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HOUSTON – Crude prices rose along with equity markets Tuesday as oil traders shook off new indications that energy spending will be hobbled by consumer fears and also slowing growth in developing countries.

Benchmark crude for May delivery rose $1.25 to settle at $49.66 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices had declined for the past two trading days after a sustained rally throughout March.

In London, Brent prices rose $1.23 cents to $49.23 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Traders are trying to gauge demand based on shifting data about the economy and consumer confidence.

Oil prices have rebounded sharply in March, which ended the first day of trading this month just above $40.

The New York-based Conference Board said Tuesday its Consumer Confidence Index rose to 26.0 in March, from a revised 25.3 reading in February, but those figures remain at historic lows.

Americans are driving billions of miles less each month, and that has helped to push U.S. oil inventories to 16-year highs. On Wednesday, the government will release the latest oil inventory report, which is expected to show a build up of at least 3 million barrels.

On Friday, the U.S. government will release the new monthly unemployment report, which traders look to for indications of future energy demand, particularly in the current economic environment.

Brad Samples, an analyst at Summit Energy Services Inc. in Louisville, Ky., said there’s little evidence the recession is letting up, but he believes oil may have reached a floor — for now. By cutting production, OPEC has helped create the floor, “and we think they’ve been fairly effective,” Samples said.

“Does that mean oil can go below $47? Certainly,” he said. “Does that mean it can go below $37? Then we’re starting to look at pricing environments we think have probably gone by the wayside at this point.”

With the global economy grinding to a halt, growth in developing countries will slow to 2 percent this year, according to the World Bank, which predicts economic activity will remain depressed for the next two years.

That’s less than half the gross domestic product — a total output of goods and services — the World Bank expected as recently as November. The worsening economic crisis forced the bank to revise expectations.

Many analysts had believed China and India would continue to consume enormous amounts of oil even as the U.S. and Europe fell into recession. But those nations have been hurt by the economic downturn and oil prices have plunged from $147 per barrel last summer.

The U.S. government last week said crude storage facilities were brimming with more oil than they’ve had in 16 years. Combined with the strategic petroleum reserve, the nation now has 1.05 billion barrels of oil in storage — enough to fuel roughly 44 million cars for a year.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has promised to slash production by 4.2 million barrels per day, but there are doubts about the level of compliance by OPEC members.

“With OPEC not meeting again until May, inventory data in coming weeks will be uber important for the market,” energy-focused securities firm Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. said in a note to clients Tuesday.

At the same time, American motorists are seeing prices at the pump rise, which is typical in the spring as refiners switch to more expensive summer blends.

After ticking up steadily for the past week, U.S. retail gas prices were unchanged overnight, with the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded holding at $2.048 per gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service.

A gallon of gasoline is 8.2 cents more expensive than a month ago but $1.239 cheaper than a year ago, when crude prices were headed to new highs.

In other Nymex trading, gasoline for April delivery rose 2 cents to settle at $1.40 a gallon while heating oil rose less than a penny to settle at $1.3436 a gallon. Natural gas for May delivery rose 3.7 cents to settle at $3.776 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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Associated Press writers Pablo Gorondi in Budapest, Hungary, Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – Home prices sank by the sharpest annual rate on record in January, and the pace continues to accelerate, but there were a handful of battered metro areas where price declines slowed, according to data released Tuesday.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 major cities tumbled by a record 19 percent from January 2008. It was the largest decline since the index started in 2000. The 10-city index dropped 19.4 percent, also a new record.

All 20 cities in the report showed monthly and annual price declines, with 13 posting new annual records. Prices dropped by more than 10 percent in 14 cities. Faring better were Dallas, Denver and Cleveland, with annual price declines of around 5 percent.

“There are very few bright spots that one can see in the data,” David Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee, said in a prepared statement. “Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path.”

