Heidi Klum’s legs, or America Ferrera’s smile? Bruce Springsteen’s pipes, or Michael Flatley’s legs? While talent runs rampant in Hollywood, only a few qualify as having some of the most expensive body parts in town, thanks to the insurance they’ve taken out to protect their most valuable assets.
Check out the celebrities in our slideshow below who have taken no risks when it comes to their money makers.
When Adam, a 13-year-old Swedish boy, was assigned to create a street-art project, he decided to use it as an opportunity to devise a social experiment. The innovative seventh grader built a “beggar” out of supplies he had around the house, placed him on a number of street corners in Gothenburg and waited to see how passersby would react, he told The Huffington Post.
Most people just walked by and “tried hard not to look at the beggar,” Adam said in his email. After a few hours, the homeless man had earned a little more than $1 and Adam gave the money away to an actual person without shelter.
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WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) didn’t vote for the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization bill when it passed the Senate last week. And on Wednesday, he gave a blunt reason why: he doesn’t think tribal courts are capable of giving a fair trial to non-Native Americans.
Grassley was holding a town hall meeting in Indianola, Iowa, when a constituent asked him about his VAWA vote. Think Progress reported on the meeting and posted a video of Grassley’s response, during which he argued that, since reservations are made up of Native Americans, those jurists wouldn’t be fair to a non-Native American.
“If you have a jury, the jury is supposed to be a reflection of society,” Grassley said. “Under the laws of our land, you’ve got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole, and on an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right? So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.”
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* Stocks post biggest two-day drop since November
* Initial jobless claims rise, Philly Fed well below forecasts
* Euro-zone business activity disappoints
* Wal-Mart climbs after earnings, Safeway soars
* Dow off 0.3 pct, S&P 500 off 0.6 pct, Nasdaq off 1 pct
By Edward Krudy
NEW YORK, Feb 21 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks fell for a second straight day on Thursday and the S&P 500 posted its worst two-day loss since November after reports cast doubt over the health of the U.S. and euro-zone economies.
But a late-day rally helped stocks erase some of their losses with most of the pullback concentrated in the technology- heavy Nasdaq. The move suggested investors were still willing to buy on dips even after the sharp losses in the last session.
In Europe, business activity indexes dealt a blow to hopes that the euro zone might emerge from recession soon, showing the downturn across the region’s businesses unexpectedly grew worse this month.
“The PMI numbers out of Europe were really a blow to the market,” said Jack De Gan, chief investment officer at Harbor Advisory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “The market was expecting signs that recovery is still there, but the numbers just highlighted that the euro-zone problem is still persistent.”
U.S. initial claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week while the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said its index of business conditions in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region fell in February to the lowest in eight months.
Gains in Wal-Mart Stores Inc shares helped cushion the Dow. The shares gained 1.5 percent to $70.26 after the world’s largest retailer reported earnings that beat expectations, though early February sales were sluggish.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 46.92 points, or 0.34 percent, to 13,880.62 at the close. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 9.53 points, or 0.63 percent, to 1,502.42. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 32.92 points, or 1.04 percent, to close at 3,131.49.
The two-day decline marked the U.S. stock market’s first sustained pullback this year. The Standard & Poor’s 500 has fallen 1.8 percent over the period and just managed to hold the 1,500 level on Thursday. Still, the index is up 5.3 percent so far this year.
The abrupt reversal in markets, which started on Wednesday after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s January meeting suggested stimulus measures may end earlier than thought, looks set to halt a seven-week winning streak for stocks that had lifted the Dow and the S&P 500 close to all-time highs.
Wall Street will soon face another test with the upcoming debate in Washington over the automatic across-the-board spending cuts put in place as part of a larger congressional budget fight. Those cuts, set to kick in on March 1 unless lawmakers agree on an alternative, could depress the economy.
Semiconductor stocks ranked among the weakest of the day, pressuring the Nasdaq as the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 1.8 percent. Intel Corp fell 2.3 percent to $20.25 while Advanced Micro Devices lost 3.7 percent to $2.60 as the S&P 500’s biggest percentage decliner.
