Monday, August 21, 2006

Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Iran rejected the suspension of its uranium enrichment program, the min objective of a European Union-led offer of incentives to which the country is due to give a formal reply tomorrow.
- The dollar fell to an 11-week low against the euro as traders reduced expectations the Fed will increase its interest-rate target again this year.
- Morgan Stanley(MS) agreed to acquire Golenborough Realty Trust for about $840 million in cash, giving it office properties from Boston to California.
- Ford Motor(F), slashing production after battling a decade-long drop in US market share, is preparing to extend buyout offers to all its factory workers in North America.
- President Bush said the US plans to increase aid to Lebanon to more than $230 million and urged rapid deployment of a UN force to ensure stability and distribution of the help.
- Treasuries are rising again, pushing yields on 10-year notes to their lowest since March, on signs that inflation and growth are slowing.

Wall Street Journal:
- US companies are seeking private equity deals to remove themselves from the stock market, as Sarbanes-Oxley rules push up costs and curb innovation, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg wrote.
- EBay(EBAY) faces calls for a change in management from businesses selling goods on the site.
- Wal-Mart Stores’(WMT) critics were branded a “traveling circus” by Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee after he was asked to back criticism.
- Friendster, the Internet-based social network competing with News Corp.’s(NWS) MySpace.com, will say today it got a $10 million investment from venture capitalists, as it tries to attract more users.
- Wal-Mart Stores(WMT) plans to reduce solid waste at its almost 4,000 US outlets by 25% in three years.
- Researchers have concluded that the human immune system one day might be restored to fight the AIDS virus or even cancer.
- A comedian and a so-called “mentalist” have set up a sleuth service to ferret out the growing number of imposters on MySpace.com.

NY Times:
- Pakistanis in the US say economic success and social integration reduce the chances that a member of their community would become an anti-American plotter.
- A digital security software application called Cleversafe offers a lower-cost way to secure documents as smaller fragments of data that can be reassembled only by the computers that originally created the files.

Washington Post:
- Iraq’s ambassador to the US, Samir Sumaida’ie, urged the US not to withdraw its troops from Iraq until the country is more stable.

Dawn:
- A 48-member delegation from the US visit Pakistan next month to explore investment opportunities in the energy sector.

Financial News:
- Silver Lake Partners, manager of the world’s biggest tech buyout fund, put Instinet Group up for sale after receiving an unsolicited bid for the business.

la Repubblica:
- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Italy should take over from France and lead the UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

AFP:
- Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein refused to enter a plea at the start of a trial for genocide during the 1988 Anfal campaign against the Kurds.

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