Boy, 15, Fatally Shoots Five Family Members then Goes to Church: Cops

By Howard Breuer

01/23/2013 at 06:45 PM EST

Nehemiah and Greg Griego

Courtesy of Eric Griego/AP; Courtesy Calvary Albuquerque

In sermons for the fire department and the local jail, Pastor Greg Griego recalled how he was involved with gangs in California before he turned his life around and found God.

As his wife Sarah homeschooled many of their 10 children in their home in the semi-rural South Valley suburb of Albuquerque, Griego converted their backyard barn into a halfway house for released prisoners, forbade his children from playing violent video games and restricted what they watched on TV.

But somehow, Griego, 51, the brother of a former state senator, could not save his teenage son.

Nehemiah Griego, 15, allegedly turned against his father and the rest of his family early Saturday morning in what Bernalillo county, N.M., Sheriff Dan Houston calls an attack that goes "beyond any human reasoning or understanding."

The boy stands accused of fatally shooting his parents and three younger siblings before being coaxed to his father's church where he allegedly confessed. An Albuquerque judge ordered Nehemiah held without bond on multiple charges of murder and child abuse resulting in death.

"It's horrific, what other word do you use?" Houston says. "It's the first time I've been to a crime scene with this much destruction."

Prosecutors say the teen will be tried as an adult. Griego reportedly waived his initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon. His public defender, Jeff Buckels, did not return a call seeking comment.

Parallels to Newtown

The family massacre immediately evoked memories of last year's mass shootings in Newtown, Conn. Griego also allegedly used multiple weapons including an AR-15 assault rifle. In both cases, the gunman first shot his mother. In Newtown, the shooter used his mother's guns, while in Albuquerque, Houston says, Greg Griego owned the guns.

In the Albuquerque case, a motive is still unclear beyond signs of alleged animosity in the family.

"Nehemiah stated that he had anger issues and he was annoyed with his mother," says the arresting officer's report. "He had been having homicidal and suicidal thoughts."

Police reports also say the alleged killer wore camouflage clothes and despite his father's rules found ways to play violent video games like Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto. Police did not say how he managed to play the games.

Police say the attacks began around 1 a.m. when the teen allegedly murdered his mother in her sleep and then forced his 9-year-old brother to look at her bloody face before shooting the boy and then their 5- and 2-year-old sisters as they wept in fear.

Police say Griego then text messaged a photo of his dead mother to his 12-year-old girlfriend, waited downstairs for about four hours for his father to come home, then shot him multiple times.

Griego told police that he then reloaded his weapons – police say the youth used a handgun in addition to the rifle – and put them in the back of the family's van "so that he could drive to a populated area to murder more people."

According to The Albuquerque Journal, Griego first called a friend who talked him into meeting at Calvary church, where his father Greg Griego had been a pastor.

A Church Confession

Once at the church, police say, the teen spoke with various people including his girlfriend and her grandmother, first claiming his family was in a fatal car accident but later saying they were shot in the family's home.

A church official drove back to the house with the teen, saw Greg Griego on the floor and called 911.

A report by the arresting officer says Nehemiah at first claimed someone else killed his family, but he soon confessed to being the shooter.

Statements of shock and condolence came from across the state, including former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Facebook friend of Greg Griego's.

"Chaplain Griego was a dedicated professional that passionately served his fellow man and the firefighters of this community," says a statement by the Albuquerque Fire Department. "His calming spirit and gentle nature will be greatly missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Greg's extended family."

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Women have caught up to men on lung cancer risk

Smoke like a man, die like a man.

U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more — that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.

Women also have caught up with men in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women.

"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.

The research is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.

The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers — about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.

Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.

They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.

One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.

A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods — 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 — using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.

Among the findings:

— The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.

—A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.

—Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.

—Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.

—Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time. Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking. Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.

—The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.

Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.

Scientists have made scant progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.

The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.

Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.

"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no 'race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.

Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years — to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.

"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.

It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack."

___

Online:

American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org

National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/tobacco/smoking and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung

Medical journal: http://www.nejm.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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S&P up for sixth day, Apple slip could halt rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 rose for a sixth day on Wednesday after stronger-than-expected profits from IBM and Google but the rally could be halted as Apple's after-hours miss sent its shares lower.

The S&P was just 4.7 percent from its all-time closing high as IBM's and Google's earnings, released after Tuesday's close, followed on the heels of stronger U.S. economic data.

"People were kind of nervous about earnings coming into this quarter but numbers have shown so far strength in earnings," said King Lip, chief investment officer at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco.

But Apple , still the largest U.S. publicly traded company, fell 8 percent in extended trading after sales of its flagship iPhone came in below analyst targets and quarterly revenue slightly missed Wall Street expectations.

"One thing that stands out is the company's ballooning balance sheet, where they now have $137 billion dollars in cash and investments," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut. "You've got to wonder when they're going to put some more of that to work."

Declining issues beat advancers in both the NYSE and Nasdaq during regular market hours, in a sign the market's rally may be overstretched. The broad Russell 2000 index <.rut> closed the day down 0.3 percent after earlier hitting and intraday historic high just below 900 points.

Shares in IBM Corp , the world's largest technology services company, climbed 4.4 percent during regular market hours to $204.72, providing just about all of the Dow's 67-point gain.

Also helping the tech sector was a 5.5 percent jump in Google Inc to $741.50. The Internet search company reported its core business outpaced expectations and revenue was higher than expected.

The S&P technology sector <.splrct> rose 1.2 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 67.12 points or 0.49 percent, to 13,779.33, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 2.25 points or 0.15 percent, to 1,494.81, and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 10.49 points or 0.33 percent, to 3,153.67.

The benchmark S&P 500 is a mere 0.35 percent away from hitting 1,500, a level not seen since December 12, 2007.

S&P 500 futures fell 4.1 points, or 0.3 percent, while Nasdaq 100 futures fell 20 points or 0.7 percent.

Netflix shares soared 32 percent, above $136, after the video subscription service said it added subscribers in the United States and abroad and posted a quarterly profit.

LED maker Cree Inc jumped 22 percent to $40.85 after it forecast a higher-than-expected third-quarter profit, and reported results above analysts' estimates.

Upscale leather goods maker Coach Inc plunged 16.4 percent to $50.75 after reporting sales that missed expectations.

Clearing a market hurdle, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a Republican-led plan to extend the country's borrowing authority until mid May. This delays a confrontation in Congress similar to one in 2011, which generated a stalemate that triggered the first-ever U.S. debt rating downgrade.

Thomson Reuters data through Wednesday showed that of the 99 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 67.7 percent have topped expectations, above the 65 percent average beat over the past four quarters.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings rose 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast at the start of earnings season.

Top U.S. manufacturers sounded a confident note about their expectations for 2013 on Wednesday as fears of the year-end "fiscal cliff" faded into memory.

In the regular session, about 6.1 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the 2012 daily average of about 6.45 billion.

On the NYSE, roughly 15 issues fell for every 14 that rose and on Nasdaq seven declined for every five gainers.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos, additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Diane Craft)

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Netanyahu claims election win despite losses

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged the bruised winner of Israel's election on Tuesday, claiming victory despite unexpected losses to resurgent center-left challengers.

Exit polls showed the Israeli leader's Likud party, yoked with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu group, would still be the biggest bloc in the 120-member assembly with 31 seats, 11 fewer than the 42 they held in the previous parliament.

If the exit polls compiled by three local broadcasters prove correct - and they normally do in Israel - Netanyahu would be on course for a third term in office, perhaps leading a hardline coalition that would promote Jewish settlement on occupied land.

But his weakened showing in an election he himself called earlier than necessary could complicate the struggle to forge an alliance with a stable majority in parliament.

The 63-year-old Israeli leader promised during his election campaign to focus on tackling Iran's nuclear ambitions if he won, shunting Palestinian peacemaking well down the agenda despite Western concern to keep the quest for a solution alive.

The projections showed right-wing parties with a combined strength of 61-62 seats against 58-59 for the center-left.

"According to the exit poll results, it is clear that Israel's citizens have decided that they want me to continue in the job of prime minister of Israel and to form as broad a government as possible," Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page.

The centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party, led by former television talk show host Yair Lapid, came second with 18 or 19 seats, exit polls showed - a stunning result for a newcomer to politics in a field of 32 contending parties.

