NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock futures are higher with the government reporting that weekly jobless claims edged downward last week, suggesting that employers may accelerate hiring this month.

Weekly applications dropped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 367,000 in the week ending May 5, the Labor Department said Thursday. The previous week’s figure was revised up slightly.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 48 points to 12,843. The Standard & Poor’s 500 gained 9.8 points to 1,360.8. The Nasdaq composite index rose 11.5 points to 2,630.75.

The four-week average for jobless claims, which economists use for a less volatile peek at the employment picture, fell 5,250 to 379,000. When that figure remains consistently below 375,000, it suggests that job growth is strong enough to lower the unemployment rate.

The numbers released by the Labor Department could dispel nascent fears that that strongest yearly start for hiring since the recession ended 2009 was sputtering.

Applications for unemployment benefits rose for most of last month in tandem with weaker hiring in March and April.

There are still signs, however, that companies are still digging out from the recession and a solid hiring environment has yet to take root.

Late Wednesday, a giant in the technology sector spooked the market with a sobering outlook on spending, particularly with Europe weighing on any global recovery.

Cisco Systems Inc. posted strong third-quarter profits, but shares tumbled 8 percent in premarket trading Thursday on dour comments about the willingness of corporations to make substantial investments.

CEO John Chambers said customers are waiting longer to close deals and they are spending less out of uncertainty about the economy, particularly in Europe and India.

“We are still in an uncertain environment economically,” Chambers told analysts in a conference call.

As talks to form a Greek government dragged into a fourth day, European markets fell.

The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares slipped 0.5 percent to 5,501 while Germany’s DAX fell 0.2 percent at 6,461. The CAC-40 in France was 1.2 percent lower at 3,081.

In the U.S., Kohl’s Corp. said Thursday that first-quarter profit tumbled 23 percent and the department store chain warned that it may fall short of Wall Street expectations in the second quarter.

The report comes a day after Macy’s reported first-quarter earnings. While first-quarter profit rose 38 percent, Macy’s shares tumbled after the department store left its guidance unchanged.

Though the company tends to give conservative guidance, investors took it as a sign of a potential slowdown in consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal jury in San Francisco is expected to deliver at least a partial verdict Monday in a copyright-infringement trial pitting Oracle against Google.

The 12 jurors informed U.S. District Judge William Aslup that they have unanimously agreed on three of the four issues at stake in the opening round of the trial. The jury foreman says there appears to be an impasse on the remaining issue.

Aslup was leaning toward accepting a partial verdict Friday until the foreman mentioned some jurors believe some of the holdouts could change their mind over the weekend.

The jury is debating Oracle Corp.‘s allegations that Google Inc. built its popular Android software for mobile devices by stealing some of the technology from Java, a programming platform that Oracle bought two years ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A disgruntled Yahoo shareholder questioned the qualifications and integrity of recently hired CEO Scott Thompson after exposing a misrepresentation about the executive’s education.

The fabrication confirmed Thursday by Yahoo Inc. gives New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb more artillery as he tries to topple a board of directors favored by Thompson, who became CEO of the troubled Internet company four months ago.

Loeb, whose fund Third Point owns a 5.8 percent stake in Yahoo, gained more leverage when he discovered Thompson doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree in computer science from a small college in Easton, Massachusetts, as Yahoo stated in a regulatory filing last week.

Thompson only has an accounting degree from Stonehill College, an accomplishment that Yahoo also listed in the filing. The accounting degree was the only one listed in Thompson’s resume last year by eBay Inc. when he was still running that company’s PayPal payment service. He graduated in 1979, according to Stonehill’s website.

Yahoo confirmed Thompson’s credentials had been exaggerated in the recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, brushed off the distortion as an “inadvertent error.”

But Loeb pounced on the misinformation as a violation of Yahoo‘s code of ethics and called for an independent investigation to determine whether Thompson had misled the company’s board about his technology credentials. He also cited the mix-up as an example of Yahoo‘s poor corporate governance.

“If Mr. Thompson embellished his academic credentials we think that it 1) undermines his credibility as a technology expert and 2) reflects poorly on the character of the CEO who has been tasked with leading Yahoo at this critical juncture,” Loeb wrote in a letter to Yahoo‘s board on Thursday. “Now more than ever Yahoo investors need a trustworthy CEO.”

In the past, other companies have suspended or fired executives who were caught lying on their resumes.

Yahoo hired Thompson to reverse years of financial lethargy that set in at the company even as more advertising shifted to the Internet. The funk has weighed on Yahoo’s stock, which has been hovering between $10 and $20 for most of the last three years. Yahoo shares fell 27 cents to close at $15.40 on Thursday. That’s well below the $33 per share that stockholders could have gotten in May 2008 if the board had accepted a takeover offer from Microsoft Corp.

The company stood behind Thompson in its statement. “This in no way alters that fact that Mr. Thompson is a highly qualified executive with a successful track record leading large consumer technology companies,” Yahoo said. “Under Mr. Thompson’s leadership, Yahoo is moving forward to grow the company and drive shareholder value.”

Tensions between Loeb and Thompson escalated since late March when Yahoo appointed three new directors to its board. In doing so, Yahoo snubbed Loeb, who had been lobbying for a board seat along with three allies who he believes have the skills necessary to help Yahoo rebound from its long-running struggles. At the time, Thompson made it clear that he and the Yahoo committee overseeing the search for new directors had concluded Loeb wasn’t the best candidate.

Loeb is waging a campaign to persuade Yahoo’s shareholders to elect him and his allies to the board at the company’s annual meeting. The date of that meeting still hasn’t been set.

Besides ripping Thompson, Loeb also sought to discredit Patti Hart, one of the Yahoo directors he wants bounced from the board. Hart led the committee that recommended Yahoo’s new appointments to the board.

In his letter, Loeb noted that Yahoo’s recent SEC filing says Hart holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and economics from Illinois State University. In its response, Yahoo clarified Hart received a bachelor’s degree in business administration with specialties in marketing and economics.

Thompson, 54, has mostly cut costs to boost profits since taking over as Yahoo’s CEO. Last month, he laid off about 2,000 employees, or 14 percent of the workforce, in the biggest payroll purge in Yahoo’s 17-year history. He also disclosed plans to close about 50 Yahoo services that haven’t been attracting enough users or generating enough revenue.

He has made modest progress on other financial fronts. Yahoo registered its first year-over-year increase in quarterly net revenue since 2008 during the three months ending in March.

Even though he doesn’t have a computer science degree, Thompson has a background in technology. He served as PayPal’s chief technology officer for three years before being promoted to the payment service’s president in 2008. He also previously worked as chief technology officer at credit- and debit-card processor Visa USA.

NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup has become the first Wall Street bank to get a thumbs-down from shareholders over outsized executive pay.

At its annual meeting Tuesday, 55 percent of the bank’s shareholders voted against the pay packages that have been granted to Citigroup’s top executives, including CEO Vikram Pandit‘s $15 million for last year and $10 million retention pay. The vote is advisory and won’t force the bank to change its pay practices, but it did send a powerful message of discontent to Citi’s leadership.

“This vote is historic,” said Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance, a board advisory firm. “None of the Wall Street firms have received this kind of a review yet.”

Wall Street‘s massive compensation packages have raised the ire of shareholders for years, especially when they appear to have little relation to the performance of specific executives. Bonuses became a flashpoint of public outrage after the 2008 financial meltdown, which was caused in large part by those same Wall Street firms.

Nonetheless, compensation on Wall Street has remained high, even after a taxpayer-funded bailout of the industry and the Great Recession that followed and left one in 10 Americans unemployed.

Until Tuesday, shareholders haven’t voted in large enough numbers against Wall Street pay packages to make a difference. Under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, major U.S. companies are required to allow shareholders to have a “say on pay” vote at least every three years. The votes are not binding.

Besides Citi so far this year, only three companies — KB Home, International Game Technology Inc. and Actuant Corp. — have failed to muster shareholders’ approval of its pay practices. Last year, 41 companies failed.

For Citigroup’s CEO Vikram Pandit, the lost vote at the annual meeting comes at a bad time. Last month the bank’s chief regulator the Federal Reserve dealt Citi a huge setback by barring the company from paying a higher dividend, saying the bank wasn’t financially strong enough. The Fed’s decision came soon after Pandit had been promising to raise dividends.

Pandit’s large pay package for 2011 and a large retention pay is not going over well with shareholders. He received $14.8 million in total compensation for 2011, up from his token $1 compensation in 2010.

Pandit was also awarded $10 million in retention pay, which vests after 2013. Paid as an incentive for Pandit to stay on as CEO, Citi’s compensation committee will assess him not on financial performance, but on non-quantifiable measures such as talent management, organizational culture and risk management.

“Citigroup is one of most egregious example of disconnect between incentives of top management and value creation of shareholders,” said Mike Mayo, bank analyst at brokerage firm CLSA and author of the book “Exile on Wall Street.”

“The owners of the big banks, namely the shareholders, are finally taking a greater amount of responsibility by speaking up.”

The influential corporate governance firm ISS was particularly concerned about the fact that Pandit’s retention pay was not linked to any financial metrics. ISS had recommended that investors vote against Citi’s compensation package.

ISS also said in a report that Pandit’s pay was higher relative to the performance of its peer group and its total shareholder returns. Since Pandit became CEO in December 2007 through the end of 2011, Citigroup stock was down 90 percent.

Citigroup nearly collapsed during the financial crisis and was rescued by $45 billion in bailout money from the government in late 2008. In February 2009, Pandit said he would accept a salary of $1 until the bank was able to turn a profit. The bank has reported profits for two consecutive years now. However, shareholders didn’t seem to agree that it was time to handsomely reward management yet.

“It’s a loud clarion call and an embarrassment to the directors, who now have to clarify compensation metrics they use,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for executive programs at Yale University’s School of Management.

Mayo said finding a way to address the pay issue will be a test for incoming chairman Michael O’Neill. Richard Parsons, who was chairman since 2009, stepped down from the board this year.

“The buck stops with him,” said Mayo.

In a statement late Tuesday, Citigroup said its board and senior management will consult with “representative shareholders” to hear their concerns.

The board’s compensation committee “will carefully consider their input as we move forward,” the Citi statement said.

NEW YORK (AP) — IBM Corp.‘s stock fell after the company reported flat revenue, even as net income grew 7 percent in the first three months of the year, thanks to strong profit margins in its services business.

IBM’s earnings beat Wall Street’s expectations, but that is often the case with the technology bellwether. Investors appeared more worried that revenue fell shy of estimates. The stock, which recently hit its highest level ever, fell about 2 percent in extended trading Tuesday after first-quarter results came out.

IBM earned $3.07 billion, or $2.61 per share, in the January-March period. That’s up from $2.86 billion, or $2.31 per share, a year earlier. Excluding special items such as acquisition costs and pension-related expenses, it earned $2.78 per share in the latest period, well above the $2.66 per share that analysts were expecting.

Revenue was flat at $24.7 billion. Software and services revenue increased, but IBM’s hardware and financing segments saw a decline. The company has been focusing on its software and services offerings lately, which have higher profit margins.

Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue of $24.82 billion.

The revenue miss, though narrow, raised questions about IBM’s ability to bring in enough new business to keep growing, even as it is able to squeeze out big profits from its software and services units.

IBM, which is based in Armonk, N.Y., also raised its full-year guidance. It now expects adjusted earnings of at least $15 per share. That’s up from its earlier outlook of at least $14.85 per share. Analysts were expecting $14.93 per share.

IBM’s long-term goal is to reach at least $20 per share in adjusted earnings by the end of 2015 — a rare example of a long-term target by a major company.

By segment, IBM’s software revenue grew 5 percent to $5.6 billion and hardware revenue fell 7 percent to $3.7 billion. Technology services revenue grew 2 percent to $10 billion and business services revenue slid less than 2 percent to $4.6 billion.

IBM also said Tuesday that it is selling its retail store solutions business to Toshiba TEC Corp. for $850 million.

IBM’s stock fell $3.95, or 1.9 percent, to $203.50 in after-hours trading Tuesday. During the regular session, the stock gained $4.73, or 2.3 percent, to close at $207.45. The stock hit a record high of $210.69 on April 3.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Oracle CEO Larry Ellison wanted to compete against Google‘s Android software in the smartphone market before deciding instead to sue his potential rival for copyright and patent infringement.

Ellison acknowledged Oracle’s interest in diversifying beyond its main business of database software while testifying Tuesday on the second day of a trial pitting two high-tech bellwethers.

Before backing off the idea, Ellison said Oracle considered buying a smartphone maker, including Palm Inc. and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. Palm ended up getting sold to Hewlett-Packard Co. for about $1 billion two years ago, while RIM is trying to recover from huge losses that have piled up as the BlackBerry got battered by Apple Inc.‘s iPhone and handsets running on Android.

“I had an idea that we could enter the smartphone business and compete with everyone in the smartphone business,” Ellison testified under questioning from a Google lawyer. “It was an idea I wanted to explore. We explored it and decided it was a bad idea.”

Ellison, a colorful CEO who ranks among the world’s richest people, took the stand after Google sought in opening statements to frame the case as Oracle’s response to its own failure to build mobile software.

Google CEO Larry Page also took the stand toward the end of Tuesday’s session. The trial was expected to last up to 10 weeks.

The dispute before a 12-person jury in U.S. District Court in San Francisco is over whether Google built its widely used Android software by improperly taking some of the technology from Java, a programming platform that Sun Microsystems began developing 20 years ago. Oracle acquired the rights to Java when it bought Sun for $7.3 billion in January 2010.

Although Oracle has spent more money buying other companies, Ellison depicted Java as the company’s most cherished prize.

“Of all the things we have ever purchased, by far the most important we ever purchased was Java,” Ellison crowed during his roughly 80-minute appearance on the witness stand.

Ellison is renowned for making bombastic statements like that.

There were other times during his testimony, though, when he looked slightly bamboozled. At one point, Google lawyer Robert Van Nest reminded Ellison about all the nice things that he had to say about Android and Google during an onstage appearance in 2009, when Oracle was still awaiting regulatory approval to buy Sun.

With Sun co-founder Scott McNealy standing by his side, Ellison assured the crowd then that he was “excited” and “flattered” about Android’s reliance on Java. Ellison hailed his “friends from Google” and said he looked forward to many more mobile devices running on Android.

Before Ellison took the stand Tuesday, Van Nest also tried to persuade the jury that Sun Microsystems had encouraged and endorsed Google’s use of Java in Android. That contrasted with opening statements Monday by Oracle lawyer Michael Jacobs, who focused on emails indicating that Google’s top executives knew for years that they should be paying to license for some parts of the Java technology that helped create Android.

In his counterpoints Tuesday, Van Nest said most of the emails cited by Oracle’s attorneys were sent in 2005 and 2006, when Google and Sun were discussing a partnership to create Android. Those discussions unraveled, Van Nest said, when Sun insisted on charging on Android. Google wanted to give away the software to help get it on as many mobile devices as possible so it could make money selling digital advertising.

Android now powers more than 300 million smartphones and tablet computers. Google hasn’t specified how much money it makes from the ads and mobile applications sold on Android-powered devices. The company is fighting to keep that figure out of the trial proceedings. U.S. District Judge William Alsup has indicated that he will allow that sensitive information to be publicly revealed if it becomes a point of contention in the trial.

Van Nest told the jury that after it became clear that Google wasn’t going to partner with Sun, Google spent hundreds of millions of dollars and devoted thousands of engineering hours to create the 15 million of computer code that guide Android. He said former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz will testify that he fully supported what Google did with Java.

It wasn’t until Ellison couldn’t figure out how Oracle could get into the smartphone market that the allegations of copyright and patent infringement surfaced, according to Van Nest.

“They want to share Android’s profits without having done a thing to bring that about,” Van Nest said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Investors are wondering what is in store for Apple Inc. after shares of the world’s most valuable public company closed down 4 percent on Monday, their fifth straight drop. But analysts remain upbeat on the iPhone and iPad maker’s shares, encouraging investors to buy the stock after its decline.

The Cupertino, Calif., company has lost $50 billion of its market capitalization over the past five days and was worth about $541 billion on Tuesday — still well ahead of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s second-most valuable company, at $395 billion.

The stock slide comes after a rally that had driven Apple‘s shares up nearly 60 percent in 2012, driving its market cap to $600 billion. Only one other public company, Microsoft Corp., has been worth that much. Shares peaked at $644 on April 10.

Before the market opened Tuesday, Apple stock dipped $2.68, or less than 1 percent, to $577.45.

The drop in stock price and market cap is a cause for concern for the stock market. Not only is Apple a bellwether for the technology industry, it is also the biggest stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and the largest on the Nasdaq Composite index. Its decline weighs on broader stock measures.

The drop in the company’s shares comes about two weeks after an analyst set a $1,001 price target on Apple’s shares, the highest yet. That implies a company value of $933 billion, well above what any company has ever been worth. But since that price target was set by Topeka Capital Markets’ Brian White on April 2, shares of the maker of iPads and iPhones have dropped 6.2 percent.

One cloud hovering over the tech giant this month is the U.S. government’s accusations that it conspired with major book publishers to raise the price of e-books. Apple denied that accusation on Friday.

Many market watchers wonder if Apple’s stock may just be coming back down to earth. The company’s shares have risen 77 percent over the past year and are still up 43 percent in 2012. Apple’s stock price ascent this year has been fueled by blowout sales of iPhones and iPads in the holiday quarter, plus the announcement that the company will start paying a dividend this summer and buy back shares. That’s a way to reward shareholders by tapping Apple’s $97.6 billion cash hoard.

Sterne Agee & Leach’s Shaw Wu maintained a “Buy” rating and $750 price target for Apple, saying that the company remains a top pick and that investors should take advantage of the recent stock price decline.

Baird’s William Power echoed that, reiterating his “Outperform” rating and $700 price target on the company’s shares.