BUSINESS

-Earnings growth unlikely in FY13-Austen quarry has key to price upside-Challenges for clinker production-Hostage to housing improvementBy Eva BrocklehurstQuarry, concrete product and cement producer Adelaide Brighton ((ABC)) used a tour of its Austen quarry, NSW, to let brokers know that the going ...

Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) opened on Tuesday its $2.2 billion diamond mine in Argyle, Kimberley, Western Australia with a tradition ceremony to ward off evil spirits.

By Greg PeelThe Dow closed up 21 points, or 0.1%, while the S&P added 0.3% to 1597 and the Nasdaq jumped 0.

Is BlackBerry Chief Executive Officer Thorsten Heins being prophetic or simply sourgraping? That question will definitely be on the mind of techies and geeks alike after Mr Heins forecast the tablet will be dead in 2018.

The Australian sharemarket made it two straight days of gains, with the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) rising by 1.2 per cent. US markets hit fresh record highs thanks in part to improved corporate earnings, while the financials led local stocks higher in Australia today.

Hewlett Packard is preparing for a high-end tablet with 10-inches of screen display and running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Moreover, the device seems to have Nvidia Tegra 4 chipset clocked at 1.8GHz and its performance has been discovered via AnTuTu benchmark app.

Airline travelers frequently passing through Australia's Darwin International Airport may expect to experience improved changes as the airport starts next month its planned $75 million expansion upgrade.

While global attention is on the intense rivalry between South Korean tech giant Samsung and California-based Apple, two phone manufacturers are getting more notice from techies for outstanding features of their devices.

Great start for the Aussie market with the ASX 200 index hitting a 52 week high in early trade after getting a real leg up from a strong rally in banking stocks. By lunch The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) stood at 5,145 points up 38points.

Look out world. It seems not everything fake or imitation just originates from China. Another Asian country, war-torn Afghanistan, has been reportedly selling iPhone 5s for $700 courtesy of a retailer not recognized by the Apple Store hierarchy.

The U.S. network carrier Sprint has recovered from scarce supply of Samsung Galaxy S4 and announced the good news for consumers that the device is also available on their retail stores. Sprint also released an Over-the-Air (OTA) update for owners of Galaxy S4 to fix most bugs on the device.

Are you a rich or adventurous vagabond out to conquer the most delicious restaurant cuisines the world can offer? British magazine Restaurant has released its annual 50 best restaurants in the world, and for 2013, the top spot distinction has been given to Spain's El Celler de Can Roca.

Google services are slowly getting inside the flagship devices of Apple and these are acting more Android than before. One of the core part of the Android OS, Google Now comes to the iOS ecosystem and acts as an alternative for Siri.

Apple's iPad tablet continued to show competitors that it is still the tablet computer to beat based on the latest result of the U.S. Table Satisfaction Study released on Monday by J.D. Power and Associates.

By Andrew NelsonLast week on the uranium spot market might not have been busy, but at least it was positive.

In 2011, a college student from the University of Alberta, Josh Le, were only one pair of jeans for 15 months and to his surprise found that the germ level of the garment was not worrisome. Could the same thing be said of shirts?

Ah. So that's what happens when you spend money you expect to have and then the money fails to show up. You get a $7.5 billion federal deficit that will be around $12 billion by the end of the year. If Standard and Poor's said Australia's AAA credit rating was under threat without a government commitment to reduce the deficit, then aren't bigger government deficits a threat to Australia's credit rating now?

BHP Billiton informed that it finally got rid of the Pinto Valley copper mine and a railroad in Arizona. The lucky buyer of these assets is Canada's Capstone Mining Corp. which is to pay as much as $650 million to the global mining giant.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. the financial behemoth, which employees 258,965 people and is considered the largest US Bank with operations across the globe, announced the departure of its Co-Chief Operating Officer Frank Bisignano on the 28th April 2013.

The biggest question facing investors in this new age of centrally planned economies is this: inflation or deflation?

It is not just the new 7-inch Galaxy Tab 3 that South Korean tech giant Samsung will release in 2013. Citing a Samsung tablet plans for 2013 leak, SamMobile claims the tech firm will release four more tablets for the remainder of the year.

As per the latest Ernst & Young (E&Y) Item Club report the "Bank Lending of loans," UK business is going to see an upward swing by the end of 2013. If it does transpire that banks increase loan lending to UK business, it will be for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis which catapulted the markets and economy in turmoil.

By Greg PeelThe Dow closed up 106 points, or 0.7%, while the S&P gained 0.7% to 1593 and the Nasdaq added 0.

It was a solid start to the trading week with financial stocks driving the gains. After rising by 3.2 per cent over the course of the shortened trading week last week, local stocks added 0.5 per cent today. The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) finished the day's trade at 5,108.3pts.

The local market is continuing on its strong run, with the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) up by 0.5 per cent. This follows on from the best weekly performance for Australian shares since December 2011.

Hunan Province has been included in Taiwan's alert list for travelers bound for China, with the total number of areas now reaching 10. Taiwan first issued the travel health advisory Thursday last week, April 25.

Android Open Source Project is now open for Sony Xperia Z and developers are encouraged to contribute to the software. The developer community can have fun tweaking on the said AOSP software to hasten the development which may lead to the official Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean firmware for Sony Xperia Z.

While Facebook, the world's most popular social media site, continues to pervade the lives of its 1 billion members through the newly released Facebook Home, in Australia, the site is becoming less popular as almost 400,000 Aussies unfriended Facebook since December 2012.

Public school students in Queensland might as well start looking this early for a possible new school as 55 state schools have been listed on the drawing board due for the padlock soon.