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By msnbc.com news services

Updated at 4:00 p.m. ET:

Wall Street closed Tuesday mixed as shares pulled back after the Dow breached 13,000 for the first time since May 2008, the latest big move in stocks’ recent rally.

Greece’s securing a bailout to avoid a disorderly default initially supported stocks, but investors said the news had been priced in to the market.

The 13,000 level, which the Dow first moved above briefly in morning trading, doesn’t hold a great deal of significance to market analysts, but “it’s nice to see a symbolic number,” Art Cashin, UBS director of floor operations, told CNBC.

The Dow last moved above 13,000 on an intra-day basis on May 20, 2008. It last closed above that level on May 19, 2008.

Climbing oil prices gave investors a reason to sell Tuesday. U.S. crude oil prices rose to a nine-month high amid Iran supply worries.

Signs of improvement in the economy and stabilization of Europe’s debt crisis have driven the Dow more than 20 percent higher since late last year, while the S&P has climbed more than 8 percent so far this year.

Euro zone finance ministers agreed on a 130 billion euro ($172 billion) rescue for Greece to avert an imminent chaotic default after forcing Athens to commit to unpopular cuts and private bondholders to take bigger losses.

“We’re running into some minor selling pressure given the extent of the rally we’ve seen,” said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon, despite the upbeat news on Greece.

Even with the bailout, Greece faces a long road to economic recovery. European Union officials said the Greek economy will only return to growth in 2014 after a recession that will shrink output by 17 percent.

Results from retailers were mixed. Wal-Mart Stores Inc shares were the top drag on the Dow, falling after its quarterly profit came in short of expectations.

Home Depot Inc shares were up after the home improvement chain’s quarterly profit beat estimates.

Related:

Top finance professor bullish on the stock market

Reuters contributed to this report.

Can the Dow move higher? Discuss on our Facebook page.

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By msnbc.com news services

Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET:

U.S. stocks moved higher in a choppy session Tuesday, with the Dow Jones industrial average crossing the 13,000 level for the first time since May 2008.

The 13,000 level doesn’t hold a great deal of significance to market analysts, but “it’s nice to see a symbolic number,” Art Cashin, UBS director of floor operations, told CNBC. The Dow last moved above 13,000 on an intra-day basis on May 20, 2008. It last closed above that level on May 19, 2008.

Signs of improvement in the economy and stabilization of Europe’s debt crisis have driven the Dow more than 20 percent higher since late last year, while the S&P has climbed more than 8 percent so far this year.

Euro zone finance ministers agreed on a 130 billion euro ($172 billion) rescue for Greece to avert an imminent chaotic default after forcing Athens to commit to unpopular cuts and private bondholders to take bigger losses.

“This is the most solid agreement Greece has had, with actual money behind it, and that makes the market optimistic,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at PFG Best in Chicago.

Even with the bailout, Greece faces a long road to economic recovery. European Union officials said the Greek economy will only return to growth in 2014 after a recession that will shrink output by 17 percent.

“If you say this is definitely the end of the story, then that shows you’re not familiar with the history of the issue,” Flynn said. “We’re cautiously optimistic, but we’re not likely to move significantly higher from this point since we’ve rallied going into it.”

Wal-Mart Stores Inc lost 4 percent to $60.01 and was the top drag on both the Dow and S&P after its quarterly profit came in short of expectations.

Home Depot Inc climbed 1 percent to $47.18 after the home improvement chain’s quarterly profit beat estimates.

Macy’s Inc climbed 3.1 percent to $37.41 as the department store group posted higher profit and forecast more sales gains this year.

Kraft Foods Inc advanced 1.5 percent to $38.59 after the foodmaker forecast earnings growth of at least 9 percent this year even as it prunes its portfolio of North American brands. Kraft, Wal-Mart and Home Depot are all Dow components.

Apple Inc was up 1.9 percent to $511.54 after the U.S. International Trade Commission ruled the iPhone maker did not infringe patented technology owned by Android phonemaker HTC Corp.

