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Cisco Systems led the Dow Jones industrial average slightly higher Thursday after the technology company reported higher sales. Mixed corporate earnings and economic reports kept the major stock indexes flipping between slight gains and losses.

Shortly after noon, the Dow was up 12 points at 15,288. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up less than a point at 1,659.

The news on the economy Thursday wasn’t encouraging. Applications for unemployment benefits rose last week, and manufacturing slowed in the mid-Atlantic region. The manufacturing report from the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve sent bond prices up in morning trading and turned stocks lower, but not for long.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of that this year,” said Scott King, an investment adviser at Unified Trust Co. in Lexington, Ky. “The news isn’t great, yet the market holds tight.”

Cisco jumped 13 percent, or $2.68, to $23.87. Cisco turned in quarterly results late Wednesday that beat analysts’ expectations, with the help of better revenue from the U.S. and emerging markets.

The networking equipment company sells its routers, switches, software and services to corporate customers and government agencies around the world. As a result, Cisco’s performance is often considered a gauge of how the technology industry is doing.

The Nasdaq rose 8 points to 3,479, a gain of 0.2 percent.

Wal-Mart fell 2 percent, the biggest drop among the 30 Dow stocks. The world’s largest retailer turned in weaker sales and a dim forecast for profits. The company blamed bad weather and delayed tax refunds for earnings and sales that fell short of what analysts had expected. Wal-Mart’s stock lost $1.68 to $78 business card.11.

Companies have reported record quarterly profits this earnings season. Seven of every 10 in the S&P 500 have trumped analysts’ earnings estimates, according to S&P Capital IQ. Earnings have climbed 5 percent over the year before.

But revenue has looked weak: six out of every 10 companies in the S&P 500 have missed forecasts, and revenue has edged up just 1 percent. Without higher sales, companies are getting more of their profits from laying off staff and other cost-cutting moves.

If the market is going to keep climbing this year, King said, sales will have to start rising. Analysts are looking for that to happen as economic growth gains strength later this year.

“It’s hard to see how companies can squeeze more earnings growth out of cost savings,” King said. “At some point, the economic numbers and revenue have to pick up.”

The Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve reported that manufacturers in the region said business conditions have slumped this month. Orders for manufactured goods and shipments have been weak.

In Washington, the Labor Department reported that the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits rose last week to 360,000. That suggests companies are laying more people off, just one week after applications for benefits hit a five-year low.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note sank to 1.88 percent from 1.94 percent late Wednesday. It’s a sign that traders are shifting money into low-risk investments like U.S. government debt.

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The no-parking sign didn’t really make sense. Nader Khan parked there anyway.

All along Finfar Court in Mississauga, signs stated parking was prohibited from 12 to 3 on Fridays. It seemed odd to Khan, since a large mosque — the Islamic Society of North America — was a few metres away and offered its main prayer service at the same time.

“When I first parked there, I genuinely thought the sign said no parking every day but Fridays,” said Khan, an Islamic singer and songwriter who had driven there to pray. “I thought, wow, how accommodating.”

But when he returned an hour later, he found that his car and all the others parked on both sides of the street in the light industrial area had been ticketed. “I was furious.”

A year later, Khan returned and saw the signs were still there. Instead of parking, he started taking photos and turned to Facebook to express his frustration. “Finfar Court: A most racist, discriminatory, Islamophobic street in the GTA, located in Mississauga Ontario,” he wrote to introduce the pictures.

The Facebook post sparked intense debate between those agreeing with Khan and those who thought the issue was merely a response to years of bad parking, including blocking driveways and parking too close to hydrants.

Across the GTA, places of worship have claimed intolerance and unfairness when their facilities face resistance from residents or their expansion plans and building permits are rejected by the city.

But a look at parking bylaws across the city and the outcomes of dozens of Ontario Municipal Board decisions suggests the real culprit is much more benign and mundane. It almost always comes down to indiscretions of the vehicular kind — traffic and parking.

“The truth is, places of worship have a need for a lot of parking,” said Joe D’Abramo, director of zoning and environmental planning for the City of Toronto. “Nobody wants to provide parking, because it takes up land and costs money to put it underground. But if we don’t require it, then they park on the streets and the community around it gets very upset.”

Toronto recently completed a review of its outdated zoning bylaws, including those for parking near a place of worship, and enacted them into law last week.

There was ample resistance. The Toronto Faith Coalition protested some of the zoning changes, concerned the parking requirements would make it impossible for existing places of worship to expand and new ones to set up.

“Parking is a big issue because it determines whether or not a church, synagogue and mosque can be built,” said Charles McVety, an evangelical Christian leader, who headed the Toronto Faith Coalition. “It’s fundamental, because if you do not have enough land to meet this high level of parking required, then you can’t build your building or expand it. They won’t approve it.”

D’Abramo said the changes were necessary. Not only were the bylaws old, but they were from pre-amalgamation and rules differed across the city. They also didn’t reflect the diversity of the city. “Some faiths have seating, and some faiths have no seating, so the standards are different depending on how you worship,” he said.

Generally, municipalities require a place of worship to provide parking based on complex formulas that account for the number of pews or square footage. The parking requirement is reduced if the religious centre is near transit or major city centres.

In recent years,the neighbourhood church has been replaced by mega-churches. According to a study commissioned by the City of Toronto on parking standards for a place of worship, the average size of a new place of worship built between 2000 and 2005 was more than double the average size of one built between 1975 and 1990. This means more people now drive to church. And, since many religious centres are set up in industrial areas — where land may be cheaper — public transit is rarely a realistic alternative.

A number of municipalities, including Brampton, Mississauga and Markham, have also conducted reviews of their parking bylaws around places of worship.

And it turns out nothing riles up the neighbours like bad parking and increased traffic. Infractions or even the perception that rules could be broken have been enough to ignite tensions and divide communities.

In Markham, a Taoist temple trying to build in a residential area faced heavy resistance from neighbours primarily due to fear of increased traffic and parking concerns — even though the temple said it expected attendance of 15 to 20 people at a time. The city voted against the temple’s plans for rezoning, and the matter eventually landed at the Ontario Municipal Board, which approved the building last summer payday loans online.

Ten years ago, city officials thwarted the plans of a Hindu temple in Scarborough to redesignate a property it purchased in an industrial zone into a religious facility. There were a number of concerns, including parking and lack of transit. The temple took its case to the OMB, but the city’s concerns were upheld.

And a new mosque project in Markham has divided an otherwise peaceful community with concerns that the construction of the facility would create a traffic nightmare and lead to parking chaos in a neighbouring residential area. The matter was further complicated by what the mosque called a “typo” on its website suggesting it could hold 1,600people when it only had approval for 500 — and parking accommodations for such. The mosque has since decreased the planned size of its worship space and will provide 188 parking spaces.

On the surface,the primary concern appears to be good planning. But there are some who question whether the zoning issues are simply a mask for underlying tensions.

“It becomes an oddly intense battle when it comes to parking and mundane zoning issues around a mosque or temple,” said Jason Hackworth, a geography professor at the University of Toronto who wrote a paper on the collision of faith and economic development in the city’s industrial zones. “You have to ask yourself why this is the case, as zoning issues normally don’t invoke such a reaction.”

But he, too, is careful. “Of course, something like that is hard to prove.”

Especially when mosque officials agree that their congregants are also at fault. “The officials are very frustrated with the small minority of people who park badly,” said Khan, the Mississauga man offended by the signs. But Khan still thinks the city went too far: “Have tow trucks on call, tow the cars that are being inconsiderate and fine them again and tow them again. Punishing an entire community or the actions of a few is very problematic.”

Mosque officials say they constantly make announcements about parking etiquette to their congregants, and have even organized a shuttle from free parking lots nearby to accommodate overflow. But they were surprised when the city put up the signs without any consultation.

The bylaw was enacted in December 2011 after the city received numerous other parking complaints from businesses, said Mississauga transportation commissioner Martin Powell. The staff report on the matter only refers to the concerns of one citizen. And the city did not send out a petition to local residents and businesses, as is the normal process, the report states.

“I know it seems a bit strange because of the hours, but that’s when we have a problem,” said Powell. “If there are safety issues involved, then staff will make recommendations to council, and that is what we did here.”

But Powell is quick to point out that the mosque isn’t the only place of worship that faces odd parking restrictions. Last spring, a number of churches in Mississauga were shocked to find their congregants could no longer park on the streets nearby from 10-1 on Sundays.

“We have been at our location for 19 years, and there has never been any problem,” said Desmond Singh, a pastor with Mississauga Gospel Assembly. “But it seems like the city has been targeting our church hours.”

Some of his congregants and those from the nearby St. Joseph Syriac Catholic Church took a petition to city hall, but their protest fell on deaf ears. A member of St. Joseph’s church wrote about the restrictions on a website on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms claiming that it infringed upon the rights of parishioners to freely practise their religion.

The Toronto Faith Coalition’s McVety believes further restrictions on where a place of worship can be set up will make the problem even worse. Toronto and Ajax have recently banned places of worship from setting up in industrial zones — forcing new places of worship into expensive residential areas.

McVety says the coalition is considering taking Toronto’s new zoning bylaws to the OMB.

“We bring in hundreds of thousands of new Canadians in the GTA every year, and then we pass laws to restrict their ability to worship.”

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Asian stock markets rose Monday after a surprisingly strong U.S. jobs report pushed Wall Street stocks to new highs. Malaysian shares jumped after the country’s ruling political alliance won national elections.

The Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index both rose to record highs Friday after the Labor Department reported that U.S. employers added 165,000 workers last month and many more in February and March than previously estimated. The unemployment rate fell to 7.5 percent, which was the lowest level in four years.

The report counterbalanced weeks of mixed signals about manufacturing and corporate earnings and renewed hopes of a recovery in the world’s largest economy.

“The dichotomy between hard economic data and asset market performance continues but unlike over past weeks at least there was some justification for the rally in equity markets following the stronger than expected US April jobs report,” said a market commentary from Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong.

Malaysia’s KLSE Composite surged 2.9 percent to 1,744.50 after the country’s governing coalition won national elections, albeit with a weakened majority, to extend its unbroken, 56-year rule.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.1 percent to 22,932.93. South Korea’s Kospi was 0.3 percent higher at 1,972.27. Australia’s S&P/ASX advanced 1 percent to 5,178.80. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines also rose. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was closed for a public holiday.

On Friday, the Dow crossed 15,000 for the first time before closing 1 percent higher at 14,973.96. The S&P 500 index rose 1 percent to 1,614.42, closing above 1,600 for the first time. The Nasdaq composite index 1.1 percent to 3,378.63.

Benchmark oil for June delivery was up 97 cents to $96.58 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.62 to close at $95.61 a barrel on the Nymex on Friday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3124 from $1.3110 late Friday in New York. The dollar rose to 99.09 yen from 99.04 yen.

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The dollar was 0.4 percent from a two- week low against the yen on speculation the Federal Reserve will affirm its bond-buying program to cap borrowing costs when it announces its policy decision today.

The U.S. currency also traded near the least in almost two weeks versus the euro before a report that economists said will show America

The Galaxy S4’s design is virtually unchanged from the Galaxy S III. And when I say virtually unchanged, I mean that you have to be pretty obsessive to notice the differences. Aside from a slightly more rectangular body and a more substantial, metal-esque band wrapping around the sides, there’s little to separate Samsung’s successor from its predecessor.

The most notable improvements to the phone’s hardware guts come in its processor, display and camera. None are revolutionary, but they all match or one-up the Android status quo.

The 5-inch, Super AMOLED display is one of the best Samsung has ever put on a phone, with a 1080p display and a pixel density of 441 per inch — more than enough to eliminate any trace of pixelation. The screen could stand to be a bit brighter, but that’s a minor quibble.

Even with a bigger screen and a beefier battery, the Galaxy S4 managed to get ever-so-slightly thinner, slimmer, and lighter than the Galaxy S III. It also got a power boost.

Smartphone makers have spent the past few years flinging extra cores at everything, so yet another quad-core processor — this time in the form of , Fortune 500) Snapdragon 600 — doesn’t sound all that exciting, especially compared to the “octo-core” Samsung Exynos 5 Octa that international markets are getting. (Geek caveat: Those extra four cores in the Exynos 5 are meant for low-power scenarios, so they don’t provide the massive boost over Snapdragon that you might expect.)

Still, the fact that the Galaxy S4 is more than three times faster than the Galaxy S III when run through the same benchmarking tests is nothing to scoff at.

In using the phone regularly for a week, I rarely came across a moment when it suffered from significant stuttering, lag or overheating. The one noticeable exception was when I played “Real Racing 3,” a graphically intense game that got choppy when too many cars were onscreen. That’s not really Samsung’s fault — Android is notorious for its game lag.

The Galaxy S4’s camera is also improved, though we’re at the point of diminishing returns. On paper, the leap from 8 megapixels to 13 megapixels sounds substantial, but we learned years ago that the megapixel arms race is only part of the story when it comes to camera quality. The Galaxy S4’s best new photo trick is a camera sensor that’s back-illuminated, which means it can capture more light and produce brighter, more-detailed images without the use of a flash.

The camera works well in most normal situations. Its new user interface, pulled from Samsung’s point-and-shoot Galaxy Camera, is nicely laid out and easy to use. The image processing time between hitting the shutter button and having a saved photo isn’t blazing, but also isn’t a nuisance one hour payday loan. A few of the software advances, like being able to erase unwanted objects from an image’s background or create time-lapse action shots, are neat and well-implemented.

Of course, these improvements — especially to the camera and screen — require more power, and Samsung obliged by packing in a bigger battery. With the screen’s brightness ranging between 50% and 75%, 4G turned on, and a few apps and services running in the background (Facebook, Gmail, Google Talk, etc. — the usual suspects), I was still able to get through a full day with moderate use. With heavier usage, I found myself having to recharge after 6 to 8 hours. On the whole, I didn’t notice any huge leap in battery life over the S3, but it certainly wasn’t worse, either.

The features Samsung wants buyers to focus on, though, aren’t the Galaxy S4’s internal guts, which are more or less identical to other top smartphones right now. It’s the software upgrades baked into Samsung’s custom “TouchWiz” interface. The phone’s flashier tricks include pausing video when you look away from the screen, letting you answer the phone by waving in front of it, and activating tilt-based scrolling when eye contact is detected. Samsung also pinched a few features from its Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet, like allowing two apps to simultaneously run side-by-side, and the Airview feature, which detects when your finger is hovering over — but not quite touching — the screen. The gesture can activate a secondary action or menu.

Those are neat tricks, but they’re more like a sword-juggling circus act than the revolutionary breakthrough Samsung would like them to be. They’re interesting, novel and sometimes impressive, but they’re not significant or lasting advances. None are meaningfully better than our existing methods of smartphone interaction.

So, is the Samsung Galaxy S4 one of the best Android phones available? Yes. There are few other phones, period, that are as powerful and capable. But, in line with what we’ve seen from the past few iPhone generations, the improvements here aren’t as pronounced and exciting as in past years. This isn’t a phone that’s going to convert an iPhone user, and current Galaxy S III owners aren’t going to miss out on a whole lot as far as features go.

If you’re ready for an upgrade, and are in the market for an Android phone, there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be one of top two or three phones you consider. It’s not the standout, though, that Samsung needs to remain the preeminent leader of the Android field. Hear that, HTC?

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A Muslim woman has been ordered to remove her niqab when she testifies at the preliminary hearing for two men she alleges sexually assaulted her years ago.

“Permitting her to wear her niqab while testifying in court does … create a serious risk to trial fairness,” Ontario Court Justice Norris Weisman wrote in his nine-page decision. “Her credibility is very much in issue and unfortunately, no accommodation of the parties conflicting Charter rights is possible.”

It is the second time Weisman has ruled N.S. – known in court by her initials – should remove the face covering when testifying in court.

He released his written ruling Wednesday.

The woman’s lawyer, David Butt, said his client is “disappointed” and he will be asking a Superior Court judge to quash the decision obliging her to remove the face covering.

The judge should have considered expert testimony about the “substantial body of evidence” that says facial expressions are not helpful in judging whether a person is telling the truth, Butt said. Butt said he will promptly file the papers seeking the review, which will put next week’s preliminary hearing on hold again.

In 2008, Weisman ruled she should be required to testify with her face bare after finding her “religious belief is not that strong.”

That decision was appealed to two higher courts before landing in the Supreme Court, which sent the case back to him last December payday loans for bad credit.

His latest decision says he is satisifed her wish to wear her niqab is based “on a religious belief that is both sincere and strong.” However, Weisman said he is concerned that her “overwhelming negative emotions in having her face exposed to public …will adversely affect her ability to tell the truth as she sees it, resulting in a wrongful acquittal of the accused and consequent loss of public confidence in the administration of justice.

“I am even more concerned, however, that her niqab will impair accurate assessment of her demeanour and credibility, resulting in wrongful convictions, loss of freedom for the accused, and loss of public respect for the justice system.”

The complainant, now 37, alleges she was sexually abused as a child by an uncle and another man over a five year period from 1982 to 1987.

Last week, lawyers revisited the veil issue. The Supreme Court said a judge’s decision on whether to allow the face-covering must be made on a case-by-case basis.

The court said judges should consider four questions before making a decision, including whether permitting a witness to wear a niqab would create a serious risk to trial fairness.

More from thestar.com:

Toronto judge in niqab case ‘fair in his treatment of everybody’

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New York Federal Reserve Bank President William C. Dudley said European economic weakness and U.S. budget woes mean

JEFFERSON CITY • Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has vetoed legislation that sought to re-impose local sales taxes on vehicles bought from out-of-state dealers or through person-to-person sales.

Nixon’s veto Friday marks the second time in two years he has rejected the Legislature’s attempt to reverse the effect of a 2012 Supreme Court ruling.

The court ruled that local sales taxes can only be charged on vehicles bought from Missouri retailers. If cities and counties want to tax vehicles bought elsewhere, the court said they need to adopt local “use taxes cheap business cards.”

The legislation vetoed by Nixon sought to get around that ruling by tying local sales taxes to the titling of vehicles. Local voters would have had a chance to repeal the taxes by 2016.

Nixon said the repeal section was not drafted well.

(Vehicle tax bill is SB182)

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The Ontario Provincial Police have lifted the Amber Alert for a 13-year-old girl.

Victoria Larabie was found in Durham region just after 9 p.m. Sunday night.

She is from Douro-Dummer Township, near Peterborough. She was reportedly picked up by someone driving a black SUV around 11:30 a.m. Sunday near Norwood, approximately 30 kilometres northeast of Peterborough, heading towards Hwy. 115.

Larabie’s grandmother reported her missing to err on the side of caution, said Const. Iain McEwan of the Peterborough OPP.

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Service industries in the U.S. expanded in March at the slowest pace in seven months as new orders and employment cooled.

The Institute for Supply Management