Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Boeing’s 18,300 machinists went on strike for the first time in 10 years after rejecting the company’s wage and benefit offer, shutting down production at the world’s largest aircraft maker.
- US two-year Treasuries are headed for their best week since January 2002 on speculation the Fed will only raise interest rates one more time this year as manufacturing slows and Hurricane Katrina threatens growth.
- Albertson’s may put itself up for sale.
- Vadim Kouznetsov, who leads the United Nations General Assembly budget panel, has been arrested by the FBI for laundering money.
- Hurricane Katrina’s catastrophic flooding will cause more than $100 billion total economic losses to the US, said storm modeler Risk Management Solutions Inc.
- Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns economists reduced their forecasts for third-quarter economic growth, citing damage from Katrina.
- New Orleans water levels have steadied as nearby Lake Pontchartrain stopped rising, and federal efforts began to repair broken levees, said Army Corps of Engineers Lieutenant General Carl Strock.
- Crude oil and gas are having their biggest declines since Hurricane Katrina devastated US Gulf Coast production and refining facilities, as the IEA considers releasing emergency oil supplies and the Bush administration will order the release of an additional 900,000 barrels per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Wall Street Journal:
- US law firms, such as Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP and Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll PLLC, are searching for European clients as new US laws cap damages and make it more difficult to move cases to friendly jurisdictions.
- Ford Motor is considering two sets of final bids from private equity firms offering as much as $10 billion including debt for its Hertz Corp. rental-car unit.
- The US Financial Accounting Standards Board plans to characterize Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath as “ordinary” rather than “extraordinary” for company bookkeeping purposes.
- Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco called on the administration to send 40,000 troops into New Orleans amid growing chaos in the hurricane stricken city.
- Hurricane Katrina has so far had only limited impact on travel outside the regions affected by the storm.

Washington Post:
- The US departments of State and Homeland Security said they will move ahead with plans to require travelers from Mexico, Canada and other allied nations to show a passport or other documents to enter the country.
- A group of 160 law school professors joined in the opposition to Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts yesterday.

Dallas Morning News:
- Texas will triple the number of refugees made homeless by Hurricane Katrina that it will shelter and take in some 75,000.

Salt Lake Tribune:
- Internet scams and e-mails from people purporting to be soliciting money for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts began appearing within a day of the storm’s landfall.