Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Mittal Steel, the world’s largest steelmaker, said third-quarter profit dropped 64% amid a worldwide slump in prices.
- Blackstone Group LP, which is raising the world’s biggest buyout fund, agreed to buy hotel operator La Quinta and its La Quinta Properties unit for about $3.4 billion including debt.
- Natural Gas prices will drop to their levels before the Gulf Coast hurricanes as industrial users reduce consumption, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Ben P. Dell says. He expects earnings estimates for gas producers to be lowered and their stocks to underperform the market.
- US Treasuries remained lower after the government sold $13 billion of five-year notes at the second of three debt auctions this week.
- France’s worst outbreak of urban violence since 1968 ebbed last night after President Chirac’s government authorized curfews and increased the police presence in ransacked neighborhoods.

Wall Street Journal:
- Exxon Mobil Chairman and CEO Lee Raymond said he thinks almost a third of the price of a barrel of oil is a “speculative” premium.
- US officials are trying to boost supplies of vaccines, antibiotics and biodefense drugs because the market place isn’t supplying enough to make sure citizens aren’t caught short.
- China’s oil imports have slowed greatly this year, and there’s increasing evidence that the surge in the country’s oil demand in 2004 was boosted by factors that are declining in significance or may not recur.
- BEA Systems and other companies based in California’s Silicon Valley are increasing the range of services they make available to employees so they don’t have to leave the office during working hours.
- The tax cuts passed into law by President Bush in 2003 shouldn’t be allowed to expire beginning in 2008 because they have helped the US economy recover from terrorism and recession, former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans said.

NY Post:
- US financial companies on Wall Street increased hiring by almost 15% in the past year, citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

NY Times:
- US chief executive officers are being held accountable for what they say in public by investors due to Regulation FD. Consequently, quarterly investor calls, generally broadcast on the Internet, have taken the manner of a White House press conference.
- ViroPharma Inc., which purchased the US rights to the antibiotic Vancocin last year, has benefited from increased demand for the drug, which treats a difficult intestinal bacterium.

Washington Post:
- A prominent Protestant pastor in China was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison for illegally printing and distributing Bibles and other religious books.