NEW YORK-Home­builders led US stocks up yes­ter­day, help­ing ma­jor in­dex­es re­coup some loss­es from the day be­fore. Ru­pert Mur­doch's News Corp surged af­ter the me­dia con­glom­er­ate said it may split in­to two com­pa­nies. The Dow Jones in­dus­tri­al av­er­age rose 32.01 points to close at 12,534.67. Pul­te­Group, Lennar and oth­er hous­ing stocks climbed fol­low­ing news that a mea­sure of na­tion­al home prices rose 1.3 per cent in April, the first in­crease in sev­en months.

The Stan­dard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price in­dex showed a rise in 19 out of the 20 ma­jor cities tracked; De­troit was the on­ly city where prices fell. Pul­te­Group rose 49 cents to $9.72 and Lennar rose 81 cents to $27.39. "There's some good news out there, es­pe­cial­ly if you look at the hous­ing mar­ket," said John De Clue, re­gion­al in­vest­ment di­rec­tor of US Bank's wealth man­age­ment unit in Min­neapo­lis. "But there's this over­rid­ing theme: con­cerns over glob­al growth. Things are pret­ty much slow­ing every­where you look."

News Corp. jumped 8 per cent. The com­pa­ny con­firmed that it's con­tem­plat­ing a break-up in­to two pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­nies. The split would di­vide its pub­lish­ing from its en­ter­tain­ment busi­ness­es. The me­dia em­pire in­cludes The Wall Street Jour­nal, Fox News Chan­nel, and news­pa­pers in Britain and Aus­tralia. News Corp's stock leapt $1.68 to $21.76. In oth­er trad­ing, the broad­er Stan­dard & Poor's 500 in­dex gained 6.27 points to 1,319.99.

The Nas­daq com­pos­ite rose 17.90 points to 2,854.06. In­vestors sold coal com­pa­ny stocks af­ter S&P low­ered the cred­it rat­ing for James Riv­er Coal deep­er in­to junk sta­tus, cit­ing weak­er de­mand for coal. Util­i­ties have favoured nat­ur­al gas in­stead of coal to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty and are al­so prepar­ing for new emis­sion stan­dards. James Riv­er plunged 15 per cent, or 43 cents, to $2.49.

Al­pha Nat­ur­al Re­sources sank 20 cents, to $7.73. Peabody En­er­gy dropped 34 cents to $21.12. More wor­ri­some de­vel­op­ments in Eu­rope kept US mar­kets in check. Spain's bor­row­ing costs jumped in a pair of short-term debt auc­tions, the lat­est sign that in­vestors are hes­i­tant to lend the coun­try mon­ey. The in­ter­est rate on the coun­try's three-month bills was 2.36 per cent yes­ter­day, near­ly triple the rate in the last such auc­tion in May.

Spain's main stock in­dex sank 1.5 per cent, the sec­ond day straight of deep loss­es, and the yield on its bench­mark ten-year gov­ern­ment bond rose to 6.81 per cent, which makes it more ex­pen­sive for the coun­try to bor­row. The slump in Span­ish fi­nan­cial mar­kets came a day af­ter the cred­it rat­ing agency Moody's low­ered rat­ings on 28 Span­ish banks.

Stock mar­kets fell sharply in the US and Eu­rope on Mon­day as Eu­rope's lat­est ef­forts to calm its fi­nan­cial cri­sis sapped in­vestors' con­fi­dence. Spain's for­mal re­quest for help for its bank­ing sys­tems left many ques­tions unan­swered, in­clud­ing how much mon­ey it needs. Mar­kets have al­so been bat­tered by signs of with­er­ing eco­nom­ic growth around the world.

Man­u­fac­tur­ing has slowed in Chi­na, and hir­ing has weak­ened in the US The Dow has tak­en its two largest dai­ly loss­es of the year this month: a 250-point plunge June 21 and a 274-point one June 1. Even with those loss­es, the Dow re­mains up 1.1 per cent for June. The S&P 500 is up 0.7 per cent. Among oth­er stocks mak­ing big moves:

- Apol­lo Group, a for-prof­it ed­u­ca­tion com­pa­ny which op­er­ates the Uni­ver­si­ty of Phoenix, soared ten per cent. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed quar­ter­ly in­come that was far larg­er than an­a­lysts had ex­pect­ed. The com­pa­ny's stock rose $3.34 to $35.81.

- Sea­gate Tech­nol­o­gy gained 4 per cent. The mak­er of hard disk dri­ves is go­ing to re­place Progress En­er­gy in the S&P 500 in­dex. As a re­sult, fund man­agers, whose per­for­mance is mea­sured against the S&P in­dex, are more like­ly to buy Sea­gate. The stock rose 85 cents to $24.12.

AP