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Saturday, May 19, 2012 |
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Weather Forecast |
| Cities / State |
°C |
°F |
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Atlanta
(Georgia) |
26.3 |
79.3 |
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Charleston
(South Carolina) |
21.5 |
70.7 |
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Charlotte
(North Carolina) |
23.7 |
74.7 |
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Columbia
(South Carolina) |
26.7 |
80 |
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Dallas
(Texas) |
30.7 |
87.3 |
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Miami
(Florida) |
24.5 |
76.1 |
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Nashville
(Tennessee) |
29.7 |
85.5 |
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News » Home
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| Foreclosures reach lowest level since 2007 |
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Date: 17-05-2012
Good news on the housing front: Foreclosure activity is at its lowest level since July 2007, according to new data from real-estate research firm RealtyTrac. In April, the number of default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions fell 5 percent from the previous month.
Foreclosure filings also fell year-over-year. One out of every 698 homes in the U.S. was hit with a foreclosure filing in April, a 14 percent decrease from April 2011. The number of properties repossessed by banks declined 7 percent from March and 26 percent from April 2011. Across the nation, 37 states and the District of Columbia saw a downturn in repossessions, known as real estate owned, or REO, transactions.
Lenders also seem to be getting serious about short-sales, in which lenders agree to sell a property for less than it's worth, as an alternative to foreclosures. That could help clear the housing sector of the excess inventory keeping home prices down.
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| Leading insurer pays $109M for dog bite claims |
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Date: 17-05-2012
Dog bites man does not get a lot of attention in the news, but it costs insurance companies hundreds of millions in claims every year.
State Farm Insurance, one of the nation's largest home insurers, paid more than $109 million on about 3,800 dog bite claims nationwide last year, spokesman Eddie Martinez said Wednesday. In 2010, there were about 3,500 claims and $90 million in payouts.
The Insurance Information Institute estimated that nearly $479 million in dog bite claims were paid by all insurance companies in 2011, spokeswoman Loretta Worters said. In 2010, it was $413 million.
It's no surprise that California -- home to more dogs and people than any other state -- led the way in 2011.
Martinez says 527 claims were filed in California and victims received $20.3 million, a jump of 31 percent over 2010.
State Farm is still working to determine reasons for the spike, Martinez said.
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| U.S. Stock Futures Pare Advance Before Reports on Jobs |
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Date: 17-05-2012
U.S. stock futures pared their gains before reports on jobless-benefit claims and manufacturing in the Philadelphia region.
Standard & Poor 500 Index futures expiring in June advanced 0.1 percent to 1,323.6 at 11:20 a.m. in London, having earlier climbed as much as 1.1 percent. Contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 6 points to 12,580.
The S&P 500 retreated for a fourth day yesterday, closing at the lowest level since Feb. 1, as concern Greece debt crisis is worsening overshadowed better-than-estimated reports on U.S. housing starts and industrial production. The Federal Reserve yesterday signaled further monetary easing remains an option to protect the U.S. economy from the danger that lawmakers fail to reach agreement on the budget.
Investors are aware that growth in the U.S. and emerging markets is roughly OK and corporate earnings are very OK, said Henrik Drusebjerg, a senior strategist at Nordea Bank AB in Copenhagen, where he helps oversee $230 billion. If you have the ability of not looking at Europe, everything is looking OK and moving slowly but surely in the right direction. But when you look at Europe, Greece is the question right now.
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| Early Signs of Parkinson's Might Be Seen in Colon |
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Date: 16-05-2012
A colonoscopy or similar test could one day diagnose Parkinson's disease years before symptoms occur. That's because signs of Parkinson's that appear in the brain also show up in the colon, a new study says.
Researchers examined tissue samples obtained during colon exams of people who later developed Parkinson's disease. The samples were taken several years before the patients showed symptoms of the neurological disorder.
The cells in the patients' intestinal walls were found to contain clumps of alpha-synuclein -- a hallmark protein of Parkinson's.