Lapid won support amongst middle-class, secular voters by promising to resolve a growing housing shortage, abolish military draft exemptions for Jewish seminary students and seek an overhaul of the failing education system.

The once dominant Labour party led by Shelly Yachimovich was projected to take third place with 17 seats.

"YESH ATID SWEEP"

The mood was subdued at Netanyahu's Likud party election headquarters after the polls closed, with only a few hundred supporters in a venue that could house thousands.

"We anticipated we would lose some votes to Lapid, but not to this extent. This was a Yesh Atid sweep," Likud campaign adviser Ronen Moshe told Reuters.

A prominent Likud lawmaker, Danny Danon, told CNN: "We will reach out to everybody who is willing to join our government, mainly the center party of Yair Lapid."

If the prime minister can tempt Lapid to join a coalition, the ultra-Orthodox religious parties who often hold the balance of power in parliament might lose some of their leverage.

After a lacklustre campaign, Israelis voted in droves on a sunny winter day, registering a turnout of 66.6 percent, the highest since 2003. That buoyed center-left parties which had pinned their hopes on energizing an army of undecided voters against Netanyahu and his nationalist-religious allies.

Opinion polls before the election had predicted an easy win for Netanyahu, although the last ones suggested he would lose some votes to the Jewish Home party, which opposes a Palestinian state and advocates annexing chunks of the occupied West Bank.

The exit polls projected 12 seats for Jewish Home.

Full election results are due by Wednesday morning and official ones will be announced on January 30. After that, President Shimon Peres is likely to ask Netanyahu, as leader of the biggest bloc in parliament, to try to form a government.

The former commando has traditionally looked to religious, conservative parties for backing and is widely expected to seek out self-made millionaire Naftali Bennett, who heads the Jewish Home party and stole much of the limelight during the campaign.

But Netanyahu might, as Danon suggested, try to include more moderate parties to assuage Western concerns about Israel's increasingly hardline approach to the Palestinians.

WESTERN ANXIETY

British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned Israel on Tuesday it was losing international support, saying prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were almost dead because of expanding Jewish settlements.

U.S.-brokered peace talks broke down in 2010 amid mutual acrimony. Since then Israel has accelerated construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem - land the Palestinians want for their future state - much to the anger of Western partners.

Netanyahu's relations with U.S. President Barack Obama have been notably tense and Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the BBC the election was unlikely to change that.

"President Obama doesn't have high expectations that there's going to be a government in Israel committed to making peace and is capable of the kind of very difficult and painful concessions that would be needed to achieve a two-state solution," he said.

Tuesday's vote is the first in Israel since Arab uprisings swept the region two years ago, reshaping the Middle East.

Netanyahu, who had a first term as premier in the late 1990s, has said the turbulence, which has brought Islamist governments to power in several countries long ruled by secularist autocrats, including neighboring Egypt, shows the importance of strengthening national security.

He views Iran's nuclear program as a mortal threat to the Jewish state and has vowed not to let Tehran enrich enough uranium to make a single nuclear bomb - a threshold Israeli experts say could arrive as early as mid-2013.

Iran denies it is planning to build the bomb, and says Israel, widely believed to have the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East, is the biggest threat to the region.

The issue barely registered during the election campaign, with a poll in Haaretz newspaper on Friday saying 47 percent of Israelis thought social and economic issues were the most pressing concern, against just 10 percent who cited Iran.

One of the first problems to face the next government, which is unlikely to take power before the middle of next month at the earliest, is the stuttering economy.

Data last week showed the budget deficit rose to 4.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2012, double the original estimate, meaning spending cuts and tax hikes look certain.

(Reporting by Jerusalem bureau; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

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‘Atari’ Is in Trouble Again

Atari is declaring bankruptcy — twice. Both the U.S. video game company and its French parent have done so, the latest twist for the company which largely invented the video game industry and remains synonymous with it, despite having seen its glory days end by the mid-1980s.

But wait. Even though the Atari name celebrated its fortieth anniversary last year, it’s a mistake to talk about Atari as if it’s a corporate entity which has been around for four decades. (The Los Angeles Times’ Ben Fritz, for instance, refers to it as an “iconic but long-troubled video game maker.”) Instead, it’s a famous name which has drifted from owner to owner. It keeps being applied to different businesses, and yes, for all its fame, it does seem to be a bit of a jinx.

Here’s a quick rundown of what “Atari” has meant at different times (thanks, Wikipedia, for refreshing my memory):

1972-1976: It’s an up-and-coming, innovative startup cofounded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.

1976-1984: It’s part of Warner Communications (which, years later, merged with Time Inc. to form Time Warner, overlord of this website). It’s a massively successful maker of video games and consoles, but then it crashes, along with the rest of the industry.

1984-1996: Atari morphs into a semi-successful maker of PCs when it’s acquired by Tramel Technology, a company started by Jack Tramiel, the ousted founder of Commodore.

1996-1998: Tramiel runs Atari into the ground. After merging with hard-disk maker JTS, the company and brand are largely dormant.

1998-2000: Atari resurfaces under the ownership of  toy kingpin Hasbro as a line of games published under the Atari Interactive name.

2000-present: It becomes a corporate entity controlled by French game publisher Infogrames, which increasingly emphasizes the Atari moniker over its own and takes over completely in 2008. In recent years, it’s focused on digital downloads, mobile games and licensing of its familiar brand and logo.

The above chronology doesn’t account for Atari’s original business: arcade games. As far as I can tell, the arcade arm was owned at different times by Warner Communications/Time Warner (twice!), Pac-Man purveyor Namco and arcade icon Midway, among other companies. But use of the Atari brand on arcade hardware petered out in 2001.

Basically, Atari has never been one well-defined thing for more than twelve years, max, at a time. That the name has survived at all is a testament to its power and appeal. And even though the current Atari has fallen on hard times, I’ll bet that the brand survives for at least a few more decades, in one form or another. Several forms, probably.

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Shakira Welcomes a Son

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/22/2013 at 06:05 PM ET

Jaume Laiguana

It’s a boy for Shakira and Gerard Piqué.

“We are happy to announce the birth of Milan Piqué Mebarak, son of Shakira Mebarak and Gerard Piqué, born Jan. 22nd at 9:36 p.m. in Barcelona, Spain,” the couple announced on Shakira’s website.

“The name Milan (pronounced MEE-lahn), means dear, loving and gracious in Slavic; in Ancient Roman, eager and laborious; and in Sanskrit, unification. Just like his father, baby Milan became a member of FC Barcelona at birth.”

Milan weighed  6 lbs., 6 oz., and the hospital says that both mother and child are in excellent health.

Earlier in the day, the singer-songwriter had requested good thoughts from fans as her son’s delivery approached. “I’d like to ask you all to accompany me in your prayers on this very important day of my life,” Shakira, 35, Tweeted.

The “Hips Don’t Lie” singer and her beau, central defender for FC Barcelona, announced the pregnancy in September and the sex of the baby in October. Earlier this month, Piqué, 25, and Shakira celebrated their baby shower, with all proceeds benefitting UNICEF.

– Sarah Michaud

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Flu season fuels debate over paid sick time laws

NEW YORK (AP) — Sniffling, groggy and afraid she had caught the flu, Diana Zavala dragged herself in to work anyway for a day she felt she couldn't afford to miss.

A school speech therapist who works as an independent contractor, she doesn't have paid sick days. So the mother of two reported to work and hoped for the best — and was aching, shivering and coughing by the end of the day. She stayed home the next day, then loaded up on medicine and returned to work.

"It's a balancing act" between physical health and financial well-being, she said.

An unusually early and vigorous flu season is drawing attention to a cause that has scored victories but also hit roadblocks in recent years: mandatory paid sick leave for a third of civilian workers — more than 40 million people — who don't have it.

Supporters and opponents are particularly watching New York City, where lawmakers are weighing a sick leave proposal amid a competitive mayoral race.

Pointing to a flu outbreak that the governor has called a public health emergency, dozens of doctors, nurses, lawmakers and activists — some in surgical masks — rallied Friday on the City Hall steps to call for passage of the measure, which has awaited a City Council vote for nearly three years. Two likely mayoral contenders have also pressed the point.

The flu spike is making people more aware of the argument for sick pay, said Ellen Bravo, executive director of Family Values at Work, which promotes paid sick time initiatives around the country. "There's people who say, 'OK, I get it — you don't want your server coughing on your food,'" she said.

