Improved technology has driven down credit card fraud in Europe dramatically, the European Central Bank said Wednesday in it’s first-ever report on the issue.

"Card fraud has been on a declining trend since 2007 ... technological advances have been key to increasing the security of transactions," the central bank said.

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin made his debut Thursday on Forbes magazine's list of the 40 richest people in Singapore with a fortune estimated at $2.2 billion.

The Brazilian, who moved to the rich city-state in 2009 and is now a permanent resident, was ranked eighth in a list dominated by Singaporeans whose wealth comes from property, finance and other businesses.

Ten years after the fall of the Taliban, who banned modern technology as un-Islamic, the use of social media in Afghanistan is booming as politicians, warlords and even militants rush to get their message across.

The hardline Islamists who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and forbade the use of the Internet, deeming it a Western propaganda tool, now regularly use Twitter to promote their ideas and boast about attacks on NATO forces.

Big technology firms including Google, Facebook, eBay and Amazon have joined to create a new lobby group aimed at promoting "an open, innovative and free Internet."

The Internet Association announced its formation in a statement on its website, indicating it will be headed by Michael Beckerman, a former congressional staffer.

A semi-official Iranian news agency says police hope to work with Facebook to fight cyber-crimes and pornography — a turnabout in Tehran's stance toward the social networking giant that it previously banned after activists used it as an organizing tool.

A Tuesday report by ISNA quotes Gen. Kamal Hadianfar, head of Iran's cyber-police, as saying the country is trying to remove pages on Facebook created by Iranian citizens that promote pornography and prostitution.

More consumers are buying the least expensive iPhones and iPads, a new phenomenon that is causing Apple's breakneck growth rate to slow.

On Tuesday, Apple Inc. revealed that both revenue and net income posted increases of just over 20 percent — cause for celebration at most companies, but meager by Apple standards.

South Korea's LG Electronics said Wednesday its second-quarter net profit surged 47 percent from a year earlier, thanks largely to booming sales of flat-screen televisions and home appliances.

The world's second-largest flat-screen TV maker by shipments after Samsung Electronics reported net profit of 159 billion won ($138.2 million) for April-June, up from 108.44 billion won a year earlier.

Prem Watsa, one of Canada's best-known value investors, has nearly doubled his stake in BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. to 9.9 percent, according to a regulatory filing Monday.

The increase makes him the largest shareholder in the struggling company and identifies a buyer for shares that other investors have been unloading.

Business software maker VMware is buying computer networking specialist Nicira for nearly $1.3 billion.

The deal announced Monday will expand VMware's product line in the rapidly growing field of computer "virtualization." The term refers to software that lowers the costs of running data centers by enabling a single computer to function like multiple machines.

On Tuesday, Apple is set to report financial results for the second quarter. Analysts are expecting net income of $9.8 billion. But whatever figure Apple reports won't reflect its true profit, because the company hides some of it with an unusual tax maneuver.

Apple Inc., already the world's most valuable company, understates its profits compared with other multinationals. It's building up an overlooked asset in the form of billions of dollars, tucked away for tax bills it may never pay.