Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- John W. Henry & Co., the investment firm run by the Boston Red Sox baseball team's owner, is among hedge funds that suffered their worst drops in almost 18 months in July as oil and other commodities retreated from records. John W. Henry lost 17 percent on its JWH GlobalAnalytics fund, the firm said on its Web site. Altis Partners Ltd.'s $1 billion global futures program fell 18 percent, paring its gain for the year to 10 percent. London-based Man Group Plc'sAHL Diversified Futures Ltd., the computer program that trades about $25 billion of investments, dropped 5.5 percent through July 28, or a loss of about $1.37 billion in the month. Oil, natural gas, nickel and corn prices all tumbled in July, making it the worst month for the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Commodity Index in 28 years. Hedge funds overall declined 6.3 percent through the end of July, the worst performance in five years, the index shows.
- Crude oil was little changed after rising as much as $3.20 a barrel earlier as Turkey said a pipeline carrying crude to the Mediterranean from Azerbaijan may remain shut for two weeks following an explosion on Aug. 5.
- The euro touched the lowest in almost eight weeks against the dollar after European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said economic growth will slow, reducing expectations policy makers will raise interest rates. The European single currency also declined against the yen and the Canadian dollar as the ECB kept its main rate at a seven-year high of 4.25 percent.
- Canada's dollar fell for the sixth consecutive day, reversing earlier gains, as the U.S. dollar strengthened again most major currencies. The Canadian dollar has traded near a year low this week as economic growth slows and gold and oil drop from record highs. Commodities account for about half of the nation's exports, while the U.S. is Canada's biggest trading partner.
- Citigroup Inc.(C), the largest U.S. bank by assets, agreed to buy back or help clients unload $19.5 billion in auction-rate securities and pay a $100 million fine to settle U.S. regulatory claims it improperly saddled customers with untradeable bonds.
- Roche Holding AG may have to boost its bid for Genentech Inc. by almost 50 percent once test results show the cancer drug Avastin, sold by both companies, works against an expanding list of tumors.
- A Sudanese-born runner who is a member of an athletes group critical of China's policies toward Darfur was chosen to carry the U.S. flag in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Wall Street Journal:
- Metropolitan areas across the US continue to get more diverse as minorities, especially Hispanics, increase their share of the population.
- Paul Tudor Jones and James Pallotta may end their association in the Tudor Investment Corp., raising questions about the future of their $18 billion dollar financial empire.
- Notwithstanding the hype about Barack Obama, here is where the presidential race stands: John McCain was within an average of 1.9% of his Democratic opponent in last week's daily Gallup tracking poll.

FoxBusiness:
- Hedge funds tracked by Hennessee Group LLC fell 1.95% on average in July, partly because a popular trade of betting against financial-services stocks and investing in energy-related securities backfired. "Hedge funds underperformed in July due to sharp reversals in the equity markets during the second half of the month," said E. Lee Hennessee, Managing Principal of Hennessee Group. "One of the most common and profitable themes among managers for the first half of the year - short financials and long energy - experienced a very sharp reversal in July." The S&P Banking Index surged almost 50% from its low point in mid-July, while managers who were long energy suffered losses as the S&P Energy Sector dropped 14% last month, Hennessee explained.

Lloyd’s List:
- Growth at Shanghai Port, the world’s second busiest box port, dropped to its lowest level in a decade last month, writes Sandra Tsui.

ZDNet:
- Demand appears to be stronger than expected for Intel’s Atom chip and the netbooks that they power, according to a Citi report.

MailOnline:
- There is something almost obscene about the revelation that hedge fund manager Crispin Odey has made a personal profit of £28 million by speculating on the credit crunch.

Diario de Noticias:
- Galp Energia SGPS SA, a Portuguese oil company, plans to invest about $10 billion to develop the Tupi offshore oil prospect in Brazil. Galp’s board yesterday approved the development plan for Tupi, which will involve total investment of $100 billion by all the partners in the project. Production at Tupi is due to start within seven months and may reach 20,000 barrels a day in that year. Brazil’s Petrobras SA said in November that Tupi may hold 8 billion barrels of recoverable oil equivalent.

Vedomosti:
- Construction in Moscow is slowing for the first time since 1999.

Ziarul Financiar:
- The number of Romanian companies that declared bankruptcy in the first half doubled from the year-earlier period, as debt loads increased.

Business Standard:
- Inflation in India at 12.01% for the first time in 13 years.

Alittihad:
- Abu Dhabi plans to invest $20.15 billion to increase its oil production capacity 30% by 2010, citing a report from the Dept. of Planning and Economy. The emirate plans to raise production capacity to 3.5 million barrels a day from 2.7 million barrels a day.

Khaleej Times:
- Property prices in Dubai are set to fall for the first time since 2002 as a flood of new housing units reaches the market, according to a forecast by Morgan Stanley. In a research note the global investment bank said, “In 2009 a predicted excess supply could trigger price declines that will culminate in 2010.” The report also said property prices that have increased 79 per cent since 2007 could drop 10 per cent by 2010. In a worst case scenario the report added that Dubai property prices could follow the pattern of Singapore in the late 1990s when property prices plunged 80 per cent in 18 months.