Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “increasingly authoritarian rule” is hurting relations with the US and fostering doubt about whether Russia will play a constructive role in the world.
- Alabama job opportunities are surging as Toyota, Hyundai and Daimler expand their plants in the state.
- Blackstone Group agreed to acquire CarrAmerica Realty for $5.6 billion, adding an office developer to real estate holdings that include hotels and resorts.
- Oil is falling more than $1/bbl. as ministers from OPEC signal that they intend to keep production close to the highest in two decades.

Wall Street Journal:
- Infinity Pharmaceuticals, a closely held Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm, will get up to $400 million from Switzerland’s Novartis AG to develop drugs to fight a protein that helps many kinds of cancer cells survive.
- Education Management Corp.(EMNC), which runs 72 primary campuses across the US and Canada, is likely to be acquired for $3.4 billion by Providence Equity Partners and Goldman Sachs’(GS) investment unit.
- Two Portland, Oregon-based private-equity firms are offering about $1.3 billion for Longview Fibre(LFB).
- The French town of Saint-Genis-Pouilly near the Swiss border rejected a request by Muslims to cancel a play by Voltaire because it used the prophet Muhammad to lampoon religious intolerance.
- AT&T’s(T) agreement to purchase BellSouth(BLS) for about $67 billion is gambling on the assumption that the Bush administration’s pro-business position will allay regulatory concerns.
- Public Storage(PSA) is close to buying rival self-storage company Shurgard Storage Centers(SHU) for about $3.2 billion.
- AT&T’s(T) agreement to buy BellSouth(BLS) will help the combined company push ahead with plans to offer customers the ability to make Internet calls using cellphones.

NY Times:
- US Democrats haven’t agreed on a common theme to use against Republicans ahead of the mid-term elections scheduled for later this year.

Financial Times:
- Verizon Communications(VZ) Chairman and CEO Seidenberg will fell pressure to take full control of Verizon Wireless mobile-phone service now that AT&T is buying BellSouth(BLS).
- A French and US move toward protectionism is not being resisted by investors, a move that they may regret in the long-run.

AFP:
- OPEC should leave production quotas unchanged to lower crude oil prices, Kuwaiti Energy Minister Fahd al-Sabah said.