The fire happened Saturday night near Brass River in Nigeria’s Bayelsa state. Witnesses told a local environmental group they heard the blast from their homes.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta claimed the attack in an email to journalists.

The group, once powerful in the region, has seen its influence wane with the arrest of its alleged leader Henry Okah in South Africa.

The militants also threatened more attacks against South African interests in the region because Okah is facing terrorism charges in South Africa.

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Anheuser-Busch InBev this week is rolling out Bud Light Platinum, an upscale version of its best-selling label. It’s the brewer’s latest bid to pump up flagging sales of its flagship brand, and to counter liquor sales that are taking a bite out of beer industry-wide.

Platinum, which hit the shelves in St. Louis on Monday, has been in the works for four years, said Mike Sundet, A-B’s senior director for Bud Light marketing. Geared to be a higher-end version of its namesake, it is still a clear light lager, though one with considerably more punch than Bud Light - 6 percent alcohol by volume compared to 4.2. It’s a bit sweeter, and a bit smoother. And it’s designed for drinking not so much around the backyard grill but in the club, or at least a classy bar.

“It’s higher-end. It’s sophisticated,” Sundet said. “There’s a time and a place where consumers are looking for drinks that make them feel like they’re stepping up.”

The beer comes in a distinctive, cobalt blue bottle. Its tag line is “top-shelf taste.” It is being launched with two 30-second ads early in Sunday’s Super Bowl, one which features a roomful of diverse, attractive young professionals sipping Platinum at an after-hours office party, complete with a DJ playing a track by Kanye West.

Platinum is a clear play for a demographic that has been bypassing beer in favor of the hard stuff more and more lately, said Ben Steinman, publisher of Beer Marketer’s Insights.

“They’re going after the spirits drinker, there’s no question about that,” he said. “It’s a very interesting play.”

For the past decade or so, spirits have been eating into the market for beer, especially so-called “premium” lagers such as Budweiser and Bud Light. Liquor sales now make up more than one-third of the U.S. alcohol market, up from 28 percent in 2000, according to research firm Discus. Beer’s share has fallen below 50 percent. Add in the fast growth of craft beers, and it’s no surprise that sales of A-B’s big brands have been slipping.

Platinum is “definitely not a craft beer,” Sundet said. A-B has been trying to tap that market with its new Shock Top line and with deals like last year’s acquisition of craft label Goose Island.

The new brew, Sundet says, is targeted more at people who have shifted to drinking spirits.

That could prove to be a good strategy, said David “Bump” Williams, a longtime industry analyst.

“If it’s their intention to try and get some spirit shoppers back into beer, I think this could be it,” he said. “Bud Light Platinum has a pretty good shot.”

The track record for these Bud Light brand extensions is rather mixed.

A-B InBev launched Bud Light Lime in 2008, and it sells well, particularly in the summer months. It notched 1.77 million barrels in sales in 2010, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights, good for 1 percent of the U.S. market.

A year later, out came Bud Light Golden Wheat, a more direct challenge to successful beers such as Miller Coors’ Blue Moon credit report. It never caught on with drinkers, selling at its peak just a few hundred thousand barrels. It’s now nearly absent from shelves, and will be discontinued as Platinum ramps up, Sundet said.

“We’re going to continue to try new things,” he said. “Some are going to succeed. Some aren’t.”

NO CHEAP ENDEAVOR

Launching these beers isn’t cheap. Sundet wouldn’t say how much A-B InBev will spend to market Platinum, but the official kickoff comes with two ads during the Super Bowl, where a 30-second spot averages $3.5 million. And that’s just for starters. There will be billboards and big events - like last week’s St. Louis launch party at the Chase Park Plaza’s Starlight Room and a happy hour for Wall Street traders on Wednesday - buzz on the internet and a barrage of TV and radio ads to come. Steinman estimates A-B InBev shelled out at least $30 million apiece marketing Bud Light Lime and Golden Wheat in their launch years, and a similar plan for Platinum is likely.

“Platinum will be out there. ‘Ubiquitous’ could be just a slight exaggeration,” he said. “The A-B distribution network still absolutely has the capability to push it. Retailers are interested in it. It’s going to get TV advertising and support.”

