Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Italy’s new government will renew the country’s partnership with the US through a united Europe that will be an ally in facing threats of terrorism and nuclear proliferation, Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema said.
- Increases in consumer prices throughout the country are becoming more frequent as soaring energy costs bubble up to the surface, the Fed’s Beige Book said.
- US Treasury two-year note yields suffered their biggest decline since July, sending yields to the highest in more than five and a half years, as May consumer prices increased more than forecast.
- Former President Clinton and his wife, NY Senator Hillary Clinton, earned more than $8 million last year form speeches and book royalties, records released today show.
- US money-market funds increased assets to a three-year high this month as investors fled falling global stock markets.
- Democratic political activist and billionaire hedge fund investor George Soros failed in a bid to overturn an insider-trading conviction at France’s highest appeals tribunal.
- Boeing(BA) won an order for 20 787-9 planes from Singapore Airlines worth an estimated $4.52 billion, trumping rival Airbus SAS’s A350 airliner.
- VeraSun Energy, the second-largest US ethanol producer, and its shareholders raised $419.8 million, more than expected, in an IPO that will help finance new plants to meet rising demand.

- President Bush said the new Iraqi government has the desire and will to take control of their country and he vowed to resist domestic political pressure to cut back US involvement.

Wall Street Journal:
- The American Medical Association, the leading US medical profession group, wants sodium levels in processed and restaurant foods cut by at least 50% in the next 10 years.
- As electronic trading replaces the trading floor, where brokers shouted prices and used hand signals, products such as “MarketSound” are gaining popularity. The software used patented algorithms that produce natural-sounding voices and activity that rise and fall in line with gains, losses and volume of the real exchanges.
- US children from low-income families receive backpacks filled with food on Fridays to ensure they eat over the weekend.
- Investors have withdrawn $8.5 billion in the past three weeks from mutual funds that invest in developing-country stocks, citing EmergingPortfolio.com Fund Research.
- More than 20 US states have passed legislation requiring that a growing percentage of electricity come from renewable energy sources, resulting in energy projects worth $475 million.

NY Times:
- Google(GOOG) plans to open a computing-data center containing tens of thousands of computers about 80 miles east of Portland, Oregon, this year.

NY Post:
- Michaels Stores(MIK) is being pursued by several groups of buyout firms.