S&P 500 reaches new high, led by tech

Specialist Meric Greenbaum, left, works with traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, April 29, 2013. A pair of encouraging economic reports helped propel the stock market up in early trading on Monday. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Specialist Meric Greenbaum, left, works with traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, April 29, 2013. A pair of encouraging economic reports helped propel the stock market up in early trading on Monday. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The handheld device of trader Joseph Tarangelo, center, is reflected in his glasses as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, April 29, 2013. A pair of encouraging economic reports helped propel the stock market up in early trading on Monday. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader George Ettinger works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, April 29, 2013. A pair of encouraging economic reports helped propel the stock market up in early trading on Monday. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Luigi Muccitelli, left, and specialist Michael Pistillo, center, work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Monday, April 29, 2013. A pair of encouraging economic reports helped propel the stock market up in early trading on Monday. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Technology companies led the Standard & Poor's 500 index to an all-time closing high Monday.

The stock market has recovered all the ground it lost over the previous two weeks, when worries over slower economic growth, falling commodity prices and disappointing quarterly earnings battered financial markets.

The S&P 500 index rose 11.37 points to close at 1,593.61. The 0.7 percent increase nudged the index above its previous closing high of 1,593.36, reached on April 11.

"The market has had a terrific run," said Philip Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investors, noting that the S&P 500 is up 12 percent since the start of 2013. "At the beginning of the year, I thought we were going to 1,660 (for the whole year). We're only about 5 percent from that."

A pair of better economic reports gave investors some encouragement. Wages and spending rose in the U.S. last month, and pending home sales hit their highest level in three years.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 106.20 points to 14,818.75, up 0.7 percent. Microsoft and IBM were among the Dow's best performers, rising more than 2 percent each.

IBM, which rose $4.84 to $199.15, accounted for a third of the Dow's increase. The index is just 46 points below its own record high of 14,865 reached on April 11.

Tech's popularity Monday was a change from earlier this month, when it lagged the rest of the market. Concerns about weak business spending and slower overseas sales have cast a shadow over big tech firms, said Marty Leclerc, the managing partner of Barrack Yard Advisors, an investment firm in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Revenue misses from IBM and other big tech companies have highlighted the industry's vulnerability to the world economy. But Leclerc thinks tech companies with steady revenue and plenty of cash look appealing over the long term.

Information technology stocks rose the most of the 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 on Monday, up 1.6 percent. It's the only group that remains lower over the past year, down 2 percent, versus the S&P 500's gain of 14 percent.

Federated's Orlando thinks tech stocks could continue to rally as investors shift money from companies that pay big dividends and have rallied recently -- utilities, healthcare and consumer staples. "They've been buying these companies, but four months into this year they've gotten expensive," Orlando said.

The Nasdaq composite rose 27.76 points to 3,307.02, an increase of 0.9 percent. Apple, the biggest stock in the index, surged 3 percent, or $12.92, to $430.12.

The Nasdaq remains far below its record closing high of 5,048.62, hit March 10, 2000, before the dot-com bubble popped.

The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes reached the highest level since April 2010, according to the National Association of Realtors. Back then, a tax credit for buying houses had lifted sales. In a separate report, the government said Americans' spending and income both edged up last month.

A handful of companies reported earnings on Monday. Eaton Corp.'s quarterly net income beat Wall Street's estimates, helped by its acquisition of Cooper Industries, an electrical equipment supplier. But the manufacturer's revenue fell short. Its stock climbed 3 percent, or $1.63, to $60.28.

Eaton's results followed a larger pattern this earnings season. Of the 274 companies that have turned in results, seven of 10 have beaten analysts' estimates for earnings, according to S&P Capital IQ. But when it comes to revenue, six of 10 have missed estimates. That suggests companies are squeezing more profits out of cost cutting, instead of higher sales.

The stocks of Moody's and McGraw-Hill, which owns Standard & Poor's, surged following news that the ratings agencies settled lawsuits dating back to the financial crisis that accused them of concealing risky investments. McGraw-Hill gained 3 percent, or $1.45, to $53.45, while Moody's jumped 8 percent, or $4.57, to $59.69, the biggest gain in the S&P 500.

In the market for government bonds, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note slipped from 1.67 late Friday to 1.66 percent, close to its low for the year.

___

AP Business Writer Bernard Condon contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-29-US-Wall-Street/id-e9d0382b5cb449d388f35846d456dd09

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Gay athletes have come out while active or retired

Even before Jason Collins, plenty of other athletes around the world have come out as gay, either while still active or in retirement.