Advocates have cast paid sick time as both a workforce issue akin to parental leave and "living wage" laws, and a public health priority.

But to some business owners, paid sick leave is an impractical and unfair burden for small operations. Critics also say the timing is bad, given the choppy economy and the hardships inflicted by Superstorm Sandy.

Michael Sinensky, an owner of seven bars and restaurants around the city, was against the sick time proposal before Sandy. And after the storm shut down four of his restaurants for days or weeks, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars that his insurers have yet to pay, "we're in survival mode."

"We're at the point, right now, where we cannot afford additional social initiatives," said Sinensky, whose roughly 500 employees switch shifts if they can't work, an arrangement that some restaurateurs say benefits workers because paid sick time wouldn't include tips.

Employees without sick days are more likely to go to work with a contagious illness, send an ill child to school or day care and use hospital emergency rooms for care, according to a 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. A 2011 study in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that a lack of sick time helped spread 5 million cases of flu-like illness during the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

To be sure, many employees entitled to sick time go to work ill anyway, out of dedication or at least a desire to project it. But the work-through-it ethic is shifting somewhat amid growing awareness about spreading sickness.

"Right now, where companies' incentives lie is butting right up against this concern over people coming into the workplace, infecting others and bringing productivity of a whole company down," said John A. Challenger, CEO of employer consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Paid sick day requirements are often popular in polls, but only four places have them: San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and the state of Connecticut. The specific provisions vary.

Milwaukee voters approved a sick time requirement in 2008, but the state Legislature passed a law blocking it. Philadelphia's mayor vetoed a sick leave measure in 2011; lawmakers have since instituted a sick time requirement for businesses with city contracts. Voters rejected a paid sick day measure in Denver in 2011.

In New York, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer's proposal would require up to five paid sick days a year at businesses with at least five employees. It wouldn't include independent contractors, such as Zavala, who supports the idea nonetheless.

The idea boasts such supporters as feminist Gloria Steinem and "Sex and the City" actress Cynthia Nixon, as well as a majority of City Council members and a coalition of unions, women's groups and public health advocates. But it also faces influential opponents, including business groups, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has virtually complete control over what matters come to a vote.

Quinn, who is expected to run for mayor, said she considers paid sick leave a worthy goal but doesn't think it would be wise to implement it in a sluggish economy. Two of her likely opponents, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and Comptroller John Liu, have reiterated calls for paid sick leave in light of the flu season.

While the debate plays out, Emilio Palaguachi is recovering from the flu and looking for a job. The father of four was abruptly fired without explanation earlier this month from his job at a deli after taking a day off to go to a doctor, he said. His former employer couldn't be reached by telephone.

"I needed work," Palaguachi said after Friday's City Hall rally, but "I needed to see the doctor because I'm sick."

___

Associated Press writer Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jennifer Peltz at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Banks, commodity stocks lift S&P 500 to five-year high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bank and commodity shares led the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index to a fresh five-year closing high on Tuesday on hopes that the global economy continues to mend.

Travelers' shares climbed after the insurer's results and lifted the Dow Jones industrial average to a new five-year closing high.

On Friday, both the Dow and the S&P 500 ended at five-year highs after the quarterly earnings season got off to a solid start. On Monday, the U.S. stock market was closed in observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday.

In Tuesday's session, the market also gained on signals that Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives aim on Wednesday to pass a bill to extend the U.S. debt limit by nearly four months to May 19. The White House welcomed the move, saying it would remove uncertainty about the issue.

Investors, however, were cautious ahead of an increase in earnings reports and as the S&P 500 rose for a fifth straight session.

Jack de Gan, chief investment officer of Harbor Advisory Corp, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, said better economic numbers in the United States and China, as well as more stabilization in Europe, were driving buyers into sectors associated with economic growth.

"Any (bearish) news could turn us down for a day or so," he said, referring to the recent string of gains.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold led gains in the materials sector after it reported a 16 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit on higher production. Shares gained 4.6 percent to $35.19.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 62.51 points, or 0.46 percent, to 13,712.21 at the close. The S&P 500 <.spx> gained 6.58 points, or 0.44 percent, to 1,492.56. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 8.47 points or 0.27 percent, to 3,143.18.

Tuesday's session marked the highest closes for both the Dow and the S&P 500 since December 2007.

