Mitt Romney lept ahead of President Obama in a new nationwide poll Monday. The New York Times/CBS poll showed Romney at 46 percent and Obama at 43 percent. Last month the poll had found the two tied at 46 percent. 26 percent of respondents said that they were less likely to vote for Obama because of his position on same-sex marriage, while only 16 percent said that his announcement had made them more likely to vote for him.  Additionally, most of those polled think Obama’s newfound support of same-sex marriage is politically motivated. Meanwhile, 67 percent of those polled think he made the announcement “mostly for political reasons,” while only 24 percent think he did it “mostly because he thinks it was right.”

Greek President Karolos Papoulias prepared for another meeting with leaders of the country’s main political parties Monday in a final effort to forge a unity government that may stave off Greece’s exit from the euro. His chances of success, however, looked slim as leading parties continued to resist the austerity measures that have enabled the country’s bailout, and European and American exchanges fell on uncertainty about Greek’s political and economic conditions. The Dow Jones fell 92 points in midday trading Monday and the Stoxx Europe 600 dipped to a four-month low. Leftist leaders in Greece have refused to join a government that would enforce austerity measures.

And then there were 12 digits. Set to go public on Friday, Facebook aimed for shares of its stock to be priced at $34 to $38 each, sending its IPO to an estimated $104 billion up from $86 billion just two weeks ago. The $104 billion target would make the IPO the highest valued of any American company ever, a source told The Wall Street Journal Monday. The prior range of shares of stock was $28 to $35, the bump-up signifying that investor confidence is on the rise as the IPO date approaches.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed $8.3 billion in spending cuts for the Golden State in order to deal with an estimated $15.7 billion shortfall. Brown’s proposal would include cuts to pay for state employees and spending on social programs. He also suggested a 16 percent increase in funding for public schools, but those are contingent on voters approving increases to sales and income taxes. Otherwise, the state will have to impose another $6 billion of cuts on public schools. “The fact is, California has been living beyond its means … This is a day of reckoning, and we have to take the medicine,” Brown said.

Risk managers and senior investment bankers reportedly expressed concern over the risky bets being made at JPMorgan Chase in the years leading up to the company’s $2 billion trading loss. Insiders say bosses, including CEO Jamie Dimon, were more concerned with gigantic losses coming from bad mortgages and new regulations threatening the profitability of traditional banking, and this led to a culture of weaker risk management. “There was a lopsided situation, between really risky positions and relatively weaker risk managers,” one former trader told The New York Times. Meanwhile, reports indicate that the bank may be reclaiming bonuses from employees involved in the snafu, including former chief investment officer Ina Drew, who resigned on Monday as a result of the loss.

LightSquared and its affiliates filed for bankruptcy Monday after hedge fund manager Philip Falcone and creditors failed to reach an agreement. The company, which Falcone hoped would become a national wireless network to compete with AT&T and Verizon, is 96 percent-owned by Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners and the famed investor was said to have sank most of his assets into the company. The U.S. government had essentially ordered Lightsquared to stop building its wireless network, as tests have shown that the proposed network would interfere with global positioning systems used by the military and other industries.

Call back the cavalry! Ron Paul announced that he is scaling back all operations in states that have yet to hold Republican primaries, according to email sent to supporters on Monday. He wrote that success in those states hinges on spending tens of millions of dollars that his campaign simply can’t afford. The Paul campaign is betting on the state convention process—with supporters actively campaigning—with the idea that he’ll wield enough power to influence the RNC. It’s still unclear what Paul will do with his delegates.

A week after President Obama announced his personal support for same-sex marriage rights, a new CBS/New York Times poll shows that 38 percent of Americans believe gay couples should be allowed to marry, while another 24 percent support same-sex civil unions. Thirty-three percent of Americans feel there should be no legal recognition available for gay couples at all. It’s a strong showing, and the numbers demonstrate that support for marriage rights is strongest among the young, but also that acceptance of the idea among Americans has continued to increase over time. A full 53 percent of 18- to 44-year-olds surveyed said same-sex couples should be guaranteed full marriage rights under the law.

