BUSINESS

The South Australian Supreme Court overturned on Tuesday a ministerial approval given to Argonaut Resources (ASX: ARE) to drill for copper, gold and iron-oxide in parts of Lake Torrens and Andamooka Island.

The local share market enjoyed a strong session today, with investor sentiment boosted by a positive offshore lead, better than expected Chinese economic data and strong quarterly production reports from a number of our key mining and energy companies. The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) added 68.8pts by close or 1.6pct to 4277.7 while the S&P/ASX 200 Index (XJO) firmed by 68.4pts or 1.7pct to 4215.6.

Cavalier Corp.'s chief executive and managing director, Wayne Chung, is set to retire from his executive role at the company, while operations manager Colin McKenzie has been tapped to take on the lead role.

Aircraft manufacturer BAE Systems will taps its Australian unit to put in place an aerospace component manufacturing operation in Adelaide which would produce titanium parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).

Ports of Auckland workers warned against contracting jobs lest they will be compelled to leave the country, the Maritime Union says.

It was a case of 'video killed the radio star' scenario as personal computers, latest industry figures showed PCs continuing their gradual decline, no thanks to the rising dominance of mobile devices.

With a new CEO and a quadrupled budget, the New Zealand oil and gas industry is moving forward against growing opposition to modernized oil exploration, such as deep-sea drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

Gloomy market environment and government intrusions were being blamed by the banking sector for the projected job losses that the industry could witness this year, which could run to thousands of job cuts, media reports said.

More and more Australians are opting for fixed home loans as the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported this week that fixed mortgage soared to 11.1 percent in November just weeks after the central bank pushed back the country's cash rate.

The final approval allowing Australia's Lynas Corp.'s rare earths facility to be fully operational is now caught in a thorny path of Malaysian national elections slated in March.

Reflecting Australia's two-speed economy, job prospects in the country's banking sector are expected to be bleak for 2012 while the resources sector has thousands of job openings and even has to take in immigrant workers to fill in the vacancies.

Excuse me for being slightly cynical, but didn't you just love yesterday's Leighton Holdings spin campaign?

By Greg PeelIndustry consultant TradeTech closed out its spot uranium price indicator for 2011 at US$52.

Despite a post New Year burst of gloom about retailing, online shopping and employment, the reality is that the Australian economy has remained where it was in December, doing a bit better than many media reports suggest, and doing poorly as the same media reports suggest.

Friday the 13th saw the eurozone crisis dragged back to confront investors larger and small around the world.

Europe's 2011 woes returned from their Christmas holidays earlier than expected thanks by the Standard & Poor's ratings downgrades and investors here and offshore will have to be very careful.

The Consumer Electronics Show is over and the only thing left to do is mop up the losers of the biggest electronics trade show of the year. Here are some gadgets and companies that made a poor showing at CES 2012.

Well, after a month off, nothing much has changed.

Some of our most vital export markets are facing a worsening in growth prospects for 2012.

It's not 'new' news, given the damage done to share portfolios over the past six months or so, but we had further confirmation yesterday that the poor performance of equities is going to be bad for the country's listed investment companies and broking firms.

By Rudi Filapek-VandyckFNArena has added another video to its Investors Education section on the website.

European stock markets rose Monday, as the French government successfully sold Treasury bills and investors shrugged off last week's news that Standard & Poor's downgraded the credit ratings of nine euro-zone nations, including France, Italy and Spain.

By Greg PeelI would have loved to have been writing something new and interesting in my first Overnight Report for 2012, but I'm not.

Apple Inc.'s next generation iPad 3 is already in full production in China and is expected to go on sale on March.

Australian oil and gas producer Santos (ASX: STO) gave the approval to develop the $490-million Fletcher Finucane project off the northwest coast of Western Australia (WA).

Tech titan Apple has reported marked improvements on working environments of employees hired by the company's mostly Asian contractors to assemble its bestselling electronic devices. Nevertheless, there is still much needed to be done.

Higher consumer prices last month of 2011 proved the Australian central bank's contention that inflation worries could dominate the initial months of 2012, latest economic indicators showed.

By Peter Switzer, Switzer Super ReportThe first trading days into 2012 look positive but unconvincing and some big call merchants still have a lot of us spooked.

By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, Editor FNArenaYour team at FNArena has returned from a well-deserved annual break, ready to take on whatever lies ahead for the next twelve months.