PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - Aug 21

Aug 21 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in the New York Times business pages on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

* Medicare officials' 2006 statements that they had reduced the number of fraudulent and improper claims were misleading, a draft report says.

* As policy makers work to ease the strain on Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N), a consensus is emerging that the two companies will have to look substantially different in the long term.

* The regulator that seized IndyMac last month said Wednesday it would help thousands of the failed thrift institution's cash-short borrowers repay their mortgages and stay in their homes, a model it hoped other banks and collection companies would adopt to stem a wave of new foreclosures in the nation's weakened housing market.

* Taking a step that professors may view as a bit counterproductive, some universities are doling out Apple iPhones and Internet-capable iPods to students.

* South Koreans hope to turn the Kaesong Industrial Park into a capitalist foothold that might some day undermine the Stalinist North Korean state.

* Intel Corp (INTC.O) has made progress in a technology that could lead to the wireless recharging of gadgets and the end of the power-cord spaghetti behind electronic devices.

* In an attempt to improve notoriously overcrowded British airports, government regulators proposed on Wednesday breaking up BAA, the company that has a near monopoly on the business. It would be the biggest overhaul of Britain's airport industry in decades.

* A federal judge has ordered a research company to supply an experimental drug to a 16-year-old Minnesota boy who is terminally ill with muscular dystrophy.

* NBC Universal said on Wednesday that it had signed an agreement to acquire Carnival Film and Television, an independent production agency in Britain, giving it a base of operations for international expansion.