Technology shares underperformed as concerns about Apple's ability to continue to grow at hyper speed and a weak outlook from Intel Corp diminished optimism about the sector's prospects. The S&P technology index <.splrct> added 0.16 percent for the day. In comparison, the S&P energy sector index <.spny>, the S&P financials index <.spsy> and the S&P basic materials index <.splrcm> each gained 0.9 percent.

But Google shares rose 4.8 percent to above $736 in extended-hours trading after the world's No. 1 search engine reported a jump in fourth-quarter revenue. Shares of IBM added more than 4 percent to trade above $204 after the world's largest technology services company reported earnings and revenue that beat estimates.

"We expected Q4 for many tech vendors would be weak because we were expecting a lot of companies sitting on their wallets until it became clear what was going to become of the fiscal cliff," Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels said about IBM.

"Given the fact it's Q4 and the cloud of fiscal cliff within it, it's a positive indication that especially tech software will be doing better in the next couple of months."

During the regular session, shares of blue chips Travelers, DuPont

, and Verizon Communications rose following earnings.

Travelers rose 2.2 percent to $77.95, a closing high. DuPont's shares gained 1.8 percent to $47.82. Verizon's stock rose 0.9 percent to $42.94.

Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning showed that of the 74 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 62.2 percent have topped expectations, roughly even with the 62 percent average since 1994, but below the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are forecast to have risen 2.6 percent. That estimate is above the 1.9 percent forecast from the start of earnings season, but well below the 9.9 percent fourth-quarter earnings forecast from October 1, the data showed.

U.S.-listed shares of Research in Motion rallied 13 percent to $17.90 a day after its chief executive said the Canadian company may consider strategic alliances with other companies after the launch of devices powered by RIM's new BlackBerry 10 operating system.

About 6.2 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below last year's daily average of about 6.45 billion shares.

On the NYSE, advancers outnumbered decliners by a ratio of roughly 9 to 4. On the Nasdaq, five stocks rose for every three that fell.

Signs of improved sentiment toward world growth were also seen in European bond markets. The yield on Portugal's benchmark 10-year note fell below 6 percent for the first time since late 2010 on news that the country was set to tap the bond market this week for the first time since it was bailed out in 2011.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Additional reporting by Jennifer Saba; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Algeria vows to fight Qaeda after 38 workers killed

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria's prime minister accused a Canadian of coordinating last week's raid on a desert gas plant and, praising the storming of the complex where 38 mostly foreign hostages were killed, he pledged to resist the rise of Islamists in the Sahara.

Algeria will never succumb to terrorism or allow al Qaeda to establish "Sahelistan", an Afghan-style power base in arid northwest Africa, Abdelmalek Sellal told a news conference in Algiers where he also said at least 37 foreign hostages died.

"There is clear political will," the prime minister said.

Claimed by an Algerian al Qaeda leader as a riposte to France's attack on his allies in neighboring Mali the previous week, the four-day siege drew global attention to Islamists in the Sahara and Sahel regions and brought promises of support to African governments from Western powers whose toppling of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi helped flood the region with weapons.

The attack on a valuable part of its vital energy industry raised questions about the security capacity of an establishment that took power from French colonists 50 years ago, held off a bloody Islamist insurgency in the 1990s and has avoided the democratic upheavals the Arab Spring brought to North Africa.

Sellal said a Canadian citizen whom he named only as Chedad, a surname found among Arabs in the region, was among 29 gunmen killed and added that he had "coordinated" the attack. Another three militants were taken alive and were in custody.

Among hostages confirmed dead by their own governments were three Americans, seven Japanese, six Filipinos and three Britons; others from Britain, Norway and elsewhere were listed as unaccounted for. Sellal said seven of the 37 foreign dead were unidentified, while a further five foreigners were missing.

Nearly 700 Algerians and 100 other foreigners survived.

An Algerian security source said investigators pursuing the possibility that the attackers had inside help to map the complex and gain entry were questioning at least two employees.

Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament in London that Britain would increase its help to Algeria's intelligence and security forces and might do more for France in Mali, though he ruled out sending many of its stretched armed forces to Africa.

Noting a shift in the source of threats to British interests from Afghanistan to Africa, he also noted Sellal's rundown of a multinational group of gunmen from across north and west Africa and said the region was becoming "a magnet for jihadists".

