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It’s been quite a Monday for Apple. Not only did the tech giant announce plans to give investors a $2.65 quarterly dividend and announce plans to buy back $10 billion worth of stock, but it officially landed the top spot in CNNMoney’s March Stock Mania tournament.

CNNMoney readers chose Apple (, Fortune 500) over Exxon Mobil (, Fortune 500) in the finals. Apple grabbed 65% of readers’ votes in the last round.

It’s a comeback of sorts for Apple in the March tournament. Last year, the tech company was bested by automaker Ford, earning just 43% of readers’ votes.

The final four pitted three tech companies, Apple, IBM (, Fortune 500) and Google (, Fortune 500), against Exxon.

The day Apple became normal

In total, 65,845 votes were cast during the week-long contest.

Few companies can match the precipitous run-up in Apple’s share price, which has surged 81% since December 2010. And since the beginning of 2012, Apple’s stock has gained 45%.

Compare that with Exxon’s shares, which have risen only 18% since December 2010, and gained only 2% in 2012, despite a frothy stock market.

Exxon and other oil companies have faced an uphill public relations battle in the aftermath of the devastation caused by BP’s oil spill. Add the recent jump in gas prices, and it’s not getting any easier.

March Stock Mania: See the results!

"What will you do? Put your money into a company that’s helping destroy the planet, or one that innovates? Revolution or pollution? iPad or oil spill?," commented one CNNMoney reader cash advance now.

Even with Apple’s share price hovering around $600, Wall Street analysts see more growth ahead.

Matthew Hoffman, an analyst with Cowen, said that the successful launch of the third generation of the iPad will continue to give Apple an edge in the "combined personal computer + tablet market."

Even with the loss of Apple’s visionary founder Steve Jobs from a battle with cancer last year, most analysts think Apple will continue putting forth game changing products.

Apple was a clear leader throughout March Stock Mania.

It won 93% of the votes in the first round against newly public Zynga (), 88% against McDonald’s (, Fortune 500) in round two, and 85% of the votes against Wal-Mart (, Fortune 500) in round three. In the Final Four, 67% of voter chose Apple over IBM.

Last year’s champion Ford did better in March Stock Mania than last year’s NCAA winner University of Connecticut. UConn made it to the NCAA but lost in the first round.

Ford showed up and competed well this year, but failed to make the final four losing out to IBM.

It looks pretty clear that CNNMoney’s readers are betting on a continued tech boom.  

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An Arnold Palmer from Michelob Ultra. Margaritas in a can. Light cider.

Those are three new brews Anheuser-Busch is readying to roll out this spring, the latest salvos in a bid by the brewing giant and other big brewers to prop up sagging beer sales with new products that are, well, not quite beer.

It’s no secret that beer sales are slipping, especially sales of the traditional light American lagers that are the stock-in-trade of Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. Both companies saw U.S. sales fall more than 3 percent last year, while wine and liquor continued to grow. Combined, wine and spirits now make up 46 percent of the U.S. alcohol market, up from less than 41 percent in 2000.

“Someone else is eating our lunch in the alcohol space,” Molson Coors Chief Executive Peter Swinburn told analysts last week.

Now the big boys are pushing back with a new round of flavored beverages that, while malt-based like beer, in some ways have more in common with cocktails.

Coors last week announced it will launch a new iced-tea flavored brew, first in Canada and then potentially the U.S. Sam Adams parent Boston Beer Co. plans to roll out its Twisted Tea in 15 more states this year. (It’s in 35 states now.) MillerCoors’ last month bought Crispin, the nation’s third-biggest brewer of hard cider.

And A-B is about to unveil some new concoctions.

It’s planning an April rollout for Bud Lite Lime-A-Rita, a margarita-inspired beer that will build off four-year-old Bud Light Lime. After that will come seasonal launches of Michelob Ultra Light Cider, which A-B hopes will broaden the growing cider market, and pint cans of Ultra 19th Hole, a tea-and-lemonade-flavored brew modeled after an Arnold Palmer.

“It’ll be easy to drink in the summertime,: said Pat McGauley, A-B’s vice president of innovation. “It fits well under the Michelob Ultra nameplate.”

Unlike Miller’s Crispin purchase, for instance, all three of A-B’s new brews build on existing brands — Bud Light and the steadily growing Michelob Ultra. That helps with name recognition, McGauley said, and creates “an expectation of quality.”

At the same time it helps to keep those brands in line with changing tastes, said Paul Chibe, A-B’s vice president of marketing payday advance lenders.

“Many consumers want more flavor. They want sweeter,” Chibe said. “Being where consumer preferences are is really important.”

The new brews come on the heels of the February launch of Bud Light Platinum. The blue-bottled version of Bud Light has more alcohol and a sweeter taste profile, and is designed to compete more directly with spirits. It has started strong, the company says, claiming more than one percent of all beer sales in its first month amid heavy marketing.

These extensions make sense for A-B InBev, said Benj Steinman, publisher of the trade newsletter Beer Marketer’s Insights. The integration of A-B and InBev is complete, and now the brewer is focused on growing revenue.

“Part of that is by ramping up innovation,” Steinman said. “They have what I’d characterize as a robust pipeline. They’re coming at the market in a lot of different directions.”

Of course, we’ve been here before. Remember Zima?

Coors launched the original “malternative” to much fanfare in 1993, and Zima made a dent in the U.S. beer market before winning the mockery of late-night comics and gradually fading into obscurity. It was discontinued in 2008. Anheuser-Busch’s Tequiza made with agave nectar and a hint of lime, met a similar fate, minus the mockery, before being largely replaced by Bud Light Lime.

Then, in the early 2000s, a new round took off, led by Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice. A-B partnered with Bacardi on the rum-flavored Bacardi Silver. They’ve carved a niche — last year flavored malt beverages (FMB) made up 2.4 percent of beer sales, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights. Now the sector is heating up again as a new generation experiments with different tastes.

That means new drinks, and lots of them.

“The (FMB) segment is very fickle. Brands switch around a lot,” Steinman said. “You have to have new products more often in FMBs than in other segments, really.”

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One of Israel’s newest startups is banking on the assumption that instead of reading this story, you’d rather watch a one-minute summary.

“There’s such an overload of information today that consuming long articles has become a really tedious and difficult task,” said Zohar Dayan, 28, the co-founder and chief executive of Wibbitz. “Why not just press a play button and get all the information in a short video?”

Wibbitz’s software takes highlights of an article and superimposes them over a slideshow of pictures and video, which are generated by keywords in the text. A computerized voice reads the selections, so all you have to do is sit back and watch.

But developing the technology only solves some of the challenges facing the two-year-old startup based in Tel Aviv. To turn a profit, the firm needs a successful business strategy. So Wibbitz has tapped a resource far away from Israel: Washington University in St. Louis.

WU students are helping Wibbitz research video advertising models. The project is part of a new class on venture consulting, which paired 12 WU students and 12 Israeli students with six Israeli startups like Wibbitz, with small budgets and basic needs.

The students’ assignments include writing social media and marketing strategies, providing pricing guidelines and compiling market research.

It’s the kind of work that many small startups can’t afford and most students don’t have the opportunity to do, said Cliff Holekamp, a professor of entrepreneurship at WU’s Olin School of Business who heads the class.

The professor, himself an entrepreneur, said this kind of experience can be beneficial to students, whether their goal is to work in venture capital, international business, or to start their own company.

“Entrepreneurs are a great way to understand international business and management consulting,” Holekamp said. “Because it’s a smaller company, you get to really see all the aspects of the business and to understand the overall business strategy.”

Many business schools are now looking to other countries for hands-on learning opportunities, said Robert Hisrich, a professor of global entrepreneurship at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz.

Universities hope that these relationships may come to benefit their local economies. For example, if Wibbitz opens a U.S. office in five years, perhaps they will locate in St. Louis. In the meantime, students gain experience that will make them competitive in a global economy, Hisrich said.

“Part of what we do at universities is educate people to help the world,” he said. “And if we can help our own area’s economy, all the better.”

SILICON VALLEY MIDEAST

There are few places riper than Israel to gain experience with an international startup online pay day loans. The country with about 7.6 million inhabitants — a population about 30 percent larger than Missouri’s — and boasts 57 companies on the Nasdaq stock exchange, third most after the U.S. and China.

“Israel is a major world headquarters for tech startups,” Holekamp said. “It’s literally Silicon Valley east — I should say, Mideast.”

The success of Israel’s startups can be traced to its own tumultuous history, said Saul Singer, co-author of the book “Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle.”

“Israel itself is a startup,” Singer said. “It took drive and risks to create the country called Israel.”

Singer also credits the army with giving Israeli youth both a propensity for risk-taking and a “mission orientation,” two attributes crucial to successful startups, he said.

Israel has mandatory military service; typically, men serve for three years and women for two years.

“On one hand you can’t fail and on the other hand you have to take risks,” Singer said of the Israeli army experience. “It gives you all sorts of tough real-world experiences that teach you what it means to get things done.”

Sarah Haselkorn, a WU junior studying engineering, and Tim Fetter, a 28-year-old MBA student, have spent hours researching different types of video advertising for Wibbitz.

At the end of the semester, they will tell the startup whether “pre-rolls,” the short commercials that launch before a video begins, or banner ads, which sit on the side of the webpage, are the better advertising strategy.

The group has hit a number of snags, the least of which is the challenge of coordinating weekly conference calls with four students on two different continents.

But Fetter said he’s learned a lot from the Israeli students and entrepreneurs, who he said approach business differently, and perhaps more efficiently, than Americans.

Israelis “are a lot more open — and, I would even say, confrontational, which carries a negative connotation here — but not in a bad way,” Fetter said. “I think that makes for an environment where it’s a lot easier to develop as a person and to air issues, and part of the reason they are such an innovative culture.”

His Israeli counterparts said they have some things to learn from American students as well.

“American students are very methodical, organized and thorough,” said Dayan, the Wibbitz CEO. “I think combining that with the straightforward way of the Israelis really produces excellent results.”

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It came and went in a flash, a number on a board for seconds at a time, but its symbolic power couldn’t be dismissed.

The Dow Jones industrial average, powered higher all year by optimism that the economic recovery is finally for real, crossed 13,000 on Tuesday for the first time since May 2008.

The last time the Dow occupied such rarefied territory, unemployment was a healthy 5.4 percent, and Lehman Brothers was a solvent investment bank. Financial crises happened in other countries, or the history books.

The milestone Tuesday came about two hours into the trading day. The Dow was above 13,000 for about 30 seconds, and for slightly longer at about noon and 1:30 p.m., but couldn’t hold its gains. It finished up 15.82 points at 12,965.69.

Still, Wall Street took note of the marker.

It was just last summer that the Dow unburdened itself of 2,000 points in three terrifying weeks. S&P downgraded the United States credit rating, Washington was fighting over the federal borrowing limit, and the European debt crisis was raging.

A second recession in the United States was a real fear. But the economy grew faster every quarter last year, and gains in the job market have been impressive, including 243,000 jobs added in January alone.

“Essentially over the last couple of months you’ve taken the two biggest fears off the table, that Europe is going to melt down and that we’re going to have another recession here,” said Scott Brown, chief economist for Raymond James.

The tumult of last summer and fall left the Dow as low as 10,655. Its close Tuesday put it 22 percent above that low. The Dow is less than 1,200 points from an all-time high, a 9 percent rally from here.

A long-awaited deal to cut the debt of Greece and prevent a potentially catastrophic default on its debt, announced before dawn in Europe after 12 hours of talks, helped the Dow clear 13,000.

Under the bailout deal, Greece will get euro130 billion, or about $172 billion, from other European nations and the International Monetary Fund. In a separate deal, it will owe euro107 billion less to investors who own its government bonds.

After months in which the talks crawled along and vague headlines yanked the market up and down, the conclusion was almost anticlimactic because the markets were already expecting an agreement.

European markets didn’t take the news as well. Stocks closed down 3.5 percent in Greece, where stocks have lost 80 percent of their value since 2007. Stocks declined less than 1 percent Tuesday in Germany, France and Britain.

Investors noted that Greece remains in deep recession. Its bond investors will take a 53.5 percent loss on the face value of their bonds, which could discourage future investment.

In the U.S., investors were cheered by earnings from Home Depot, watched closely as a barometer of American spending on homes, and Macy’s. Wal-Mart missed Wall Street expectations, and its stock lost 4.2 percent, worst among the 30 stocks in the Dow.

The Dow has climbed 6 percent this year and has not lost 100 points on any day. The Greek debt crisis may be receding, but high gasoline prices are emerging as a threat to the economic recovery, and thus the stock market.

A gallon of regular gas costs $3.57 on average, the highest on record for this time of year. With tension building over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Iran has halted oil exports to Britain and France and threatened to stop shipping to other European countries.

The price of oil settled at $106.25, up $2.65 for the day and its highest level since last May. Airline stocks got clobbered. United Continental lost 9 percent, Delta Air Lines 7 percent. The Dow transportation average lost 1.5 percent.

Materials, telecommunications and energy companies led the industries gaining ground. Health care companies, makers of consumer staples and utilities, traditionally stocks to own in more cautious times, were lower.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index surpassed 1,363, its peak from April 2011, but closed at 1,362.21, up 0.98 point. The Nasdaq composite, which is heavy with technology stocks and trading at levels not seen since December 2000, closed down 3.21 points at 2,948.57.

Metals prices jumped because of expectations that demand may improve after the Greek bailout package was approved and China took another step to stimulate economic growth. Silver finished up 3.7 percent, and platinum, copper and palladium all rose 3 percent or more. Gold ended up 1.9 percent.

The Dow industrials last closed above 13,000 on May 19, 2008. The next day, they crossed under 13,000, not to return for almost four years. They fell as low as 6,547 on March 9, 2009. A reading of 13,094 would double that.

Dan McMahon, director of equity trading at Raymond James, called the 13,000 mark “just a big round number” as a matter of market fundamentals. But he added: “Psychologically, it matters.”

The milestone could motivate cautious investors to pump more money back into the stock market. The yield on the government’s benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.06 percent from 2.01 percent Friday, a sign that fewer investors wanted the bonds and were instead willing to buy riskier stocks.

“You need notches along the way to measure things,” and Dow 13,000 is as good as any, said John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo’s funds group. “Is 50 older than 49 and a half? Yes, by six months. Do those six months really make a difference? Probably not. But it does give us a fixed point, something we can look at.”

The Dow is also an imperfect measure of the economy’s health. It is made up of just 30 companies, and it’s weighted so that the few with the highest stock prices carry the most heft.

A tiny percentage change in the stock of IBM, which is trading around $194, sways the index much more than a giant change in the stock of Bank of America, which is trading around $8.

Last year, the Dow rose 5.5 percent. But strip out IBM and McDonald’s, the two stocks with the highest prices last year, and it rose just 1.8 percent, according to calculations by Birinyi Associates.

Dow Jones, which decides which 30 companies are the best barometer, says the index can accurately represent the economy because they make up 25 to 30 percent of the market value of all U.S. public companies.

Among the big movers:

_ Barnes & Noble fell 4 percent after missing expectations. Rising costs offset higher sales of both traditional books and digital books. Investors seemed encouraged that the bookstore chain, a survivor in an era that has felled competitors like Borders and Waldenbooks, plans to introduce a cheaper Nook to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

_ J.C. Penney, which is trying to reinvent itself and just brought in an Apple veteran as CEO and changed its logo, fell 3 percent after Fitch Ratings dropped its credit grade to junk status.

_ Wal-Mart fell 4 percent after missing analysts’ expectations for revenue and per-share earnings.

_ High-end department store Saks rose 3 percent after beating analysts’ expectations.

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U.N. nuclear inspectors arrived in Iran on Monday in the latest push to hold key talks with Iranian officials about how far the country’s controversial nuclear program has come.

The trip is the second in less than a month by the International Atomic Energy Agency team, reflecting growing concerns over alleged weapons experiments _ something Iran has so far both denied and refused to discuss.

Herman Nackaerts, a senior U.N. nuclear official, said in Vienna before the team departed on Sunday that he hoped for progress in the talks but his careful choice of words suggested little expectation the meeting will be successful.

The West suspects Iran’s nuclear program is geared toward making weapons, a charge Iran denies, insisting it’s for peaceful purposes only, such as power generation.

Iran’s state TV said the IAEA team arrived early Monday morning for a two-day visit. The state radio, meanwhile, said the inspectors hope to meet Iranian nuclear scientists and pay a visit to the Parchin military complex.

The radio said the IAEA had requested to visit Parchin, an Iranian military base and conventional weapons development facility outside of Tehran. The site has also been suspected of housing a secret underground facility used for Iran’s nuclear program, a claim denied by Iranian authorities.

IAEA inspectors visited the site in 2005, but only one of four areas of potential interest within the grounds. The nuclear watchdog did not report any unusual activities, and has not mentioned Parchin in its reports since 2008.

“Whatever the reasoning of the agency is, it proves the IAEA is not loyal to its previous commitments,” the radio said. The tone of the commentary suggested the visit to the military complex would likely be denied no fax cash advances.

The IAEA visit comes as Iran last week announced what it described as key advancements in its nuclear program, inserting the first domestically made fuel rod into a research reactor in Tehran and installing a new generation of Iranian-made centrifuges at the country’s main uranium enrichment facility in the central town of Natanz.

Beyond concerns about the purported weapons work, Washington and its allies want Iran to halt uranium enrichment, which they believe could eventually lead to weapons-grade material and the production of nuclear weapons. Iran has been enriching uranium up to 20 percent, while uranium enriched to more than 90 percent can be used for a nuclear warhead.

The IAEA team wants to talk to key Iranian scientists suspected of working on an alleged weapons program. They also hope to break down opposition to their plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits.

Iran has denied alleged weapons experiments for nearly four years, saying they are based on “fabricated documents” provided by a “few arrogant countries” _ a phrase authorities in Iran often use to refer to the U.S. and its allies.

The IAEA summarized its information last November in a 13-page document drawing on 1,000 pages of intelligence. It stated then for the first time that some of the alleged experiments can have no other purpose than developing nuclear weapons.

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China

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Anheuser-Busch President David Peacock, who has led the brewery’s U.S. operations since 2008, has resigned from the company.  

Employees were notified today of Peacock’s resignation, which is effective today. He’s leaving to spend more time with his family and pursue other business interests, according to the company.

Peacock will continue to serve in an advisory role, according to an email sent by Luiz Edmond, who is assuming leadership of the brewery’s U payday loans.S. operations based in St. Louis.

 Peacock was formerly vice president of marketing at the brewery.

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In the land of big-time deficits and trillion dollar budgets, Congress is spending less money on at least one thing.

Itself.

After voting last year to cut its own operating budget by 5%, House members have reduced the number of paid positions on their staffs, and are spending less on office supplies and computers.

The cuts have translated to 948 fewer salaried staff positions, a 62.5% drop in spending on computers and 30.7% less spending on office supplies, according to an analysis conducted by the Sunlight Foundation.

Staff assistant positions were the hardest hit, registering a 16.6% decline, while the number of part-time employees dropped 15.6%. Meanwhile, the number of slots for communication directors actually increased.

The House has around 12,000 staffers, and the job cuts amounted to a 7.4% overall decline in positions, according to Sunlight.

When compared to current deficits, the House spending reductions don’t add up to much in the way of savings. But for a Republican-controlled chamber, they are an important reflection of legislative priorities.

"The cuts are such a tiny fraction of the overall budget," said Lee Drutman, a data fellow at Sunlight. "And the reality is it makes it harder for them to do a decent job."

And more cuts are on the way, as funding will decrease another 6.4% for the legislative year that kicks off Tuesday.

Commentary: Debt crisis must be solved in the open

With many of the easy cuts already made, and staff salaries accounting for about half of congressional budgets, things might get tricky for lawmakers trying to keep a full roster of employees saving account pay day loan.

A report from the Congressional Management Foundation, a non-profit that helps congress improve its operations, backs that up.

"The 2011 cuts were manageable," the report said. "However, the consensus is that the cumulative two-year cut of 11.4% will require the large majority of offices to make painful cuts that will be felt by virtually all staff."

Drutman warns that any further reduction in staff levels will hurt the ability of congressional offices to independently produce sound policy recommendations and legislation.

"Capitol Hill staffers are already stretched incredibly thin," Drutman said. "And that means if you’re a staffer, you’re more dependent on outside sources."

And who are those outside sources?

For the most part, said Drutman, they’re lobbyists. And dependence on lobbyists for policy expertise is a dicey proposition.

Lobbyists can help fill policy knowledge gaps on congressional staffs, but at the same time come with deep-pocketed backers seeking a specific legislative outcome. 

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A group supporting Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says it will remove errors from a film it made about Mitt Romney’s business experience _ if Romney helps them figure out what is inaccurate.

The political action committee Winning Our Future sent Romney a letter asking him to respond to several questions about his tenure at Bain Capital, a private equity firm.

The PAC, run by Gingrich allies, says the questions will help clarify any errors in a film the group released this week assailing Romney’s experience at Bain. The accuracy of some of the film’s assertions have been called into question.

On Friday, Gingrich asked the group to either edit out any inaccuracies or take down the ad entirely.

Campaigns and PACs are prohibited from directly coordinating.

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