Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Crude oil fell more than $3 a barrel as the U.S. dollar strengthened and BP Plc restored shipments on a Caspian Sea pipeline through Turkey. Energy futures fell as the rising dollar eased demand for commodities as an inflation hedge. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will probably increase oil supply in August by 400,000 barrels a day, or 1.2 percent, as Iran releases crude oil held in storage, according to preliminary estimates from PetroLogistics Ltd. OPEC will next meet to review production targets on Sept. 9 in Vienna.
- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.,(LEH) the fourth-largest U.S. securities firm, climbed as much as 16 percent in New York trading after Korea Development Bank said it's ``considering'' an investment in the company.
- The US dollar rose against the euro and the yen as a South Korean bank said it's ``considering'' an investment in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., indicating U.S. financial firms may weather credit market turmoil. The U.S. currency also rose versus the euro on speculation yesterday's biggest drop since June was overdone and as a decline in European industrial orders added to evidence of a deepening economic slowdown. Dollar stability and price declines in oil and other commodities are ``encouraging,'' Bernanke said in a speech at the Kansas City Fed's two-day conference on financial stability in Jackson, Hole, Wyoming. He added that the inflation outlook remains ``highly uncertain'' and the Fed ``is committed to achieving medium-term price stability and will act as necessary to obtain that objective.''
- European industrial orders fell the most in more than six years in June, led by a drop in transport equipment such as planes and rail cars. Industrial orders in the 15-nation euro area declined 7.4 percent from a year earlier, the most since December 2001, the European Union statistics office in Luxembourg said today.
- The cost of protecting corporate bonds from default in Europe may fall almost 25 percent in a U.S. government rescue of mortgage lenders Fannie Mae(FNM) and Freddie Mac(FRE), according to BNP Paribas SA analysts. Credit-default swaps on the Markit iTraxx Europe index of 125 companies with investment-grade ratings may drop to 75 basis points from about 98 today, according to Vivek Tawadey, head of credit strategy at BNP Paribas in London. The index, which declines as perceptions of credit quality improve, last dropped as low as 75 on May 21.
- The cost of protecting Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.(LEH) from default dropped the most in five months after Korea Development Bank said it's ``considering'' an investment in the company. Credit-default swaps on New York-based Lehman fell 67 basis points to 322 basis points, the biggest one-day drop since March 18, according to CMA Datavision prices as of 10:42 a.m. in New York.
- Larry Grace, an analyst at Kim Eng Securities Ltd., says crude oil may fall below $110. (video)
- Copper dropped the most in more than a week as rising stockpiles signaled demand may be waning for the metal used in pipes and wires. Inventories monitored by the London Metal Exchange jumped 4.6 percent to 163,800 metric tons, the biggest one-day gain since May 9 and the highest total since Feb. 11.
- Goldman Sachs(GS) and Merrill Lynch(MER) have missed out on the rally in bank and brokerage stocks since July 15, the day Second Curve Capital LLC’s Thomas Brown says financial stocks “made their bottom.” Brown, who as a Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette bank analyst topped Institutional Investor's analyst ranking eight times in the 1980s and '90s, believes financial-stock ``valuations are compelling,'' according to his blog, bankstocks.com.
- China Squelches Speech the Simple, Ancient Way.
- China's yuan completed the biggest weekly gain in three months on speculation officials will seek a stronger currency to curb the trade surplus and deter the U.S. from imposing penalties.
- The U.K. economy stagnated unexpectedly in the second quarter, ending the nation's longest stretch of economic growth in more than a century. Gross domestic product was unchanged from the previous quarter, the Office for National Statistics said, compared with a previous estimate for growth of 0.2 percent.
- OAO Gazprom, the world's biggest natural-gas producer, fell in Moscow trading after analysts said they were ``shocked'' by the company's plans to raise its investment budget to more than $40 billion this year.

