Japan's Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) has reached it's strongest in a year, with a seasonally adjusted reading of 52.4 for the month of October, as conducted by a business survey from Nikkei last Monday.

The leaders of South Korea and Japan have finally decided to break their long-standing diplomatic freeze in favor of combining forces to address North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Amazon.com is finally no longer selling Apple TV or other streaming devices like Google's Chromecast to boost sales of its own Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick units. The company's plan to discontinue selling competing product was first announced earlier in October.

US Cellular is reported preparing to roll out the Android 5.1.1 Lollipop to Samsung Galaxy Note 4 units this month. The final Lollipop update will bring in key improvements in device management, user interface and security.

The mortgage processing software company Ellie Mae Inc., showed a better-than-expected result on the company's third-quarter financial report, beating expectations. Ellie Mae's revenue jumped 61% to $68.9 million, beating the analysts expectations of 46% growth. The company's shares rose by 5.84% in the past week and 8.13% for the last 4 weeks.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4 on AT&T has been updated with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop in late last month and is expected to end in November before the release of Android 6.0 Marshmallow in the first quarter of 2016. More details here.

Indicating the prolonged sluggishness in the economy, China's factory activity dropped further again in October. However, the marginal recovery in export orders has slowed down the drop in the manufacturing production. The PMI edged up in the previous month.

For the first time in history, the FDA has approved the medical use of a virus to treat people with cancer - specifically those suffering from skin cancer, or melanoma. The announcement was made through a news release by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on October 27, stating that Melanoma is the most widespread form of cancer in the country and will be responsible for the deaths of 10,000 people by the end of 2015.

The second quarter for Japanese automobile majors is expected to be positive as the sales surged in the US market. Toyota Motor Corp, Nissan Motor Co and Honda Motor Co. registered a rise in sales volume in the North American market during July to September. Investors are closely monitoring the forecasts about vehicle sales to ascertain the possible outcome from the third quarter results. The US and China markets account for one-third of global sales for the top three Japanese automobile companies. The rise in US sales and weaker Yen may add to profits for the Japanese automobile majors during the quarter.

The Federal Reserve is implementing new rule especially in a bid to strengthen the global financial institutions. According to the proposal, all banks that operate in the US will be able to go down smoothly without causing too much collateral damage to the public.