Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards unveiled a tax policy that raises the top capital gains rate to 28% from 15%.
- Then benchmark for US stock volatility, or VIX, surged to the highest in 13 months.
- Exxon Mobil Corp.(XOM) reported its first profit decline in more than three years.

Wall Street Journal:
- Porsche AG, the Stuttgart, Germany-based maker of 911 sports cars, is developing a hybrid gasoline-electric engine in conjunction with Volkswagen AG for its Cayenne sport-utility vehicle.
- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett took a stake of less than 5% in Kraft Foods(KFT), citing a person familiar with the investment by Berkshire Hathaway(BRK/A).
- Al-Rajhi Bank, Saudi Arabia’s largest lender by market value, is being monitored by the US government for allegedly financing extremists.
- Picnik is a useful photo-editing software program available free on an Internet Web site, which will soon become a mostly pay-for-use service, Walt Mossberg wrote.
- US home sales are still slumping, yet an increase in inventories of unsold houses is slowing, citing its own survey of 28 major metro markets.
- Nielsen Co. plans to present today the first results from Nielsen GamePlay Metrics, the service that tracks what games users are playing, on which devices and when.

NY Times:
- Mattel Inc.(MAT), which makes 65% of its toys in China, is a model for other toy companies doing business in the country.
- RC2 Corp.(RCRC) fired the Chinese-based producer of the lead paint and the maker of the wooden “Thomas & Friends” train toys that were recalled this year because of lead in the paint.

Xinhua News Agency:
- China will maintain a tight monetary policy to prevent the economy from “overheating,” reiterating the government’s top policy goal for the second half of 2007.

China Daily:
- China vowed to tighten rules ensuring the safety of its toy exports amid international concern over its product quality.