But however much A-B InBev may push Platinum in the next few months, the true test will come later. Will people buy that second six-pack once the novelty wears off? Will they actually order it instead of a gin and tonic?

It’s far too soon to know. While Platinum started to hit shelves in Texas and a few other markets last week, its national rollout began Monday.

Here in St. Louis Platinum displays started popping up at grocery stories by Tuesday and there 12-packs stacked seven-high at Randall’s Wine and Spirits in south St. Louis. But several bars along Washington Avenue downtown said they weren’t carrying the new beer just yet.

At The Over/Under Bar and Grill, general manager Brian McAfee was taking a wait-and-see approach before deciding how much space he would give to the blue bottles in the refrigerator behind the bar.

“We’ll definitely try some out,” he said. “But we may wait until people start asking for it.”

A-B InBev hopes a lot of people do, said Williams, for it has much riding on Platinum. It’s their shot to bite back at spirits, to woo drinkers who have turned away from beer, to show they can produce a new product just as well as their rivals at MillerCoors. And it’s obvious the brewery is putting a lot into its new brand, from the beer to the ads to the stuff consumers don’t see.

“The wholesalers are doing their job. The packaging folks have done a phenomenal job developing a beautiful package. Everything’s good,” he said.

“Now, is it what the consumer wants?”

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Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.8 percent to 8,881.27 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.2 percent to 20,585.44 and Seoul’s Kospi added 1.4 percent to 1,985.82.

Signs of an improving U.S. economy have helped bolster trader sentiment. Factories raised output in January by the most in seven months, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index on Wednesday. And the Commerce Department said construction spending rose 1.5 percent in December, the fifth straight monthly gain.

Investors have also been cheered by growing optimism that contagion from a likely Greek debt default can be contained.

Global equities are advancing “on hopes of the global economy gaining a solid footing and the banking sector continued to rally on the belief that Europe will avoid a catastrophe,” IG Capital in Melbourne said in a report.

On Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 0.7 percent at 12,716.46. The S&P added 0.9 percent to 1,324.09 while the Nasdaq composite index rose 1.2 percent to close at 2,848.27.

European stock indexes also rose Wednesday. France’s CAC-40 gained 2.1 percent while Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 1.9 percent and Germany’s DAX jumped 2.4 percent.

China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index climbed 0.2 percent to 2,272.99 on Thursday amid signs manufacturing improved in January for a second straight month.

Shares in Singapore, Australia, Taiwan and New Zealand all gained ground.

“After stepping into a soft patch in the fourth quarter, Asian economic growth is gradually picking up,” said Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economics at HSBC in Hong Kong. “This rebound is led by the region’s giants: China, India, and Japan.”

Early Thursday, the Tokyo Stock Exchange suspended trading in 241 securities, including Sony Corp. and Hitachi Ltd., due to a glitch in its electronic trading system. Trading in the suspended securities was to resume midday.

Benchmark oil for March delivery rose 6 cents to $97.67 per barrel Thursday in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 87 cents to settle at $97.61 on Wednesday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3193 from $1.3158 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar slipped to 76.12 yen from 76.15 yen.

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The Dow Jones industrial average was down two points at 12,652 just before 10:30 a.m. EST. The Standard & Poor’s 500 was up less than a point at 1,313. The Nasdaq composite index was up two 2,814.

For the month, the S&P 500 is up 4.5 percent. That would be its best performance to start a year since 1997, when the S&P gained 6.1 percent. Last year, the market added 2.3 percent in the first month.

Meeting in Brussels, European leaders said a final debt deal for Greece could be completed in coming days, together with a euro130 billion bailout package designed to save the country from a potentially disastrous bankruptcy.

Greece is negotiating with investors who bought its government bonds. They are expected to swap their bonds for new ones with half the face value, plus a lower interest rate and longer term of maturity. In all, investors would lose about 70 percent.

A large majority of countries in the European Union agreed late Monday to sign a treaty designed to stop overspending. Europe’s debt problems remain the main worry in the markets.