Dell Inc and software company Intuit Inc were due to report results after Tuesday’s closing bell.

Earnings season continued to wind down this week, with 59 companies scheduled to report. According to Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning, of the 418 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 64 percent have topped analysts’ expectations, which is below the beat rate for recent quarters.

Related:

Top finance prof. bullish on the stock market

Reuters contributed to this report.

Can the Dow move higher? Discuss on our Facebook page.

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By msnbc.com and news services

Afghan demonstrators fired sling shots and guns in the air while U.S. helicopters responded with flares, after thousands of angry people gathered Tuesday to protest the alleged burning of copies of the Quran at the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan. 

The demonstrators — shouting “Die, die, foreigners!” — started gathering in the morning after learning of the incident. 

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The top NATO general in Afghanistan, General John Allen, ordered an investigation, offered “sincere apologies”  and said any improper handling of the Quran was “NOT intentional” in a written statement.

Photographs taken by the AFP news agency outside the Bagram airbase, an hour’s drive north of the capital Kabul, showed people firing sling shots and others holding charred copies of the Quran, Islam’s holy book.

“There are about 2,000 to 3,000 demonstrators, throwing stones at the base and chanting down with the foreigners,” Rahman Sayedkhili, a senior police officer in Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said.

‘Very angry’
A Reuters reporter at one of Bagram’s gates said flares were fired from U.S. helicopters in a bid to disperse the crowd.

“The people are very angry. The mood is very negative,” Zia Ul Rahman, deputy provincial police chief, said. “Some are firing hunting guns in the air, but there have been no casualties.”

Police said a similar protest on Tuesday just east of Kabul ended peacefully.

Roshna Khalid, the provincial governor’s spokeswoman, said Qurans were burned inside Bagram, citing accounts from local laborers.

“The laborers normally take the garbage outside and they found the remains of Qurans,” she said.

Ahmad Zaki Zahed, chief of the provincial council, said U.S. military officials gave him about 30 Qurans and other religious books that were recovered before they were destroyed.

“Some are burned. Some are not burned,” Zahed said, adding that the books were used by detainees once incarcerated at the base.

The materials were in trash that two soldiers with the U.S.-led coalition transported in a truck late Monday night to a pit where garbage is burned on the base, according to Zahed, who spoke with five Afghans working at the pit.

He said that when the workers noticed the religious books in the trash, they stopped the disposal process.

Public relations disaster?
Allen attempted to contain fury over the incident, which could be a public relations disaster for the U.S. military as it tries to pacify the country ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops in 2014.

“When we learned of these actions, we immediately intervened and stopped them. The materials recovered will be properly handled by appropriate religious authorities,” said General John Allen, head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), in a written statement, as well as in a video released on a U.S. military website.

“This was NOT intentional in any way,” his written statement said.

Bagram also houses a prison for Afghans detained by American forces. The centre has caused resentment among Afghans because of reports of torture and ill-treatment of suspected Taliban prisoners, with President Hamid Karzai demanding the transfer of prisoners to Afghan security.

Afghan refugees wait for relief from the cold weather

Allen did not provide details on the incident.

Winning the hearts and minds of Afghans is critical to U.S. efforts to defeating the Taliban, but critics say Western forces often fail to grasp Afghanistan’s religious and cultural sensitivities.

“I offer my sincere apologies for any offence this may have caused, to the president of Afghanistan, the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and most importantly, to the noble people of Afghanistan,” Allen added.

Protests raged for three days across Afghanistan in April last year after a U.S. pastor burned a Quran in Florida. Eleven people were killed when demonstrators stormed a U.N. compound in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, including seven foreign U.N. workers. Another riot in the southern city of Kandahar left nine dead and more than 80 wounded.

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

The Associated Press, Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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Former candidate for the seat of Southern Downs, Peter Watson, 19, was forced to resign as a candidate yesterday and was expelled from the party today after being linked to online rants about homophobia and neo-nazis.

But Queensland Labor this afternoon refused to say if party officials bothered to do an internet search on a teenage election candidate whose homophobic rants have exposed the party to ridicule.

“We are dealing with someone who is an extremist and a dishonest one,” Ms Bligh said.

“The views of this man have no place in the ALP. Frankly they are despicable and they have no place in the Australian community,” Ms Bligh said.

“That’s why when these views became known to the party. He was asked to resign and this morning he was expelled.

“I am certainly very, very angry about this man’s endorsement in the first place.

“From what I understand this man was very determined to get into the ALP. Hiding his views, then making them know to embarrass the party.”

An ALP spokeswoman would not say whether the party had done a simple Google search on Mr Watson.

The Liberal National Party (LNP) argues that’s all it would have taken to discover Mr Watson’s views.

LNP deputy leader Tim Nicholls said the ALP had ample to time to check on Mr Watson. He had been an ALP member for four years and was the Warwick branch secretary.

Ms Bligh’s theory that Mr Watson planned the whole episode was a like plot from the X-files TV show, Mr Nicholls said.

“From the outside, their preselection program looks like a circus,” he told AAP.

Despite the ALP issuing a media statement claiming Mr Watson had flatly denied allegations against him when the controversy came to light yesterday, the 19-year-old this morning defended some of the views offered in the 2007 posts.

During a radio interview Mr Watson stood by his earlier claims of links between pedophilia and homosexuality.

“I said that homosexuality and pedophilia were linked because there has been some research done and it’s been published by the Catholic Church that suggests that 30 per cent of male pedophiles are homosexuals,” he said.

“I made the comments so I do agree.”

Mr Watson, whose resignation was announced in an ALP media release claiming he flatly denied the allegations, said he was not aware of all the allegations at the time the statement was issued.

ALP State Secretary Anthony Chisholm, who issued the media release, said Mr Watson denied the allegations at the time the document was being prepared.

“Clearly he has had a change of mind on those matters but clearly the decision to ask for his resignation was the correct one and we stand by that and he is now no longer the party candidate,” he said.

“We’ll be recommending to officers that Mr Watson be expelled because clearly his views have no place in the Australian Labor Party.”

Yesterday, The Courier-Mail reported that a teenage Labor candidate has been forced to resign after being linked to online rants about homophobia and neo-nazis.

Peter Watson, 19, was stood aside as Labor’s candidate for the safe conservative seat of Southern Downs even though the party insisted he was not responsible for some of the highly offensive material.

Among posts under the name “Peter Watson”, homosexuals are labelled as “degenerates” who should be “wiped out”.

“Homosexuality and pedophilia go hand in hand with each other,” the post states.

“To deal with one you must deal with the other in order to wipe them from society.”

In another post under the name “Peter Watson aka Stalinist”, the contributor insists he has masqueraded as a neo-nazi to “get information out of the enemy”.

“I gave the information about the stupid neo-nazis to my comrades and they dealt with the neo-nazis,” it states.

“Now most of those neo-nazis are in jail or bashed thanks to my lie.”

There is also a post in which a “Peter Watson” promises to give out information on fellow Labor Party members as part of his “long battle against the commies in the branch here in Warwick”.

One post from 2007 also talks about dressing up as Soviet soldiers to fight the US.

“We all attack each other with water guns, rocks, sticks,” it says.

ALP state secretary Anthony Chisholm said in a statement that he had accepted Mr Watson’s resignation.

“Allegations have been made against Mr Watson, which he flatly denies,” he said.

“We were unaware of these allegations when he was endorsed late last year.

“Nonetheless, I have accepted his resignation so this issue does not distract from the important issues confronting Queenslanders during this election campaign.

“We look forward to announcing a new Labor candidate for this seat as soon as we can, to provide a local voice for Labor voters on the Southern Downs.”

