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With 72 percent of businesses concerned about their country's level of public debt and 43 percent very or extremely concerned, a new survey from KPMG International shows that cutting public spending is the most popular method of managing the public debt.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for Australia increased 0.8 percent and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) increased 0.2 percent in July.

Planned IT spending by small and medium businesses (SMBs) is on the rise for the second half of the year, according to a new survey by Spiceworks™, Inc. Overall IT budgets are up an additional 4 percent from the first half of 2010.

In July 2010, the unemployment rate for the OECD area was steady at 8.5%, unchanged from the previous month and down slightly from the 8.6% level recorded in May. The general pattern of broad stability holds in most OECD countries. In August 2010 however, the unemployment rates increased slightly (by 0.1 percentage point) in both Canada (to 8.1%) and the United States (to 9.6%).

OECD composite leading indicators (CLIs) for July 2010 point to clearer signs of a moderation in the pace of expansion compared to last month’s assessment. The CLI for the OECD area decreased by 0.1 point in July 2010.

A new Financial Times/Harris Poll finds that immigration is widely unpopular in the United States and in all of the five largest countries in Europe. The survey asked about immigration generally and not about illegal immigration. Majorities in four of the countries and pluralities in the other two believe that immigration makes it harder to find new jobs. Majorities in three countries and over 40% in the other three believe it has a bad effect on education. Majorities in four of the countries and 40% or more in the other two think it has a bad effect on health care services. Americans, even though they live in what has been described as a nation of immigrants are not, in general, any less hostile to immigration than Europeans.

The worldwide mobile operating system (OS) market will be dominated by Symbian and Android, as the two OSs will account for 59.8 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014, according to Gartner, Inc.

The world economic recovery may be slowing faster than previously anticipated, according the OECD’s latest Interim Economic Assessment. Growth in the Group of Seven countries is expected to be around 1½ per cent on an annualized basis in the second half of 2010 compared with the previous estimate of around 1¾ per cent in the OECD’s May Economic Outlook.

PandaLabs, Panda Security's anti-malware laboratory, has discovered that hackers are creating 57,000 new websites each week that exploit approximately 375 high-profile brand names worldwide at any time. These findings are based on a three-month long study conducted by PandaLabs of its global malware database. Notably, eBay and Western Union-related URLs comprise 44 percent of all malicious sites, with Visa, Amazon, Bank of America and PayPal also heavily targeted by cybercriminals.

The United States ties for fifth place with Switzerland in a new "World Giving Index 2010" (WGI 2010) report issued by the Charities Aid Foundation America (CAFAmerica), a member organization of the United Kingdom-based Charities Aid Foundation international network of offices. The review of the state of giving in 153 countries representing 95 percent of the globe's population is the most ambitious study of its kind to have ever been attempted.