Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- The risk of European companies defaulting headed for the biggest weekly decline in almost two months amid speculation bond insurer Ambac Financial Group(ABK) will be bought by billionaire Wilbur Ross.
- Biofuels made from biomass and waster are “very promising,” because their feedstock doesn’t compete with food crops for agricultural land, according to a fund manager at ABN Amro Asset Management.
- The bipartisan agreement on an economic stimulus package reached by House leaders and President Bush was immediately undermined by senators intent on ensuring that their ideas get a hearing before any bill becomes law.
- Merrill Lynch(MER) is “very well positioned” to grow in 2008, CEO Thain said.
- US homebuilder shares are poised for their biggest weekly gain since 1995, as investors and analysts say the market for new homes may have hit bottom.
- The SEC wants to wrap its sweeping probe into whether companies improperly backdated stock options by the end of this year, the agency’s enforcement chief said.

Wall Street Journal:
- Lobbyists Smoothed the Way For a Spate of Foreign Deals. Two yeas ago, the US Congress pressured the Arab emirate of Dubai to back out of a deal to manage US ports. Today, governments in the Persian Gulf, China and Singapore have snapped up $37 billion of stakes in Wall Street, the bedrock of the US financial system.
- The Tax Threat to Prosperity.
- The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plan to donate $306 million to six farming organizations to boost agricultural productivity in developing countries.

CNBC:
- Nestle SA, the world’s largest food company, expects less commodity cost pressure this year than in 2007, Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said.

USA Today:
- President Bush plans to propose doubling the funding to combat HIV/AIDS overseas in his last State of the Union address next week.

CNNMoney.com:
- Treasuries advance amid hedge fund rumors.

Telegraph:
- Bernanke calms fears of a credit bloodbath.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
- Cisco Systems(CSCO) expects “ardent growth” of video data on the World Wide Web to boost investment in Internet infrastructure, fueling the company’s long-term growth, citing Europe’s Cisco’s Europe head, Chris Dedicoat. The number of video streams broadcast on the Web amounted to 250 million in 2007, exceeding a forecast of as many as 70 million broadcasts, Dedicoat said.

globeandmail:
- Iraq expects to increase oil production this year to 3.7 million barrels per day and hopes to sign contracts to boost the output from oil fields that aren’t production to capacity, Iraq’s oil minister said. “We have increased our production by 400,000 barrels a day over the last three months,” he said. “This has been a very big increase…from 1.9 million barrels a day to 3.3 million. The Iraqi minister said the recent rise in oil prices was not a result of a shortage of crude oil. “On the contrary, there is as much crude oil on the market as people want,” he said. “It has been gambling by speculators, just betting on the prices really, disregarding the fundamentals of the oil markets.”