Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Hedge-fund investors are best protected by market discipline rather than added regulation, the US Treasury Dept. said in releasing guidelines for the industry form the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets.
- Google Inc.(GOOG), seeking to challenge Microsoft Corp.’s(MSFT) dominance in business software, will today start selling e-mail, calendar and personalized home pages to businesses over the Web.
- Iran expanded its capacity to enrich uranium, defying a UN Security Council demand to halt its atomic work and prompting the US to consider seeking further international sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
- Crude oil is rising above $61/bbl. as a government report showed gasoline supplies fell as refineries shut units and Iran defied another UN mandate.
- Oil prices will be less than anticipated this year because a warm winter in the Northern Hemisphere and the absence of supply disruptions caused fuel stockpiles to gain, according to National Australia Bank Ltd.
- Prince Harry, third in line to the British throne, will serve alongside his military regiment in Iraq later this year, the UK Ministry of Defense said.

Wall Street Journal:
- BHP Billiton Ltd.(BHP), Rio Tinto Plc(RTP) and other world mining companies are boosting their investment and planning to open more mines, even though some commodity prices have dropped and their spending is likely to bring down prices in the future. The companies together have plans to spend tens of billions of dollars expanding production of iron ore, coal, nickel and other materials. The projects may show that mining executives are setting aside concerns that the industry may over-expand in good times and find a glut of metal in a slowdown.
- Costs incurred by North American corporations in order to comply with the 2003 Sarbanes-Oxley financial and accounting disclosure law are leveling off, as costs to meet environmental guidelines are increasing, citing a study to be published today by AMR, a Boston-based research firm.
- US crude-oil imports from Africa exceeded purchases from the Middle East in 2006 for the first time in 21 years.

NY Times:
- Executives at DaimlerChrysler AG(DCX) would prefer to sell the Chrysler unit as a whole, instead of breaking off assets.
- The campaigns of Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama engaged in a series of sharply worded exchanges, changing the tone of the presidential race. Hollywood producer David Geffen’s remarks yesterday in a commentary in the Times prompted the exchange. Geffen wrote that the Clintons lie “with such ease, it’s troubling” and the NY senator’s politics are “going to be very unpleasant, unattractive and ineffective.”
- Advocates for medical marijuana sued the Dept. of Health and Human Services and the FDA over the agencies’ claims that smoking the drug isn’t medically beneficial.

Washington Post:
- China is undertaking a nationwide effort to keep teenagers from becoming addicted to the Internet.

National Post:
- Magna Intl.(MGA), Canada’s largest auto-parts maker, may make a bid for DaimlerChrysler AG’s(DCX) Chrysler unit, citing British researcher SupplierBusiness.

Arab News:
- Saudi Arabia reported a capital outflow of $800 billion, citing a member of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The money is leaving the kingdom as a result of corruption, citing Majed Garoub, chairman of the lawyers committee at the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry.