BUSINESS

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.

By Michael Lombardi, MBA for Profit ConfidentialSomething is starting to smell in the bond market...Since their peak in July of 2012, 30-year U.

Gold continued to lost its luster as prices of spot gold futures for June delivery dropped 0.7 per cent and closed on Thursday at $1.386.90 an ounce on the Comex in New York. It is the sixth consecutive prices that the price went down, and the longest slump for the precious metal once considered a safe haven.

Gina Rinehart, the richest person in Australia, is renewing her criticism of the federal government's policies, hitting it for incurring debt levels that are unsustainable and for treating the mining industry like an ATM.

By Greg PeelThe Dow fell 42 points, or 0.3%, while the S&P lost 0.5% to 1650 and the Nasdaq dropped 0.

The Australian share market was sold off for a second consecutive session today, despite new record highs on Wall Street and European shares closing at five year highs.

A low-cost diarrhoea vaccine for children has been developed by India, enabling parents all over the world to avail of a cheaper alternative medicine that could cure and save their children from the deadly Rotavirus.

Despite record highs on Wall Street overnight and a positive start to the day's trade, local stocks are back in the red at lunchtime in the East, weighed down by mining players and weakness in the healthcare stocks.

Dairy Australia said on Thursday that there would likely be a 10 to 15 per cent increase in milk prices in 2013. The announcement spells good news for Australian farmers, but represents bad news for consumers.

When I hear news reports about consumer spending being soft and businesses struggling, frankly I think it's all rubbish. From my perspective, no other time in history has been so promising for people with a great idea (some call them entrepreneurs) to go from zero dollars to a million overnight.