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Stocks on Wall Street move higher after Europe report - UPDATE

Published: 10:43 05 Sep 2012 EDT

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US stocks reversed course Wednesday morning to post slight gains after a news report lifted spirits about Europe ahead of an ECB policy meeting on Thursday. 

The Dow was lately higher by 46 points to 13,082, the S&P 500 was up by 2 points at 1,407, and the Nasdaq rose 5 points to 3,080. 

Bloomberg News reported that European Central Bank president Mario Draghi's bond-buying program involves unlimited purchases of government debt that would be sterilized to ease inflation concerns. 

In the US, investor reaction to productivity data was rather muted, after the Labor Department said the gauge of employee output per hour rose at a better than expected 2.2 per cent yearly rate in the second quarter - after a 0.5 per cent drop in the prior quarter. 

In corporate news, Nokia (NYSE:NOK) unveiled its newest Lumia 920 smartphone - the flagship for the new Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) - this morning at a media event in New York City. The newest phone includes the company's PureView camera technology as well as Nokia maps, and says the phone can be charged wirelessly. No price or launch date was given. 

Shares of the company were down more than 7% this morning. 

Commodities 

Gold futures were trading around flat, at $1,696 an ounce, while oil for October delivery was down 69 cents at $94.61 a barrel as oil giant BP (NYSE:BP) (LON:BP) was accused of “gross negligence and wilful misconduct” by the US Department of Justice over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The allegations were filed with the New Orleans court, which will hear the case over the Gulf of Mexico blowout that killed 11 oil rig workers and spilled millions of gallons of crude oil.

Analysts believe that this is the strongest sign yet that the US authorities will seek the maximum penalty from the British company.

And if the Department of Justice can prove the claims,BP could be liable to pay as much as US$21 bln (£13 bln) in damages under the Clean Water Act. Shares of BP were down almost 2.3% in New York. 

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