Wall Street Journal:
- Europe’s Hangover. The US may be better than Europe at rebounding from economic shocks because its policy makers react quickly to avert recession, while European officials focus on controlling inflation, said Thomas Mayer, the co-head of global economics at Deutsche Bank AG. The European Central Bank in tightening monetary policies, may have underestimated the severity of the world economic slowdown, the economist said. A European recession, while it may not be deep, could be lengthy and recovery slow, Mayer wrote, adding that inflation probably won’t be a big concern.

NY Times:
- Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ $100 million fund to invest in developers of applications for Apple Inc.’s(AAPL) iPhone signals a shift in mobile phone technology to software makers from wireless carriers.

CNBC.com:
- Warren Buffett tells our Becky Quick that he has been adding recently to one of the two stakes Berkshire Hathaway already has in a pair of financial stocks: American Express(AXP) and Wells Fargo(WFC).
- A slide in oil prices as demand weakens will continue, prompting many analysts to lower their price forecasts, a Reuters poll found on Friday. The August poll of more than 30 analysts shows a fall in the consensus forecasts for U.S. crude for a current year for the first time since early 2007, after a sharp rise in oil prices in the first seven months of this year had forced most analysts to raise their forecasts several times. "U.S. demand is responding even stronger and quicker to high prices than what we believed two months ago," said Torbjorn Kjus of DnB NOR Markets from Norway, Europe's largest oil producer.

BusinessWeek.com:
- Apple’s(AAPL) Ambitious iPhone 3G Plans. It intends to make at least 40 million iPhones in the next year. This would be 50% above current estimates.

Seeking Alpha:
- Rumors of a Deutsche Bank bid for Charles Schwab appear to be fueling speculative options activity in the brokerage this morning as shares read 2.5% higher at $23.59.

The Washington Post:
- Mobile service provider Verizon Communications Inc.(VZ) is nearing an agreement with Google Inc.(GOOG) on a wide-ranging partnership, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the situation. The deal under discussion would make Google the default search provider on Verizon devices and give it a share of ad revenue, the paper said.
- Obama Camp Has Many Ties to Wife’s Employer.

The Beaufort Gazette:
- This is huge: A new speech-to-text technology from Google(GOOG) in which you type in a word or a phrase and it searches through YouTube videos to find all the instances where someone said it. Right now, it's being used on YouTube's You Choose video page (youtube.com/youchoose) and applied to all of John McCain and Barack Obama's YouTube videos, both those produced by their campaigns and by everyday folk.

AP:
- There are signs of a promised Russian pullback from positions deep in Georgia. No Russian forces could be seen Friday afternoon in and around Igoeti, which had been their closest position to Georgia's capital. A Russian armored column also was seen moving away from a base in western Georgia and a Georgian official said that forces were leaving the key central city of Gori. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other officials have said Russian forces would pull back to separatist regions and surrounding security zones by day's end Friday.

US News:
- Best Colleges 2009.

Reuters:
- U.S. stock index futures jumped on Friday after investor Warren Buffett said he has no bets against the dollar and stocks are more attractive now than a year ago.

TimesOnline:
- A long-awaited bid for TNT, the Dutch delivery group, from UPS(UPS), the American parcels giant, could be made as soon as this weekend if speculation in the Square Mile is anything to go by.

Le Parisien:
- More than half of French people want the country to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after 10 soldiers were killed there this week, according to an opinion poll published in Le Parisien today.

ARD television:
- Most Germans reject an extension of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to include Georgia, a poll shows.

AFP:
- Nigerian Stock Exchange Chief Executive Officer Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke is being investigated after holding a fund-raising event linked to US presidential candidate Barack Obama. US electoral laws forbid donations from foreigners to electoral campaigns. Officers from Nigeria’s Economic Financial Crimes Commission interviewed Okereke-Onyiuke on Aug. 20 and Aug. 21 about a dinner she hosted last week where $80,000 was raised. Okereke-Onyiuke said the dinner, dubbed ‘Africans for Obama 2008,’ wasn’t linked to the Obama Campaign group in the US.