Jamelle Agbuis

The last week saw sharp declines in commodity prices and equity markets, with oil taking a big hit as Eurozone worries rose to the fore. After the drop in oil prices, which many analysts point out was merely correcting the speculative rise in prices, oil is once again trending upward.

"Windows Phone Mango will be the release that is used for the first Nokia Windows Phones," Lees says. "We already have Nokia phones running Windows Phone Mango in our labs today."

The Australian Dollar is trading around the USD1.0550 level this morning after a relatively quiet night.

Barnes and Noble on Tuesday unveiled its new touchscreen Nook Simple Touch e-reader, the company's first Nook to lack a color screen and Android branding.

Today, Andy Lees, president of Microsoft's Windows Phone division, boasted about 18,000 applications in 7 months. He can only wish for this kind of future: 500,000 applications approved to Apple's iOS app store in about three years. This isn't even a fair fight. The elephant in the room could squash the mouse just too easily.

The release of Opera Mini 6 for iOS has seen the app transformed into a universal app that has been optimized to take advantage of the iPad's larger screen.

Apple has beefed up its patent portfolio, apparently obtaining the rights to about 200 patents formerly held by Freescale Semiconductor. The patents cover a range of technologies, from Wi-Fi to cellular data and data encoding, some filed as late as 2010.

The Australian Dollar opens significantly lower this morning buying 1.0505 US Cents.

The Australian share market closed slightly lower on Tuesday but bounced back from earlier lows caused by concerns about European sovereign debt.

US new home sales rose 7.3pct in April to a seasonally adjusted 323,000 - the highest rate since December. Median home prices were up 4.6pct from a year earlier.

It's hard to know what hurt the Elders share price the most yesterday, the downgrade of the outlook or the general sell-off across the market, led by banks.

Investors would do better to worry about the continuing drought in central and southern China than another dip in a key manufacturing index for May.

Markets across Asia sold off yesterday with financial and big miners taking a whack from nervous investors.

Gold prices moved higher last week, as investors continue to believe that higher inflation is likely to seep into global economies making hard assets such as gold a beneficial asset to hold in a portfolio.

Australian burrito chain Mad Mex has seen a successful uptake on its month-long Cinco de Mayo Big Burrito challenge, reporting over 2000 of the one-kilogram burritos sold at its nine outlets in NSW, Queensland and Victoria.

The AUD is weaker this morning after some poor data releases and continued concerns about Europe saw investors move towards the USD in safe haven trading.

Peak horticulture body Growcom has called for the urgent integration of food policy and programs by the federal government to plan for future food security.

Australia is on the cusp of an employment skills shortage in the information and communications technology sector, according to data from the Information Technology Contract and Recruitment Association (ITCRA).

The average woman is still not being paid the same as the average man, according to a recent report by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

US equities were under pressure during the last week gyrating in a tight range as commodities and currencies pushed and pulled equities up and down. Outside influences such as European debt concerns, and weak US housing data offset strong earnings data from Wal-mart and Home Depot.

For a while yesterday morning, Woodside Petroleum shares were the only major stock in green in the big sell-off after it surprised the market with a big gas discovery off the northwestern WA coast.

As the trading week begins, two lingering concerns are playing havoc with the common currency Euro, pushing it broadly lower and resulting in a record low against the safe haven Swiss Franc.

In London trading today, the FTSE has been experiencing heavy, broad-based selling.

Markets across the globe racked up big losses yesterday and overnight.

The Australian dollar opens higher this morning currently trading a rate of 1.0647 against its US counterpart. In what proved to be a very subdued day of trading with very tight ranges being seen throughout the Asian Session, the recent trend of investors buying the currency on dips continued.

The Australian share market ended the day deeply in the red at a two-month low as finance stocks lost the most ground amid widespread selling.

China´s manufacturing index hit a 10-month low in May according to a ´´flash´´ estimate by HSBC. But price pressures eased with input prices at a 9-month low.

In the minds of most investors, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank assumes the role of leader of the world's economies, with the ECB generally viewed as its close second.

Global and more importantly, Chinese steel production continues to run at near record pace.