Gold futures for June delivery were up 0.7 percent Friday to $1,568.90 per troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Silver futures for July delivery were up 22.90 cents to $28.386 per troy ounce. The U.S. dollar rose to its highest level since 2010 on continued...

Oil prices moved slightly higher Friday but held just below $91 a barrel of crude on positive U.S. consumer sentiment. The price of West Texas Intermediate for July delivery rose 20 cents to $90.86 per barrel. Natural gas for June delivery lost 7.9 cents to $2.568 per million British...

Grain markets closed mostly higher Friday on the Chicago Board of Trade. Corn was steady to up 8 1/4, soybeans were up 4 3/4 to up 13 1/4, wheat was up 10 1/4 to up 17, oats were off 8 1/2 to off 10 1/4. Weather gave a boost to corn after a day of choppy trade on slow export demand and outside...

Selling homes at desperately low prices is a fading phenomenon in some U.S. locations, industry observers said. The National Association of Realtors said April”s inventory of homes on the market was down to a 6.6-month supply. A year earlier in April, there was a 9.1-month supply of...

Advance Publications said its flagship newspaper, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, would cut its print schedule to three days a week this fall. The company, which is based in New York, said it would also scale back the production schedule for its newspapers in three cities in Alabama:...

U.S. stocks closed lower Friday on economic news out of Spain and ahead of the holiday weekend. The Dow Jones industrial average, which gained 34 points Thursday for the first finish in the black this week, was down 74.92 points, or 0.6 percent, to 12,454.83. Investor eyes are on Europe....

U.S. President Barack Obama urged Congress to extend the tax benefits key to the nation’s wind power sector. Speaking Thursday in Newton, Iowa, from a manufacturing facility for TPI Composites, a global provider of wind turbine blades, Obama said: “If Congress doesn’t act,...

The British government unveiled a draft energy bill this week critics say will raise prices and favors new gas-fired power plants over renewable sources. British Energy Secretary Ed Davey published the draft law Tuesday amid negative reviews from energy companies, which predicted it will...

Indonesia needs to address loopholes in its moratorium on deforestation, Greenpeace said. The two-year moratorium, announced last May by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, was part of an agreement with Norway. Under that agreement, Norway had committed up to $1 billion in...

Plans for Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish enclave to build an oil pipeline to Turkey points to a major political and economic realignment in the Middle East that will impact heavily on Iraq. The country stands to lose a region believed to contain 45 billion barrels of oil and as much as...

Since U.S. President Barack Obama”s visit earlier this month, talk in the Afghan capital has centered almost exclusively on how the United States” and NATO presence will pack its bags on the way out of the country, beginning next year. In country and in the region, Washington...

Communist rebels in the southern Philippines have threatened to attack mining companies, including Toronto Ventures Inc. operating in the Zamboanga Peninsula. Jorge Madlos, a spokesman for the New People’s Army — the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines — also...

Emmy Award-winning comedy writer Al Gordon has died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his family said. He was 89. Gordon’s son, Neil, confirmed his death Wednesday of age-related causes to the Los Angeles Times. Al Gordon, an Ohio native raised in New York, is best known for...

Two-time Tony Award-winner Katie Finneran is to play Miss Hannigan in the upcoming Broadway revival of “Annie,” the show”s producers said Friday. Finneran won her Tonys for her work in “Promises, Promises” and “Noises Off.” “Miss Hannigan is...

The musical “Million Dollar Quartet” is to close June 24 after 900 performances on Broadway and at New World Stages, the show”s producers announced. The New York production originally opened at the Nederlander Theatre April 11, 2010 and transferred to New World Stages...

Frank Langella is to be honored with the 2012 Compass Rose Acting Award at the Nantucket Film Festival in Massachusetts next month. The prize is awarded to an “outstanding performer whose contribution to the world of acting has been profound,” organizers said. “Langella...

Arthel “Doc” Watson is hospitalized in critical condition after a fall at his North Carolina home, the 89-year-old folk musician”s family said. Watson”s daughter, Nancy, told the Winston-Salem Journal the blind Grammy Award-winning artist remains at Wake Forest...

U.S. musician Gregg Allman said on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” he is engaged to marry his seventh wife. UsMagazine.com reported she is a 24-year-old woman named Shannon. The 64-year-old founding member of The Allman Brothers Band and father of five children did not offer any...

