The! Biggest! News! of! the! Day! - Not Mark Hurd or WMT Prescriptions

Here are some of the contenders for today's biggest...news...of...the...day...

• Continuing uncertainty at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) as CEO Mark Hurd gets pulled into the spying quagmire...
• Another take on the Hurd/Hewlett-Packard controversy...
• Optimism on [subscription required] St. Jude Medical (STJ) and Medtronic (MDT) where it is argued "with fundamentals still strong, new products hitting the market and reasonable valuations, Medtronic and St. Jude could quicken investor pulses with shockingly better returns..."
• The announcement that Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) will offer $4 prescriptions for a number of generic drugs...
• Chatter about what OPEC will do...
• Some skepticism [subscription required] on the retail sector where it is said "The upshot is that investors might be getting too excited about retail stocks right now. Lower gasoline prices are helping. But a burst of bad weather could lead to some gloomy days ahead..."
• This interview with our very own Chris Johnson...

While those are all stories worth watching, I think it is obviously clear that the biggest story is the new twist to the options backdating tempest where Cablevision Systems (CVC) awarded options to a deceased man...perhaps the best description of the issue comes from the Wall Street Journal's article which quotes a professor of law who sums up the issue nicely...

"Trying to incentivize a corpse suggests they were not complying with the spirit of shareholder-approved stock-option plans..."