Business

European Union leaders meet in Brussels for their latest summit aimed at saving the eurozone from financial meltdown. The top-level meeting will pit German chancellor Angela Merkel against her increasingly unified partners, France, Italy and Spain, which are determined to win concessions from Europe's economic powerhouse.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Google opened its World Wide Developers conference yesterday with a few announcements — the most notable is its entry into the highly competitive tablet market.

LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE: As NPR's Laura Sydell reports, with the Nexus 7, Google is headed for a market somewhere between the Amazon Fire and Apple's iPad.

It's called the Nexus 7 because it's a seven-inch tablet. Google also announced more content for its online store. In addition to music, movies and books, they will have TV shows and magazines.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And we reported, yesterday, that Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate News Corp. was considering splitting itself into two separate companies. The company's board of directors approved a split last night.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And you may want to Google our last word in business today. That word is foie-kage. It's kind of like corkage, the fee restaurants charge to open a bottle of wine that you've brought in with you.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Foie-kage is the fee that Californians will have to pay if they want to eat foie gras - fatty goose or duck liver. They'll have to bring their own because starting thanks week, restaurants will be banned from serving the delicacy.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with a possible deeper debt for JPMorgan.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Here's a classic story of how a multimillion-dollar company gets started.

A young guy named Seung Bak is on a trip to China. He gets back to his hotel room late one night and turns on the TV.

"I'm flipping through channels, and in the middle of China they are showing Korean dramas all around the clock," Bak says.

Just imagine the political fallout: Nov. 2, only days before the election, tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of workers receive letters warning that they could be out of a job.

That's exactly what some in the defense industry say will happen if Congress doesn't act soon to reverse sequestration — the across-the-board spending cuts that take effect in January if Congress doesn't agree on a plan to cut the deficit.

Today's a good day for gadget enthusiasts. During its I/O event, Google announced that like Microsoft, it was jumping into the tablet market. The search giant made three big announcements: The Nexus 7, its tablet; the Nexus Q, a streaming device; and a new version of its mobile operating system called Jelly Bean.

Early this morning, three armed assailants fire bombed the headquarters of Microsoft in Athens, Greece.

The attackers used a van to ram through the front door and tried to set the building on fire using gasoline, Microsoft Greece's General Manager Ernst-Jan Stigter told reporters. Stigter added that no one was injured.

The AP reports:

It's wedding season and that's when newlyweds get their first taste of marital bliss and marital challenges, including managing finances. A new survey for the American Institute of CPAs found that 30 percent of couples are deceitful about their spending. Guest host Viviana Hurtado finds out how couples can better manage money with Louis Barajas.

"Pending home sales bounced back in May, matching the highest level in the past two years, and are well above year-ago levels," the National Association of Realtors reports. The association says that:

There was a 1.1 percent increase in new orders for so-called durable goods in May from April, the Census Bureau says. That's more than economists had forecast, Bloomberg News reports. According to Reuters, economists thought Census would say orders went up about 0.4 percent.

News Corp. executives have confirmed they are considering dividing the company in two. One new company would hold all of News Corp.'s profitable entertainment and television outlets. The other would hold all of its newspaper and publishing outlets. The move is seen as a way for the Murdoch family to hang on to its less profitable and troubled newspapers while pleasing investors with a newly independent and far more profitable entertainment company.