Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Crude oil is falling the most in more than three weeks, to below $59/bbl., as warm US weather reduced demand for heating fuels, bolstering inventories.
- Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Lacker, coming off his third dissent from a decision to leave interest rates unchanged, said the US economy is “resilient enough” to withstand further credit tightening.
- Schneider Electric SA, the world’s biggest supplier of circuit breakers, agreed to buy American Power Conversion(APCC) for $6.1 billion to become the largest maker of equipment that protects computers and factories from power outages.
- Declines in the cost of shipping dry-bulk commodities such as coal and iron ore, down 6.4% recently, may accelerate as Chinese demand for iron ore slips.
- Copper prices plunged the most in three weeks in London, leading a slump in industrial metals, as rising inventories renewed speculation that mine output may exceed demand this year. Inventories of copper tracked by exchanges in London, NY and Shanghai rose to 190,024 metric tons today, the highest in 7 months. Supplies from mines and scarp yards will top demand by 146,000 tons next year, the first surplus since 2002, Mitsui Bussan Commodities Ltd said Oct. 6.

Wall Street Journal:
- The SEC is looking into whether UBS AG was involved in illegitimate manipulation of Treasury securities prices in February.
- World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is extending his efforts to reshape Iraq by strengthening the international lending agency’s presence in the Middle Easter nation.
- NY trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald LP is to offer shares of its inter-dealer brokerage business to the public.

NY Times:
- Lehman Brothers(LEH) and IBM(IBM) are starting a $180 million private equity fund to buy minority stakes in Chinese companies.
- Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai whose company was spurned from attempting to run operations at six US ports in March, has become a fabled name in US horse racing.
- NYC is considering a plan to require some of the city’s 20,000 restaurants to disclose calories on menus and menu boards.

AFP:
- Lawyers for ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein returned to court in Baghdad and presented a list of demands for ending their boycott of his genocide trial.