(Reuters) - The Nasdaq briefly turned negative shortly after the open on Monday, weighed by losses in Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) and Research in Motion (RIMM.O). The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI gained 17.71 points, or 0.16 percent, to 11,428.03. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX gained 2.79 points, or 0.22 percent, to 1,243.19. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC gained 1.01 points, or 0.04 percent, to 2,638.55.

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(Reuters) - General Electric Co reached a deal to buy Wellstream Holdings Plc by raising its bid for the British oil drilling pipemaker by 6 percent to 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion). The agreement is the latest in a series by the largest U.S. conglomerate to boost its presence in the oil services sector and shows that, despite the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico this summer, the industry expects deepwater drilling to continue apace.

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(Reuters) - What the Federal Reserve giveth, Obama taketh away. The central bank's $600 billion stimulus plan was supposed to lower interest rates. But President Barack Obama's tax deal with Republicans, by rekindling fears of budget deficits in the bond market, has pushed them higher. As the Fed meets this coming week, the surprise shot in the arm from the fiscal authorities might strengthen the case of hawks at the central bank, who think the economy is already growing of its own momentum. They could argue to scale down the $600 billion in bond purchases announced in November.

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(Reuters) - Grocery store chain Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co (GAP.N) filed for bankruptcy on Sunday, drained of cash by tough competition and a sluggish economic recovery. Once the largest U.S. grocer, the owner of about 400 stores under brands such as A&P, Waldbaum's and Super Fresh filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York with more than $1 billion in assets and more than $1 billion in debt, according to court documents.

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(Reuters) - Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA) has extended its snubbed $18.5 billion cash bid for U.S. biotech group Genzyme (GENZ.O) by six weeks, buying the French drugmaker time to persuade its reluctant target to talk. Only 0.9 percent of shares were tendered by a Friday deadline for the $69-a-share bid, which Genzyme has rejected as too low, and Sanofi has said it won't raise unless Genzyme's board is willing to talk.

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(Reuters) - Two leading international financial institutions faulted Germany for aggravating the euro zone crisis by spooking debt markets, but Berlin seems set to get its way at this week's European Union summit. EU leaders are not expected to announce new measures to ease market concerns about the region's debt, though one source said intense efforts were being made behind the scenes to find ways to inoculate Spain early next year against the threat of contagion.

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(Reuters) - A district judge dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit brought by a company linked to Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen against a cluster of major corporations, including Internet giants Netflix and YouTube, saying the complaint failed to identify specific products or devices. In August, Interval Licensing LLC filed the suit against AOL, eBay, Facebook, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and Google's YouTube.

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(Reuters) - Orange juice prices soared to their highest in 3-1/2 years on Monday after the National Weather Service warned a hard freeze would strike Florida on Tuesday. January frozen concentrated orange juice futures jumped the daily 10-cent limit to trade at $1.706 per lb at 9:00 a.m. EST (1400 GMT), its highest level since May 14, 2007.

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(Reuters) - Wall Street rose modestly on Monday with investor appetite for stocks lifted by a flurry of merger deals and the expected congressional approval of a tax-cut extension. General Electric Co (GE.N) said it will buy British oilfield services company Wellstream Holdings Plc (WSML.L) for about 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion) to expand its subsea equipment and services portfolio.

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(Reuters) - Euro zone countries must consolidate public finances even though this is likely to dampen economic growth in the near term, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Monday. The OECD said that as soon as upward risks to price stability -- which the European Central Bank defines as inflation below, but close to 2 percent -- in the medium term emerge, the central bank should withdraw its monetary policy stimulus.

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