Obama to Name Shaun Donovan U.S. Housing Secretary (Update2) 
By Kim Chipman and Anthony DiPaola

Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- New York housing commissioner Shaun Donovan is President-elect Barack Obama's pick to be secretary of Housing and Urban Development, where he will lead efforts to increase property ownership among lower-income Americans and help people hit by the recession stay in their homes.

Donovan, 42, who trained as an architect, served in the housing agency under President Bill Clinton and has been commissioner of housing in the New York City government since 2004. Obama said HUD will be a central part of his efforts to resolve the housing crisis.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTKlZMX9Z51g&refer=home

Boeing's '7-Late-7' Takes as Long as Pioneering 707 (Update3) 
By Susanna Ray

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co.'s latest delay means the 787 Dreamliner will take almost as long to develop as the planemaker's original model that ushered the U.S. into the Jet Age more than a half-century ago.

The schedule Boeing announced yesterday would start 787 shipments to airlines in 2010, almost six years after the first order. That's about two years more than the average for other Boeing planes and rivals the six years and two months spent on the 707 in the 1950s. That aircraft, which started out as the Dash 80, was the forerunner of the more than 16,000 commercial jets the company has built since.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aMuCQc_eF04M&refer=home
Jones Concedes Errors With Bacon, Griffin in Shakeout (Update1) 
By Katherine Burton and Saijel Kishan

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- In the close-knit hedge fund community, where confessions of a mistake are rare, billionaires Louis Bacon, Kenneth Griffin andPaul Tudor Jones are retreating from borrowed-money bets, private equity and emerging market debt and championing more transparent stocks, bonds and currencies.

The three trading prodigies, who have earned annualized returns of more than 20 percent in careers of two decades or more, say they aren't about to lose the cachet that prevented them from ever being compared to ordinary investors.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aCbwJSmCjd3o&refer=home

Wasting Enough Rice to Feed 184 Million Is Habit Only Rats Love 
By Jason Gale and Luzi Ann Javier

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Inside his northern Philippines granary, Marlon Ventura stirs gray zinc phosphide into a bowl of boiled rice, making a garlicky, toxic meal for rats.

He puts the bowl on a dirt floor dotted with grain spilled from vermin-gnawed sacks. Each year, rats steal or foul almost three-quarters of a metric ton (1,654 pounds) of his rice. The cost -- 12,240 pesos ($250) -- equals 7.8 percent of his farm's net income.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=adH2EpXXWSRo&refer=home

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/cfutures.html

i think i understand why rupert murdoch likes owning newspapers.