BUSINESS

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.

By Alexander Green, Investment U Chief Investment StrategistInvestors worldwide have watched gold take a precipitous plunge in recent weeks.

We end the week continuing on the 'bad news is good news' theme. Actually, it's a theme that's been in vogue for a while now, but it's really ramped up in the past week.

Paris... Can Paris be described in few words, one sentence, two sentences? The answer is no. Paris, the City of Light, has this undeniable magic that lures ordinary mortals. But the truth is that Paris is not only the city of love. Indeed, Paris is believed to be the better business destination. The City of Light is simply believed to be a place to do business.

The Co-operative Bank, which currently owns one bank branch and three outlets in Scotland, came forward in December 2011 to bid £ 750 million for part of a business owned by Lloyds Banking Group. It entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with "Lloyds Banking Group" to complete the purchase by November 2013.

South Korea has reasons to boast as it saw its Q1 GDP climb at the fastest rate in two years. The expansion was above analysts' expectations as growth was driven by an improvement in construction and investment, not to mention strong exports. In spite of optimistic data , it seems that the country will struggle as consumers and exporters are less confident.

All eyes are on South Korean tech giants Samsung and LG which one will win the race to produce a smartphone with flexible screens. However, a Canadian laboratory has actually made a prototype that bends and twists when it received a call or short messaging. The model is called MorePhone, made by researchers at the Human Media Lab of Queen's University.

Unlike the HTC which has been classified by iFixit as a weak phone in terms of repairability, the newly released Samsung Galaxy S4 got good scores from the same repair site.

The ASX200 finished the holiday shortened week with a modest loss. Although the week will be remembered for the resurgent resource sector which helped the index gain in the range of 3.5%.

Amid concerns over privacy breaches caused by wearing the latest gizmo, the Google Glass, techies have come up with a list of 10 places not to wear the device.

The Australian market is improving for the fifth straight trading session, making it the second longest winning streak of the year. The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) is up 0.1 per cent or 5.00 pts to 5,089.2. As long as the market holds on to the gains, shares would have improved by more than 3.5 per cent this week.

In 1971, American country singer John Denver released a song titled Take Me Home, Country Road, which immortalised the state, West Virginia, as a place that feels like heaven because of its beauty.

GrainCorp Ltd., Australia's largest listed grain trader and the last standing independent grains handler, has conceded to a $3.4 billion takeover bid offer of U.S.-based Archer Daniels Midland Co (ADM).

Russian billionaire Alexander Nesis is poised to enter a joint venture that will tackle the extraction and production of precious rare earths from the country's giant Tomtor deposit in Yakutia.

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.