Older adults, blacks, American Indians, those with fewer years of education and those living in the southeast, have elevated stroke risk, U.S. officials say. A report published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report said those age 65 and older...

About 9 percent of all U.S. asthma cases are made worse by work-related exposures, federal health officials say. Work-related asthma includes work-exacerbated asthma — pre-existing or concurrent asthma worsened by factors related to the workplace environment — and occupational...

Big tobacco spends $10 billion annually — about $1 million an hour — to portray smoking as vibrant and healthy, but it’s not reality, a U.S. official says. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said the CDC recently...

The rate of preventable deaths in Canada dropped by half — from 373 per 100,000 Canadians in 1979 to 185 per 100,000 Canadians in 2008 — officials say. The most recent edition of Health Indicators 2012, an annual report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information and...

Some people try to avoid all thoughts of death but U.S. researchers advise thinking about death can bring out the good in people. Kenneth Vail at the University of Missouri reviewed experiments involving people thinking about death. He also reviewed assessments of how people who were not...

Health Canada officials advise against buying any foreign health products because they may pose a health risk. “These products have been found by regulators in other countries to contain prescription drugs, unauthorized drugs or heavy metals, that are not declared on the product...

Facebook might be looking to buy Norwegian company Opera Software for its popular Opera mobile Web browser, British tech site Pocket-lint.com is reporting. Facebook, based in Menlo Park, Calif., has been buying a number of companies in recent months to increase its presence in the world of...

Google will unveil its new tablet computer at its I/O conference next month and will give a unit to every developer in attendance, Web site TechnoBuffalo said. Citing a “trusted source,” TechnoBuffalo said the search giant will show off the device at its conference, scheduled to...

German researchers say the oldest archaeological evidence of a Jewish cultural presence on the Iberian Peninsula has been found at a Portuguese excavation site. Archaeologists of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena said a 16-by 24-inch inch marble plate that may have been a tomb slab bears...

Global positioning system-maker Garmin says moving from touchscreens to a console-mounted controller will help divers navigate with fewer distractions. Known for its portable GPS devices, Garmin has begun moving away from them to focus on permanent in-dash auto installations, the tech Web site...

The International Telecommunication Union has issued a draft recommendation on technical details for ‘Ultra High Definition Television’ or UHDTV, officials say. Although Ultra-HD TV systems are years away from being widely adopted, they would yield a massive improvement in picture...

Australia and South Africa will share the site for the world’s most powerful radio telescope, powerful enough to detect extraterrestrial life, officials said. Both countries had been competing to win the $2 billion contract for the Square Kilometer Array, an instrument that will be 50...

World No. 3 Agnieszka Radwanska and Simona Halep won their matches Friday and will meet Saturday in the final at the Brussels Open. Radwanska, the No. 1 seed, eliminated eighth-seeded Kaia Kanepi 7-6 (10-8), 6-3 in 1 hour, 51 minutes, while Halep dispatched Sofia Arvidsson 6-4, 6-3. Radwanska...

James Morrison of England shot an 8-under 64 Friday and leads the BMW PGA Championship by four strokes over Luke Donald and David Drysdale. Morrison was in the clubhouse at 12-under 132 when windy conditions set in. Donald, the defending champion shot a 4-under 68 Friday and Drysdale shot...

Defending champion Nicolas Almagro won in straight sets and American Brian Baker outlasted a Russian star Friday to reach the title match of the Nice Open. Almagro, of Spain, breezed to a 6-1, 6-3 semifinal win over Gilles Simon in just 68 minutes. Baker, a qualifier, took down Nikolay...

The St. Louis Cardinals said first baseman Lance Berkman had knee surgery Friday in Houston and will need up to 10 weeks to recover. The Cardinals released a statement Friday saying arthroscopy on Berkman”s right knee “found a partial tear in the medial meniscus, which was...

Francesca Schiavone of Italy and Frenchwoman Alize Cornet will play Saturday for the title in the Strasbourg International tournament in France. Schiavone advanced with a 7-5, 6-2 win over American Sloane Stephens and Cornet, a wild card, rallied to beat Pauline Parmentier of France 4-6,...

Former winners Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon turned in the fastest laps Friday in the final practice session for the Indianapolis 500. Franchitti was clocked at 222.360 and Dixon at 222.274. The race will be Sunday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the forecast calls for...