Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

• Qaddafi's Opponents Hold Eastern Oil Facilities, Advance Along Libya Coast. Libyan rebels seeking to end Muammar Qaddafi’s 41-year rule clashed with security forces loyal to him and moved closer to his birthplace of Sirte after repelling government attempts to retake oil hubs in the east. The conflict has left 6,000 people dead, the opposition forces’ spokesman, Abdullah Al Mahdi, told Al Jazeera today. Fighting spread along the Gulf of Sidra, with clashes in the oil port of Ras Lanuf and the desert area of Al Agaila, the broadcaster said. The rebels said they downed a military helicopter and were advancing on Sirte, on the west-central coast, Al Arabiya television said. The oil facility at Zueitina, near Benghazi, was ablaze, the U.K.’s Daily Mail said.
• Bahrain May Be Uprising Too Far for Saudis Avoiding Iran's Grip. Saudi Arabia has watched revolts unfold in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. When it comes to Bahrain, the world’s largest oil exporter may not be a mere spectator. Protests on the neighboring island, where the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet guards Gulf oil supply, are being overshadowed by the challenge to Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi. Yet they underscore the sectarian divide in the Muslim world between Shiites and Sunnis that puts Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia on the other in a region that holds about 55 percent of the world’s crude. “Saudi Arabia is concerned about the expansion of the Shiite crescent,” said Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. “The last thing Riyadh would want to see is Shiite rule in Bahrain. At the end of the day, Saudi Arabia would intervene militarily.”
• Crude Oil Advances to a 29-Month High as Libya Unrest Threatens to Spread. Crude in New York increased to a 29- month high on concern unrest in Libya will spread to other North African and Middle East energy exporters, curbing shipments. Oil rose as much as 2.1 percent as Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi sent troops to recapture towns in the western part of the country and prepared to quash protests in the capital, Tripoli. Crude oil for April delivery increased $1.69, or 1.7 percent, to $103.60 a barrel at 11:26 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices climbed as much as $2.18 to $104.09, the highest level since Sept. 29, 2008. The contract is heading for a 5.8 percent gain this week, the third straight advance, and is up 29 percent from a year ago. Brent crude for April settlement rose $1.25, or 1.1 percent, to $116.04 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract is up 3.5 percent this week and is heading for the sixth straight weekly gain. “Everyone in the market is very concerned about the situation in the Middle East,” said Phil Flynn, vice president of research at PFGBest in Chicago. “The Day of Rage protest called for next week in Saudi Arabia will keep us on edge.”
• U.S. Payrolls Rose 192,000; Jobless Rate at 8.9% in February. The U.S. jobless rate unexpectedly fell to 8.9 percent, the lowest in almost two years, and employers added 192,000 jobs in a sign of growing confidence in the recovery. The increase in payrolls partly reflected a return to more seasonable weather and followed a 63,000 gain in January, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists was for an addition of 196,000 jobs last month. Earnings averaged $22.87 an hour last month, little changed after a 0.4 percent jump in January. The average work week for all workers held at 34.2 hours. The so-called underemployment rate -- which includes part- time workers who’d prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking -- decreased to 15.9 percent, the lowest since April 2009.
• Record Gasoline Grips Europe While California Faces $4 a Gallon. Gasoline prices are setting records across Europe and exceeding $4 a gallon in California as the rise in crude oil caused by the conflict in Libya punishes companies and consumers. Households are cutting back on travel, cinema visits and groceries in the U.K., where prices jumped to 130.68 pence a liter ($8.06 a gallon) yesterday, according to research from the Automobile Association, Britain’s largest motoring organization. Prices set records in the Netherlands and Italy today. The current average U.S. gasoline price is near a two-year high at $3.81 a gallon, according to the AAA website. Crude oil’s rise to as high as $119 in Europe has pushed fuel costs up and put the economic recovery at risk.
• Cotton Futures Soar to Record on 'Worldwide Scramble' for Limited Supplies. It’s a worldwide scramble,” said John Flanagan, the president of Flanagan Trading Corp. in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina. “The last holdouts realized there was no way out other than just buying, trying to find cotton to keep their mills running.” Cotton for May delivery climbed by the exchange maximum of 7 cents, or 3.4 percent, to an all-time high of $2.127 a pound at 9:18 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. The price headed for the sixth straight gain, the longest rally since Nov. 5. This week, futures are up 15 percent, the most since early December.
• U.S. Retailer Shares' Slide Since Black Friday Signals Squeeze on Margins. The era of cheap jeans may be ending as U.S. apparel retailers take advantage of the economic recovery to boost prices on some products for the first time in more than a decade. The increases may contribute to a slowing in consumer spending, while not fully offsetting record cotton costs, higher wages in China and rising freight charges that are squeezing margins.
• Rising Commodity Prices Spur Governments, Companies to Insulate Themselves. The agricultural price rally of 2008 unleashed riots in more than 30 countries and forced companies into bankruptcy. It lasted five months. The latest rise in commodity prices, which has already helped topple regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, may last many more months, if not years. “If you are not scared, you are not paying attention,” says David Nelson, a global strategist in the food and agribusiness research advisory unit of Rabobank in Chicago. “There is no margin for error with these agricultural markets.” That prospect has governments and companies around the world searching for ways to profit or insulate themselves from price shocks, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its March 7 issue. A growing, more prosperous global population is draining stores of grain and meat. Global inventories of corn -- used in food, feed and fuel -- will fall to just 53 days, a 37-year low, before harvests in the northern hemisphere begin, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Soybean stockpiles worldwide as a percent of demand may be the lowest in almost 18 years, Paris-based Societe Generale forecast last month.
• Fed Policy Makers Signal Abrupt End to Bond Purchases in June. Federal Reserve policy makers are signaling they favor an abrupt end to $600 billion in Treasury purchases in June, jettisoning their prior strategy of gradually pulling back on intervention in bond markets. “I don’t see a lot of gain to reverting to a tapering approach,” Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart told reporters yesterday. “I don’t think that is necessary,” Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said last month.
• Bearish Bets on Soybeans, Cattle Surge to Two-Year High in Options Market. Investors are making the most bearish bets against crops and livestock in the U.S. equity- options market since 2008 after the World Bank said prices surged to dangerous levels. The number of outstanding puts to sell the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund, which tracks 11 commodities from corn to soybeans and cattle, versus calls to buy has increased to 0.67 and reached a 28-month high of 0.69 on Feb. 28. The ratio doubled in January and February, the fastest two-month rate since February 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The $4 billion exchange-traded fund had its first outflows of the year in the week ended Feb. 23, with investors removing a net $116.4 million, EPFR Global data show.

