PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - June 4

June 4 (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.

* Countries worldwide are paying higher interest rates on their expanding debt, which could translate into hundreds of billions of dollars more in spending for countries like the U.S., Britain and Germany.

* The new chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will ask Congress on Thursday to impose substantial new costs and restrictions on large banks and other financial institutions that deal in the complex and largely unregulated financial instruments known as derivatives.

* The chief executive of General Motors Corp GMGMQ.PK, Fritz Henderson, vowed to Congress on Wednesday that as long as the American taxpayer was its largest investor, "it's our obligation to be open and transparent in all we do to reinvent G.M."

* The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, said on Wednesday that the United States needed to develop a plan to restore fiscal balance, even as the government builds huge budget deficits as it tries to spend its way out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

* The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation indefinitely postponed a central element of the Obama administration's bank rescue plan on Wednesday, acknowledging that it could not persuade enough banks to sell off their bad assets.

* Carl Icahn, the corporate raider turned activist investor, claimed a major victory in his long-running battle with Biogen Idec Inc (BIIB.O) on Wednesday, announcing that two allies had been placed on the board of the biotechnology company.

* Silicon Valley was abuzz Wednesday with news that the Justice Department had begun an antitrust investigation into the hiring practices of some of the best-known companies in the technology and biotech industries, including Google Inc (GOOG.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) and Genentech.

* NetApp Inc (NTAP.O) raised its takeover offer on Wednesday for Data Domain Inc (DDUP.O), a rival maker of computer storage products, to $1.9 billion, matching an unsolicited bid from the EMC Corp (EMC.N).

* ArcelorMittal (ISPA.AS), the world's largest steel maker, said Wednesday that the Spanish government had granted it permission to lay off a major part of its work force in Spain, another sign of retrenchment in a country that already has the highest jobless rate in Europe.

* Under sharp questioning from a Senate panel, executives from General Motors Corp GMGMQ.PK and Chrysler defended their plans to whittle down the number of dealerships on Wednesday, calling it a painful but necessary part of creating leaner, more competitive companies.

* A federal appeals court agreed late Tuesday to hear an appeal of Chrysler's sale to Fiat (FIA.MI), after a lower court judge approved the move to help expedite the process.

* The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, an affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L), must face a lawsuit accusing it of crimes against humanity, a United States federal court ruled Wednesday.

* A federal appeals court on Wednesday stayed a Texas court's order that would have forced the satellite pay-TV provider Dish Network Corp (DISH.O) and its set-top box division EchoStar Corp (SATS.O) to disable millions of digital video recorders that infringe a patent held by TiVo Inc (TIVO.O).

* A former vice chairman of the accounting firm BDO Seidman pleaded guilty on Wednesday to federal charges that he helped clients evade more than $200 million in taxes through illegal tax shelters.