Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- SAP AG(SAP) forecast software license sales will rise as much as 17% this year, beating analyst estimates.
- Women will now be able to determine how many eggs they have left in their ovaries, allowing them to assess whether they can wait before trying to get pregnant or should get to work immediately.
- Boston Scientific(BSX) won bidding for Guidant(GDT) with its $27 billion bid, beating out Johnson & Johnson(JNJ), which declined to raise its offer.
- Investors pulled more money out of hedge funds in the fourth quarter than they put in, the first quarterly withdrawals in more than 10 years, as returns fell below their long-term average for the second straight year, according to Hedge Fund Research.
- Crude oil is falling after an Energy Department report showed that US supplies of gasoline and distillate fuel increased for a fourth straight week.

Wall Street Journal:
- Oxford University Press and other religious textbook publishing companies have come under increasing pressure from Hindu, Jewish and other religious groups to modify passages in textbooks they produce.
- A group of US utilities is trying to persuade automakers to produce plug-in electric hybrid cars in a bid to gain more business.
- US start-up companies are finding it harder to maker IPOs because of regulatory and other stock-market changes.
- Aetna(AET), Wellpoint(WLP), Humana(HUM) and other private insurers in the US are hiring aggressively to help cope with an unexpected level of problems as new Medicare drug-benefit plans are rolled out.
- Google(GOOG), Sun Microsystems(SUNW) and Lenovo Group Ltd. have supplied at least $1 million to finance a new program to identify malicious software producers.
- The US Congress plans to prevent troubled companies from funding lavish pension payouts to executives.

NY Times:
- Ford Motor(F) plans to begin airing a television commercial today explaining the automaker’s financial difficulties and restructuring plans to consumers.

Washington Post:
- President Bush plans to propose tax breaks for individuals’ personal health spending

Gulf News:
- Iraq more than doubled the flow of oil to 500,000 barrels a day through its northern export pipeline to the Ceyhan terminal in Turkey.

Interfax:
- Iran regards “positively” a proposal to set up a joint venture on Russian soil to enrich uranium for the Iranian nuclear industry, citing Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

World Gas Intelligence:
- Global liquefied natural gas output capacity may rise 18% this year as four new export plants come online.