Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Blockbuster Inc.(BBI) made an unsolicited $1.35 billion offer for Circuit City(CC).
- President Bush said the decision by the US House of Representatives last week to delay action on the trade accord with Colombia leaves the agreement “dead,” and urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to revive it by allowing a vote.
- US mutual-fund investors may pay record capital-gains and dividend taxes for 2007.
- GE’s(GE) Immelt Faces Pressure After Missing Forecast.
- Uranium fell to a 16-month low, or half the record price reached in June, after new supplies became available and exceeded demand.
- Crude oil rose more than $1/bbl. in NY after a G-7 meeting failed to end the dollar’s slide against the euro and speculators increased bets on the commodity.

Wall Street Journal:
- Credit Crunch Hurts Hedge-Fund Stars. David Tepper, founder of hedge-fund firm Appaloosa Management, saw a negative 17% return last quarter in two funds with more than $6 billion in assets combined as bets on distressed debt went awry.
- A Los Angeles start-up says it has developed a way to dramatically expand the range of a popular wireless tracking technology, opening up many new applications for low-cost identification tags.

NY Times:
- Hedge Funds Focus Their Largesse on Obama. As of Feb. 29, Mr. Obama’s contributions from money managers totaled $2,196,734; Ms. Clinton’s, $2,046,550; and Senator John McCain’s came in at $772,375.

Desert News:
- Talk of an economic ‘crisis’ is greatly exaggerated. During presidential elections, when candidates postulate this or that “crisis” for which each is the indispensable and sufficient cure, economic hypochondria is encouraged, so a sense of suffering is rampant.

Reuters:
- Obama tries to cast off “elitist” label.
- Republican presidential candidate John McCain is attempting to reassure American that “I detest war” even as he strongly backs the current US war strategy in Iraq. McCain and his aides point to his past as a Vietnam prisoner of war as evidence that he is well aware of the sacrifice involved in war and not eager to get the US involved in more conflicts if elected in November.
- An offshore find by Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras(PBR) in partnership with Repsol-YPF and BG Group, may be the world’s biggest oil discovery in the past 30 years, the head of the National Petroleum Agency said. Haroldo Lima told reporters the find known as Carioca could contain 33 billion barrels of oil equivalent, five times bigger than the recent giant Tupi discovery.

Guardian:
- Big oil to big wind: Texas veteran sets up $10 billion clean energy project. T. Boone Pickens is famous for thinking big. This month he will make the first down payment on 500 wind turbines at a cost of $2 million each. The order is the first material step towards his goal of building the world’s largest wind farm.

International Herald Tribune:
- Beijing will implement a series of temporary measures to stop construction and close heavy industries, all aimed at cleaning the city’s notoriously polluted air when the Olympics begin in four months.

Kuwait Times:
- Iraq has so far accepted 35 companies to compete for future oil and gas contracts from 120 companies that entered the process to qualify. Iraq holds the world’s third-largest oil reserves and needs billions of dollars of investment to overhaul infrastructure and boost oil and gas output after years of sanctions and war.