BUSINESS

President Obama's weekend statement on India , raising concerns over the invest climate in the country, has evoked sharp criticisms making it further hard for the Indian Prime Minister to go ahead with reforms.

India's wholesale price index (WPI) rose slower than expected rate of 7.25 percent on a year-on- year basis, contrary to the analysts' expectations, triggering hopes for rate cuts from the Reserve Bank of India.

U.S. stock index futures point to lower opening Monday as investor sentiment was dragged down by worries of global economic growth continuing to falter.

Asian stock markets mostly advanced Monday on speculation of further stimulus measures from China after Premier Wen Jiabao warned Sunday that the recovery in the world’s second largest economy was not stable.

India's headline inflation slowed to its lowest level in five months in June, helped by slower increases in fuel prices, adding to pressure on the RBI from business leaders to cut interest rates to help revive the lacklustre economy.

Most European markets fell Monday as investors continued to have concerns about the faltering global economy and mounting debt crisis in the euro zone.

Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex and NSE's Nifty on Monday, opened flat, and are hovering between the red and the green, signaling the volatility, as the market awaits June inflation figures.

Just a few days after a Chinese e-commerce platform surprised the tech world by accepting preorders for the next generation Apple iPhone, aka iPhone 5, another report from Asia surfaced Saturday, saying that production of the highly anticipated smartphone has already begun and is expected to launch this fall.

Asian markets were rose Monday as investors are hoping that China will soon announce stimulus measures to regain the economic growth momentum.

NBC News announced Sunday night that it had officially severed its online relationship with the Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) with respect to their joint news site MSNBC.com. NBC has acquired the MSNBC domain, paying Microsoft about $300 million for its stake in the site.

Had a rough time playing Minecraft Sunday? There’s a reason why. A security flaw in Minecraft that allowed users to sign into strangers’ accounts was exposed by security researchers Alex Vanderport and Keegan Novik when the Team Avolition duo posted a detailed advisory about the snafu on GitHub Saturday.

The release of Samsung’s Galaxy S3, its flagship smartphone for 2012, has sparked excitement throughout the mobile device industry. In addition to impressive hardware specs, it seems the Korean manufacturer is seeking to please with its aesthetic features as well. According to Pocket Lint, Samsung has hinted that the Galaxy S3 will be available in an array of new colors, in addition to those already announced.

Consider: at New York’s Stuyvesant H.S., one of the best in the country, more than 80 students are ensnared in a cheating probe of a city language exam administered last month. Cellphone accounts are intercepted by cops. Is anything electronic immune?

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams along with Russian cosmonaut Yury Malenchenko and Japan's Akihito Hoshide departed for the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Sunday morning.

Asian markets breathed a sigh of relief Friday as the Chinese GDP figures improved, contrary to what some had feared, and eased concerns of a sharper slowdown in the world's second largest economy. The second quarter economic data showed a sequential acceleration and pointed to a pick-up in growth in the second half of the year.

Student-loan debt levels are rapidly rising and recently topped $1 trillion in the U.S.. And communities in Kansas and New York are using the bait of paying off this debt to lure educated residents who they hope will help improve the economic, cultural, and social conditions of their respective regions.

One of the euro zone's two bailout funds could begin disbursing monies to Spain at the end of this month in a €100 billion ($120 billion) rescue of the country's embattled banks, according to an article by the Associated Press based on a story in the German newsweekly Der Spiegel on Saturday.

Beleaguered security boss Nick Buckles has come under intense scrutiny after it emerged earlier this week that G4S had failed to recruit enough guards, leaving the UK Government to make up the shortfall with soldiers -- many of whom are thought to be on Summer leave -- and extra police units.

Brazil has risen to number six among the world's economies. As it finds itself caught between prosperity and a past of poverty, it's dealing with a pervasive problem: lots of household debt

Introducing Myanmar, the world's next big thing that's struggling to figure out what exactly that means.

Global beauty pageants make for strange contests, where pop culture and patriotism can often prove a volatile mix.

The settlement, which lawyers are calling the largest antitrust settlement in U.S. history, would resolve dozens of lawsuits filed by retailers in 2005 that accused the card companies of fixing fees for processing credit and debit card payments and prohibiting stores from steering their customers to cheaper forms of payment.

China's aging and diminishing population is not a surprise, but experts lament that little is being done to prepare society for its effects.

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who recently took over the charge of the Finance Ministry, has set up an expert committee to review and finalize the controversial General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR), which the foreign investors say are not investor-friendly.

At a time when the fight between Apple and Samsung over the sales ban on Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the U.S. is creating much buzz around the tech world, FOSS Patents has stumbled upon some documents, which reveal just how aggressively forthright the iPhone-maker has been even with retailers selling the objectionable devices in the country.

Asian markets fell this week as investor sentiment turned negative with concerns of economic slowdown in China, Japan and South Korea.

South Korea's announcement of the unexpected interest rate cut this week has given an indication to market players that policymakers are unnerved by the country's economic condition.

The top after-market Nasdaq gainers Friday were Merge Healthcare Inc, AuthenTec Inc, Infinera Corporation, MannKind Corporation and Web.com Group Inc. The top after-market Nasdaq losers were Iridium Communications Inc, Hansen Medical Inc, Exelixis Inc and National Penn Bancshares Inc.

The top after-market NYSE gainers Friday were Saks Inc, MasterCard, EXCO Resources, Visa and Yanzhou Coal Mining. The top after-market NYSE losers were New York & Co, Omega Healthcare Investors, Bonanza Creek Energy, VimpelCom and Accuride Corp.