PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - Sept 13

Sept 13 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in The New York Times business pages on Monday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* The world's top bank regulators agreed Sunday on far-reaching new rules intended to make the global banking industry safer and protect international economies from future financial disasters.

* Websites are trying to make search more helpful by showing what your friends -- or other people like you -- like.

* This month, the Federal Communications Commission is likely to approve what could be an even bigger expansion of the unlicensed airwaves, opening the door to supercharged Wi-Fi networks that will do away with the need to find a wireless hot spot and will provide the scaffolding for new applications that are not yet imagined.

* Chattanooga city-owned utility, EPB, plans to announce on Monday that by the end of this year it will offer ultra-high-speed Internet service of up to one gigabit a second. That is 200 times faster than the average broadband speed in America.

* Driven to the fringes by blog competitors, Hollywood Reporter, the five-times-a-week publication is being remade as a glossy, large-format weekly magazine.

* In a recent poll by TiVo Inc (TIVO.O), television viewers said they were growing tired of reality shows, with 40 percent calling reality the most overdone genre of programming.

* Several films at the Toronto International Film Festival offer a brutal assessment of the Wall Street high jinks and regulatory failings that fed the financial collapse.

* Projects in California and Maine ask people to photograph and locate dead animals to understand the impact of roads on the environment.

* Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) is close to a deal to buy ArcSight Inc ARST.O, a maker of security software, for about $1.5 billion, a person briefed on the matter said on Sunday, as the computing giant continues its recent buying spree.

* Hertz Global Holdings Inc (HTZ.N) agreed on Sunday to raise its takeover offer for the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group Inc (DTG.N) to about $1.43 billion in stock and cash, trumping a rival offer from the Avis Budget Group Inc CAR.N.

* Pennsylvania is speeding payments of $3.6 million to its debt-laden capital, Harrisburg, to prevent the city from defaulting on a general obligation bond, Gov. Edward G. Rendell said on Sunday.

* In the last year, social networking services have nearly doubled in popularity among online Americans over 50, while they made virtually no inroads among those ages 18 to 29, according to a report published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

* The European Commission is poised this week to back a plan that would divert a portion of the valuable broadcast spectrum used by television stations to mobile operators by 2013, in a bid to create an European Union-wide market for wireless broadband services.

* Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said Sunday that the spending cuts and economic reforms that his government has pushed through since May were "a small revolution," but added that much more work was needed to revive the sluggish economy.

* Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), the largest bank in Germany by assets, said Sunday that it planned to raise at least 9.8 billion to buy the rest of Deutsche Postbank, reducing its reliance on investment banking as tough new bank capital rules loom.

* Drug maker Roche Holding (ROG.VX) has stopped giving patients its experimental diabetes treatment taspoglutide in late-stage clinical trials because of a high rate of adverse reactions, a major blow to a drug once expected to have $2 billion-a-year potential.