Stocks mostly dip lower on Wall Street Stocks mostly dip lower on Wall Street ADVERTISING NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks ended pretty much where they started Wednesday on Wall Street, a day after the market had its biggest gain of
Stocks mostly dip lower on Wall Street
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks ended pretty much where they started Wednesday on Wall Street, a day after the market had its biggest gain of the year.
The Dow Jones industrial average eked out an increase of 16.42 points, its sixth consecutive gain. The Dow ended at 13,194.10, up 0.1 percent. The Dow was up as much as 43 points in the morning, but most of those gains evaporated by mid-afternoon.
It was the longest winning stretch for the Dow since February 2011, but that was one of the few bright spots on an otherwise glum day in the stock market.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 edged down 1.67 points to 1,394.28. The Nasdaq composite inched up 0.85 point to end at 3,040.73. The Nasdaq closed above 3,000 on Tuesday for the first time since December 2000.
CDC launching anti-smoking ads
ATLANTA (AP) — Tobacco taxes and smoking bans haven’t budged the U.S. smoking rate in years. Now the government is trying to shock smokers into quitting with a graphic nationwide advertising campaign.
The billboards and print, radio and TV ads show people whose smoking resulted in heart surgery, a tracheotomy, lost limbs or paralysis.
The $54 million campaign is the largest and starkest anti-smoking push by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its first national advertising effort.
The agency is hoping the spots, which begin Monday, will persuade as many as 50,000 Americans to stop smoking.
“This is incredibly important. It’s not every day we release something that will save thousands of lives,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a telephone interview.
That bold prediction is based on earlier research that found aggressive anti-smoking campaigns using hard-hitting images sometimes led to decreases in smoking. After decades of decline, the U.S. smoking rate has stalled at about 20 percent in recent years.
Murdoch rethinks role in phone scandal
LONDON (AP) — News Corp. executive James Murdoch acknowledged Wednesday that he could have done more to get to grips with the phone hacking scandal that has rocked Britain and threatened his place as the likely heir to his father’s global media empire.
Murdoch’s admission came in a seven-page letter written to British parliamentarians investigating the scandal. In it, the 39-year-old repeated his insistence that he didn’t know the extent of the illegal behavior at his now-defunct News of the World tabloid newspaper, saying that the details had been hidden from him by members of his staff.
“It would have been better if I had asked more questions,” Murdoch told the House of Commons’ media committee.