LightSquared and its affiliates filed for bankruptcy Monday after hedge-fund manager Philip Falcone and creditors failed to reach an agreement. The company, which Falcone hoped would become a national wireless network to compete with AT&T and Verizon, is 96-percent-owned by Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners. The famed investor was said to have sank most of his assets into the company. The U.S. government had essentially ordered Lightsquared to stop building its wireless network, as tests had shown that the proposed network would interfere with global-positioning systems used by the military and industry.

Brian McNamee, the only person who claims to have witnessed Roger Clemens using performance-enhancing drugs firsthand, says he first injected the former baseball great with steroids in 1998. McNamee testified Monday at the perjury retrial for Clemens, who is charged with lying to Congress when he testified in 2008 that he had never used performance-enhancing drugs. McNamee met Clemens when he was the strength-and-conditioning coach for the Blue Jays and said he injected Clemens eight to 10 times that year, but stopped when Clemens developed an abscess on his buttocks. McNamee said he knew it was illegal and he wishes he could take it back, but “I did it because I wanted to help and I wanted to keep my player safe ... I wasn’t under the assumption that was the first time he did that.”

He won’t be winning any medals for best boyfriend. The Jamaican 2008 World Olympic sprint champion Usain Bolt has dumped his girlfriend to focus on taking home the gold at the upcoming Summer Olympics. A source close to Bolt, 25, told the New York Post that he “will have plenty of time for relationships” and currently “doesn’t want anything to distract” him from his running career. Bolt had been criticized by female fans for dating a white fashion designer, Slovakian-born Lubica Slovak, after a Jamaican newspaper printed a photo of the biracial couple kissing. Slovak, 28, met Bolt last year through a common friend after moving from Canada to Jamaica.

The Daily Beast’s John Avlon has been honored for a second year in a row by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, this time earning the highest honors among three other online columnists in publications with over 100,000 monthly unique viewers.Judges praised Avlon’s “keen commentary on some of the most important movements of the year” and his ability to “pin down original, fresh thinking on topics readers need to understand.” The NSNC announced the awards on May 5, with Chicago Sun-Times’ Rogert Ebert taking second place in the category and Politico’s Roger Simon coming in third.

Barack Obama’s camp takes aim at Romney’s corporate experience with a 2-minute ad out Monday, and as tales of corporate bloodsucking go, this one could have been penned by Bram Stoker. The ad revisits the closure of a plant owned by GST Steel, which was acquired by Romney and Bain Capital and then shut down. “They made as much money off it as they could and they closed it down, they filed for bankruptcy, without any concern for the families or the communities,” says former steelworker Joe Soptic in the ad. “It was like a vampire. They came in and sucked the life out of us.”  The campaign has slated the ad to run in the battleground states of Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Colorado, but declined to comment on the total cost of the ad buy.

One U.S. cruise line has a litigious Robinson Crusoe on its hands. Eighteen-year-old Panamanian fisherman Adrian Vazquez says he and two others were stranded for 16 days after the motor on their fishing boat broke. Then, on March 10, they saw a cruise liner approach and called for help, but the ship, owned by Princess Cruises, allegedly passed them by. Vazquez’s two companions died in the nearly two weeks that followed before Vazquez was finally picked up near the Galápagos Islands. According to Princess, passengers aboard the cruise liner never told the captain they had seen a stranded boat.

The combination of political uncertainty and economic maladies could mean that the handwriting’s on the wall for the euro, Peter Boone and Simon Johnson write at Bloomberg. Unemployment rates are at record highs in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. Budget deficits and high government debt drag down national economies. And all of these problems are “compounded by five years of complete political denial,” according to Boone and Johnson. “Is there any hope for the euro dream?” they ask. An answer may lie in the European Central Bank, but even that may be fraught with peril. As for austerity, those plans have been “huge social and political failures, removing one more hope for saving the euro area.”

Environmentalists say hydraulic fracturing will end the world in a whoosh of lethal contaminants, while drillers say it will save the American economy and inaugurate a utopia of oil and gas. In all the blowback and bluster associated with the controversial drilling technique, oil- and gas-company insurers find themselves wondering just how to assess the risks involved. “From an insurance standpoint, it’s really hard to underwrite something with a lot of uncertainty,” said Jeffrey Hanneman, director of Aon Risk Solutions. The cost is going up for “environmental-impairment liability,” experts said, even as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to release initial findings later this year on the hazards fracking may or may not pose to drinking water.