From Martina Navratilova to Greg Louganis to Sheryl Swoopes, men and women from a variety of sports have openly acknowledged their sexuality, though many others are believed to still be reluctant to come forward.

Collins, a 34-year-old NBA veteran, became the first active player in the four major American professional sports to come out as gay, writing a first-person account posted on Sports Illustrated's website Monday. Collins has played for six teams in 12 seasons, including this past season with the Washington Wizards, and is now a free agent.

"It is hugely powerful when any individual in the sports world, wherever they come from in the world, feels able to come out," said Ruth Hunt, deputy chief executive of the British gay rights organization Stonewall. "The fact that this is a current player adds to the strength of his statement."

Previously, some pro sports athletes waited until after quitting to say they were gay, including former NBA player John Amaechi and former NFL running back Dave Kopay. English soccer player Justin Fashanu committed suicide in 1998, eight years after coming out during his playing career.

Amaechi, a center who played five seasons with four teams, became the first NBA player to publicly come out in 2007, three years after the Englishman's playing career was over. He said Collins spoke with him before deciding to come out and called his decision "ground-breaking" and one that could encourage other gay athletes to follow suit.

"I'm getting tons of messages right now from people talking to me about him, about what he's done," Amaechi told The Associated Press. "I've spoken to a couple of college athletes in the States and a couple of high school athletes who are very good who have been immensely buoyed by this news.

"They feel a weight lifted off them even if they aren't out and they aren't going to come out at this point."

Sports leagues in Britain and elsewhere in Europe have been trying to combat anti-gay bias. But the taboo remains particularly strong in soccer, where there are no openly gay players in Europe's top leagues. Homophobic chants still occur at some games.

"Football is not going to change," Amaechi said. "If it wanted to change it would change. It has the resources to do so. It doesn't want to change."

Amaechi said he has been in touch with soccer players, including in the English Premier League, who are gay but are not ready to go public.

"Many of them are out already," he said. "They are out in the way that most people are out in that people they love and that people who care about them know that they are gay. But random strangers don't know that they are gay."

Fashanu remains the only top-level British soccer player to have come out publicly, acknowledging he was gay in 1990. The former Nottingham Forest and Norwich City striker was found hanged in a London garage at age 37.

According to an inquest, Fashanu left a note saying, because he was gay, he feared he wouldn't get a fair trial in the United States on sexual assault charges. Maryland police were seeking him on charges that he sexually assaulted a 17-year-old boy after a party at his apartment.

Robbie Rogers, a former U.S. national team player who played for Leeds in England's second-tier division last season, went public in February that he was gay, saying on his personal website that "I realized I could only truly enjoy my life once I was honest." He also said he was retiring from the sport.

Anti-gay sentiment in soccer has been expressed in different ways.

Last year, Italy forward Antonio Cassano said he hoped there were no homosexual players on the national team and used a derogatory word to describe gays. Fans of two-time defending Russian champion Zenit St. Petersburg signed a petition saying gay players were "unworthy of our great city." Marcello Lippi, Italy's World Cup winning manager, caused a stir in 2009 when he said he had never come across a gay player and would advise gay players to stay in the closet.

"The NBA is light years ahead of football, there is no doubt about that," Amaechi said.

In the U.S., Kopay, who played for five NFL teams over 10 years, was the first pro athlete to acknowledge his homosexuality publicly when he came out in 1977 after retiring, and wrote a book about it.

Four-time diving gold medalist Louganis revealed he was gay in 1994, a year before announcing he was also HIV-positive.

Swoopes, a WNBA star and three-time Olympic gold medalist, disclosed in 2005 that she was gay.

In tennis, women's greats Navratilova and Billie Jean King came out about their sexuality. Former French player Amelie Mauresmo also spoke about her sexual orientation.

U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe came out before she played in last year's London Olympics. WNBA star Seimone Augustus and the league's No. 1 draft pick, Brittney Griner, are some of the more recent female athletes to follow suit.

Glenn Burke, an outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Oakland A's in the 1970s, and Billy Bean, a utility player in the 1980s and 1990s, disclosed they were gay after retiring. Burke died of complications due to AIDS in 1995.

Gareth Thomas, a Welsh rugby star, attracted widespread media attention in 2009 when he announced he was gay; he played until he retired in 2011.

