Top Stocks

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

I'm just sitting here reading about all of the exciting new products coming out of Medtronic (MDT), all the terrific news out of the oncology conference, all the shortages of parts for wireless Internet because of the demand, all of the unbelievable things that the Apple (AAPL) iPhone does (and that ARM Holdings (ARMH) helps them do), and I say to myself: So what?

Who cares?

Have you seen the euro? Gold? Spain?

It's not enough.

That was a message emphatically delivered Monday by several members of Congress and numerous minority producers and diversity-minded media-business watchdog groups to Comcast and NBC Universal, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing conducted in downtown Los Angeles.

The four-hour hearing, the first and probably only one to be held in Los Angeles over the proposed Comcast purchase of NBCU, was convened at the California Science Center, at the behest of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who represents the area.

Its purpose: to explore the issue of ethnic and cultural diversity in the broadcast and cable media -- and more specifically, how one of the biggest mergers in media history will improve or worsen that situation.

It's time to bring back vertical integration in the movie business, said outspoken entertainment, sports and Internet mogul Mark Cuban at the Producers Guild of America's Produced By conference on Saturday. He said movie studios ought to buy theater chains and explore releasing certain movies to video-on-demand even before those films hit the big screen.

During a wide-ranging conversation moderated by Los Angeles Times reporter Dawn Chmielewski, Cuban said his ownership of both Magnolia Pictures and the Landmark Theaters chain allowed him more flexibility on the release patterns of films like Steven Soderbergh's "Bubble," Neil Jordan's new "Ondine" and Alex Gibney's Oscar-nominated documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room."

Written by Douglas Estadt

Eric Whitman, MD, of http://drericwhitman.wordpress.com/, is a board certified surgical oncologist specializing in the care of patients with melanoma, joins us today for an exclusive interview regarding the DTCH presentation at The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

• Survival rate tripled for cancer patients treated with PHP (Percutaneous Hepatic Perfusion) - 398 days vs. 124 with best alternative care

• Related: Media Buyers Blink: ABC, CBS, CW Do Big Business

The result is a potential blueprint for the entire television industry.

In gauging the dimensions of a crisis, you have to make certain assumptions. 

One thing I've assumed about the current euro debt crisis is that no politician there would do something unusually stupid. Venial. Short-sighted. Duplicitous. Sure. But not something so really stupid that it would raise damage from the crisis by an order of magnitude.

Well, I'm seeing exactly that level of “really stupid” starting to gather momentum. And the source is Chancellor Angela Merkel's government in Germany.

When Walmart (WMT) identifies a new location for one of the chain's supercenters, that often generates some degree of local opposition. Some of that, it turns out, is coming from outside agitators.

The Wall Street Journal reports that competing chains such as Safeway (SWY), Supervalu (SVU)  and others retain a consulting firm to lead the charge against a new Wal-Mart store. That means that some of those "concerned citizens" writing letters to the editor may actually be sticking up for corporate interests and not the community’s welfare.

By Jonathan Blum, TheStreet

There's a new small-business mobile beast loose in the land: the Sprint (S) Evo.

Finally, after, I kid you not, almost a year of speculation, pre-announcements, announcements and other marketing drivel, Sprint's premier 4G superphone, the HTC Evo, is on sale. And while far from perfect -- much more on clunk factor, grim battery life and cost -- the Google (GOOG) Android-powered Evo offers a legitimate, small-business option between the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and the full line of Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry devices.

Without question, the Evo’s bright screen, blazing multi-tasking performance and support for critical business tools compete at the highest levels in the mobile-business-device market.

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

What happens to traders on Sunday night that drives them to such levels of despair? How can they send oil down to $69 and the Nasdaq ($COMPX) futures down 22 ticks? What gives? How can they be so, well, wrong?

Now it is easy to say "they will be right," but the fact is that the Sunday night futures are some bizarre anti-tell, the sum of all fears, the sense that doom is here and that we will crash Monday. That's why you sell down that hard, because you think we will crash.

It's age-old and ingrained. A really horrible Friday will ineluctably yield a much worse Monday. So just get ready for it and blast out everything, regardless of the available news – which included reports of European bankers actually talking about how to save things, and a decrease in the disastrous Gulf spill.

• With just 4% of global GDP they have 20% of the world's land and 15% of it's population
• Between 2000 and 2008 Africa's GDP grew 5.3% annually but the global GDP only grew 4% for the same time frame
• In 2009 Africa's GDP grew 2% -- US dropped 4%, EU dropped 2.8%, Latin America dropped 1.5%
• These companies do business not only in their own country but in the rest of Africa and around the world as well
• The companies mentioned in their survey far outstripped the rest of the world in increased sales and earnings growth