ANALYSIS

Margaret Whitman, the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), the No. 1 computer maker, decided to swing her ax Wednesday as the company reported dreadful second-quarter results.

Because they report quarterly results generally out of the regula,r pattern technology giants Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSC), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) are technology bellwethers. Do their dismal dismal forecast presage downturn?

As U.S. entertainment companies look for new opportunities in light of a stagnant home market, new partnerships with China are emerging, but the process of linking media worlds between the two countries is also a two-way street.

Shareholders of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social network, are set to get the shares Tuesday, following Friday?s tumultuous first sales after the $16 billion initial public offering.

Politics make strange bedfellows indeed -- especially in France. Francois Hollande, the newly elected Socialist president of the republic, has formed his cabinet and is planning to scale back the austerity programs imposed by his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, of the center-right UMP party.

With the euro under threat and looming nuclear showdowns in Iran and North Korea, the Heidi-like retreat of Camp David in Maryland will come as a welcome break for the beleaguered leaders as they gather for this weekend's Group of 8 summit.

Investors in Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social network, got their first chance on Friday to gauge reaction to its $38-a-share public offering price that initially had valued the company at $104 billion.

General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) rocked the automotive and advertising worlds with its announcement Tuesday that it will stop buying advertisements on Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB), a value of roughly $10 million a year, on the eve of social networking site's monster IPO. The rest of the automotive industry's major players are not following suit, though, Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F), banking on the strength of the network effect, is actually upping its investment.

A day before Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), the No. 1 social network holds its initial public offering, its 33 underwriters boosted the number of shares for sale by 25 percent, potentially valuing the deal as high as $19 billion.

Recent polls show that Greece's far-left Syriza party is poised to gain the most votes in the June 17 parliamentary elections. The news has many wondering exactly where the popular opposition party came from, what it represents, and how it would address Greece's crushing debt burden while living up to its promise of abolishing austerity.

Shortly after winning 21 seats in parliament, Greece's Golden Dawn has already become a political pariah.

The selection of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain should not distract from the overall conservative nature of Roy Hodgson's England squad.

Although Greece is considered the ?cradle of Western Civilization,? the nation has had a vastly different history and trajectory from the dominant countries of Western Europe.

The fertility level in western Turkey (the most economically advanced part of the country) is now about 1.5 -- roughly the same as in western Europe.

Singapore was the fifth-largest arms importer in the world between 2007 and 2011.

Hollande also wants the euro zone fiscal pact re-written -- something Merkel has adamantly refused to do.

Congratulations, the good guys finally won. You and your team, with help from other institutions, have ousted CEO Scott Thompson, elected three Third Point nominees to the board, removed another handful of management nominees and effectively control the company. Now what?

Deutsche Bank is as German as lederhosen, sauerkraut, beer and the Autobahn.

Financial-market participants around the world have reasons for both optimism and pessimism at the dawn of this trading week. But nobody appears to care, really. Unless the reason centers on Greece -- and, by implication, the future of the euro zone.

India's emergence as an economic superpower has been accompanied by a disturbing and unexpected phenomenon: an apparent increase in sexual assaults on women.The actual number of rapes in Delhi -- and India as a whole -- is likely to be dramatically higher than indicated by published statistics.

Athens and Paris have rebelled against Berlin-inspired austerity, but Dublin has taken the harsh medicine dutifully -- and, unlike its testy European peers, grimly borne budget cuts and tax hikes with minimal protest. That may be about to change.

Following Thursday's financial earthquake at JPMorgan Chase & Co., fingers are pointing to Bruno Michel Iksil, who recently boasted that he could walk on water -- suggesting the French trader's ego is as outsized as the nemesis in Melville's novel from which his nickname the White Whale originates. Whether or not Iksil's reputation will go from fearsome whale to Jonah after he's blamed for the storm and tossed overboard is not yet known.

Rather than deal with business, directors of Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), the No. 3 search engine, have been busy all week in the ?resume embellishment? scandal that forced one director to quit and put the CEO under a cloud.

Just about everything in China's economy seems to have gone backwards in April and the raft of weaker data raised fears that the world's second largest economy has yet to bottom out.

President Barack Obama declared his support for gay marriage on Wednesday in an interview with ABC News. Less than 24 hours later, online denizens have slowly started developing memes surrounding POTUS's evolution on the issue.

Remember that great story last week about the Polish dentist ex-wife pulling all her ex-husband's teeth out under anesthesia and he didn't realize what happened until he got home? Yeah, well it's just that - a great story. A hoax. And we should've known - the clues were all there.

A month ago, shares of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), the world's most valuable technology company, closed at their record high of $628.64. On April 10, they hit their all-time high of $644. Now they are at $570.

Is President Barack Obama going to endorse gay marriage during an interview Wednesday? All signs point to yes, as a crescendo of events in recent days and months have made it nearly impossible for him to keep avoiding a clarification of his views until after the election.

Teen Mom star Jenelle Evans has been nothing but a role model to young MTV viewers. The show has displayed the 21-year-old fighting with her mom over child custody and crying over not being able to smoke pot, but fans are seeing a lot more off the camera. When the cameras aren't rolling, Evans is getting arrested, fighting, getting a boob-job and releasing disturbing before and after topless photos all over the web. What exactly is MTV trying to tell young viewers about being a Te...