The Northeast braced Tuesday for a new round of flooding as a slow-moving storm system readied to dump up to 6 inches of rain in some parts.

Stock futures are inching higher Tuesday as investors grow more optimistic about an economic recovery. Reports due out Tuesday are expected to show consumer confidence grew in March and home price declines continued to ease. The reports would follow a recent trend in data that shows the economy is improving, albeit slowly. loadposition in-article Investors have reacted positively to similar reports in recent weeks, sending stocks higher. The consumer confidence report is expected to extend the trend of modest improvement. The Conference Board ‘s Consumer Confidence Index likely rose to 50 in March from 46 in February, according to economists polled by Thomson Reuters. The report is due out at 10 a.m. EDT. While the expected reading would indicate growth, it is far from signaling a healthy economy. A reading above 90 means the economy is on solid footing. Consumers are a key to a sustained recovery because their spending accounts for …

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider managed to make two proton beams collide at high energy Tuesday, marking a “new territory” in physics, according to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. loadposition in-article The $10 billion research tool has been accelerating the beams since November in the LHC’s 17-mile tunnel on the border of Switzerland and France. The beams have routinely been circulating at 3.5 TeV, or teraelectron volts, the highest energy achieved at the LHC so far, according to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The first two attempts Tuesday failed, said Steve Myers, CERN’s director for accelerators. He said the beams were lost before they reached their full energy. Experiments at the LHC may help answer fundamental questions such as why Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity — which describes the world on a large scale — doesn’t jibe with quantum mechanics, which deals with matter far too small…

Home prices showed the smallest annual decline in almost three years in January, indicating there are surprising areas of strength in the housing market. The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index fell just 0.7 percent from last year on a seasonally adjusted basis. The index reading of 146.32 was almost in line with analysts expectations, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. loadposition in-article Better still, prices rose 0.3 percent from December to January, the eighth consecutive monthly gain. Among the 20 cities in the index, 12 rose. The index, released Tuesday, is up nearly 4 percent from its bottom in May 2009, but still almost 30 percent below its May 2006 peak.