If you weren't glued to the business news all week, here's your chance to catch up on the biggest stories:

Housing Slowdown. With the U.S. housing market likely in the midst of a fairly severe, probably multi-year contraction, U.S. homebuilder weakness will likely extend into 2007 according to Fitch Ratings in its latest edition of 'Chalk Line'. Separately, the Fed reported a distinct slowdown in housing with the majority of the Fed's 12 regions reporting lower asking prices for homes, a softening in sales and rising inventories of unsold homes. Read Story

Visa IPO. Visa, the world's largest credit card payment system, is to follow the example set by rival MasterCard and sell shares in a public offering. It said the move would help fund its expansion, boost efficiency and pay the legal costs it faced in some markets. Since debuting on the New York Stock Exchange in May, MasterCard's shares have risen by nearly 84%. Visa employs 6,000 people around the world and is funded by the 21,000 firms that issue its cards and products. Read Story

Lidle's Insurance. Cory Lidle's beneficiaries could lose out on a $1.5 million benefit from baseball's benefit plan if it's determined that he was piloting his plane when it crashed into a Manhattan high-rise condominium. The baseball player's union plan provides a $450,000 life insurance benefit and has an accidental death benefit of $1.05 million. However, the plan - which applies to all big leaguers - contains an exclusion for any incident related to travel in an aircraft -- while acting in any capacity other than as a passenger. Read Story

Deficit Soars. Record oil import costs have pushed the US current account deficit to $218 billion in the second quarter, a 2.4% increase on the previous period. The deficit is the broadest measure of US global trade, including investment flows and trade in goods and services. With world oil prices above $70 a barrel for much of this year, the cost of buying oil pushed import values up 2% to $463.4 billion between April and June. Read Story

Airbus Cuts. The newly appointed boss of Airbus has warned there are likely to be "painful" job losses at the plane firm in light of delays to its A380 super jumbo. Louis Gallois, who replaced Christian Streiff, said cost-cutting measures would be evenly split between Airbus' French and German operations. Meanwhile, Airline Emirates has warned that it may cancel some of its order for 45 giant Airbus A380 planes if there are any further delays to the troubled project. Read Story

Hedge fund risks. Hedge funds present a risk to the financial markets and tighter regulations are needed, a majority of private economists said in a new WSJ.com survey. The explosive growth of hedge funds and their aggressive use of borrowed money have raised alarms about whether a financial crisis could set off a chain reaction of hedge-fund failures causing financial chaos. Hedge funds have $1.2 trillion in assets up from $500 million in 2001. Read Story

As part of a port securities bill passed by the House and Senate recently, online gaming in the US would be outlawed for foreign-based companies that offer online betting transactions in American currency. Though the comapnies are generally based in the Caribbean or Central America, they derive the bulk of their revenues from US gamblers. If this legialation is signed into law by President Bush, US gamblers will not longer be able to transfer money to foreign-based gaming companies using credit cards, checks, or electronic fund transfers. I guess gamblers could mail big wads of cash to their off-shore bookies. The legislation is designed to make it harder for terrorist organizations to move money around under the guise of legitimate businesses. Also, domestic gambling operations, such as those in the Gulf Coast region, would have fewer competitors for consumer access to real money poker.

PartyGaming, the world's largest online gambling company, indicated it would cease business operations in the US if this legislation is enacted, as would 888 Holdings PLC and Sportingbet PLC. Shares in PartyGaming have already plummeted by over half, closing recently at 84 cents. 888 Holdings in down by 26% and Sportingbet is the big loser, declining by 65% to close at $1.24.

The legislation seems also to prohibit many forms of sports-related gambling, including wagering on the games leading up to the World Series, as well as the monumental betting pools for the Super Bowl in early 2007.