Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Washington Mutual(WM) agreed to buy Commercial Capital Bancorp for about $983 million to increase returns from real-estate banking in California.
- Blackstone Group agreed to buy Deutsche Telekom AG(DT) shares for $3.3 billion from Germany, its first stake in a government-controlled company.
- Plans Exploration & Exploration(PXP), a US oil and natural-gas producer, agreed to buy Stone Energy(SGY) for about $1.46 billion to boost output in the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico.
- Iran’s President Ahmadinejad said Israeli Jews should return back to the European countries from which they came.
- A federal jury awarded Rambus(RMBS) almost $307 million in a patent dispute with Hynix Semiconductor, the world’s second largest chipmaker.
- Crude oil fell from a record as OPEC said that the producer group is providing consumers with adequate supplies.
- US Treasuries are rising, pushing the benchmark 10-year note’s yield below 5%, amid speculation that high oil prices will restrain consumer spending.

Wall Street Journal:
- Cendant Corp.(CD) may put its travel unit up for sale today after some private equity firms said they would pay about $4.5 billion for it.
- TIAA-CREF CEO Allison is planning to regain lost business by introducing an online brokerage and other changes.
- The US is stepping up efforts to block funding to Hezbollah from concern that the Shiite organization is helping Iran stage terrorist attacks.
- A startup venture, DayJet Corp., will start air-taxi passenger services later this year between small cities in the southeastern US.
- Toyota Motor(TM) and News Corp’s(NWS) Fox network have reached an agreement for the automaker to sponsor and be featured in a spin-off series of the drama “Prison Break” for mobile phones.
- More companies are selling bonds convertible into shares, boosting profits at hedge funds that trade the securities.

NY Times:
- Intel Corp.(INTC) will introduce a new line of business products to manage large groups of personal computers as it tries to reverse its loss of market share to Advanced Micro Devices(AMD)
- Seven Roman Catholic cardinals and about a half-dozen archbishops are among some 50 religious leaders who have signed a petition to support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.