New York

Stocks rise past 13,900 a day after big rally

NEW YORK — Wall Street ended an extraordinary and record-setting week Friday by surging higher again, sending the Standard & Poor's 500 index past a trading high set in March 2000 and thrusting the Dow Jones industrial past 13,900 for the first time.

Both the S&P and the Dow logged record closes for the second straight day and the Dow's new trading high put the blue chip index within about 70 points of 14,000. But the technology-laden Nasdaq composite index showed more modest advances in Friday's session and remained far from its record levels seen early in the decade.

In a week that saw the Dow swing more than 450 points, including a gain of 283 points in Thursday's session alone, investors grappled with unease over soured subprime loans and the broader economy before casting off such concerns and bidding stocks higher amid signs consumers might yet again pull through and give Wall Street reason to climb higher.

The Dow rose 45.52, or 0.33 percent, to 13,907.25 after reaching a new trading high of 13,932.29.

For the week, the Dow rose 295.57 points, or about 2.2 percent. Its three-day gain following sharp losses Tuesday was the Dow's biggest percentage increase since a rise of 3.17 percent over three sessions in May 2005 and its biggest point gain since early 2003, when the Dow added 405.74 points.

Broader stock indicators also advanced Friday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 4.80, or 0.31 percent, to 1,552.50. The index late in Friday's session set a fresh trading high of 1,555.10, topping a previous record of 1,553.11 set in March 2000. The S&P added 1.4 percent for the week.

The Nasdaq composite index gained 5.27, or 0.20 percent, to 2,707.00 after spending much of the session moderately lower; the week's gain totaled 1.5 percent. Though the Nasdaq was trading at levels not seen since early in the decade, the index remains well short of its closing record of 5,048.62, set in March 2000 when it was bloated by the late 1990s tech boom.

California

Amgen board ups share repurchase plan

THOUSAND OAKS — Biotechnology company Amgen Inc. said its board authorized a $5 billion in increase in its share repurchase plan.

The company said it has about $1.5 billion remaining under its previous stock authorization.

Amgen has about 1.18 billion shares outstanding. Shares have traded between $52.36 and $77 over the past 52 weeks and closed Friday at $56.93.

Suit alleges discrimination at Countrywide

CALABASAS — Countrywide Financial Corp. has been hit with accusations of racial discrimination in its lending practices in a federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Massachusetts.

Four black homeowners, three from Massachusetts and one from Virginia, filed the suit, which seeks class status for any other black consumers who have obtained Countrywide mortgages since 2001.

Calabasas-based Countrywide told Reuters news service that it has not reviewed the lawsuit and does not tolerate discriminatory lending.

The suit alleges that "tens of thousands of individuals" all over the country might be affected by Countrywide's lending practices, which they say are unfair to blacks because they use a discretionary pricing policy that allows lenders to impose subjective charges and interest mark-ups.

"And it just so happens that once all those charges were added, African-American borrowers were three times more likely to get a high-interest rate loan," said one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Robert Rothman, a partner in Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP.

The filing comes on the heels of another suit filed Wednesday by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP case was filed in Los Angeles federal court and also seeks class-action status against several other subprime mortgage lenders, including Countrywide, claiming they engaged in racial disparity in lending.

Jury selection begins in pesticide case

LOS ANGELES — An attorney for Dole Fresh Fruit Co. told prospective jurors Thursday there could be many causes for the sterility claimed by Central American banana workers in a pesticide lawsuit set to go to trial.

Frederick McKnight and other lawyers gave a brief explanation of the case during jury selection. Opening statements are expected next week.

The lawsuit accuses Westlake-based Dole and Standard Fruit Co., now part of Dole, of exposing workers to a harmful pesticide known as DBCP in the 1970s.

Dow Chemical Co. and Amvac Chemical Corp., manufacturers of the pesticide, "actively suppressed information about DBCP's reproductive toxicity," according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is one of five cases filed in Los Angeles County by at least 5,000 agricultural workers from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama.

Attorney Duane Miller represents more than 30 plaintiffs in the first case to go to trial. He said Dole took no steps to protect workers in Nicaragua, even after workers in the U.S. showed a high level of infertility in 1977.

McKnight said that Dole stopped buying the pesticide three days after the U.S. government suspended DBCP in 1979. Dow attorney Michael L. Brem said the company found the chemical was safe if used at the right mixture.

Idaho

Viacom, Google spar over YouTube case

SUN VALLEY — Tensions between technology and media companies are usually humming just beneath the surface during a weeklong retreat for top chief executives that this cozy mountain resort hosts every year, but this week a marketplace clash between Viacom Inc. and Google Inc. just couldn't be kept down.

Viacom, a major media conglomerate that owns the MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon cable networks, has hit Internet search leader Google with a $1 billion lawsuit, saying that Google's popular video-sharing site YouTube is a massive center of copyright infringement, routinely displaying clips from Viacom shows such as "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart."

The conflict has huge implications for the future of both media and technology companies as a legal ruling could help set standards for how video and other kinds of media are distributed over the Internet, a trend that is in its early stages but growing rapidly as people increasingly go online for entertainment, and advertising dollars follow them.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, said he believed his company was acting within the law and promised to defend itself vigorously. Schmidt held court with a group of reporters well into the night on a hotel terrace Thursday during a conference of top-level media executives that the Allen & Co. investment bank has organized in Sun Valley since the early 1980s.

— From staff and wire reports