In the Cleveland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington D.C. metro areas — all ravaged by foreclosures_ annual price declines eased somewhat. Meanwhile, six cities, including Minneapolis, Charlotte, Seattle and New York, showed smaller price declines in January compared with December.

Last week, the National Association of Realtors said sales of previously occupied homes unexpectedly jumped in February by the largest amount in nearly six years as first-time buyers took advantage of deep discounts on foreclosures and other distressed properties. Some economists say that could help moderate declines.

“We still think there is a good chance the rate of (price) decline will slow through the spring as existing home sales stabilize and perhaps pick up a bit, but foreclosures are weighing heavily on prices,” wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.

Prices in the 20-city index have plummeted 29 percent from their peak in summer 2006, while the 10-city index has fallen 30 percent. Prices have sunk back to levels not seen since late 2003, and analysts say the ultimate drop in prices could easily be 35 percent or greater in some metros.

To provide some relief, Congress in February passed a new $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers and President Barack Obama is directing $75 billion to a new foreclosure prevention plan. But the success of those efforts could well depend on how far the U.S. economy falls.

Some slivers of hope about the economy buoyed consumers in March and consumer confidence crept upward for the first time in four months, the Conference Board said Tuesday.

“We have seen some signs of improvement in the economy, but they are subtle,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group.

Lennar Corp.’s chief executive also said there are some signs suggesting the housing market is beginning to stabilize, but he’s not projecting significant improvement for some time.

Stuart Miller blamed weak consumer confidence and competition from deeply discounted foreclosed properties for a 28 percent decline in new home orders in its most recent fiscal quarter.

But Miller told Wall Street analysts Tuesday there’s been a discernible uptick in sales this month, though believes it’s too early to say it’s a defining trend.

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AP Business Writers Alex Veiga in Los Angeles and Anne D’Innocenzio in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency will soon be adding a different kind of equipment to dozens of school yards around the country — air pollution monitors.

The EPA announced Tuesday a list of 62 schools in 22 states where the outdoor air will be tested for toxic air contaminants. The agency will work with state and local officials to begin the monitoring at the selected schools within three months.

While the EPA and state and local governments already operate air pollution monitoring networks that collect information on a variety of air pollutants, this will be the first time school-yard air quality will be the focus of their investigations.

The contaminants to be tested vary depending on the school. But the focus is toxic chemicals that are known to cause cancer, respiratory and neurological problems — especially in children, who are more susceptible than adults because they are still growing.

The monitors will measure the air for gases as well as solid particles such as heavy metals and soot, the EPA said.

“EPA, state, and local officials are mobilizing to determine where elevated levels of toxics pose a threat, so that we can take swift action to protect our children at their schools,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. The agency will spend $2.25 million purchasing the monitors and paying for the laboratory analysis.

The schools were chosen because of their proximity to industrial facilities or other sources of pollution.

The list includes an elementary school and middle school in Deer Park, Texas, with about 1,500 students. The schools are located about one-quarter of a mile from the petrochemical plants and refineries that line the Houston Ship Channel.

Matt Lucas, a spokesman for the Deer Park Independent School District, said the district was notified of the monitoring on Monday. The school already cancels recess on days when smog — a persistent problem in the Houston area — reaches dangerous levels.

“Of course, we are going to cooperate and we look forward to seeing the results of the study, and we hope the EPA will advise us accordingly,” Lucas said.

Three schools in Birmingham, Ala., near pipe and steel manufacturing plants also made the EPA list.

Michaelle Chapman, a Birmingham City Schools spokeswoman, said that one of the schools, Lewis Elementary, had already been monitored and the district was waiting for the results.

“We are not aware of any health problems that children who attend these schools are experiencing because of air quality,” she said in a statement.

She said an EPA official who contacted the school in December urged parents not to panic.

The full list of schools that will be monitored can be found on the EPA’s Web site at http://www.epa.gov/schoolair.

Once in place, the new equipment will collect air samples on 10 days over a month. The EPA will cease monitoring at the school if the results show good air quality. But if high levels of contaminants are detected, the agency will take steps to reduce the pollution.