President Obama gave a rousing commencement address at New York City’s all-female Barnard College on Monday, urging graduates to “fight for a seat at the head of the table” in public life and politics. Obama stressed women’s leadership roles and challenged young graduates to “make this the century when women not only shape their own destiny but the destiny of the whole nation.” His speech was peppered with a few of his policy messages, including health care, education, and sustainable energy. The president also acknowledged the recession’s impact on job opportunities and other aspects of life for new grads, but encouraged them that “as tough as things have been, I am convinced you are tougher.” Obama, who joked about being a graduate of rival Columbia University, mostly focused on equal rights in his speech and vowed to “join you every step of the way.”

Things are looking up for Groupon. The daily-deal company has reported a significant increase in revenue at the end of its first quarter and a smaller net loss after an alarming $9.8 million fourth-quarter loss report in February—the company’s first financial results since it went public in November. Revenue jumped 89 percent to $559.3 million from $295.5 million a year earlier when it was still privately held. Groupon Inc. earned 2 cents per share in the latest quarter and revealed a net loss of $11.7 million, surpassing analysts’ expectations.

Before leaving Yahoo, 54-year-old ousted CEO Scott Thompson told the company’s board he had thyroid cancer as controversy swirled around his résumé. Thompson’s decision to step down from the top job at the company was influenced by the diagnosis, according to sources close to the matter. The former chief executive’s academic record listed him as having a computer-science degree, which he did not have—the error was repeated in a Yahoo regulatory filing and on company websites. According to The Wall Street Journal, the source said Thompson’s decision to leave the company was in part influenced by his cancer diagnosis, which reportedly occurred not long before his resignation.

Best Buy said Monday that former company chief executive Brian Dunn, who resigned his post in April, was engaged in a close relationship with a female employee while he held the top job. The company also alleged that chairman of the board Richard Schulze knew of the relationship, but did not bring it to the attention of the audit committee. Schulze’s successor was announced Monday as well. Best Buy has been taking a closer look at Dunn since he resigned, questioning his conduct and that of executives around him who may have failed to report questionable personal behavior. Last week Reuters reported that company investigators had spoken to a 29-year-old female staffer in connection with the claims of personal misconduct.

Masters of the universe, perhaps not. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Ina Drew, the top-earning chief investment officer at JPMorgan Chase who put her stamp on the trades that went bust, resigned Monday. CEO Jamie Dimon said in a statement that Drew's "vast contributions to our company should not be overshadowed by these events." Hers is one of three desks expected to be empty by the end of this week as the bank reels from the disclosure that it lost a whopping $2 billion in bad trades. Two more executives, direct subordinates of Drew’s, are also expected to leave, sources told Reuters. Drew reportedly offered her resignation weeks back as the size of the losses from her mismanaged derivatives portfolio became clear, but she was briefly insulated from the fallout by her successful history at the bank.

A plane carrying 21 people, most of them Indian nationals, crashed into a hillside Monday as it descended to land at a Nepalese airport. Many of the passengers were en route to the Muktinath temple, a religious site in the mountainous region. A local police spokesman told reporters that the plane hit a muddy slope after attempting to land and ended up buried in the hillside, killing 13 Indian passengers and two Nepalese pilots. Among those being treated after the crash are two Danish passengers and two Indian infants. Accidents involving small aircraft occur occasionally in the treacherous mountain regions of Nepal.

President Obama had some explaining to do after announcing his personal support for same-sex marriage last week. Not to voters or party leadership, but to the ministers he called two hours after his television appearance. “They were wrestling with their ability to get over his theological position,” said the Rev. Delman Coates, a Baptist pastor who was on the conference call with other religious leaders, including some who said that Obama’s choice may cost him their support. In Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan explores how the president’s biracial identity led him to his historic announcement, one that could tip America toward marriage equality for all.

The John Edwards trial will be gaveled back into session Monday as lawyers for the onetime North Carolina senator begin his defense on six counts of alleged campaign-finance violations. The prosecution has said that Edwards misused $1 million from two donors to cover up that he had a pregnant mistress while on the 2008 campaign trail for the Democratic presidential nomination. Scheduled witnesses include Scott Thomas, a former Federal Election Commission chairman, as well as Harrison Hickman, a pollster. Edwards could face up to 30 years in prison if found guilty. The judge in the case rejected a motion to dismiss the case Friday.

