Nov 19 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
* Hedge-fund titan Kenneth Griffin lost $8 billion of his clients' money last year. Now, he is trying to persuade investors to trust him with more.
* A defendant accused of exchanging a case of cash for inside information has ties to Galleon Group's former No. 2 executive -- the first link between a top executive at the hedge fund and smaller-time players cited in a sprawling insider-trading case.
* A state-owned Russian bank is likely to take a stake in the initial public offering of UC Rusal, marking the first government ownership of the embattled aluminum giant.
* German prosecutors filed criminal fraud charges against former Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Rolf Breuer, alleging the executive gave false testimony during a high-stakes lawsuit.
* Cash-rich life insurers are having trouble putting their money to work as rising prices in the corporate-bond market are driving down yields.
* The U.S. real estate arm of Africa Israel Investments Inc has tentatively agreed with creditors to restructure its disastrous acquisition of the former New York Times headquarters in a deal that will wipe out more than $400 million in debt.
* The U.S. housing market is sputtering again, adding to doubts about the vigor of the economic recovery. Just a few months after housing showed signs of leveling off, bad weather and uncertainty over the extension of a home-buyer tax credit sent new-home starts in October tumbling 10.6 percent from the previous month.
* Stanford University has received bids totaling more than $1 billion for its large block of hard-to-sell investments that it put up for sale last month, a figure at the high end of the school's early expectations.
* Defense contractor DynCorp International Inc has admitted that it may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act when it tried to speed up the issuance of visas and licensing related to work for the U.S. government overseas.
* Many employers are planning to reinstate merit increases in 2010, but some compensation experts say base salaries are unlikely to return to pre-recession levels anytime soon, if ever. Of 555 large U.S. employers polled in October, 83 percent said they will give out raises next year, while only about half did so in 2009, reports Lincolnshire, Ill.-based Hewitt Associates Inc.
* Senator Harry Reid outlined a ten-year $849 billion bill that would overhaul the nation's health-care system and extend insurance to 31 million Americans.
* Delta Air Lines In and its airline partners said that they could provide a $1.02 billion funding package to ailing carrier Japan Airlines Corp, in an aggressive bid meant to show their financial muscle as they try and wrest JAL away from its partnership with rival American Airlines. Keywords: PRESS DIGEST/WSJ
(Compiled by Tenzin Pema; Bangalore Equities Newsdesk +91 80 4135 5800; within U.S. +1 646 223 8780)
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