Wall Street jumps as Spain moves toward reforms

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 snapped a five-day string of declines in a broad-based rally on Thursday, as Spain's plans for economic reform eased some worries about one of the euro zone's most troubled countries.

The benchmark S&P 500 rose 1 percent, its biggest percentage gain since the Federal Reserve announced its plan for a third round of stimulus on September 13.

Spain announced a detailed timetable for economic reforms for the fiscally troubled nation and a tough 2013 budget based mostly on spending cuts.

"Any information that gives some understanding about what's going to happen is good for the market. It's small news, but more certainty is good," said Giri Cherukuri, head trader at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois.

The EU's Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner, Olli Rehn, said Spain's detailed timetable for economic reforms goes beyond what the European Commission has asked of Spain. Rehn said it is an ambitious step forward.

Gold stocks ranked among the day's bigger gainers in the wake of Spain's news; the PHLX gold/silver index (^XAU) jumped 3 percent.

Adding to the rally was a last-minute push by investors to reposition portfolios ahead of the quarter's end, with the S&P 500 on track for a gain of 6.2 percent in the third quarter. Friday will be the quarter's last trading day.

"What we've seen is broadly a consolidation, but also an attempt by fund managers to position properly for the rest of the year, to be in the best sectors," said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.

The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI) shot up 72.46 points, or 0.54 percent, to 13,485.97 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^GSPC) rose 13.83 points, or 0.96 percent, to finish at 1,447.15. The Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC) gained 42.90 points, or 1.39 percent, to close at 3,136.60.

While the Nasdaq led Thursday's gains, it also led the market's declines earlier this week - its volatility possibly reflecting investors' nervousness about the U.S. economic outlook, analysts said.

Apple (AAPL), up 2.4 percent at $681.32, gave the biggest lift to the Nasdaq. The semiconductor index (.SOX) gained 2.3 percent, bolstering the Nasdaq 100 (.NDX). Intel Corp (INTC.O) was up 1.9 percent at $23.09.

After the bell, U.S.-listed shares of Research In Motion (RIMM) surged 15 percent to $8.21 after the Canadian maker of the BlackBerry reported a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss.

On the deal-making front, Tempur-Pedic International Inc (TPX) agreed to buy rival mattress maker Sealy Corp (ZZ) for about $242 million and assume about $750 million in debt. Tempur-Pedic shares jumped 14.4 percent to $30.64, while Sealy's stock rose 2.3 percent to $2.19.

In the earnings realm, Discover Financial Services (DFS.N) reported third-quarter earnings that beat expectations - and its shares climbed 7.3 percent to $39.71.

Stocks were rising before Spain's announcement on hopes that China would take steps to spur its slowing economy.

China has severely underestimated this year's global economic slowdown, and further cuts to Chinese interest rates or bank reserve requirements will hinge on any new deterioration in the external environment, a central bank adviser said on Thursday.

U.S. economic data was mixed. A report showed initial jobless claims dropped by 23,000 to 359,000, sharply exceeding the decline of 4,000 that had been expected.

But the final read on second-quarter gross domestic product showed growth of just 1.3 percent, weaker than an expected 1.7 percent. And August durable goods orders tumbled 13.2 percent, much more than the expected drop of 5 percent.

Volume was below average at roughly 5.74 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the Amex, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of 6.53 billion.

Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by a ratio of slightly more than 3 to 1,and on the Nasdaq, about three stocks rose for every one that fell.

10 Tricks to Prepare for Your Next Job Interview

One of the top reasons for not getting hired is unpreparedness. When a company brings in a job candidate for an interview, they want to see that you have done your research on the company, and that you're prepared for what you'll be asked. If you truly want the job, doing the legwork to prepare for the interview should be no problem. Use these tips and tricks to help you maximize your chances of getting the job.

1. Bring a list of references and contacts. Often during a job interview, you'll be asked to fill out an official application, and you'll likely need to list out your references and phone numbers or addresses of previous employers. Rather than waste time digging in your phone to find the information you need, come prepared. Make a list of job references and personal contacts, along with their emails and phone numbers.

2. Look at LinkedIn. You can learn a lot from LinkedIn, not only about a company, but also about the person who's interviewing you. If you know ahead of time who your interviewer will be, look her up on LinkedIn. Knowing a little bit about her can help you guide the conversation and show you did your homework.

3. Come with questions. Many job seekers get paralyzed when they're asked if they have any questions. It's certainly not a requirement, but coming prepared with a few well thought-out questions about either the company or the position can make you seem inquisitive and interested.

4. Follow the company's news. If the human resources manager mentions the company's recent acquisition and you stare at her blankly, she might consider you less deserving of the role than another candidate who has read up on the (major) company news and can speak on it intelligently. It pays to read the company's News tab, and certainly makes you look smarter.

5. Follow your interviewer on Twitter before the interview. Not only will this give you another opportunity to connect with her, but you might also learn something useful for your interview. And you can flatter her by mentioning something she tweeted. Everyone likes it when people pay attention to what we say.

6. Bring extra copies of your resume. Sometimes you'll be interviewed by more than one person, so having extra copies can ensure everyone sees your skills firsthand.

7. Get directions in advance. Especially if you have to navigate the inside of a parking deck and multi-story office building. The last thing you want to do is waste valuable time trying to find parking and then locate the floor your interview is on, only to arrive late and out of breath.

8. Bring money for parking. Speaking of that parking situation: you never know when you'll need quarters for the meter or bills for paid parking. Stressing out because you don't have cash on you can affect your interview negatively.

9. Be nice to everyone you meet. From the parking attendant to the secretary, you never know who might have influence with the hiring manager. The last thing you want getting back to her is how you snapped at the receptionist upon arriving for your interview.

10. Follow up by email and snail mail. We're so accustomed to instant communications, so either the same day or the day after your interview, send a quick email to your interviewer thanking her. This is also your opportunity to ask any questions you didn't ask in the interview. You should also consider sending a snail mail thank-you card. These are rare these days, so they are always positively received.

You'll likely be going on several job interviews in your lifetime, so learn from your mistakes and find what works best for you.

6 celebs who gained cash when losing weight

Salary by the pound

Did you get $50 to hit the treadmill this morning? How much were you paid to choke down that bland rice cake instead of a candy bar? The answer, of course, is nada. We don't get paid to do what's right for our bodies. Luckily for many celebrities, they do.

According to Jo Piazza, author of "Celebrity Inc.: How Famous People Make Money," celebrities who sign on to endorse a weight-loss regimen can instead become bloated on cash -- an average of about $33,000 per pound.* In total, it can mean up to $3 million to do what they should have done anyway: Lay off the cake.

"Today in Hollywood, weight loss has become yet another revenue stream that agents and managers know how to monetize," Piazza says. "They will advise clients to get fat simply to lose the weight."

It's enough to make you a little angry -- perhaps angry enough to eat an entire carton of cookie dough ice cream before hearing a familiar voice on TV telling you to step away from the spoon.

*We used this estimated amount to approximate how much some of the celebs would be making using this formula.

Weight loss: 'The greatest scam'

• Who: Charles Barkley
• Weight-loss brand: Weight Watchers
• Weight lost: 60 pounds
• Money gained: Estimated $1.98 million*

If anyone is going to understand the absurdity of celebrity weight-loss endorsements, it will surely be the candid Charles Barkley.

"I thought this was the greatest scam going -- getting paid for watching sports," Barkley said on a hot mic during a basketball telecast earlier this year. "This Weight Watchers thing is a bigger scam."

He certainly wasn't biting the hand that feeds him, though he had to be hungry enough to -- he's said to have lost more than 60 pounds on the men's program. He was acknowledging being in the peculiar position of being paid for what most of us do anyway.

The price tag for such an arrangement is only rising, Piazza says. "Many of the celebrities who do these diet deals make more from them than they do from television, movies or music -- the things that make them famous."

Cheers to weight fluctuation

• Who: Kirstie Alley
• Weight-loss brand: Jenny Craig
• Weight lost: Up to 100 pounds
• Money gained: Undisclosed

Perhaps in retrospect, it might have been a little foreboding that Kirstie Alley's career essentially began the way many waistlines begin their outward exploration: at a dive bar. The former star of " Cheers" has since become the veritable yo-yo of the celebrity diet world, swinging wildly from fit to, well, "relaxed."

In what would have been a demoralizing defeat for just about anyone, Alley was dumped by Jenny Craig as their spokeswoman in 2008 for bucking the system and gaining back nearly all the pounds she'd shed.

Undeterred, Alley launched her own weight-loss brand in 2010 that was rumored to be aligned with Scientology. Along with her new Xenu regimen, she signed on for " Dancing with the Stars" last year, which she says helped her lose 100 pounds. Seven hours of dancing and an intake of only about 1,400 calories per day sounds like it could only mean good business for Alley's weight-loss company and book, but perhaps she shouldn't cash those checks just yet. She's being sued for false advertising.

1 pound at a time

• Who: Valerie Bertinelli
• Weight-loss brand: Jenny Craig
• Weight lost: 47 pounds
• Money gained: Estimated $1.55 million*

One of the more successful stories is Valerie Bertinelli, who got her acting chops on the '70s sitcom "One Day at a Time" and then put her actual chops to work at the dinner table. Her relevance faded as she struggled with her weight, littering her resume with a smorgasbord of lesser-known acting gigs, mainly in made-for-TV movies.

She teamed with Jenny Craig in 2007 and dropped about 50 pounds. What's more, she has managed to keep the extra pounds off and even looked alarmingly attractive in a swimsuit photo shoot in 2009.

"She went from has-been to household name expressly because of her Jenny Craig endorsement," Piazza says.

In addition to her numerous Jenny Craig commercials and People magazine bikini shoot, the 52-year-old's notoriety and bank account have benefited from best-selling books on weight loss and a starring role on TV Land's "Hot in Cleveland."

Bundle of joyous cash

• Who: Jessica Simpson
• Weight-loss brand: Weight Watchers
• Weight lost: 50-pound goal
• Money gained: $3 million, pending

Piazza says it's all too common for pregnant celebrities to be urged by their agents to turn their baby bump into a bulge of cash, adding extra weight for a lucrative post-baby deal.

Normally a pillar of respectability in Hollywood, Jessica Simpson had received some raised eyebrows and chortling over her junk-food binging that overlapped with normal pregnancy weight gain before and after her May 1 delivery.

Though no one quite reached the point of speculating paternity to Chester Cheetah, it was not for a lack of evidence. Friends disclosed to the media that Simpson was eating her way through pregnancy to a weight of more than 180 pounds, substantially more than the typical weight gain with a child.

After giving birth, she seized the opportunity to cash in and signed on with Weight Watchers for $3 million, a sum she would only be awarded if she could shed 50 pounds in the following five months. Simpson has supposedly complained about the difficulty and ineffectiveness of the program. In all fairness, the couch is pretty comfortable and they make candy wrappers with such bright, enticing colors these days.

Making those 'Paper' Roses

• Who: Marie Osmond
• Weight-loss brand: Nutrisystem
• Weight lost: 50 pounds
• Money gained: Estimated $1.65 million*

Singer Marie Osmond struggled with her body image for much of her life, which might be one of the most relatable sentences ever written. Osmond's challenge was a bit more acute, however, having grown up in a performing family that was always in the spotlight. Things took a turn toward self-image implosion when, around age 14, producers of the show "Donny & Marie" took her aside. They urged her to drop more weight off of her 110-pound frame or her show would be canceled.

Continued weight fluctuation led her to sign on as spokeswoman for Nutrisystem in 2007, when she would drop about 45 pounds in her first four months.

In 2006, Nutrisystem signed former Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino to remind men that their wives weren't the only ones growing love handles. He must have one of the best endorsement deals around, considering the 22 pounds he's lost on the program can't be too much more than how much his old gear used to weigh.

