MARKETS / FINANCE

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.

Gold prices continued its rebound Friday after dipping to a five-month low earlier this week. June delivery of the metal rose was up over 1 percent to $1,595 on Friday after jumping 2.3 percent the day before, the biggest one-day gain since January.

Gold rose more than 1 percent on Friday, building on the previous session's hefty gains, as a recovery in the euro prompted fresh buying of the precious metal after prices slid to five-month lows earlier this week.

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.

A lack of new data or news saw markets run with previously established trends overnight.

Spot gold rallied more than 2.6 percent on Thursday, its largest one-day gain since late January, as technical buy signals and new signs of a sluggish U.S. economy more than offset deepening despair over the euro zone.

The euro wallowed near a four-month trough versus the dollar Thursday after some banks in Athens faced emergency funding needs, compounding fears that a potential Greek exit from the euro could put more pressure on other struggling euro zone nations.

A report on Wednesday reveals that child marriage has become less prevalent in South Asia over the last two decades, but not for brides of all age groups. Adolescents over 15 are still marrying at about the same rate as they did two decades ago.

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.

The social network is expected to make the internet's largest initial public offering ever recorded at an estimated company valuation of $96 Billion. Projecting such high figures, investors unfamiliar with the IPO market and more familiar with Facebook as a company will most likely be asking themselves -- what's the worst that could happen?

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?

Gold prices fell to a 4-1/2-month low on Monday, hit by concerns about a worsening debt crisis in the euro zone following political deadlock in Greece which fuelled risk aversion and put pressure on the euro.

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

MetaQuotes Software Corp, a developer of software applications for financial markets, Monday announced the integration of its MetaTrader 5 Forex Trading Platform with Integral Development Corp's FX Grid.

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.

Gold prices fell to a four-month low on Friday as worries over the financial health of Greeceand Spain and huge trading losses for JPMorgan hurt stock markets and the euro, prompting investors to seek refuge in the dollar.