BOSTON – Two companies have landed a real estate bargain: Boston’s tallest skyscraper.

The John Hancock Tower was bought Tuesday for about $660 million at a foreclosure auction in New York City.

That’s about half of what it cost a little more than two years ago.

The 60-story building was acquired by a partnership between Normandy Real Estate Partners and Five Mile Capital Partners.

World-renowned architect I.M. Pei designed the building. It was sold after Broadway Partners defaulted on loans used to buy it in late 2006.

BERLIN – Researchers in Germany have used a modern medical procedure to uncover a secret within one of ancient Egypt’s most treasured artworks — the bust of Nefertiti has two faces. A team led by Dr. Alexander Huppertz, director of the Imaging Science Institute at Berlin’s Charite hospital and medical school, discovered a detailed stone carving that differs from the external stucco face when they performed a computed tomography, or CT, scan on the bust.

The findings, published Tuesday in the monthly journal Radiology, are the first to show that the stone core of the statue is a highly detailed sculpture of the queen, Huppertz said.

“Until we did this scan, how deep the stucco was and whether a second face was underneath it was unknown,” he said. “The hypothesis was that the stone underneath was just a support.”

The differences between the faces, though slight — creases at the corners of the mouth, a bump on the nose of the stone version — suggest to Huppertz that someone expressly ordered the adjustments between stone and stucco when royal sculptors immortalized the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten 3,300 years ago.

“Changes were made, but some of them are positive, others are negative,” Huppertz said.

John H. Taylor, a curator for Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum in London, said the scan raises interesting questions about why the features were adjusted — but that answers will probably remain elusive.

“One could deduce that the final version was considered in some way more acceptable than the ‘hidden’ one, though caution is needed in attempting to explain the significance of these changes,” Taylor wrote in an e-mail.

The bust underwent a similar CT scan in 1992. But the more primitive scanner used then only generated cross sections of the statue every 5 millimeters — not enough detail, Huppertz said, to reveal the subtlety of the carving hidden just 1-2 millimeters under the stucco.

Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt discovered the bust in 1912 and added it to Berlin’s Egyptian collection on Museum Island, a cluster of five neoclassical art halls that make up one of the city’s most familiar landmarks.

Currently on display at the Altes Museum, the bust will move next door when the Neues Museum reopens in October after a lengthy restoration by British architect David Chipperfield.

In 2007, Wildung denied a request from Egypt’s antiquities chief to borrow the bust for an exhibition, saying it was too fragile to transport. Huppertz said the results of his scan added credence to that claim.

Taylor, the British Museum curator, said the better understanding of the bust’s structure will also help preserve it.

“The findings are particularly significant for the information they shed on the constructional process and the subsurface condition of the bust, which will be of value in ensuring its long-term survival in good condition” Taylor said.

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On the Net:

http://radiology.rsnajnls.org

NEW YORK – Drugstore operator Walgreens will offer free clinic visits to the unemployed and uninsured for the rest of the year, providing tests and routine treatment for minor ailments through its walk-in clinics — though patients will still pay for precriptions.

Walgreens said patients who lose their job and health insurance after March 31 will be able to get free treatment at its in-store Take Care clinics for respiratory problems, allergies, infections and skin conditions, among other ailments. Typically those treatments cost $59 or more for patients with no insurance.

Hal Rosenbluth, chairman of the Take Care Health Systems division, described the plan as something close to an experiment: He said Walgreens isn’t sure of patient demand or how much providing the services might cost the company.

It’s likely to generate more attention for the clinics, however. Rosenbluth said a typical Take Care patient tells eight other people about his or her experience. So far, about 30 percent of Take Care patients were new customers to Walgreens.

The program is expected to last through the end of 2009. Walgreens runs 341 Take Care clinics in 35 markets around the country, including Chicago, Atlanta, Miami and Cleveland.