Tackling his weight problems

• Who: Rex Ryan
• Weight-loss brand: Lap-Band
• Weight lost: About 105 pounds
• Money gained: Undisclosed

In a close call that hasn't been seen since Willy Wonka had to juice the ever-expanding Violet Beauregarde, New York Jets coach Rex Ryan was putting on the pounds at an alarming rate. He would gorge as if preparing for hibernation, consuming 12 tacos or an entire pizza in one sitting.

When he decided to test the scales in 2009, he was shocked to see it read 348 pounds. He tried weight-loss programs and exercise to no permanent avail, instead opting for Lap-Band surgery to restrict his food intake. His weight has since plummeted more than 100 pounds, and he intends to shed another 20 pounds off his frame.

Ryan recently revealed that following the surgery, he is in fact being paid to endorse the Lap-Band procedure. Though the endorsement amount wasn't disclosed, he says he's now down to one taco per sitting, which is already a savings of at least $11 per meal.

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'Britishisms' Creeping into American English

British people have long bemoaned the gradual encroachment ofAmericanisms into everyday speech, via Hollywood films and sitcoms. Now, "Britishisms" are crossing the pond the other way, thanks to the growing online popularity of British media such asHarry Potter, Downton Abbey and The Daily Mail.

For example, BBC News reports that "ginger" as a descriptor of a red-haired, freckly person has shot up in usage in the United States since 1998. That's the year the first Harry Potter book, with its Weasley family of gingers, hit store shelves. The trend shows up inGoogle ngram searches, which track the frequency of words and phrases appearing in print.

The Britishism invasion also includes "cheeky," "twee," "chat-up," "sell-by date" and "the long game," as well as "do the washing up," "keen on," "bit" (as in "the best bit"), "to book" (e.g. a flight), "called X" (instead of "named X") and "to move house."

A few of these now sound so familiar to American ears that their recent Limey origins might come as a surprise. [Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?]

While some of these British terms have gained ground because they sound pleasantly posh to American ears, Jesse Sheidlower, American editor-at-large of the Oxford English Dictionary, says others simply fill a gap where there is no equivalent in American English. "One-off," as in something which is done, or made, or which happens only once, and "go missing," instead of the vaguer "disappear," are two examples.

According to Sheidlower, the small but noticeable increase in the American usage of traditionally British terms doesn't bother Americans nearly as much as Americanisms bother many Brits.

"In the U.K., the use of Americanisms is seen as a sign that culture is going to hell," he told BBC News. "But Americans think all British people are posh, so — aside from things that are fairly pretentious — no-one would mind."

This laissez-faire linguistic attitude hasn't always been the American way. Early in U.S. history, when the nation was striving to distinguish itself from its former landlords, the dictionary maker Noah Webster set about establishing a distinctly American form of English. Webster's legacy includes the lack of "u" in words like "color" and the "-er" ending in words like "center" — spelling variants he viewed as superior to their British counterparts (colour and centre).

Some of the economical spellings Webster adopted, such as "public" instead of the British "publick," have since spread back to England. Clearly, in the continuously evolving languages of these transatlantic allies, there is give and take.

McLaren P1, a Le Mans racecar for the street, edges into the spotlight

chnically, the McLaren P1 unveiled at the Paris Motor Show Thursday is just a tease of a tease. It's billed as a design prototype, the final version of which won't be seen for several months. And McLaren held back many key details about the car, such as how much power it has to offer, vowing to reveal that early next year. What we did learn was that McLaren has put its typical obsessive compulsion of racecar engineering toward building a street car that can race any other at Le Mans and win.

As the preview pictures suggested, the P1 was designed as a spiritual successor to the McLaren F1 supercar of the '90s, down to the "snorkel" in the roof that helps cool the engine. It's part of a concerto of scoops, strakes and vents styled by the same engineers who handle aerodynamics for the McLaren Formula 1 team.

