

Google (, Fortune 500) launched its long-awaited Google Fiber, the search giant’s ultra high-speed network, Thursday in Kansas City, Kansas while also making a surprise announcement: the introduction of Google Fiber TV.

The two services will be available to Kansas City, Kansas, which was chosen last year after more than 1,100 cities applied to get the faster Internet.

But because the company was a little "ahead of schedule," Google also announced that the service will be available to some in Kansas City, Missouri as well.

The Fiber network offers speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. That’s 100 times faster than what the average American Internet user currently has. The company says the average speeds for downloads are 5.8 megabits per second.

The event also included a demonstration of Google Fiber TV. The system will allow households to watch all their shows in HD, record up to eight shows at once, store 500 hours of HD video on the cloud and even control multiple televisions through the search giant’s new tablet, the Nexus 7.

The demonstration, which streamed on Google-owned YouTube, showed how a typical consumer could watch live TV, tens of thousands of shows on demand, pull videos from Netflix () (if they’re subscribers), search for content using just their voice and watch them across several platforms, including smartphones and PCs online payday advance.

"You don’t have to settle for old-style television anymore," said Milo Medin, vice president of Google Access. "It’s not just Internet and it’s not just TV. It’s Google Fiber."

Google is offering the TV and Internet service for $120 a month for Kansas City residents, said Kevin Lo, general manager of Google Access. For those who just want the faster Web service, that’ll cost about $70 a month. Depending on the length of the contract, subscribers can also get an initial $300 set up fee waived.

The search giant plans to provide the service free to schools, community centers, government buildings and libraries.

The company also announced that it will encourage users over the next six weeks to rally their neighbors to sign up for the service. This will determine which "Fiberhoods" (Google broke up neighborhoods into groups of about 800 people) will get access to the service first. The higher the interest, the sooner the availability.

"Together we will make Kansas City a place where bandwidth flows like water," Medin said. We’re "looking forward to writing the next chapter of the Internet together, right here in Kansas City." 

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The British economy slumped for the third consecutive quarter, adding to the economic concern throughout Europe, with some economists calling this the most prolonged double-dip recession in the United Kingdom since the 1950s.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy, contracted 0.7% in the months of April, May and June, according to the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics. The decline was broader than the 0.2% drop economists had forecast.

Investec economist Victoria Clarke said this is a "very prolonged and severe economic downturn" that is "driven by a global financial downturn" beginning in 2008. The London-based economist said this is the longest double-dip recession since the British started tracking their GDP in 1955.

On an year-over-year basis, GDP fell 0.8%.

"This morning’s GDP is little short of a disaster for the UK economy and a humiliating blow to [finance minister] George Osborne," said Richard Driver, analyst for Caxton FX. "The government will surely have to adjust its austerity stance now and a clearer growth strategy must be put in place to get Britain back on track."

"We’ve said the situation would get worse before it gets better," said Jeremy Cook, chief economist at the foreign exchange company World First. "Anything worse than this and we are risking depression."

Greece: Here we go again

A stagnant construction sector, and less dramatic slumps in manufacturing production and the services sector also did their part to drag down GDP, according to the report. Construction activity dropped by 5.2% in the second quarter.

The holiday from the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and wet weather might have contributed to the slowdown, said James Knightley, senior economist at ING Commercial Banking London.

"The wettest April-June period on record and the dullest June (in terms of hours of sunshine) since 1909 likely deterred shoppers," said Knightley, adding that the GDP report is "merely a very early estimate based on only 44% of the complete information required to provide the ‘final’ GDP number."

Things could look up, according to Driver, who forecast a "mild recovery in the second half of the year, particularly in light of the Olympics." But he added that the "risks of further contraction are increasing all the time."

London is hosting the Summer Olympics, which begins on Friday.

Harry Duff of the Office for National Statistics said the second-quarter GDP figures will be updated, if necessary, in about one month. 

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It has become clear that Mitt Romney does not want to release any additional tax returns.

But that’s not the only tax issue the presumptive nominee has been reluctant to talk about. He has been equally quiet on a policy question that could have a direct impact on the amount of taxes paid by millions of Americans.

Romney has for months touted an ambitious plan that promises massive tax cuts. He has also steadfastly refused to say how he would pay for them.

Romney has proposed a 20% across-the-board cut to income tax rates. He also wants to scrap the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminate the estate tax and chop the tax rate paid by corporations from 35% to 25%.

