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News In Brief

PODCAST: Richard Cordray new pick to head consumer bureau

Katharine Crnko Jul 18, 2011

Here are today’s top headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report and from around the web.

Later today, President Barack Obama will introduce his pick to head up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Obama’s nominee is Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. Elizabeth Warren had been expected to take that role, but she faced major opposition from Republicans.

U.S. home builder sentiment rose more than expected in July, but remained near historic lows, the National Association of Home Builders said on Monday.

China, the biggest buyer of U.S. Treasury debt, has increased its holdings in May for the second straight month, after five months of declines.

Halliburton, the world’s second-largest oilfield services company, reported a forecast-topping 54 percent jump in quarterly profit Monday as a U.S. drilling boom showed no signs of cooling off.

Gannett doubled its quarterly dividend and reinstated a $1 billion share buyback program.

Discount broker Charles Schwab says its second-quarter income rose 16 percent as a gain in asset management fees helped offset a decline in trading revenue.

Hasbro, maker of Nerf foam toys and Transformers action figures, missed Wall Street profit estimates in the second quarter on higher costs and weakness in its preschool, girls, and games businesses.

Australian shares of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation fell to a two-year-low today because of concerns that the phone hacking scandal in the U.K. could destroy a $2 billion deal in Australia.

Still no bids for Borders bookstore, which heads to a bankruptcy court auction tomorrow. A Borders liquidation would affect the company’s 11,000 workers. And could pose a new risk to shopping centers that rely on Borders traffic to boost sales.

A Boston Bruins hockey player named Nathan Horton was relying on Jet Blue yesterday to get his wife and the Stanley Cup trophy from Boston to Buffalo. He wanted to show it off at his hometown parade just over the border in Canada. But his wife arrived at the airport too late to get the Stanley Cup through security for an 8 a.m. flight. So the Cup missed the 11:00 parade. It caught a later flight and arrived by 2:30.

The Women’s World Cup final may have been a heartbreaker for the U.S., but it did set some records. The face-off between the U.S. and Japan was the most tweeted event ever. Well, in Twitter’s five-year history. More than 7,000 TPS — that’s Tweets-per-second in case you didn’t get the memo.

You can read the rest of today’s stories from the Marketplace Morning Report here.

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