Free services will be offered only from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Walgreens said it will not offer free checkups, vaccinations or other injections because it is focusing on providing services patients might otherwise get at an urgent-care center or even an emergency room.

Patients must present proof they are unemployed, including a federal or state unemployment determination letter and an unemployment check stub. They will have to sign a form at the clinic saying they have lost their jobs and health benefits. If they find a new job or get new health insurance, they will no longer be eligible for free care.

Spouses and children are also eligible for free services if they don’t have insurance of their own.

Medical lab operator Quest Diagnostics is participating in the program by offering free tests for step throat and urinary tract infections.

Walgreens bought the Take Care clinics in May 2007. Take Care says it has seen about 1.2 million patients since its launch in November 2005 and estimates that up to 30 percent of them were uninsured.

NEW YORK – Investigators suspect two African immigrants slain at a Long Island condo owned by an NFL player may have been killed as revenge for an Internet scam, police said Tuesday.

Sekou Sakor and Ansu Keita were each shot in the head sometime Thursday night at a condominium in Woodbury, N.Y., owned by Jonathan Vilma. There were no arrests.

The New Orleans Saints linebacker and former New York Jets player was not there at the time and not believed to be involved, said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne.

Browne said investigators believe the victims may have been mixed up in a so-called “black money” scheme. Victims are sent e-mails saying that cash smuggled from overseas — stained black to avoid detection — can be purchased at a discount; what they receive is a trunk full of worthless paper.

It was unclear how Sakor, 31, and Keita, 32, both originally from Liberia, ended up at Vilma’s home. Sakor’s body was found Friday dumped in Queens; that of Keita was found in Brooklyn.

Browne said various members of Vilma’s family had access to the condominium, located in a gated development. It had been up for sale.

Vilma joined the Saints last season after four years with the Jets. He was the NFL’s Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2004.

His agent did not immediately return a call for comment on Tuesday.

Vilma played college football at Miami (Fla.).

TRIPOLI, Libya – An overcrowded boat packed with migrants capsized in stormy seas off the coast of Libya, killing at least 20 and leaving 200 missing and feared dead four days after the accident, officials said Tuesday.

The boat, which a Libyan police official said had a capacity of just 50, overturned Friday in high winds with about 250 on board. The bodies of six migrants pulled from the water on Sunday, at least three of them women, were laid out among piles of nets and frayed ropes on the deck of one of the fishing boats that took part in rescue efforts.

The boat capsized in 60-degree waters about 30 miles off the Libyan coast on the most heavily traveled route for illegal migrants trying to reach Italy, Laurence Hart, an official of The International Organization for Migration, told The Associated Press.

“It is hard to imagine that there are survivors among the missing by now,” Hart said.

More than 20 people were rescued from the overturned boat and about 20 bodies were recovered on Sunday, Hart and a Libyan police official said. A second boat with about 350 migrants aboard was rescued safely in the same area on Sunday, the officials said.

Libyan television showed footage of the flimsy boat that was rescued, packed with people shoulder to shoulder. Most of the migrants appeared to be men from Africa, although women and children were also among the group. A man could be seen carrying a baby and helping a woman who could barely walk.

“The second boat has vanished and only 21 were rescued and those were the ones who were able to swim,” said Libyan police spokesman Col. Najy Abou Harous. “We found 21 other corpses. The rest are believed dead,” he added.

“The boat capacity is 40 to 50 and the smugglers packed it with hundreds. These are wooden fishing boats, not for sailing,” Harous said.

Libyan officials did not release information on the accident until Tuesday. Libyan and Italian naval vessels as well as fishing boats all scoured the seas Sunday for survivors although rescue efforts did not appear to be ongoing Tuesday.

Harous said survivors told him the boat was in poor condition to begin with and a hole may have caused it to sink.

Both boats carried migrants from Africa and the Middle East, some of them Syrian Kurds, Hart said.