All those cuts mean the government would collect far less revenue. Romney claims his plan will make up the difference in-part by limiting deductions, exemptions and credits currently available to top-level income earners.

But he hasn’t lifted the curtain on which deductions he is planning to curtail.

In April, reporters stationed outside a private fundraising event in Palm Beach, Fla. overheard the former Massachusetts governor rattle off a list of deductions that would likely be eliminated.

But a campaign official later said that the candidate was "tossing ideas out" and not "unveiling policy."

And just last month, when Romney was directly asked by CBS News to name the deductions, the candidate evaded the question, instead saying that "we’ll go through that process with Congress."

The lack of detail extends even to tax breaks that Romney himself has taken advantage of — to the tune of millions of dollars.

Romney and his campaign have, for example, given a variety of answers on what the candidate plans to do about the tax treatment of carried interest, an obscure compensation method used primarily in high-stakes finance.

Full election coverage: America’s Choice 2012

The tax break, which benefits private equity partners, continues to save the Republican presidential candidate millions of dollars in taxes after a pioneering career at Bain Capital.

Romney has, in the past, explicitly called for keeping the tax benefit in place. But this election cycle, even when asked directly, the candidate has not clearly articulated a position.

Campaign staffers have added to confusion over the candidate’s position, occasionally suggesting that Romney would, once elected, consider rolling back the tax break. At other times, the campaign has walked those suggestions back.

When asked again for more details about his tax plan, a spokesperson for the Romney campaign said to CNNMoney that Romney "has proposed a comprehensive plan to repair the nation’s tax code by bringing marginal rates down to stimulate entrepreneurship, job creation, and investment, while still raising the revenue needed to fund a smaller, smarter, simpler government."

The spokesperson added that Romney "looks forward to working with Congress" on tax reform. In other words, don’t expect more details unless he actually wins the race for president.

(Related: Romney’s confounding position on carried interest)

From a political perspective, the lack of detail may be beneficial. After all, each deduction benefits a certain constituency. But the hazy policy prescription leaves the public in the dark — and lets Romney skate on a devilishly difficult area of tax policy.

A recent report by the Tax Policy Center, an independent research group, showed just how difficult Romney’s plan would be to implement, particularly if they are on top of other proposed tax cuts.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that if today’s Bush-era income tax rates were made permanent, Romney’s additional rate cuts would lead to a reduction of $320 billion in tax revenue in 2015.

One way to make up for that difference, the report said, would be to shave 72% off the value of all itemized deductions; above-the-line deductions (such as the one for alimony); a host of smaller tax credits; and benefits such as the health insurance tax break many workers get.

Lawmakers could decide to eliminate some benefits altogether and leave others untouched, or reduce them all but by different amounts. The analysis assumed no changes in taxpayer behavior.

"It won’t be impossible to pay for substantial individual tax rate reductions by cutting tax expenditures," Howard Gleckman, the editor of TaxVox, wrote in a blog post. "But it will be very, very hard."

– CNNMoney’s Jeanne Sahadi contributed to this report. 

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French President Francois Hollande

Britain had a bigger budget deficit than economists forecast in June, casting fresh doubt on whether Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne can meet his full- year fiscal goals.

The shortfall, which excludes government support for banks, was 14.4 billion pounds ($23 billion) compared with 13.9 billion pounds a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said in London today. The median forecast of 20 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey was for a deficit of 13.4 billion pounds.

With the U.K. struggling to climb out of a recession, speculation is growing that Osborne will miss his target of cutting the deficit to 120 billion pounds in the fiscal year that began April 1. The International Monetary Fund said yesterday the government should be ready to introduce temporary tax cuts and increase spending if growth fails to materialize.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke outlined options to ease policy further in case the flagging economic recovery fails to lower unemployment.

Easing tools include further purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, and altering the Fed

Pacific Investment Management Co.

India

Indian exports fell for the third time in four months in June, while a trade deficit that has pressured the rupee was the narrowest in more than a year as imports slid, government figures showed. The currency rose.

Merchandise shipments fell 5.45 percent from a year earlier to $25.06 billion, Director General of Foreign Trade Anup Pujari said at a briefing in New Delhi today. Imports slipped 13.46 percent to $35.3 billion, leaving a trade deficit of $10.3 billion, he said. The data are provisional.

India

Investors may see more signs of slowing U.S. manufacturing growth when makers of corrugated boxes and distributors of supplies report quarterly earnings this month.

W.W. Grainger Inc. (GWW) and Packaging Corp. of America are among companies that offer