Lenovo’s solid results stand out in the global PC industry, which is struggling with weak demand as more consumers turn to tablet computers and smartphones. Global PC shipments in the first quarter fell 14 percent from a year earlier, according to research group IDC.

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Tokyo-based SoftBank has agreed to give the federal government the right to approve one of the directors it names to Sprint’s board. That director will be responsible for overseeing national security issues. People familiar with the matter said the government is also seeking the right to approve some of Sprint’s equipment purchases and wants the removal of Chinese gear from a Sprint affiliate’s network.

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In a brief statement Wednesday, Pearson said that Penguin has reached a “comprehensive agreement with the U.S. State Attorneys General and private class plaintiffs to pay $75 million in consumer damages plus costs and fees to resolve all antitrust claims relating to e-book pricing.”

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The information provides a powerful tool for marketers but raises new privacy concerns. Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has long been considered particularly sensitive.

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“The proposal from Third Point, Dan Loeb is something that we should discuss thoroughly at a board meeting and then we’ll decide Sony’s stance,” Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai said in a briefing Wednesday to lay out his strategic vision for the company. “Therefore, we are now going to start the discussion and we are still at the starting stage.”

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The Richfield, Minn., company reported another quarterly loss driven by weaker sales in its European business, which it recently shed. The company last month sold the rest of its stake in Best Buy Europe back to Carphone Warehouse Group PLC for about $775 million to help shore up its profitability.

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With its vast operations in troubled Europe under siege from intense competition and regulatory changes, Vodafone is in desperate need of a reboot to keep pace with competitors whose popular bundled offers of mobile, fixed-line, television and Internet services are leaving the U.K. company isolated as a mobile-only player.

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Online design retailer Fab Inc. is in advanced talks to raise $250 million to $300 million in venture capital in a deal that would value the fast-growing but unprofitable company at $1 billion not including the new capital, people familiar with the matter said.

The deal and its list of final participants hasn’t closed, but it is expected to wrap up in mid-June, with existing investor Atomico is leading the round, the people said. Atomico did not respond to requests for comment.

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Under the terms of the agreement, Websense stockholders will receive $24.75 in cash for each share of Websense common stock they hold, representing a premium of approximately 29 percent over Websense’s Friday closing price and a 53 percent premium to Websense’s average closing price over the past 60 days. The Websense board of directors unanimously backed the deal.

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Just how much is Samsung willing to pay? The contest will see 10 winners, who will receive a combined $800,000 in prize money.

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On May 9, a day after the company posted its first-ever quarterly profit, the stock exploded higher in heavy trading. Ms. Baiynd, a full-time short-term trader since 2006, pounced. From her home office in Charlotte, N.C., the 48-year-old says she scooped up shares at $67.15 and sold them on Monday for a 31 percent gain.

The very next day, Ms. Baiynd changed tack, she says, successfully betting Tesla would head lower on a day when the shares finished down 14 percent from their intraday high.

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Only in the past few years has the Central Intelligence Agency issued standardized guidelines on how to use social media, according to one former intelligence official. The line these guidelines draw appears to be thin: Revealing too much on Facebook and Twitter risks tipping too much to the other side. But given that social media use is becoming ubiquitous, revealing too little could also arouse suspicion.

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Ms. Powell Jobs has ramped up her years-long crusade for the Dream Act, which would give citizenship to young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally. She says she also wants Congress to pass “common-sense immigration reform” for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. She has commissioned polling, lobbied Congress, urged President Barack Obama to take action and funded a documentary about undocumented youth.

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Following a slowdown in technology IPOs after Facebook’s offering last May, companies including microblogging service Twitter Inc., peer-to-peer lending site Lending Club Corp. and software-tools startup Atlassian are among those preparing to go public, said executives and people familiar with the matter.

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An unusual supercooled machine built by D-Wave Systems Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, will be installed at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Center, near Google’s campus in Mountain View, Calif. It will be operated by the nonprofit Universities Space Research Association.

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On Sunday, the Kepler telescope, which hovers in space about 40 million miles from Earth, suspended its operations and automatically put itself into a pre-programmed safe mode. By Tuesday, space-agency mission workers had determined that one of the three reaction wheels required to orient the spacecraft had jammed, NASA officials said. So far, engineers have been unable to get it moving properly.

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The move comes on the same day of the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, in which Google is set to launch a paid subscription music-streaming service akin to that of Spotify AB. In the past, the company has used this conference to preview music-related initiatives.

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That has started to change. Boards worried about their scant digital expertise are scrambling to recruit newcomers who can advise management on strategies for mobile devices, social media and data analytics.

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The DICE unit, purchased by EA in the middle of the last decade, will be a key cog in the creation of a new series of “Star Wars” videogames. Walt Disney Co. announced last week that it enlisted EA to make “Star Wars” games weeks after closing its LucasArts games division.

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The software expected in coming months will effectively be a second launch of Windows 8, the operating system that debuted last October to great fanfare but fairly tepid sales. But the Windows 8.1 name underscores that Microsoft considers the revised software a relatively minor update and not a do-over, which would point to fundamental problems with the original product.

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Companies from Google Inc. to small startups are introducing new features, such as taking and syncing notes and files within the browser, voice-recognition, video calls and messaging. They are also reinventing the browser for newly connected devices like cars.

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Sharp said Tuesday that Executive Vice President Kozo Takahashi, 58, will replace current President Takashi Okuda, who led the company during a tumultuous year in which it scrambled to secure capital and warned about its future.

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In a letter to Sony Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, Mr. Loeb, founder of the hedge fund Third Point, said that by listing the entertainment arm, Sony would be able to focus on unlocking the “considerable and underappreciated value” at its electronics business. He added that he sees as much as 60 percent upside to Sony shares if the company followed his proposals.

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The threat comes at a sensitive time for European telecommunications-equipment suppliers, which are looking to increase their business in China.

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The company is betting that a thoroughly modernized approach to IT — consciously modeled in many ways on advances made by Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. — will help accelerate the turnaround led by chief executive Dan Akerson. The company’s new data center has been designed to be easier to maintain and expand, and less expensive to cool than older, conventional data centers. It also supports a mixture of conventional and experimental technologies that the company hopes will measurably improve its capacity to innovate by doubling the number of IT projects it is able to undertake. But those capabilities will not transform the company unless the rest of the company undergoes an accompanying cultural shift, one that Mr. Mott says has “just begun.”

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