BUSINESS

By Kathleen Brooks, Research Director UK EMEA, FOREX.comIt's been pretty slow-going today as economic data has been thin on the ground.

The flagship smartphone HTC One comes with a variant which supports up to 64GB of microSD card and still features the metal body, Zoe camera effects, 'ultrapixels', Blink Feed and BoomSound.

By Andrew NelsonLast week was a slow, if not somewhat significant week on the uranium spot market. Slow because only three deals were done, with just 300,000 pounds U3O8 changing hands.

Canada glories in many titles. Similar to Canada, Toronto is frequently and constantly ranked at the top of rankings. In some rankings, the country was ranked as one of the best places to do business.

Bad money drives out good money. That's the short version of Gresham's Law. What it really means is that people interested in self-preservation don't follow trends. When inflation runs amok in financial markets or in the economy, prudent people tend to hoard what's valuable. They spend what's less valuable before it becomes even more devalued (paper money).

U.S. PC-maker Dell said over the weekend that it would begin to ship in July a thumb-sized computer called Project Ophelia. The Android-based device as big as a USB stick, will sell for $100.

Tesla Motors Inc., headed by green entrepreneur Elon Musk, is looking to rewrite the car industry in the US with a new stock offering.

Gold experts continue to see bleaker days ahead for the yellow metal, once considered a safe haven. Ric Deverall of Credit Suisse forecast the price of gold would further dip to $1,100 in 2013 and even plunge more to $1,000 in the next five years.

By Greg PeelThe Dow closed down 19 points, or 0.1%, while the S&P lost 0.1% to 1666 and the Nasdaq lost 0.

The afternoon session saw the local index retreat from its best levels of the session when it was seeing gains of more than 1%. The main event of the week sees the US Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke delivering a testimony to the Joint Economic Committee in Washington on Wednesday night local time. Whilst the purpose of the Mr Bernanke's chat is to update the politicians on the state of the economy, the key focus will be on Quantitative Easing.

David Karp, 26-year old founder of micro blogging site Tumblr, becomes the latest young tech billionaire with the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo on Sunday. The micro-blogging site was sold for $1.1 billion cash.

The Australian share market has hit five year highs in early trade on Monday, following a strong lead from Wall Street and a weaker Australian dollar.

In a boon to Australian consumers, a mortgage rate war is underway following the recent 25 basis points overnight cash rate cut made by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

Australia's state government of Queensland has laid down a new set of changes to securing and renewing driver licenses for old-timer and new entrant drivers.

Cliff Kluge, a George resident who claims to have found the secret Coke formula, sold the much sought after beverage recipe on eBay. The successful bidder is a 15-year-old teen who bid $15 million.

HTC North Asia will double its production of its flagship device, HTC One, this month, said Jack Tong, president of HTC North Asia. Production will continue to expand in June to meet the strong demand for the unit, which has merited favourable reviews by techies since its release in April.

Until recently, it was only Amazon, one of the most profitable online stores in world, that was in the public eye for irregularities in its UK tax payments. May 15 saw another tech major - Google Inc. - added to the list of high-profile companies with business operations in the UK, which despite earning huge profits continue to circumvent local tax guidelines and get away with paying low tax.

Google will release a prescription version of its newly launched Google Glasses. The confirmation of the prescription edition came at the tech firm's I/O conference last week when several employees of the company were spotted wearing a pair of the trial specs.

Yahoo, which has started to recover following the takeover of Marissa Mayer as chief executive officer, is reportedly eyeing the purchase of popular blogging site Tumblr.

Bill Gates is richest man in the world again since 2007 with a personal net wealth of $72.2 billion according to Bloomberg. He snatched the title from former No. 1 Mexican mobile phone mogul Carlos Slim.

The Australian market not only held onto its gains but extended them further this afternoon. The ASX200 Index jumped by 0.3 per cent, making it three stronger sessions this week. Despite the rise, local shares slipped by 0.5 per cent over the past five sessions. This makes it the first week of losses in a month.

Samsung latest flagship Galaxy S4 becomes the fastest-selling smartphone ever with four million shipments in 4 days after its release on April 26, 2013. Galaxy S4 breaks the record of Galaxy S3 of selling 3 million units within 21 days.

Despite the global gold demand trade decelerated in the first quarter of 2013 compared from the year ago, the actual exchange of gold among small-time investors in the Middle East, India, and China was very much alive through jewellery in the same period.

Finally, after two straight days of losses the Aussie market is creeping higher. The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) is up 0.2 per cent or 8.8pts to 5,153.3. The gains are being recorded despite weakness in US markets, which slipped by 0.3 per cent however are still around all-time highs.

For the past ten years, in what could be America's most sensitive health topic to date, a report has disclosed that the number of mental health cases in the world's freest economy is rising.

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, topped the Billionaires' List of Bloomberg, released on Friday. He grabbed the title World's Richest Person from Carlos Slim of Mexico.

Experts and researchers working with marine mammals are now being advised to wear protective suits and gear as the dreaded influenza A H1N1 subtype virus has mutated and had been detected present and active in elephant seals off the coast of central California.

FNArena is surveying investor sentiment in Australia in an effort to generate, over time, a guage similar to the AAII Investor Sentiment Survey in the US.

By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, Editor FNArenaI joined Twitter. Not because I am curious what this celebrity has to say about her kids, or to read that another one is waiting for a connecting flight, impatiently.