places like zurich where the smi is only up by about 0.1%. ftse 100 still powering ahead. banking stocks and also metal and mining shares very much leading the charge in the markets in london. andrew? a very similar picture here, too, nina. markets have recovered after a pretty ordinary past three or four days. mainly on the back of rising commodity prices. take a look at australia. the s&p up by 1.6%, the big resource company, bhp, rio tinto as well. hong kong is up by 0.67% higher. shanghai continues to be weaker, down about a quarter of 1%, nina. it seems as though with all the concerns surrounding euro zone s sovereign debt, et cetera and the change at the helm of the imf investors don t know where to be putting their money
flow. many of the experts will agree on that. part of some of the damage to sony is what did happen on the earthquake. that they do believe that even most of it will be covered by insurance. looking ahead to the forecast, the upcoming fiscal year. they do anticipate that the earthquake will continue to cost this company about 1.83 billion u.s. dollars. but if we could stress something, the real elephant in the room here, andrew, it is what has happened with sony and it s hacking. the hacking of its play station network and its curiosity network many of the play station network users are fuming over this time gap when sony actually learned about the hacking and when it started to actually communicate with the players. so because of that time gap, there s a bit of user anxiety and anger out there about how to treat sony as a network moving forward. if they want to put their credit cards in the hands of sony. sony has to figure out now how to make it up to the user.
in part, this is financially important for this company. this, andrew, is what the company is considering in using one of the key pillars to succeed in the future. interesting it s become such an important part of sony, now it s online operations and how a string of it was pushing back before, saying we were quite quick, relatively alerting the customers to what had happened. that s not washing very well, kyung. if you look at what sony will be doing over the next year to try and get if back to profits, is it expecting big things from its bread and butter businesses, i guess you can put it? tvs and electronics stuff? yes, if you look at what they announced today, some of the details, what they re looking forward to is selling more lcd tvs and also relying on its network, content. this diversity as far as movies but also playstation network. what sony is looking at is what
in syria. these rikts are set to show demonstrations in dara last friday. although cnn cannot verify when the video was shot. an estimated 1,500 people are unaccounted for in joplin,h. nearly 100 volunteers are working to reunite family and determine who s really missing. the volcanic eruption in iceland that s disrupted air traffic in europe is finally ending. the ash cloud thrown up from the volcano is drifting east and dissipating and most of the airports closed are re-opening. those are the headlines. i m zain vergee, world business today starts now. good morning, from cnn london and welcome to world business today. i m nina dos santos. and good afternoon from cnn hong kong, rhyme andrew stephens. the top stories this thursday, may 2 th. sony s bad run continues. it s now forecasting a profitable year ahead. even that outlook fails to impress. dominique strauss-kahn is now under house arrest at this luxury new york townhouse. i m a leader by temper and att
they ve been working on, turning around this antiquated company. the sony walkman was a long time ago. they re trying to diversify and update. it s a process ongoing. many analysts say it s been successful internet leadership of howard stringer. the question will be how long will stringer stay on the job and can sony continue what it has started this last ten years? i think i have one of those walkman s kicking around the house. they might be worth a bit to some collector. thank you, kyung lah. dominique strauss-kahn has a new place to stay while he s under house arrest in new york. he moved from an apartment to a luxurious townhouse in a pricey part of lower manhattan. while he waits for his trial to begin, he won t want for much it seems. we re told the townhouse has four bedrooms, a hot tub and