Alongside a "strong security response", however, he called for efforts to address long-standing grievances, such as poverty and political exclusion, which foster support for violence. Some militants in Algeria want autonomy for the south and complain of domination by an unchanging establishment in Algiers.

DEATH AND SURVIVAL

As Algerian forces combed the Tigantourine plant near the town of In Amenas for explosives and the missing, survivors and the bereaved told tales of terror, narrow escapes and of death.

"The terrorists lined up four hostages and assassinated them ... shot them in the head," a brother of Kenneth Whiteside told Sky News, in an account of the Briton's death given to the family by an Algerian colleague who witnessed it. "Kenny just smiled the whole way through. He'd accepted his fate."

Filipino survivor Joseph Balmaceda said gunmen used him for cover: "Whenever government troops tried to use a helicopter to shoot at the enemy, we were used as human shields."

Another Briton, Garry Barlow, called his wife from within the site before he was killed and said: "I'm sat here at my desk with Semtex strapped to my chest."

Several hostages died on Thursday when Algerian helicopters blasted jeeps in which the militants were trying to move them.

An Algerian security source had earlier told Reuters that documents found on the bodies of two militants had identified them as Canadians: "A Canadian was among the militants. He was coordinating the attack," Sellal said.

In Ottawa, Canada's foreign affairs department said it was seeking information. Security experts noted that some Canadian citizens had been involved with international militants before.

Officials have also named other militants in recent days as having leadership roles among the attackers. Veteran Islamist Mokhtar Belmokhtar claimed responsibility on behalf of al Qaeda.

In a video distributed on the Internet, the one-eyed veteran of Afghan wars of the 1980s, of Algeria's civil war and of the lucrative trans-Sahara cigarette smuggling trade, said: "We in al Qaeda announce this blessed operation."

Dressed in combat fatigues, Belmokhtar demanded an end to French attacks on Islamist fighters in Mali.

The jihadists had planned the attack two months ago in neighboring Mali, Sellal added. They had traveled from there through Niger and Libya, hence evading Algeria's strong security services, until close to In Amenas. Their aim, he said, had been to take foreign hostages to Mali, and they made a first attempt to take captives from a bus near the site early on Wednesday.

Normally producing 10 percent of Algeria's natural gas, the facility was shut down during the incident. The government said it aimed to reopen it this week, although officials at Britain's BP and Norway's Statoil, which operate the plant with Algeria's state energy firm, said the plans were not clear.

MALI CONFLICT

An Algerian newspaper said the jihadists had arrived in cars painted in the colors of Algerian state energy firm Sonatrach but registered in Libya, a country awash with weaponry since Western powers backed a revolt to oust Gaddafi in 2011.

Using his oil wealth, the Libyan dictator exercised a degree of influence in the region and the consequences of his death are still unfolding.

In a sign of the complexities wrought by the Arab Spring revolts, Egypt, a former military dictatorship now led by one of the generals' Islamist foes, criticized France's intervention in Mali on Monday. President Mohamed Mursi called instead for more spending to address rebels' grievances and warned that the military moves would "inflame the conflict in this region".

The bloodshed also increased the strains in Algeria's long fraught relations with Western powers, where some complained about being left in the dark while the decision to storm the compound was being taken.

But this week, Britain and France both defended the military action by Algeria, the strongest military power in the Sahara and an ally the West needs in combating the militants.

Chafik Mesbah, a former Algerian presidential security adviser, said: "The West did not criticize Algeria because it knows an assault was inevitable in the circumstances ... The victims were a minimum price to pay to solve the crisis."

(Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Samsung (005930) is well known for its clever ads mocking Apple (AAPL) and its fans, but the company has decided to pick on a less powerful target in its newest ad that takes swipes RIM (RIMM) and its BlackBerry smartphones. The ad revolves around an office that is implementing its own bring-your-own-device policy and is meant to show that both the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II are ideal business phones that can enable greater creativity. While most workers in the ad happily switch to Samsung smartphones after the BYOD policy is put in place, one of them insists on clinging to his BlackBerry, which prompts one of his coworkers to ask, “Are you finally going to retire that thing?” The full video is posted below.

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This article was originally published on BGR.com

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