The Australian share market remained higher at noon as investors followed positive offshore leads rather than focus on ongoing concerns about the resources tax and European debt.

Upbeat sales reports and forecasts continue to pour in for the PC and chip market, offering yet more evidence that economic recovery has already spurred a worldwide resurgence in spending on hardware.

The Australian dollar opened higher after reports of a surge in Chinese exports lifted commodity-driven currencies.

The Australian dollar opened firmer as a positive session on Wall Street gave a boost to commodity-driven currencies.

Wall Street took a late dive after the United States government said it was starting criminal and civil investigations into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

IT professionals taking on more work in light of the current economic climate identified rising workloads as the greatest source of workplace stress, according to research from Robert Half Technology.

September 2008 will certainly go down as one of the blackest months in Wall Street history. Venerable financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG abruptly vanished or were radically overhauled. Investors lost loads of money -- in some cases, fortunes -- and ordinary taxpayers are now finding themselves funding an industry bailout that could cost a staggering US$700 billion, perhaps even more.