All Three Markets Rise on Earnings Beats; Government Now Citi’s Biggest Shareholder; Jobless Claims Up but Subsiding; Crude Surges More Than 5%; Motorola Surprises; Recession Takes a Toll on House of Mouse; Ballmer Defends Yahoo Partnership; Southwest Makes Bid for Frontier

Verizon Lays Off 8,000 as Profit Sinks 21%; Bulls Run in Monday Markets; SEC Seeks to Limit “Naked Shorting;” New Single-Family Home Sales Rise in June; Oil Rises 1.4%; Deutsche Bank: Windows 7 Could Trigger New Enterprise Tech Investments; Video Game Industry Takes Hit From Recession

Senate Nixes Quick Healthcare Vote; Falling PC Sales Hurt Microsoft’s Bottom Lines; Jobless Claims Rise; Deutsche Raises Apple Outlook on iPhone Sales; Economist: Housing Market Has Hit Bottom; AT&T Profit Falls 15%; McDonald’s Profit Down; 3M Beats Expectations

Is high-tech stalwart Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) bucking the worst downturn since the Great Depression? It sure looks that way. Despite a cautious veneer during Apple’s quarterly conference call Tuesday, company executives ended up painting a picture of a company that continues to elbow aside recessionary pressures…

Google Revenues, Profits Rise; IBM’s Bumps Margins; Foreclosures Up as Well as Single-Family Homebuilder Confidence; Initial Unemployment Claims Fall to Lowest Level Since January; Sun Shareholders Approve Oracle Merger

Tech Bulls Boost Markets; Crude Tops $60 a Barrel; Bing Takes Bite Out of Yahoo, But Not Google; Weatherization Funds Cause Concern About Fraud; Paulson Defends BofA/Merrill Deal; U.S. Weighs in On China’s Spy Game; Microsoft Stores: Next to An Apple Store Near You

GM May Salvage Pontiac Car; CIT Void to Be Filled, More Expensive; Dell Expects Higher Q2 Revenue; U.S., UBS Lawsuit Delayed for Possible Settlement; U.S. Deficit Grows; Russian Investor Boosts Stake in Facebook; Microsoft Office Goes Online

Yesterday we were reading how Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has been getting pretty testy with reporters concerning questions over it’s strategy to break into the advertising market thatGoogle (Nasdaq: GOOG) controls.