Need to know:
Another one could be close to biting the dust in Europe.

Cyprus is getting closer to becoming the next euro-zone country to tap a European bailout fund, the Wall Street Journal said.

The idyllic vacation island in the Mediterranean could be forced to ask for a financial rescue as early as this month as it works to stave off the spread of Greece’s financial crisis and its worsening credit reputation, the paper said.

Cyprus’ already is forced to contend with paying double-digit yields for what two major ratings agencies already classify as junk.

Want to know:
American International Group CEO Robert Benmosche won’t have to work until he’s 80, but he thinks you might have to.

In an interview with Bloomberg from his villa in the Croatian seaside resort town Dubrovnik, the AIG CEO said Europe’s debt crisis demonstrates that people aren’t working long enough to make their pensions and medical services affordable to their governments.

People around the world could need to work until they’re 70 or 80, he told Bloomberg.

Benmosche is 68, but since he earned more than $10 million in 2011 alone, he can probably retire whenever he wants. 

Dull but important:
Billionaire investor George Soros is giving the euro zone three months to figure out how to keep the euro alive.

He describes the euro zone as a political bubble on the verge of popping. Speaking at the Festival of Economics in Italy, a country that's of course struggling with its own economics, Soros said he expects that market demands of European governments will exceed their ability to pay in three months.

The euro as you know has been on the verge of collapsing for a while now.

Just because:
Yum! Brands, the corporation behind KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell wants to do in India what it has done in China.

The company wants to give McDonald’s a little more run for its rupee and is trying to figure out how to copy its Chinese dominance in India, Financial Times reported. China is one of the few countries in the world where Yum stores outnumber McDonald’s locations. Yum has around 4,000 KFC and Pizza Huts in China, where McDonald's has only about 1,400 golden arches. 

By 2015, Yum expects Indians will be spending more than $1 billion a year on KFC fried chicken.

Strange but true:
The Securities and Exchange Commission may be a more dangerous place to work than you think, at least according to the SEC’s lead internal investigator.

If there's one certainty on planet earth in 2012, it's that many, many people are obsessed with a man named Steve Jobs.

You may have heard of him.

He was the founder of Apple Computer who went on to reinvent the company into a digital powerhouse, along the way revolutionizing personal computing, tablet computing, music, mobile phones, animated movies, marketing, digital publishing and various other cool things that most of us can't now live without.

You may have also heard there's a Hollywood movie in the works about this fascinating, complicated and very problematic man.

As part of that project, famed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin is in the early stages of whittling down Walter Isaacson's best-selling tome "Steve Jobs."

Apple fans — and plenty of others interested in the intersection of business, technology, art and society that Jobs personified — are of course eagerly awaiting the upcoming film on his life.

So Sorkin — who penned A Few Good Men, Moneyball, The Social Network, The West Wing, and many other blockbusters — has given the Apple masses what they crave: details, details, details.

Here are some of the juiciest bits, according to Apple Insider, not to mention the 50,000 other stories about this that are now whirring through the Jobs-hungry web:

"One of the hesitations I had was that this was a little like writing about The Beatles,” Sorkin said. “There are so many people out there that know him and revere him; I saw a minefield of disappointment. I hope people don't say 'You really missed the big thing.' But that's bound to happen. All I can say at this early stage is that you should think of this as a painting, not a photograph.”

So forget the "cradle-to-grave" approach that worked so well for Isaacson, folks.

What will the movie be about, then?

"I'm probably going to instead identify the point of friction that appeals to me and write about that." Sorkin also said Jobs was "an extremely complicated guy, that I know for sure."

Sorkin was particularly insightful on the genius of Jobs:

The euro crisis is, understandably, perplexing to most Americans.

Its subject matter is arcane and complex.

Its main action is playing out in the darkened halls of Brussels and Frankfurt and on the mysterious balance sheets of banks across Europe.

It is producing a variety of severe economic, human and political costs throughout the world's largest trading bloc.

And it practically requires a spreadsheet to keep up with all the pieces of the worsening drama, from analyzing the personalities that make up the various coalition partners in Greece's shattered government, to tabulating minute-by-minute yields on Italian and Spanish debt, to reading the shifting political winds in Paris, Dublin and beyond, to — most critically — divining the motivations and maybe even the psychology of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the queen of austerity who holds Europe's future in her hands.

For help with this last point in particular, you should immediately turn to Martin Wolf, the Financial Times columnist and heavyweight champion of the world when it comes to making sense of the euro zone mess.

In it, Wolf offers a brainy analysis that gets to the heart of this very pressing matter: what, exactly, does Germany want?

Here's how he sums up the stern mood in Berlin, and I must warn you, it is not an optimistic outlook:

"This is how I understand the views of the German government and monetary authorities: no eurozone bonds; no increase in funds available to the European Stability Mechanism (currently €500bn); no common backing for the banking system; no deviation from fiscal austerity, including in Germany itself; no monetary financing of governments; no relaxation of eurozone monetary policy; and no powerful credit boom in Germany. The creditor country, in whose hands power in a crisis lies, is saying “nein” at least seven times."

There are two ways to look at this, Wolf argues:

When you come right down to it, confidence is the whole deal in economics.

That's because consumers need it to reach into their wallets, and spending makes up about two-thirds of all economic activity in the United States.

But businesses big and small also need confidence to hire people, buy capital goods and other stuff, and make investments in the future.

And all kinds of investors — from US Treasury note buyers, to Greek debt holders, to those looking to own shares in Facebook or any other company — need it, too.

In short, confidence matters.

A lot.

So how's consumer confidence these days in the world's largest economy?

Terrible.

Or great.

It depends on which report — and which group of two-handed economists — you want to believe.

Today the Conference Board said consumer confidence this month plunged to its lowest level since January.

Here's how Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at the Conference Board, put it in a statement:

"Consumer Confidence fell in May, following a slight decline in April. Consumers were less positive about current business and labor market conditions, and they were more pessimistic about the short-term outlook. However, consumers were more upbeat about their income prospects, which should help sustain spending. Taken together, the retreat in the Present Situation Index and softening in consumer expectations suggest that the pace of economic growth in the months ahead may moderate."

Now try this one on for size.

Just four days ago, the Thompson Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers rose to its highest point since 2007 — before the Great Recession began.

That consumer sentiment index, by the way, has risen for nine straight months.

Here's how Richard Curin, the Surveys of Consumers chief economist, put it in a statement: