It's been a busy week for dividend increases. Blue chip stocks like personal products giant Procter and Gamble (PG), health care stock Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) and utility Southern Company (SO) all raised dividends. Small cap stocks also got in on the action of raises to dividend yields, including computer assessment technology provider Renaissance Learning (RLRN), chemical company Sensient Technologies (SXT), semiconductor stock STMicroelectronics (STM) and packaging giant Sonoco (SON). Here are the details:

CenturyTel, Inc. (CTL), which is re-branding itself as CenturyLink, has offered $10.6 billion in CenturyTel stock to acquire Qwest Communications (Q). Under terms of the deal, CenturyTel will also assume $11.8 billion of Qwest's outstanding debt, valuing the acquisition at $22.4 billion, or about $6.02/share of Qwest stock. The merger is expected to close in the first half of 2011, and current CenturyTel shareholders will own approximately 50.5% the merged company.

CenturyTel, Inc. (CTL), which is re-branding itself as CenturyLink, has offered $10.6 billion in CenturyTel stock to acquire Qwest Communications (Q). Under terms of the deal, CenturyTel will also assume $11.8 billion of Qwest's outstanding debt, valuing the acquisition at $22.4 billion, or about $6.02/share of Qwest stock. The merger is expected to close in the first half of 2011, and current CenturyTel shareholders will own approximately 50.5% the merged company.

What's the best way to store computer data? More and more often the answer to that question includes the word "cloud." For most of us, the cloud refers to the large public off-site storage sites offered by Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), and Microsoft (MSFT) but also Seagate Technology (STX), Western Digital (WDC) and VMware (VMW).

Burger King (BKC) has is turning up the heat in its war with McDonalds (MCD) for early morning sales. In selected markets, BK is advertising the availability of a "Burger King brunch" in a quest to cash in on the lucrative breakfast market. This is only a few months after announcing Burger King will carry coffee made by Starbucks as early as September to provide a more flavorful alternative to its BK Joe coffee.

While these leveraged ETFs can deliver huge returns when Wall Street moves in the right direction, they can do serious damage to your nest egg when the tables are turned.

Armchair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen each earnings season, breaking out their crystal balls and predicting which stocks will post strong earnings and sales and which ones will miss expectations. Take them with a grain of salt, but here are five earnings predictions for top stocks Boston Scientific (BSX), Caterpillar (CAT), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR), Dupont (DD) and Norfolk Southern (NSC).

Burger King (BKC) has been sleepwalking through breakfast sales for a long time, and a new partnership with Starbucks (SBUX) announced recently isn't likely to be the wake-up call the company needs to catch archrival McDonald's (MCD).

Chemical manufacturer Lubrizol Corp. (LZ) suffered a setback of 5% last week following word that it is in the bidding for a German chemical maker called Cognis, but remains in very powerful uptrend.

China's largest mobile phone operator, China Mobile Ltd. (CHL), saw its revenues rise 7.7% year-over-year, but it's profit was able to manage just a bump of 1.1%. Competition is coming from two other big players in the Chinese mobile market, China Unicom (CHU) and China Telecom (CHA). Together the three claim 766 million customers.

Today, Wall Street titan Goldman Sachs (GS) reported net income of $3.3 billion and EPS of $5.59 on revenue of $12.78 billion for the first quarter. Over on Main Street, meanwhile, Regions Financial Corp. (RF) posted an EPS loss of -$0.21. Another regional bank, U.S. Bancorp (USB) also reported earnings this morning, and did much better. U.S. Bancorp reported diluted EPS of $0.34 on revenue of $4.3 billion.

7-Eleven is defying the beer sales slump with the launch of its own private-label beer called "Game Day," produced by City Brewing of Wisconsin. The move is sure to shake things up in the brewing industry -- and for hard-hit stocks like Molson Coors (TAP), Anheuser Busch InBev (BUD) and Heineken (HINKY), this could be one more reason the industry is just about tapped out.

In a fascinating example of new tech depending on old tech, the most up-to-date consumer devices on the planet depend on one of the most veteran wireless chipmakers on the planet. And the marriage is working out best for the geezer. That would be Qualcomm (QCOM), one of my letter's top tech picks this spring, a company that's been a leader of the wireless phone and data revolution for more than two decades and has the scars to prove it.

As prospects for a carbon cap and trade mechanism diminished over the last quarter, coal miners have seen share prices rise to near or above 52-week highs. Arch Coal Inc. (ACI), Massey Energy (MEE), and Peabody Energy (BTU) set new highs in January, and Massey even recorded a second high in April before the disaster at its West Virginia mine that killed 29 miners.