The! Biggest! News! of! the! Day! - Not Hotter-Than-Expected PPI or Bear Stearns Earnings

Here are some of the contenders for today's biggest...news...of...the...day...

• A higher-than-expected producer price index...stock futures gave up their earlier gains as the PPI report triggered inflation chatter...
• The weekly jobless claims report that came in at "the lowest in five weeks"...
• Earnings from Bear Stearns (BSC)...the investment bank reported earnings of 3.82 a share compared to the Thomson Financial forecast of $3.80...
• A bid from InterContinental Exchange (ICE) to buy CBOT Holdings Inc. (BOT) - the parent company of the Chicago Board of Trade...this bid would break up a proposed merger between BOT and Chicago Mercantile Holdings Inc. (CME)...
• Word that a "state judge in California Wednesday dropped the charges against ex-Hewlett-Packard Chair Patricia Dunn"...
• "A strategic shift" for Red Hat (RHT) as the firm launches "an online marketplace" for open-source software...

While those are all stories worth watching, I think it is obviously clear that the biggest story is this - F.D.A. Warns of Sleeping Pills' Strange Effects...my colleague Jocelynn Drake alerted me to this New York Times article that says "most widely prescribed sleeping pills can cause strange behavior like driving and eating while asleep"...at least according to the FDA...

Yes, you read that correctly. Some users of Ambien have reported -

"unusual reactions ranging from fairly benign sleepwalking episodes to hallucinations, violent outbursts, nocturnal binge eating and — most troubling of all — driving while asleep"

Curiously enough, I didn't see any reports of "sleep exercising"...