ECONOMY

The Housing Industry Association (HIA) is disappointed with Reserve Bank of Australia's decision to keep interest rates steady for at least another month. The RBA has recently announced on Tuesday that it can possibly keep cash rates for another month as a weak Australian dollar reduces the need to cut rates.

This week, Croatia officially joins the European Union while the North Korean nuclear and missile threat is the subject of an ASEAN security forum.

A new meme is spreading in financial markets: The US Federal Reserve is about to turn off the monetary spigot. US Printmaster General Ben Bernanke announced that he might start reducing the monthly debt monetisation program called 'quantitative easing' (QE) as early as autumn 2013, and maybe stop it entirely by the middle of next year.

Gold dropped another -$18 an ounce... Mr. Market is working his devious magic... scaring away the Johnny-come-latelies... putting the fear of God into the rest of us.

The 2013 Financial Year could best be summarised by Charles Dickens' immortal opening line in A Tale of Two Cities: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.'

Australians are in for a treat when it's time to open superannuation statements by the end of the year. Average returns are reported to be at their highest in six years due to a strong market leap in the previous year.

After the economic repercussions brought by the Fukushima and Miyagi earthquakes, the Japanese economy had its first positive outlook in two years.

Fuel prices in New Zealand increased 4 cents per litre in June due to weakening of the New Zealand dollar and rising prices of commodities. Today, fuel prices rose again by another 3 cents along with the scheduled annual rise of petrol tax.

Nokia has raised up its stake at the mobile broadband industry as it purchased the remaining stake of Siemens in their joint partnership for 1.7 billion euros.

Several Myanmar nationals, particularly the religious and its supporters, express their criticism regarding their country's national mobile phone deal with a Qatar-based firm.

Saudi Arabia, determined to control the possible spread of the fatal Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) to the other global nations, has imposed a 15-day limit observance of the Umrah pilgrimage.

Speaking at a financial forum in Shanghai, head of the People's Bank of China Zhou Xiaochuan said investors can no longer depend on cheap cash to fund riskier operations, cautioning that the central bank will conduct pre-emptive adjustments to liquidity in the banking system to keep financial markets stable.

The Australian dollar may be losing its momentum as three major banks in Australia have lowered their forecasts due to the phasing out stimulus of the US Federal Reserve and China's commodity prices.

A new study by Strategy Analytics revealed on Thursday that India had overtaken Japan as the world's third-biggest smartphone market.

Despite economic reforms and rapid growth in the economy following the 2008 recession, India's currency is at rock-bottom against the dollar. This could spell higher interest rates on loans for resident Indians and the interest rate is likely to stay the same for a longer period of time.

Although it had categorically denied its participation, Australia's flag carrier Qantas Airways Limited has launched its own investigation into allegations that its in-flight headphones had been manufactured and purchased from abused inmates in a prison factory in China.

People are starting to fear for their health in India as corpses begin to decay and contaminate water sources following the devastating floods which is now two weeks old. Some of the victims have reported suffering from diarrhea. Officials fear an outbreak of pandemic diseases such as cholera and dysentery could erupt anytime.

Japan has decided to cancel visa requirements of visitors from Southeast Asian neighbors in order to boost its tourism sector which has been greatly damaged following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident as well as strained relations between Japan and China.

The haze triggered by forest fires in Indonesia has killed at least two in Malaysia, its next-door neighbour. The smog, which likewise severely affected the quality of air in Singapore, another next door neighbor, has crossed boundaries to affect some of Thailand's southern provinces.

Ben Bernanke is losing control. He desperately wants inflation. He's getting deflation instead. He wants low interest rates; yet rates are rising.

'When will America's economy finally stop limping along?' asks Steve Hargreaves for CNN Money. Next year, 2014, he says with a degree of confidence we find puzzling at best.

As the fires devouring the forests in Sumatra island continued to burn, the number of visits to medical institutions in both smog-embattled Singapore and Malaysia, Indonesia's next door neighbors, have likewise escalated.

The average pay of top bankers in the United States and Europe fell by 10 percent in 2012, according to a report by the Financial Times, after a series of high-profile revolts and legal scandals forced banks to place caps on executive remuneration.

An independent comparison of banks in developed countries shows four of Australia's big banks generating big profits than other banks. National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank, ANZ and Westpac are hailed most profitable banks in the developed world.

Driverless cars are commonly featured in futuristic sci-fi films, but despite being prophesised for decades they have so far not looked close to becoming reality. However, all of this looks set to change with eight major global motoring players all working on driverless technologies.

Singapore's air-pollution index has breached 400 on Friday after five full days of non-stop smoke billowing from neighbor Indonesia due to the latter's forest fires. And with the smog expected to last through for the next two weeks, citizens have been forced to improvise safety nets to protect themselves in the face of dwindling stock of surgical and gas masks.

On Thursday, ANZ spokesperson Stephen Ries denied earlier reports that the company is closing its Mulgrave call centre in Melbourne and transferring jobs to New Zealand and The Philippines. "We're not going to speculate what's going to happen in the future," he said. He assured Australian customers that ANZ's call centre headquarters would remain in Melbourne.

IBM Australia is looking to let go of 1,500 jobs in a move to send jobs offshore to New Zealand and Asia. Local jobs held by around 1,200 to 1,500 Australians are affected as their jobs have been found to be redundant. The figures are comparable with Ford's plans to cut 1,200 jobs when the company leaves Australia in 2016.

ANZ Bank considers cutting 600 jobs and plans to send head office jobs to New Zealand or the Philippines as part of its cost-cutting measures.