The result isn't just about making the car go fast, but keeping it on the track; thanks to a massive rear wing and two flaps that pop from the body, the car can generate an extra 1,322 lbs. of downforce at racing speeds -- which McLaren managing director Antony Sheriff compared to having a young elephant sit on the car.

Everything about the car's exterior is meant to shuttle air around it at speed, and McLaren says its spared no expense in the P1's construction; it's made mostly of carbon fiber, but there are more exotic materials mixed in, like the heat shield for the exhaust that's coated in gold leaf. To help stop the car, the wing can pivot down and act like an air brake -- not that the car will need them if it keeps the brake calipers large enough to fit across the tires of some small cars.

McLaren says the rest of the details about the P1 will arrive at the Geneva Auto Show, with production beginning late next year as a commemoration of McLaren's 50th anniversary.

After Wasting $5 Billion, the Army Is Eyeing These New Camouflage Patterns

Earlier this summer we wrote: "The U.S. Marine Corps has long been known for doing more with less; smaller, more agile, and quick to react, it actually employed that ability when hunting for new uniforms in 2002.

Erik German at The Daily tells the story of the Marines and the Army's uniform selections, mentioning a conversation he had with a textile technologist that shows the Marines flexibility and the Army's cumbersome bureaucracy.

The Marines went to their sniper school at Quantico, Va., and told a couple of their guys to find a good camouflage color for the new uniform pattern. A group of snipers went to the local Home Depot and found the main base color in the Ralph Lauren section of the paint department. The color now called Coyote Brown went into the pattern of their very successful and well-loved MARPAT uniform pattern.

This was also around the time the Army was sending its troops to Iraq with uniforms and body armor in a variety of mismatched patterns that, in effect, left U.S. soldiers wearing a target for the enemy to fire upon.

Bedder explains that in response to this and the Marines new uniforms, the general in charge of Army uniform procurement told his staff to pick a color before trials were finished. 

Five billion dollars, eight years later, and the Army is now doing the whole thing again. Over the next 12 months 1.1 million soldiers will be replacing their uniforms for something called Multicam.

Hopefully this will work out better for troops, and won't have to be replaced again in a handful of years."

Now see what direction that new camo may take.

You just see the big picture and camo helps to confuse the eye

Kryptek demonstrates its concealment capability (Kryptek/Jim Kinsey)Except there's someone with a weapon.

Color schemes are chosen to mimic natural surroundings. 

It's best that colors are contrasted with dark and light shades so that the wearer blends into the natural reflections and shadows we're used to seeing.






Pixels disrupt what you see and break up straight lines that did not occur in nature

ADS woodland pattern simulated (ADS, Inc./Guy Cramer)Digital patterns re-create shapes found in nature, known as fractals, which we see as mere background noise.

Pixels break up the fabric into a macropattern and a micropattern, so the design doesn't appear as a solid block. Even when picked up by infrared technology, the human form is broken up and its movements are masked.






3-D Layering tricks your brain by creating depth and shadows where there may be none and refusing to allow an image to form

ADS entry for desert camouflage. Pattern simulated. (ADS, Inc./Guy Cramer)We interpret gradients and layers of color as a textured surface with depth. In this case, the desert.

ADS explains that the brain is deceived into regarding the fabric as part of the natural environment, rather than a solid flat surface. 









Science and shadows do their part by bleeding out camo light to dark into backgrounds and help personnel blend better through patterns of light

A Kryptek pattern called Nomad selected by the Army for testing (Kryptek)Kryptek's example of 3-D layering features two levels: shading in the background and sharp random shapes in the foreground.

A light-reflecting gradient helps creates a three-dimensional illusion that blends into natural terrain.









There is no better designer than someone who stood out wearing bad camo — good hard R&D thinking goes on in the field

(Kryptek/Jim Kinsey)And active-duty soldiers will be field testing the Phase IV entries. The Army will then weigh the benefits and costs of adopting new camouflage.

Kryptek says their designs are made for the battlefield and the backcountry alike, so troops and civilians can both take note.