State and National News

Facebook will be valued at about $100 billion when it goes public this week. What would it take for that valuation to be justified?

As we noted yesterday, the value of a typical big, public company is 15 times the company's annual profit. So a company valued at $30 billion would typically have annual profits of $2 billion.

Facebook will be valued at 100 times its current annual profits. That's because investors expect the company's profits to go through the roof in the coming years.

Daniel Halper is online editor for The Weekly Standard.

According to just released disclosure forms, President Barack Obama has between $500,000-1,000,000 in assets in a JPMorgan Chase account. The full title of the account, as it's written on the disclosures, is "JPMorgan Chase Private Client Asset Mgmt Checking Account." It is a jointly held account, presumably with First Lady Michelle Obama.

Additionally, according to the disclosure forms, President Obama has between $1,001-$15,000 in a JPMorgan Chase checking account.

"Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic taunted Srebrenica survivors on Wednesday at the start of his trial for genocide, running his hand across his throat in a gesture of defiance to relatives of the worst massacre in Europe since World War II," Reuters writes from The Hague.

Ari Berman is the author of Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics.

There was a 2.6 percent increase in housing starts in April from March, the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development just reported.

When it comes to presidential style, the new leaders of France and Russia couldn't be more different.

With "the shockwaves from Greece's failure to form a coalition government" continuing to roil financial markets around the world, there's word from the BBC that Greece has now scheduled a new set of elections for June 17.

And there's also this:

Good morning, here are some of the top stories we're looking at today:

Medical Report Details George Zimmerman's Injuries, ABC News Says.

Folks Seem To Like It, So Facebook Boosts Size Of Stock Offering By 25 Percent.