The Dow also got a helping hand from personal computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co, which rose 2.3 percent to end the regular session at $17.10. The company was scheduled due to report first-quarter results after the closing bell.
Shares of Boeing Co rose 1.6 percent to $76.01 as a senior executive was set to meet with the head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Friday and present a series of measures to prevent battery failures that grounded its 787 Dreamliner fleet, according to a source familiar with the plans.
In other company news, shares of supermarket operator Safeway Inc jumped 14.1 percent to $22.97 after the company reported earnings that beat expectations.
Shares of VeriFone Systems Inc tumbled nearly 43 percent to $18.24 after the credit-card swipe machine maker forecast first- and second-quarter profits well below expectations.
Of the 427 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results so far, 69.3 percent have exceeded analysts’ expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning.
Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.9 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.
Berry Petroleum Co jumped 19.3 percent to $46.02 after oil and gas producer Linn Energy LLC said it would buy the company in an all-stock deal valued at $4.3 billion, including debt. Linn Energy shares advanced 2.8 percent to $37.68.
About two stocks fell for everyone that rose on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. About 7.64 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, well above the 20-day moving average of around 6.6 billion shares.
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In the midst of starring in the national tour of the Tony Award-winning musical, “Fela,” Michelle Williams is also set to star in the forthcoming reality series, “My Sister’s Keeper.”
The Entertainment One Television-produced show, which will premiere this summer in conjunction with the release of her third gospel album, will follow Williams and her sisters as she balances family life and the pressures of releasing a new solo project.
“I am very thrilled about this opportunity, to extend into television with the eOne family as well, with this series,” Williams said in a press release. “Working together on my new gospel album and television series, I am excited to share with everyone a behind-the-scenes look at the inspiration and journey of recording for the album, performing, fun family times and other unforgettable experiences out together with my dear sisters.”
Freshly cut flowers from your garden or florist are an easy way to brighten up a room, but sometimes it feels like you blink and your fresh flowers are brown. And wilting. And then dead. It doesn’t have to be that way! With the help of things like your refrigerator and a little bit of fizzy drink, it’s easy to keep your blossoms alive and beautiful.
If one wanted a sense of how difficult it’s become to manage the public relations fallout of sequestration, they need read no further than Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-Utah) take on the significance of the spending cuts.
From the Salt Lake Tribune on Wednesday:
“I’m for sequestration,” Hatch said, if Congress can’t cut spending. “We’ve got to face the music now, or it will be much tougher later.”
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New York City taxis are getting 10 inches of added leg room, so why not throw a condom vending machine in there?
That’s the idea behind TaxiTreats, a startup that just raised $1 million to install vending machines in cabs selling anything from peanuts to prophylactics.
TaxiTreats founder Brian Shimmerlik told The Huffington Post that he expects the company to start offering its taxi product to the city’s cabbies this summer.
When AP reporters walked through turf where Islamic terrorists had been driven out by the French military, they found a curious photocopied document: a list of 22 tips for avoiding UAV death. But you can use them, too! More »
HP’s stock is climbing in after hours trading from news of the company’s quarterly financial results. The Palo Alto firm has posted a profit of $1.2 billion for the first quarter, which is based on revenues of $28.4 billion. While the results fared better than HP’s previous expectations, both profit and revenue have fallen year-over-year for the Silicon Valley mainstay, down 16 percent and six percent, respectively. With respect to the company’s divisions, personal systems, printing, enterprise, services and software have each taken a hit from the previous year, with HP’s financial services segment being the only unit to show growth (despite the fact that financing volume is also down). Beyond the sagging numbers, Meg Whitman is offering reason for optimism to investors, saying the company will bring “a number of new programs and disruptive innovations to market in the coming quarters, and we expect the benefits from our restructuring will accelerate through fiscal 2013.” For the complete breakdown of HP’s financial health, just hit up the source link.
Filed under: HP
Source: Marketwatch
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