Investors are increasingly worried that Portugal may need a similar deal with its private creditors. European leaders insist the Greek reduction is a one-time event. Portugal’s borrowing costs have risen to record highs.

Back home in the United States, investors have enjoyed a steady climb through January amid signs of an improving economy. Unemployment has fallen from a 10 percent peak in October 2009 to 8.5 percent.

The Dow had been up 66 points in morning trading, but it lost the gains after the Conference Board reported that its consumer confidence index fell to 61.1 in January, down from 64.8 in December. Economists had expected 68.

There were also signs that the housing market continues to struggle. Home prices fell in November for a third straight month in in 19 of the 20 cities tracked by the S&P/Case-Shiller index. The biggest declines were in Atlanta, Chicago and Detroit.

Among stocks making big moves:

_ Mattel Inc. soared 6 percent because of strong demand for Barbie and Monster High dolls during the holidays. That boosted Mattel’s fourth-quarter profit by a better-than-expected 14 percent. The company also raised its dividend.

_ U.S. Steel Corp. gained 4 percent after it reported strong demand for pipes from the oil industry from October through December. The company was also optimistic about this quarter.

_ Agriculture conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland declined 4 percent after it reported an 89 percent drop in quarterly net income. The company said its results were weighed down by weakness in oilseeds, corn processing and agricultural services.

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Macro-economic risk rose to become the number-one concern among bankers, the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, a forum for bankers and regulators funded by institutions including the Bank of England, reported in a survey today. The amount of debt some countries have, access to liquidity and a scarcity of capital were their next worries, it said.

Standard & Poor

Costa, a unit of the world’s biggest cruise operator, the Miami-based Carnival Corp., also said it would reimburse passengers the full costs of their cruise, their travel expenses and any medical expenses sustained after the grounding.

The agreement was announced Friday after negotiations between Costa representatives and Italian consumer groups who say they represent 3,206 cruise ship passengers from 61 countries who suffered no physical harm when the Costa Concordia hit a reef on Jan. 13.

The deal does not apply to the hundreds of crew on the ship, the roughly 100 cases of people injured or the families who lost loved ones.

Passengers are free to pursue legal action on their own if they aren’t satisfied with the deal. Some consumer groups have already signed on as injured parties in the criminal case against the Concordia’s captain, Francesco Schettino, who is accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all passengers were evacuated. He is under house arrest.

In addition, Codacons, one of Italy’s best known consumer groups, has engaged two U.S. law firms to launch a class-action lawsuit against Costa and Carnival in Miami, claiming that it expects to get anywhere from euro125,000 ($164,000) to euro1 million ($1.3 million) per passenger.

Codacons has also called for a criminal investigation into the not-infrequent practice of steering huge cruise ships close to shore to give passengers and residents on land a bit of a thrill easy payday loans.

The chief executive of Costa, Pier Luigi Foschi, told an Italian parliamentary committee this week that so-called “tourist navigation” wasn’t illegal, and was a “cruise product” sought out by passengers and offered by cruise lines to try to stay competitive.

The Concordia gashed its hull on reefs off the island of Giglio after Schettino made an unauthorized deviation from its approved route to bring it closer to Giglio. Some 4,200 passengers and crew were hastily evacuated after the Concordia ran aground and capsized a few kilometers away near the port of Giglio.

Sixteen bodies have been recovered and another 16 remain unaccounted for and presumed dead. Search efforts for them resumed Friday as salvage crews prepared to begin extracting some 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil before it leaks.

Passengers have said the evacuation was chaotic. Coast guard data shows the captain only sounded the evacuation alarm an hour after the initial collision, well after the Concordia had listed to the point that many lifeboats couldn’t be lowered.

Schettino has admitted he had taken the ship on “touristic navigation” but has said the rocks he hit weren’t charted on his nautical maps.

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The Fed’s monetary policy committee said it is unlikely to raise interest rates before 2014, extending a period of record-low rates by more than a year. Lower interest rates can encourage investment in stocks by reducing traders’ returns from bonds.

The Fed plans to keep interest rates very low in part to make loans more affordable for people and companies. Access to credit is vital for the economic recovery.

The Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index both turned slightly positive shortly after the Fed’s 12:30 p.m. Eastern announcement. Both had been solidly negative all morning; the Dow had lost as many as 95 points.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note plunged to 1.98 percent from 2.05 percent an hour before the Fed announcement. Bond yields fall when demand for them increases.

Markets had opened mostly lower on fears about Greece’s slow progress in talks with bondholders about reducing the nation’s crushing debt load.

Tech stocks rose, bucking the wider market, after consumer electronics giant Apple Inc. reported a best-ever quarter driven by strong sales of iPhones and iPads.

Apple’s stock jumped 6.2 percent, helping lift the Nasdaq composite index by 16 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,802. The Nasdaq is up 7.6 percent this year, more than twice the gain for the Dow Jones industrial average.

The Dow was down 19 points, or 0.2 percent, at 12,657. The S&P 500 index fell a fraction to 1,313.

The declines follow a two-month surge that lifted the broad S&P 500 index by 13 percent since its recent low on Nov. 25. As fears recede about the European debt crisis, big-time investors such as hedge funds will be drawn back into the market, fueling more gains, said Joe Bell, senior Equity Strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research.

After such a strong rally, “we could see a … slight pullback or consolidation; but overall we’re bullish,” Bell said.

Later Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will take questions from reporters in his quarterly news conference Business Card Holders.

European markets mostly closed lower as Greece’s bondholders held a closed-door meeting to discuss whether they will continue to negotiate with the crisis-stricken nation.

Greece wants the investors, mostly banks and hedge funds, to voluntarily write off about half of its debt. Otherwise, Greece will be unable to obtain needed bailout cash and will default. That could set off a financial crisis similar to the aftermath of Lehman Bros.’ failure in 2008.

Benchmark stock indexes in Italy and London closed a half-percent lower. Borrowing costs for Italy and France increased, a sign of traders’ fears that the debt crisis will spread. Adding to the gloom was a report that Britain’s economy shrank by 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter.

With Apple’s gains Wednesday, the Cupertino, Calif. electronics maker again surpassed Exxon Mobil Corp. as the company with the biggest market value. Apple said late Tuesday that it sold 37 million iPhones in its fiscal first quarter, the first period after the death of CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs. That was coupled with a big jump in iPad sales to 15.4 million, and a more modest increase in Mac sales.

Apple’s net income leapt 118 percent from the same quarter a year earlier. Revenue soared 73 percent. Both results blew the doors off Wall Street’s expectations.

Among the other companies making big moves after announcing earnings:

_ US Airways Group Inc. jumped 18 percent and Delta Air Lines Inc. rose 6.6 percent. Both carriers reported earnings that were far better than Wall Street analysts expected. The airlines raised fares during the fourth quarter while keeping costs under control. Delta also cut the number of flights it makes to keep pace with demand.

_ WellPoint Inc., the nation’s largest health care insurer based on enrollment, fell 4.9 percent. The company’s fourth-quarter earnings dropped 39 percent, far more than analysts had expected. The Indianapolis company’s full-year forecast also fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts. Medical claims, its largest expense, rose nearly 10 percent in the quarter.

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De Guindos said the government

Jan Kees de Jager said Monday that “we’ve never said it (the debt restructuring) must be voluntary. Our goal is a sustainable debt. It has our preference if it’s voluntary, but it’s not a precondition for us.”

De Jager has become the first finance minister of the 17 countries that use the euro as their currency who has openly raised the prospect of forcing losses on banks and other investments firms.

Talks between Greece and private creditors to cut the country’s debt pile by euro100 billion ($129 billion) have hit an impasse over disagreements over the interest rate on new, lower valued bonds.

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The Burbank-based company says Iger merited a boost in compensation for excellent management in a tough economic environment.

Disney generated record-breaking profit and revenue for fiscal 2011, buoyed by the success of “The Lion King” in 3-D and other films, and improved revenue at other business segments guaranteed high risk personal loans.

Shareholders saw the company’s stock price slide 12.5 percent in its fiscal year ended Oct. 1. But the stock has since recovered, closing Friday at $39.31.

The Associated Press formula considers salary, bonuses, perks, stock and options awarded to the executive during the year.

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