In a previous study, these researchers found these aggregates were apparently unique to the gut of Parkinson's disease patients -- they were not seen in people with certain gut disorders or in healthy people.
The findings suggest that tissue obtained during a colonoscopy or other colon cancer screening test could one day be used to predict who will develop Parkinson's, said study researcher Dr. Kathleen Shannon, a neurologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
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| Needy States Use Housing Aid Cash to Plug Budgets |
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Date: 16-05-2012
Hundreds of millions of dollars meant to provide a little relief to the nation struggling homeowners is being diverted to plug state budget gaps.
In a budget proposed this week, California joined more than a dozen states that want to help close gaping shortfalls using money paid by the nation biggest banks and earmarked for foreclosure prevention, investigations of financial fraud and blunting the ill effects of the housing crisis. California was awarded more than $400 million from the banks, and Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed using the bulk of that sum to pay the state debts.
The money was part of a national settlement valued at $25 billion and negotiated with five big banks over abuses in their mortgage and foreclosure processes.
The settlement, reached in February after a year of talks and intervention by the Obama administration, was the second-largest in history involving the states, trailing the tobacco industry settlement, and represented the first large-scale commitment by banks to provide direct aid to borrowers.
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| Oil falls to 6-month low below $93 on US supplies |
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Date: 16-05-2012
Oil prices fell to fresh six-month lows below $93 a barrel Wednesday in Asia after a report showed U.S. crude supplies surged more than expected last week.
Benchmark oil for June delivery was down $1.22 to $92.76 a barrel, the lowest since November, at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 80 cents to settle at $93.98 in New York on Tuesday.
Brent crude for July delivery was down $1.14 at $110.31 per barrel in London.
The American Petroleum Institute said late Tuesday that crude inventories rose 6.6 million barrels last week while analysts surveyed by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos., had predicted an increase of 1.5 million barrels.
Inventories of gasoline fell 2.6 million barrels last week while distillates tumbled 1.6 million barrels, the API said.
The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration reports its weekly supply data later Wednesday.
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| Economists list cheapest ways to save the world |
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Date: 14-05-2012
Leading economists have ranked how to best and most cost-effectively invest to solve many of the world's seemingly insurmountable problems, a Danish think-tank said Monday, calling for a shift in global priorities.
"It may not sound sexy, but solving the problems of diarrhoea, worms and malnutrition will do good for more of the world's poor than other more grandiose interventions," Bjoern Lomborg, who heads the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, said in a statement.
His think-tank on Monday presented the results of its third global Copenhagen Consensus, in which it asked prominent economists working within 10 of the world's top problem fields to propose the best investments to fix those problems.
A panel of experts, including four Nobel laureates, then went through the proposals and ranked the ones they believed would have the biggest impact and "where we can get the most mileage for our money," Lomborg told AFP.
The Dane, who shot to fame with his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" in 2001, insisted the list was necessary since policymakers and humanitarian organisations often allow irrational emotions to dictate how they spend money earmarked for fighting poverty, declining biodiversity or natural disasters.
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| Oil falls below $95 amid China growth concerns |
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Date: 14-05-2012
Oil prices fell below $95 a barrel Monday in Asia amid investor concern that China's economy, the world's second-largest, is slowing faster than previously expected.
Benchmark oil was down $1.33 to $94.80 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 95 cents to settle at $96.13 in New York on Friday.
Brent crude was down 86 cents at $111.40 per barrel in London.
Traders brushed off China's announcement Saturday that it plans to cut its bank reserve requirement by 0.5 percentage points. The move, the third reserve ratio cut since November, is designed to boost lending and spark economic growth.
However, investors are worried by signs that China's economy is faltering. The government said Friday that industrial production growth in April slowed and electricity output was little changed.
Investors are also eyeing political turmoil in Greece, where political parties have been unable to form a government after elections earlier this month.
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