Wall Street Journal:

• Gadhafi's Tight Grip on Tripoli Suppresses Protests. Libya's security forces displayed a tight grip on the capital after the city's Friday prayers, succeeding in largely suppressing antigovernment protests while supporters of the leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, staged noisy and widespread rallies throughout the city. Amid a tense mood in the sprawling capital, several hundreds residents of the industrial suburb Tajura were one of the only parts of the city to take to the streets to denounce the 42-year rule of Col. Gadhafi and demand that he step down. The demonstration took place despite what residents said were a wave of arrests in the area earlier in the week and their growing fear of reprisals for voicing opposition publicly.
• Unions Contend With Inhospitable States. Efforts to strip public employees of collective-bargaining and other rights in Wisconsin and Ohio have received much of the attention, but at least 10 other states are pursuing similar measures.
• Yemeni Protests Turn Violent. Yemeni soldiers fired rockets on protesters in the restive northern province of Amran Friday, killing three people and injuring seven others, according to a Shia rebel spokesperson. "We were staging a peaceful protest along a main road when soldiers fired rockets on us," said Abu Hashim, a spokesman for the group. Mr. Hashim said there were "thousands of people" at the protest and the dead included a 70-year-old man. Eyewitnesses said tanks were used and eight people had been killed.

Bloomberg Businessweek:

• Fitch Cuts Spain Outlook to Negative on Bank Costs, EU Deal. Spain had the outlook on its debt rating cut to “negative” by Fitch Ratings, which cited the potential cost of rescuing its savings banks and risks to the economic recovery. Fitch, which has Spain at AA+, lowered the rating from “stable,” it said in a statement today. It also noted the “potential for an intensification of volatility and stress in European financial markets” if governments don’t agree on a “credible and comprehensive response” to the debt crisis at summits this month. The European Union is facing an end-of-the-month deadline for a reinforced plan to aid debt-strapped countries after bailing out Greece and Ireland last year.

MarketWatch:

• Marvell(MRVL) Miss Highlights BlackBerry Woes. Marvell Technology’s disappointing earnings report not only sent its own shares tumbling on Friday, it also turned the spotlight on the BlackBerry’s struggle to compete with the iPhone and Android-based devices.

CNBC.com:

• US Airlines Raising Fares Again Amid Rising Fuel Costs. Airfares at major U.S. airlines are climbing again, continuing a dizzying pace of nearly weekly increases on both penny-pinching vacationers and expense-account corporate fliers.