“The first boat was rescued and is back to Tripoli. All of them are alive and safe,” Hart said. “The second boat, I believe 240 people are missing. Rescue was quick for the first boat because they were near an oil platform that notified the Libyan coastal guards who quickly rescued the migrants,” he added.

“For the second one, it is believed to be in the same area,” Hart said.

Hart said the boat overturned about 30 miles north of Libyan coastal town of Maleta and about 50 miles west of Tripoli.

“This is the typical route for migrants from Libya toward Italy,” Hart said.

According to Ron Redmond, chief spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, this is the beginning of the smuggling season in the Mediterranean Sea.

In Italy, port authority spokesman Capt. Cosimo Nicastro said an Italian merchant ship, flanked by a Libyan vessel, rescued a boat carrying 350 people on the night between Saturday and Sunday. The merchant ship received a call for help from an oil platform that had spotted the immigrant boat, said Nicastro.

The Italian ship, flanked by a Libyan military vessel, found the immigrant boat shortly after midnight about 50 miles off Tripoli. The ship towed the immigrant boat ashore, reaching the Tripoli port at around 3 p.m. Sunday, Nicastro said.

It was not immediately know where the boats sailed from in Libya.

Libyan police said 17 of those rescued from the capsized boat went to hospitals in Libya in poor condition because they had been in the sea for a long time without food or water. He said the capsized boat had not yet been found.

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Associated Press Writer Maggie Michael reported from Cairo; Associated Press Writers Alessandra Rizzo in Rome and Frank Jordans in Geneva contributed to this report.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – In a cautious first step toward unlocking 30 years of tense relations, senior U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke had a brief but cordial meeting with Iran’s deputy foreign minister Tuesday at an international conference on Afghanistan.

The meeting was the first official face-to-face interplay between the Obama administration and the Iranian regime. But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cautioned that the talks between Holbrooke and Iran’s deputy foreign minister Mehdi Akhundzadeh were not “substantive.”

The meeting between Holbrooke and Akhundzadeh came on the sidelines of a meeting where Iran pledged to help the reconstruction of its neighbor but criticized U.S. plans to send more troops into Afghanistan.

Holbrooke’s meeting “did not focus on anything substantive. It was cordial, it was unplanned and they agreed to stay in touch,” Clinton told reporters as the daylong conference was winding down.

The gathering was being closely watched for signs that the U.S. and Iran can work together on a common problem after years of hostility. The two countries cooperated in 2001 and 2002 after U.S.-led forces ousted Afghanistan’s Taliban government.

But relations were frozen during the administration of George W. Bush, who referred to Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil,” although Bush’s former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell had informal contacts with Iranian foreign ministers.

Washington broke diplomatic ties with Tehran after the U.S. Embassy was overrun and diplomats taken hostage during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought to power a government of Islamic clerics.

Clinton said she also sent Iran a direct letter concerning three U.S. citizens who are detained or missing in Iran. Their return would be a humanitarian gesture, the letter said. Normally, U.S.-Iran contacts are conducting through Swiss intermediaries.

The private meeting between the U.S. and Iranian officials was the first sign of cordiality at the conference. Although they sat at the same horseshoe-shaped table, neither Clinton nor Akhundzadeh mentioned the other in their speeches Tuesday.

The U.S. and Iran were among more than 80 countries summoned at the initiative of the United States to focus on Afghanistan. It comes days after Obama unveiled a revamped U.S. policy calling for another 17,000 troops; 4,000 military trainers for Afghan security forces; and hundreds of civilians to assist in Afghanistan’s development.

“The range of countries and institutions that are represented here shows the universal recognition that what happens in Afghanistan matters to us all,” Clinton told the gathering.

Iran highlighted its history of helping Afghanistan with cash and infrastructure development and by sheltering 3 million Afghan refugees. The two countries share a 600-mile border.

“Iran is fully prepared to participate in the projects aimed at combating drug trafficking and the plans in line with developing and reconstructing Afghanistan,” Akhundzadeh said.