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Jason Lees, a popular private school teacher and successful international rugby referee, his wife Danielle Cara Sutton, a psychologist. Their two-year-old son a normal, well-adjusted boy.

Their seemingly happy life together makes it even harder to understand what could have driven Mr Lees to take his son to Brisbane’s Story Bridge in the early hours of yesterday, throw him over the edge, before jumping himself.

It was the second murder-suicide involving a parent and child at the city landmark in just five months.

Local resident Craig Cooper told Fairfax media he witnessed the tragedy from his nearby balcony, describing a “blood curdling scream”.

“I just heard this scream, it was blood curdling,” he said. “I don’t think I could describe it, it was unbelievable. I caught a glimpse of a falling thing, it was tiny.

“A few seconds later, he (Mr Lees) jumped, it was unmistakeable this time that it was a body.”

The final journey of Mr Lees and his son began when he took the toddler from their home in Seven Hills, in Brisbane’s southeast, about 2.30am and drove to Kangaroo Point.

He then strapped him into the babyseat of his bicycle and rode the remaining couple of hundred metres to the outbound side of the bridge where he jumped over the safety rail.

The man’s bike was left on the footpath. The bodies were removed hours later, about 8am.

Neighbours shocked

Neighbours say Mr Lees was the “best dad a kid could want” and his son Brad was “a beautiful kid”, The Courier-Mail reports.

“Life’s cruel. Only he knows why he did it. He was a lovely guy, a nice guy, you could tell. I’d give him a wave. It was always so lovely to hear them laugh,” one neighbour said.

“I was awoken at about two-thirty, two-forty-five when I heard doors opening and shutting, but I didn’t think anything of it,” a neighbour said.

“I thought maybe he had to catch a plane, it was so early in the morning, so I didn’t get out of bed to see. I wish that he had told someone, confided in his own dad. He was the best dad a kid could want.”

“He was a lovely boy,” another neighbour said. “He would wave to you if you saw them out the front.”

Another neighbour said: “They were just a lovely family. I guess she will just have to try to put her life back together. It’s just her now.”

Mr Lees, 40, originally from Canada, worked at the prestigious Anglican Church Grammar School (known as Churchie) and his son attended preschool there.

Headmaster Jonathan Hensman said he started at the school in 2007 after six years at The Southport School on the Gold Coast.

“Jason was a highly regarded and much loved teacher whose kindness to his students, his gentlemanly approach and enthusiasm for teaching were acknowledged by students, parents and staff alike,” he said.

“He was an outstanding teacher and very generous contributor to the whole of our program, not just the classroom, which adds to the shock of the circumstances surrounding this.”

He spoke fondly of Mr Lees’ son: “He was a lovely boy and that just adds to the tragedy.”

A teacher at the school said staff were upset to have lost one of their own. “He was a really good man,” one said.

Mr Lees’ students will also be offered counselling.

“All of the families concerned have been phoned and we’ve asked them to talk through the issues with their sons tonight so they’ve had that opportunity first,” Mr Hensman said.

“We’ll talk through more deeply with the boys with our counselling programs.”

Detective Superintendent Michael Niland said investigations were continuing and that the family was “suffering an immense amount of grief”.

Every year an average of four lives are lost on the Story Bridge which features handrails rising to just 1.4m.

The Australian Institute of Suicide Prevention and Research recommended in 2004 Brisbane City Council look at improvements including a full cage over the walkway.

But Deputy Mayor Adrian Schrinner said this would not work because “there’s a number of cliffs around Brisbane, a number of rail crossings”.

In September, Kim Patterson murdered her 14-year-old daughter Sidonie, before grabbing her 12-year-old son and driving to the Story Bridge, where she jumped off.

If you are depressed or contemplating suicide, please call for help.
Lifeline – 13 11 14 (24-hour help line) www.lifeline.org.au
SANE Australia on 1800 18 SANE (7263) www.SANE.org
Beyondblue Info Line 1300 224 636 www.beyondblue.org.au

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