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LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Family-controlled Freedom Communications Inc., which owns the Orange County Register newspaper, has postponed a plan to buy out two minority partners, Blackstone Group LP and Providence Equity Partners, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation. Freedom was planning to spend more than $500 million to buy back the roughly 45% stake held by Blackstone and Providence, according to people familiar with the situation. But negotiations with General Electric's GE Capital and others to finance the deal were suspended amid the credit-market turmoil, the report said.

The Bush administration's newly aggressive effort to help people facing foreclosure and shore up the troubled mortgage industry was sparked by growing concerns of an election-year recession, and the political damage that would cause, analysts said Tuesday.

The White House's move to deal with the growing foreclosure rate comes amid concerns about the '08 elections. The Bush administration's newly aggressive effort to help people facing foreclosure and shore up the troubled mortgage industry was sparked by growing concerns of an election-year recession, and the political damage that would cause, analysts said Tuesday.

THE New York Mercantile Exchange, whose stock surged on takeover speculation then stalled when a deal didn't materialize, is now focused on slashing costs and raising trading fees to increase profit, Chairman Richard Schaeffer said. "People have been waiting and waiting and waiting and have become frustrated" over the prospects of a sale, Schaeffer said. "But I run the place on a bottom-line basis." Nymex posted the biggest first-day return of any initial public offering in 2006, soaring 125 percent about a year ago, amid a wave of consolidation among stock exchanges worldwide. After rising to a high of US$152 in November 2006, the shares are now unchanged for the year, versus gains of 62 percent by the Intercontinental Exchange Inc and 28 percent for CME Group Inc. While Schaeffer said Nymex still remains "interested in being with the right partner," the changes he made spurred a 43-percent increase in net income during the first three quarters.