Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Financial services minister Ed Balls called for regulators of the world’s major financial markets to adopt the British practice of running semi-annual checks of the hedge fund industry.
- Sugar plunged to a 21-month low in NY and the lowest price since November 2005 in London after China, the world’s second-largest consumer, said it may reduce imports.
- Corn is falling another 2.7% in Chicago as warmer, drier weather in the Midwest firmed up muddy fields as farmers accelerated planting what the US government said will be the most acres since 1944.
- Carl Icahn agreed to sell the Stratosphere, three other Nevada casinos and 17 acres on the Las Vegas Strip to Goldman Sachs Group’s(GS) real estate funds for $1.3 billion.
- Crude oil is rising above $65/bbl. in NY as speculators raise bets that shipments from Nigeria may be disrupted as complaints about the country’s presidential election spawn more violence.
- AstraZeneca Plc(AZN), struggling to develop new medicines, agreed to buy US biotech company MedImmune(MEDI) for $15.2 billion in cash to gain flu vaccines and an antiviral treatment for babies.

Wall Street Journal:
- US farmers have funded a dam in Kenya that brings water and crops, helping combat a decrease in international aid to Africa and underscoring the impact small projects can have.
- US and UK hedge funds are selling stock in their funds to the public, but weak performance of some of the shares is creating doubt about this relatively new source of funding.

NY Times:
- New York Governor Eliot Spitzer plans to introduce legislation to legalize gay marriages in the state.
- Sales of video games for personal computers are on the rise as companies such as Microsoft Corp.(MSFT) try to use the games to highlight other technology and services.

AP:
- Time Warner Cable(TWX) will allow its broadband customers to become public wireless hotspots through technology offered by Fon, a Wi-Fi startup.

San Francisco Chronicle:
- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom won’t allow any of the city’s employees to assist federal authorities in illegal immigration raids.

Chronicle of Higher Education:
- US colleges and universities will be encouraged to use debit cards to distribute money to students under a new proposal to streamline the flow of federal student aid.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung:
- The German government expects the economy to grow by 2.3% this year and 2.4% in 2008.

Vedomosti:
- Schlumberger(SLB) shareholders elected a Russian citizen to the company’s board, a first for a major Western company.

China Business News:
- Symantec Corp.(SYMC) and China’s Huawei Technologies may form a computer storage and network security venture.