We’ve seen history made, writes Andrew Sullivan in Newsweek. When President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, he made his years of “evolution” look much more like a sort of patient intelligent design—and now he’s positioned himself to make once-unthinkable strides toward true equality for gay Americans. The immediate, or even long-term, consequences of Obama’s personal position are “impossible to judge,” Sullivan writes, but it seems clear that the president landed on the side of gay-marriage rights at least in part because of his own quest for an identity. “Barack Obama had to come out of a different closet,” Sullivan writes. “He had to discover his black identity ... just as gays discover their homosexual identity.”

Beware the Greeks, especially bearing debt. Officials in the euro zone are weighing their options Monday as politicians in Greece continue to struggle to form a government that would enable the next tranche of bailout money for the country. Patrick Honohan, a member of the European Central Bank Governing Council, said the prospect of Greece withdrawing from the currency “is not necessarily fatal, but it is not attractive.” Greek President Karolos Papoulias is set to continue meeting with representatives from his country’s political parties today, including the far-left Syriza coalition, which opposes the bailout and austerity measures. Honohan said an exit from the euro was “technically” possible. The euro fell against the dollar Monday, and European stocks dropped off as a result of the continuing political uncertainty in Greece.

A rights group said Syrian rebels killed 23 members of forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad Monday. Shelling of the town of Rastan by pro-Assad forces continued, the rights group said, killing nine people. Fifteen miles north of the city of Homs, the site of heavy shelling in past months, Rastan is a hotspot that has changed hands multiple times as opposition and Syrian military forces battle for control. “Shells and rockets have been hitting the town since 3 a.m. at a rate of one a minute,” a member of the Free Syrian Army told Reuters. “Rastan has been destroyed.” The shelling reportedly began Sunday evening and became increasingly intense, leaving a rebel commander among the dead, sources said.

As a young Georgia woman fights back against a flesh-eating bug that has claimed her fingers and most of her left leg, her parents have learned to read lips. Aimee Copeland is doing battle with necrotizing fasciitis, a rare infection of flesh-eating bacteria that can eat through muscle, fat, and other tissue. Copeland, whose breathing is being assisted by a tube down her throat, has been communicating by mouthing words to her parents, her father Andy Copeland said Monday. “Aimee is alert and trying to mouth questions,” the father said. “Her breathing tube has been reoriented to increase her comfort and allow them to try to read her lips.” According to her father, ice cream is the first thing Copeland wants to eat once she can manage it.

If it were up to Pat Robertson, host of Christian Broadcasting Network's 'The 700 Club,' Jesus would be the Republican presidential nominee. But since he's not running this year, Mitt Romney will have to do. After Mitt's appearance on the show--part of his tour of Evangelical America--Robertson gave a less than enthusiastic endorsement for the candidate. "It looks like what people who were worried about his Mormonism, at least that crowd is diminishing somewhat. The question is, if you have two candidates, you don't have Jesus running against someone else. You have Obama running against Romney." 

Singer Ricky Martin shared the stage with President Obama at a fundraiser in New York City on Monday afternoon. 200 donors paid at least $5,000 each to attend the gathering, which was cohosted by the LGBT Leadership Council and the Futuro Fund. In his remarks, Martin said, “We admire his courage, like the courage he showed last week in affirming his belief in marriage equality. That is the kind of courage we expect from our president and that is why we support him.” Martin had announced plans to host the fundraiser long before Obama voiced his support for gay marriage last week.

Don’t misinterpret the compliment. President Obama told hosts of ABC’s The View that J.P. Morgan is “one of the best managed banks there is,” but added that its recent risky investments and errors underscore a need for Wall Street reform. During an interview that airs Tuesday, Obama called CEO Jamie Dimon “one of the smartest bankers” and yet “they still lost $2 billion and counting,” noting how much more disastrous the loss could have been if it had occurred under a smaller, less successful bank. “We might have had to step in,” Obama said, stressing his administration’s determination to fight for financial reform and avoid behavior that led to the financial crisis—and how this policy differentiates him from Mitt Romney. Dimon and other top executives will face shareholders Tuesday at J.P. Morgan's annual meeting in Tampa.