BUSINESS

Aftershocks continued to rattle the communities and residents of Iran's Bashagard City following the 6.2 magnitude earthquake that struck off Saturday, killing one child and injuring at least 20 others.

SPX500 Forecast To Trade To Record PeaksBy David Rodriguez, Quantitative StrategistSPX500 ?Retail CFD speculators are now their most short the SPX500 contract on record, and we see little choice but to take a contrarian bias to crowd sentiment and calls for fresh SPX500 highs.

Sony announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update for Xperia S, Xperia P and Xperia Go rolling out to owners of the three handsets. The update includes several bug fixes and system improvements plus new features from the Android Jelly Bean version. Unfortunately, Xperia S, P, and Go will not go on to Android 4.2 which means their life cycle has finally ended.

Zoom lens in cameras used to be the domain of digicams, not mobile phones. A Russian Web site said over the weekend that South Korean tech firm Samsung is set to release a smartphone with a 10x optical zoom lens.

Guide: The FNArena database tabulates the views of eight major Australian and international stock brokers: BA-Merrill Lynch, CIMB, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Macquarie and UBS.

Apple's stock price has seen a dramatic drop since its all-time high in September 2012.. Some analysts attribute this to a saturated market as Apple has been unable to successfully tap the giant Asian smartphone market where Apple could be losing billions of potential mobile phone users.

Friday's session largely boiled down to a tug of war between the resources and banks. As has been the case all week the miners won and financials underperformed. At face value Friday's performance appears underwhelming. The ASX200 finished with a gain of almost 8 points, having squandered an early lead of 44 points at its best levels which were seen in late morning trade. Investors appeared happy for some book squaring ahead of the weekend after the market gained 1.7% in the last 5 days.

The Android-based gaming console Ouya delays launching date from June 4 to June 25. High demands for the gaming console served as main reason of its delay. Once it's released, expect Android games and stream video services to be loaded right on your big-screen TV.

The main talking point in the early part of Asian trade has been the sharp rally in the US dollar as the Wall Street day was winding down. Many unilluminating rationalisations for the move have been offered, most of them turning around the US Fed's mindset towards quantitative easing. The better reading overnight in relation to the number of US unemployed claiming benefits was seen as adding credence to this view.

Nokia announced the new software update is now rolling out to owners of Lumia 900. The company finally released the Windows 7.8 OS for handset owners which now boast several system improvements and features.

Countries located in the Northern Hemisphere may well heave a sigh of relief as weather forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Thursday the weather phenomenon twins El Niño and La Niña are less likely to develop through the late summer and towards the winter.

After its initial successful foray into gadgets with the tablet Kindle, ecommerce site Amazon is joining the smartphone battle by coming out with two handheld devices.

What a strange world it is where global capital flees persecution by global central banks into the safety of the high priced Dow and the S&P500. Overnight, we saw another record high in the US indexes. As Dan Denning has been saying, we're in for a global melt-up in the big blue chips as capital seeks a refuge at the 'core' of the financial system.

A mood of prophecy, perhaps brought on by a large helping of osso bucco from our local Italian restaurant, came over us last night. We looked into the future. And there we saw a grim world.

It's taken a while, but the RBA has joined the international currency war by cutting official interest rates to an all-time low. We're not sure whether it will have the desired effect or not. Chances are we'll need further interest rate cuts to really see the dollar fall to a point where it starts to relieve pressure on various dollar sensitive industries.

Tesla Motors Inc., the electric car manufacturer, has finally broken even, seeing surprisingly encouraging profits for the first quarter of 2013. This definitely has beaten expectations of poor sales which were widely expected.

Even though China saw inflation speed up vaguely in April, it remained subdued, thereby making it possible for the government to introduce measures aimed at fostering the economy. Concerns have been recently raised over the strength of the economic recovery and the state of the world's second economy.

From its size to its strength and pixels, screens have become the new battleground for flagship smartphones as manufacturers come up with the best display to make more sales.

By Greg PeelThe Dow closed down 22 points, or 0.2%, while the S&P fell 0.4% to 1626 and the Nasdaq lost 0.

While Facebook is considering opening the door of the world's most popular social networking site to annoying and unwanted pop-up video ads, Firefox is turning off its portal to third-party cookies in upcoming versions of the popular browser.

After the Thursday launch of the affordable 2G touchscreen smartphone Asha 501 in India, Finnish tech firm will bring the same phone to UK for its May 14 debut in Europe.

The Australian share market closed flat today, following subdued Chinese inflation data and volatile jobs numbers.

HTC First keeps you close to all your friends and loved one in real time using the Facebook Home launcher. It features steady stream of photos and posts from friends right on the home screen which refreshes automatically. But why did AT&T dropped HTC First to only 99 cents under contract?

In the olden days - let's say back in the 13th century during the Mongol invasions of Europe - if you wanted to escape the Horde you retreated behind big thick city walls.

Public life bumbles along under a combination of false pretences and self-imposed delusions.

What about that Dow! Overnight, it punched through the 15,000 mark, on its way to 16,000, 17,000 and beyond. Could it happen? Well, markets are clearly in melt-up mode. But how far can they melt-up before the bust?

George Osborne, the Chancellor, is once again under the IMF scanner, as officials of the Washington-based financial institution will arrive to review UK economic growth. With additional warnings to recall austerity drive and reinstate the 'lost decade of growth,' the Trades Union Congress (TUC) finds competent support to drive home their arguments.

McDonald’s act of “getting in touch” with the Cleveland hero arouses disapproval from a business standpoint.

The Australian market has extended its gains following much better than forecast job numbers and an unsurprising inflation report in China. The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) is up 0.2 per cent or 11.7 pts to 5,189.6, making it the third day of improvements this week. There were 50,100 jobs added in April, 34,500 of which were full-time positions. The unemployment rate eased from 5.6 per cent to 5.5 per cent and the participation rate (the percentage of working-age Australians either employed or loo...