Friday morning headlines

Bush and gas prices: The president's obvious ignorance yesterday about the prospect of $4 gas - "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that.... I know it's high now" - is getting quite the ride. As noted by the LAT, it's provoking comparisons to his father, who also seemed out of touch with everyday people. And this morning the Auto Club's weekly survey provided a little more fuel to the discussion. The average price of regular in L.A. is $3.368, which is 16.9 cents higher than last week and 24 cents more than last month. Meanwhile, oil hit the $103-a-barrel mark overnight but has since pulled back.

Dollar keeps dropping: It's now at the lowest level in almost three years (versus the yen). But with all due respect to any American trying to run a business overseas, or take a vacation, the Federal Reserve now sees a weakening dollar as helping the economy. "The Fed is breaking new ground in expressing indifference to the U.S. dollar's decline,” Merrill Lynch analysts wrote in a research note. (Bloomberg)

More SAG squabbling: The NY and L.A. chapters are at odds on when to start contract talks. The NY division, which accounts for 14 of the 71 board seats, adopted a resolution demanding that talks start no later than March 31. "I see absolutely no value to the members in delaying these talks any longer," New York President Sam Freed said. But SAG President Alan Rosenberg and Executive Director Doug Allen say there's still work to get done before formal negotiations can start. They’re now looking at sometime after March 31. From the LAT:

The resolutions reflect the views of many high-profile members who have been pressuring guild leaders to jump start talks and avoid another costly strike after the 100-day writers walkout, which ended this month. The actors' contract expires June 30. "SAG should pursue a course similar to the DGA [Directors Guild of America] where early negotiations short-circuit the need for a strike," New York-based actor Alec Baldwin said.

Blood thinner linked to deaths: U.S. regulators had found "potential deficiencies" at a Chinese plant that supplied much of the active ingredient for the blood thinner heparin. Baxter International, which makes the brand of heparin associated with the problems, said it would expand a recall to include virtually all its heparin products. The FDA said the number of deaths possibly associated with the drug had risen to 21 from 4, though many of those patients were already seriously ill and that the drug might not have caused their deaths. From the NYT:

The F.D.A. emphasized that it had yet to identify the root cause of the problem, and that it had not concluded that the Chinese plant was responsible. The agency also said it was investigating two Chinese wholesalers — also called consolidators — that supplied crude heparin to the Chinese plant, Changzhou SPL, as well as those that sold raw ingredients to the consolidators. The New York Times reported Thursday that at least one of the consolidators received supplies from small, unregulated family workshops that scraped mucous membrane from pig intestines and cooked it, eventually producing a dry substance known as crude heparin. The F.D.A. admitted this month that it had violated its own policy by failing to inspect SPL, located west of Shanghai, before the factory began shipping the heparin ingredient to Baxter in 2004. China’s drug agency also did not inspect the plant.

Universal buys Univision Music: The purchase price was nearly $140 million, according to LAT sources. The acquisition will more than triple Universal's share of the Latin music market, to about 49 percent. That covers regional Mexican music, Latin pop, Latin rap and hip-hop. Universal's French parent, Vivendi Universal, is building its music portfolio at a time when much of the industry is pulling back. Univision, meanwhile, must start paying down the $10-billion debt that its new owners assumed. (Universal Music is not part of NBC Universal.)

Ticketmaster to buy into AEG Live?: The West Hollywood ticket service, along with Cablevision Systems Corp., are in talks to acquire a combined 49 percent of the concert promoter AEG Live (part of the Anschutz Corp. colossus). The deal connects the assets of all three companies: AEG is a big concert promoter that also owns the Nokia Theatre and Staples Center; Ticketmaster is the dominant ticket seller in the U.S.; and Cablevision owns Madison Square Garden Entertainment. From the WSJ:

The deal appears to be in part a response to recent moves by Live Nation, a concert promoter that has signaled it has broader ambitions. Live Nation recently split from Ticketmaster to form its own ticketing business, representing a loss of Ticketmaster's largest client. Live Nation has also been signing artists like Madonna to multifaceted deals that call for the company to not just promote concerts, but also sell merchandise and issue new recordings. Confronted with Live Nation's push to become a full-service concert-promotion and ticketing company, Ticketmaster and AEG Live could both use additional firepower most readily supplied by each other.