Business Insider:

• TEACHING YOUR KIDS THESE DAYS: Live Sex In Class. We thought you'd like to stay apprised of what $40,000-a-year in private-college tuition buys you these days. The Daily Beast reports: It was bizarre, say students—even for a professor who gets off (excuse the pun) on controversy. On Feb. 21, after a lecture on sexual arousal, students in Northwestern University psychology Professor J. Michael Bailey’s human-sexuality course were given the option to stay for a guest presentation. Most were used to these sessions: With topics like “The Gay Guys Panel” (gay men talking about their sex lives) and Q&A sessions with transgender performers, the optional add-ons were part of what made Bailey’s class one of the most popular on campus. But this particular lecture was, shall we say, different. Led by a man whose website describes him as a “psychic detective and ghost hunter,” it was called “Networking for Kinky People,” and began with a towel placed neatly on the auditorium stage. Next, a woman took her clothes off, and—with an audience of around 100—lay down on her back, legs spread. As students moved forward from the theater’s back seats, for a closer view, “The girl grabbed the mic,” says Sean Lavery, a Northwestern freshman. “She explained that she had a fetish for being watched by large crowds while having an orgasm.”
• Chart of the Day: The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever.
• Libya Is In Straight Up Civil War, And Qaddafi Is Winning Today.
• The Head of Libya's Main Investment Fund Was "Taken With Glossy Wall Street Names" and Invited Steve Schwarzman to His Wedding.
• Here's That Bank of America(BAC) Report Downgrading Goldman(GS) and Citi(C) That Everyone is Talking About.
• 15 Stocks That Investors Are Shorting Like Crazy.
  

Zero Hedge:

• Follow Latest Developments in Libya on SkyNews.
• Religious Tensions in Bahrain on Edge.
  

Washington Post:

• Economists: State, Local Pension Funds Understate Shortfall by $1.5 Trillion or More. The pension funds for state and local workers in the United States are understating the amount they will owe workers by $1.5 trillion or more, according to some economists who have studied the issue, meaning that the benefits are much costlier than many governments and taxpayers thought.

Boston Globe:

• Local Consultants Aided Khadafy. It reads like Libyan government propaganda, extolling the importance of Moammar Khadafy, his theories on democracy, and his “core ideas on individual freedom.’’ But the 22-page proposal for a book on Khadafy was written by Monitor Group, a Cambridge-based consultant firm founded by Harvard professors. The management consulting firm received $250,000 a month from the Libyan government from 2006 to 2008 for a wide range of services, including writing the book proposal, bringing prominent academics to Libya to meet Khadafy “to enhance international appreciation of Libya’’ and trying to generate positive news coverage of the country.

Daily Herald:

• Illinois' Long-Term Pension Debt Jumps Sharply. The financial hole in Illinois' government pension systems grew even larger last year, the state auditor reported Thursday — a problem that tends to increase pressure on a state budget already stretched too far. The long-term gap between what Illinois owes future retirees and the money available to pay them jumped 21 percent under a new measuring system, Auditor General William Holland reported.
  

Reuters:

• Two U.S. Amphibious Assault Ships Enter Mediterranean - US OFFIC.
• Watchdog Probing if SEC Lawyer Had Madoff Conflicts. The top watchdog at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into whether the agency's senior lawyer should have been allowed to handle Bernard Madoff matters even though his deceased mother had invested with the convicted swindler. The suit does not accuse them of knowing about Madoff's Ponzi scheme, but it seeks $1.5 million in alleged phony profits their mother's estate received through Madoff investments. Becker is a co-executor of his mother's estate.
• Weekly Leading Economic Growth Gauge Eases in Latest Week: ECRI. A measure of future economic growth dipped in the latest week, while its annualized growth rate racked up a fresh nine-month high, a research group said on Friday. The Economic Cycle Research Institute, a New York-based independent forecasting group, said its Weekly Leading Index fell back to 129.8 in the week ended February 25 from 130.5 the previous week. The index's annualized growth rate rose to 6.5 percent from 6.1 percent a week earlier. That was the highest since the week ended May 14, 2010 when it stood at 9.4 percent.

MailOnline:

• Major Libyan Oil Plant Ablaze as Rebellions Erupt in Tripoli After Friday Prayers.

Der Spiegel:

• European Central Bank Wants to Unload PIIGS Bonds. During the crisis, the European Central Bank began buying up bonds from debt-ridden countries like Greece. Now the bank wants to transfer responsibility for those securities to the EU's euro rescue fund. Meanwhile, the parliamentary group of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have issued a resolution opposing such bond purchases.

Vietnam News:

• First Solar Inc.(FSLR) has been given permission by the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee to build a solar panel factory. The plant will be built in the Dong Nam Industrial Zone in Ho Chi Minh City's Cu Chi District with a total investment of $1.2 billion.

Xinhua:

• China's eastern province of Zhejiang, a manufacturing center, will increase its minimum wage as much as 19%, effective next month, citing a government statement. The province, where 20 million rural migrant workers are employed, will seek "markedly higher" increases in minimum pay in the five years through 2015.
• Leaders of China's official Protestant and Catholic churches asked members to stay away from public street protests called for every Sunday. A group of Chinese Christians allegedly called for regular Sunday-afternoon gatherings in 38 public places, citing foreign media.