However, Iran was critical of Obama’s plan to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, saying those funds instead should be redirected to building Afghanistan’s own forces.

“The presence of foreign forces has not improved things in the country, and it seems … an increase in the number of foreign forces will prove ineffective, too,” Akhundzadeh said.

Clinton said one goal of the revised U.S. strategy was to strengthen Afghan security forces.

“Security is the essential first step. Without it, all else fails. Afghanistan’s army and police will have to take the lead,” she said, adding they must be supported by the NATO-led international force. The U.S. contributes about half of the force’s 70,000 troops.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Clinton said Afghanistan would welcome Taliban fighters who embrace peace, reject al-Qaida and pledge to abide by the Afghan constitution.

Clinton said most Taliban fighters have allied with anti-government forces “out of desperation” rather than commitment, in a country that has barely made inroads against poverty and lack of development. She said they should be offered “an honorable form of reconciliation and reintegration into a peaceful society, if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al-Qaida, and support the constitution.”

The United States is starting cautiously down a path in Afghanistan that proved helpful in Iraq, where former insurgents joined forces with U.S. troops and a U.S.-backed government.

Although the conference was devoted to Afghanistan, Clinton said it should also focus attention on the lawless border regions of Pakistan that provide a safe haven for the insurgents. “We must give Pakistan the tools it needs to fight these extremists,” Clinton said.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, however, warned against interfering in his country. A regional approach to Afghanistan must include “respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference,” he said.

Akhundzadeh, too, cautioned against losing sight of the conference’s objectives of providing security and reconstruction for Afghanistan, and urged countries to “refrain from any kind of deviation from this motto.”

In a closing statement, the conference agreed to promote good governance and stronger institutions in Afghanistan while generating economic growth and strengthening security. It pledged to support the Afghan army and police, which it said is “undergoing a comprehensive reform.”

Karzai said any increase in military action against the insurgents must avoid further civilian casualties. He pledged a renewed campaign against corruption in the Afghan bureaucracy and the narcotics trade that finances al-Qaida operations.

The Obama administration is less enthusiastic about Karzai than the Bush White House, and Clinton on Tuesday skipped what used to be a ritual praising of his courage and leadership.

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Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed to this report.

By KIMBERLY S. JOHNSON, AP Auto Writer Kimberly S. Johnson, Ap Auto Writer   – 2 hrs 2 mins ago

DETROIT – Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. are offering payment protection plans to help reassure consumers who may be putting off buying a new car because of worries about losing their job.

The offers come as auto sales have been battered by the recession and tight credit, reaching their lowest levels in 27 years.

Ford said Tuesday it will cover payments of up to $700 each month for up to a year on any new Ford, Lincoln or Mercury vehicle if consumers lose their jobs. The program runs until June 1.

Hours later, GM said it will make a similar offer. GM’s new CEO, Fritz Henderson, said the company will make up to nine car payments of $500 each for customers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Customers must qualify for state unemployment to be eligible for the program. The program starts April 1 and runs until April 30.

Hyundai Motor Co. launched a program in January that allows buyers to return a vehicle within a year if they can’t make the payments due to a job loss or disability. The company said the program helped it avoid a double-digit sales decline last month, reporting a 2 percent slide.

Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford is also offering zero percent financing on certain Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles.

“Consumers remain anxious about the economy and their own outlook for the future,” Ken Czubay, vice president of sales and marketing, said in a statement.

The announcements come a day after President Barack Obama said the government will back new car warranties issued by GM and Chrysler LLC, who have accepted federal assistance and are seeking more, to help boost consumer confidence about buying their vehicles.

Ford has not requested federal bailout funds.

Ford also said it would partner with its dealers to introduce a program that would help local charities affected by the economic downturn.

Shares of Ford fell 6 cents to $2.70 in morning trading, while GM shares dropped 18 cents to $2.52.

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AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed to this report.