Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Senate Republicans thwarted Democratic-supported legislation that would increase windfall-profit taxes on oil companies such as Exxon Mobil(XOM). Democrats fell nine votes short of the 60 needed to proceed to debate. The bill “will undercut US energy security and decrease US energy production, thus exacerbating market tightness and increasing energy prices,” said the White House statement.
- The US dollar rose to a three-month high against the yen and climbed versus the euro after Fed Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said economic risks have faded, spurring traders to boost wagers interest rates will rise.
- Crude oil fell more than $3/bbl. as the dollar climbed against the euro and yen, curbing the appeal of commodities.
- China’s stocks plunged over 7% to a 14-month low after the central bank told lenders to set aside a record amount of money in reserve to curb credit growth and inflation.

NY Times:
- Verizon(VZ), Sprint(S) and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to Internet bulletin boards and Web sites nationwide that disseminate child pornography.

CNBC.com:
- Investors pulled a net $5.9 billion out of US hedge funds in April, marking the industry’s biggest outflow in 6 ½ years as they punished managers for their worst-ever returns at the start of 2008.

NY Sun:
- Eliot Spitzer, in his first big business venture since he was shamed out of office by a prostitution scandal, is shopping around a plan to start a vulture fund what would scoop up distressed real estate assets around the country, revamp them, and flip the properties for a profit.

Dallas Morning News:
- The voice-recognition specialists at Nuance Communications(NUAN), who already have mobile applications that work with BlackBerry smart phones, say they’re working on a program for the iPhone: Voice search.

TechCrunch:
- This morning, Hitwise came out with its search market share numbers for May, 2008. In the U.S., Google was up slightly to 68.3 percent versus 20 percent for Yahoo and 5.9 percent for Microsoft. All the fighting over the fate of Yahoo cannot be helping matters. In the month of May, Google gained 0.39 points from April, while Yahoo was down 0.33 points and Microsoft was down 0.37 points. In the UK, Google’s market share actually slipped as much as it gained in the U.S. (0.39 points), but it is even more dominant there with 87.3 percent market share, according to Hitwise.

AppleInsider:
- Citigroup(C) hikes Apple(AAPL) target to $287, Lehman(LEH) to $234. "We remain aggressive buyers of Apple shares at current levels," said Citigroup analyst Rich Gardner, who raised his price target on the Cupertino-based firm from $248 to $287. "Apple's decision to move from a revenue share model to a traditional subsidy model for the 3G iPhone is a significant positive because Apple receives iPhone-related cash flow sooner."

Business Wire:
- American Superconductor Corp.(AMSC), a leading energy technologies company, today announced that it has received a $450 million order from Beijing-based Sinovel Wind Corp. Limited for core electrical components for 1.5 megawatt(MW) wind turbines. AMSC's wind turbine electrical systems and core electrical components include the company's proprietary PowerModule(TM) power converters. They enable reliable, high-performance wind turbine operation by controlling power flows, regulating voltage, monitoring system performance and controlling the pitch of wind turbine blades to maximize efficiency. The stock is soaring 22% on the news.

Reuters:
- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Monday he would impose a windfall profits tax on US oil companies as he sought political gain from Americans’ pain over high gasoline prices. “I’ll make oil companies like Exxon(XOM) pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills,” Obama said.
- Ghana’s initial oil output from its offshore discoveries, due to start up in the first quarter of 2010, will be 120,000 barrels per day, double a previous estimate, the state oil company said.
- The Commodity Futures Trading Commission(CFTC) said on Tuesday it formed an interagency task force to evaluate commodity markets because of the “significant strain” high prices were having on American households.

International Herald Tribune:
- Global demand for oil is likely to be lower than previously estimated as the effect of shrinking government subsidies for fuel in Asia softens demand in the region, the IEA forecast.