"I was like a ticking bomb. I thought I could suppress it, keep it locked away in some dark corner of myself, but I couldn't. It was who I was, and I just couldn't ignore it any more. I'd been through every emotion under the sun trying to deal with this," Thomas said in a recent documentary broadcast on British television.

Orlando Cruz of Puerto Rico came out in October as pro boxing's first openly gay fighter, saying, "I don't want to hide any of my identities. I want people to look at me for the human being I am."

Canadian swimmer Mark Tewksbury came out as gay six years after winning a gold medal in the backstroke at the 1992 Barcelona Games. Former Olympic skiing gold medalist Anja Paerson of Sweden announced last year after her retirement that she was in a long-term relationship with a woman. Australian diver Matthew Mitcham came out as gay before he won the men's 10-meter platform gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

__

AP Sports Writer Rob Harris in London contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gay-athletes-come-while-active-retired-225227273.html

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Happy Monday

Happy Monday

Selena Gomez Dresses Up for the Gym?[The Frisky] No Prenup for Jennifer Aniston??[HollyWire] Kim Kardashian Baby Bump Exposed?[Right Celebrity] Taylor Swift Buys Mansion in Cash?[The Celebrity Cafe] Julianne Hough Spotted in a Bikini?[The Blemish] Zoe Saldana a Fashion Hit at Star Trek Photocall?[The Huffington Post] Kate Middleton To Deliver Baby in Hometown Hospital??[Celeb Dirty Laundry] ...

Happy Monday Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/04/happy-monday-23/

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Angry Birds Friends coming to Android this Thursday

The popular web-based social version of Angry Birds is flying onto mobile

Rovio has just announced today via its official @AngryBirds Twitter account that the extremely popular "Angry Birds Friends" version of the franchise will be coming to both Android and iOS this Thursday. This falls in line nicely with some rumblings we heard in early April of the game coming to mobile, and on May 2nd it's finally happening. The "Friends" version of the game is currently a web-only Facebook title, where instead of going solo you can join up with friends (naturally) and hold tournaments to compete together.

We're a little sparse on information of pricing and how cross-platform it will be, but there's only a few days of waiting before we see it pop up in the Play Store. 

Source: Rovio (Twitter)

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/Th7hEQSjVJg/story01.htm

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Sea surface temperatures reach highest level in 150 years on Northeast continental shelf

Apr. 26, 2013 ? Sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem during 2012 were the highest recorded in 150 years, according to the latest Ecosystem Advisory issued by NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC). These high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are the latest in a trend of above average temperature seen during the spring and summer seasons, and part of a pattern of elevated temperatures occurring in the Northwest Atlantic, but not seen elsewhere in the ocean basin over the past century.

The advisory reports on conditions in the second half of 2012.

Sea surface temperature for the Northeast Shelf Ecosystem reached a record high of 14 degrees Celsius (57.2?F) in 2012, exceeding the previous record high in 1951. Average SST has typically been lower than 12.4 C (54.3 F) over the past three decades.

Sea surface temperature in the region is based on both contemporary satellite remote-sensing data and long-term ship-board measurements, with historical SST conditions based on ship-board measurements dating back to 1854. The temperature increase in 2012 was the highest jump in temperature seen in the time series and one of only five times temperature has changed by more than 1 C (1.8 F).

The Northeast Shelf's warm water thermal habitat was also at a record high level during 2012, while cold water habitat was at a record low level. Early winter mixing of the water column went to extreme depths, which will impact the spring 2013 plankton bloom. Mixing redistributes nutrients and affects stratification of the water column as the bloom develops.

Temperature is also affecting distributions of fish and shellfish on the Northeast Shelf. The advisory provides data on changes in distribution, or shifts in the center of the population, of seven key fishery species over time. The four southern species -- black sea bass, summer flounder, longfin squid and butterfish -- all showed a northeastward or upshelf shift. American lobster has shifted upshelf over time but at a slower rate than the southern species. Atlantic cod and haddock have shifted downshelf."

"Many factors are involved in these shifts, including temperature, population size, and the distributions of both prey and predators," said Jon Hare, a scientist in the NEFSC's Oceanography Branch. A number of recent studies have documented changing distributions of fish and shellfish, further supporting NEFSC work reported in 2009 that found about half of the 36 fish stocks studied in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, many of them commercially valuable species, have been shifting northward over the past four decades.

The Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) extends from the Gulf of Maine to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The NEFSC has monitored this ecosystem with comprehensive sampling programs since1977. Prior to 1977, this ecosystem was monitored by the NEFSC through a series of separate, coordinated programs dating back decades.

Warming conditions on the Northeast Shelf in the spring of 2012 continued into September, with the most consistent warming conditions seen in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank. Temperatures cooled by October and were below average in the Middle Atlantic Bight in November, perhaps due to Superstorm Sandy, but had returned to above average conditions by December.

"Changes in ocean temperatures and the timing and strength of spring and fall plankton blooms could affect the biological clocks of many marine species, which spawn at specific times of the year based on environmental cues like water temperature," Kevin Friedland, a scientist in the NEFSC Ecosystem Assessment Program, said. He noted that the contrast between years with, and without, a fall bloom is emerging as an important driver of the shelf's ecology. "The size of the spring plankton bloom was so large that the annual chlorophyll concentration remained high in 2012 despite low fall activity. These changes will have a profound impact throughout the ecosystem."

Michael Fogarty, who heads the Ecosystem Assessment Program, says the abundance of fish and shellfish is controlled by a complex set of factors, and that increasing temperatures in the ecosystem make it essential to monitor the distribution of many species, some of them migratory and others not.

"It isn't always easy to understand the big picture when you are looking at one specific part of it at one specific point in time," Fogarty said, a comparison similar to not seeing the forest when looking at a single tree in it. "We now have information on the ecosystem from a variety of sources collected over a long period of time, and are adding more data to clarify specific details. The data clearly show a relationship between all of these factors."

"What these latest findings mean for the Northeast Shelf ecosystem and its marine life is unknown," Fogarty said. "What is known is that the ecosystem is changing, and we need to continue monitoring and adapting to these changes."

Ecosystem advisories have been issued twice a year by the NEFSC's Ecosystem Assessment Program since 2006 as a way to routinely summarize overall conditions in the region. The reports show the effects of changing coastal and ocean temperatures on fisheries from Cape Hatteras to the Canadian border. The advisories provide a snapshot of the ecosystem for the fishery management councils and also a broad range of stakeholders from fishermen to researchers.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/OO7wc-3mfWU/130426115614.htm

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Video: Who Hacked AP Twitter?

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/cnbc/51663749/

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HBT: Jeter takes BP, inches closer to return

I love Jayson Nix. You love Jayson Nix. We ALL love Jayson Nix. But eventually the Jayson Nix dynasty will have to end. His replacement is on his way to the Yankees soon:

Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter has resumed on-field hitting after being shut down last month by left ankle soreness.

Jeter took 32 swings in batting practice Wednesday at the Yankees? minor league complex. The 38-year-old superstar also ran for the second consecutive day.

There?s no timeline yet, but this is something.

Source: http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/10/derek-jeter-takes-bp-runs-inches-closer-to-returning/related/

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Melanoma Skin Cancer on the Rise in Children | The Parent Report

With spring upon us, and children spending more time in the outdoors, it?s time for parents to remind themselves of the importance of protecting their children from UV radiation more than ever.

A study out of Brown School at Washington University has looked at the increase of melanoma in adolescents and children. Melanoma is a serious and often deadly form of skin cancer that is, fortunately, rare in children between 0 and 19 years of age. However, researchers found that since 1973 there has been significant increase of melanoma cases among children, at an average increase of 2% of cases a year between 1973-2009.

Most of a person?s lifetime exposure to UV rays occur during childhood, when time spent outdoors is 3 times of that during the adult years. Risk factors for melanoma are fair skin, light colored hair and eyes, family history, and an increase of exposure to ultra violet radiation. Much of this damage can be avoided by wearing sunscreen, donning hats and staying out of the sun during peak hours.

Source: News Medical, April 9, 2013

Source: http://www.theparentreport.com/2013/04/melanoma-skin-cancer-on-the-rise-in-children/

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Dating Tips for the Single Gal Who's 'Ready for Love'

If you’ve been waiting for Mr. Right to land on your doorstep…well, that might be why you still haven't found him. Dating is hard work -- that’s why we asked matchmakers Tracy McMillan, Matt Hussey and Amber Kelleher-Andrews for a little advice. This soul mate-finding trio stars on NBC’s new reality series, Ready for Love (premieres April 9, 9 p.m. ET, NBC), where they help three bachelors who want to settle down. And if these pros are good enough for series producer Eva Longoria to enlist to find these guys "the one," then they are definitely worth listening to! Here are their No. 1 tips for the single lady who is "ready for love."

Source: http://www.ivillage.com//1-a-532741?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3A-532741

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