PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Aug. 4

Aug 4 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner blasted top U.S. financial regulators in an expletive-laced critique last Friday as frustration grows over the Obama administration's faltering plan to overhaul U.S. financial regulation, according to people familiar with the meeting.

* Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) agreed to pay $33 million to settle a civil lawsuit alleging that it misled shareholders about billions of dollars in bonuses promised to Merrill Lynch & Co employees when it bought the troubled firm at the height of the financial crisis last year.

* The U.S. Treasury, which issued a record amount of debt in the past year to fund the surging federal budget deficit, said it will borrow less in the third quarter than it had previously expected, in part because banks repaid billions of dollars of government aid under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

* Google Inc (GOOG.O) Chief Executive Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) board as the companies face regulatory scrutiny over their board ties and as their businesses increasingly overlap.

* American International Group Inc (AIG.N), the beleaguered global insurer propped up by the government, selected as its next CEO Robert Benmosche, a former chief executive of MetLife Inc (MET.N) who led a period of transformation at the insurer that included taking it public.

* Ruth Madoff, the wife of convicted Ponzi-scheme operator Bernard Madoff, reached an agreement with a court-appointed trustee who is gathering assets for defrauded investors whereby she will provide the trustee with a monthly accounting of her income and payments.

* Centex Corp (CTX.N) swung to a quarterly profit, thanks to an income-tax benefit, while Pulte Homes Inc (PHM.N) posted a wider loss as the two home builders looked ahead to their planned merger.

* CIT Group Inc (CIT.N) took a small step closer to staving off a bankruptcy-court filing Monday, sweetening the terms of a bond buyback that all but guarantees its success.

* EBay Inc's (EBAY.O) PayPal unit experienced a world-wide system outage, leaving millions of customers of the online payments service temporarily unable to complete transactions.

* Strong performances in wholesale and investment banking helped two leading British banks to post profits for the first half of the year and dig them out of troubles caused by continuing loan-impairments and other difficulties related to the economic downturn.

* The decline in the U.S. manufacturing sector continued to ease in July as factories boosted output, an early sign that manufacturers and the overall economy are likely to grow in the third quarter.

* The cash-for-clunkers program in the U.S. has designated sodium silicate as the agent of death for surrendered cars, sending a surge in business to chemical distributors.

* Obama officials are holding discussions that could result in White House counsel Gregory Craig leaving his post, following a rocky tenure.

* U.S. President Barack Obama's cybersecurity czar, Melissa Hathaway, said she is resigning, a setback to White House efforts to protect computer networks.

* HSBC Holdings PLC has hired a former senior member of JPMorgan Chase & Co's (JPM.N) disbanded standalone proprietary-trading team as it continues the expansion of its markets business.

* MGM Mirage (MGM.N) posted a $212.6 million second-quarter loss as revenue plunged. The results were hardly stellar, but for the casino conglomerate they marked a victory of sorts.

* U.S. federal agents raided the Florida offices of Colonial BancGroup Inc CNB.N and wholesale mortgage lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp, days after a financial deal between the two firms fell through.

* Alibaba.com Ltd (1688.HK) is considering establishing a joint venture in India to provide business-to-business e-commerce services, Chief Executive David Wei said Monday.