toshiba's infrastructure businesses were also brisk. these include solar power generation systems and elevators. for the current year, toshiba forecasts a record high, estimating an operating profit of $3.2 billion. the company expects brisk business to continue in asia and a recovery in the u.s. and europe. >>> china's exports in april rose for the first time in three months. officials at china's customs agency says exports last month totalled more than $188 billion. that's up about 1% from a year ago. imports which tend to reflect how the domestic economy is doing posted their first rise in two months. the total was about $170 billion. that was up 0.8%. overall trade also up 0.8% from april last year. china's trade with japan in the first four months of the year increased just over 4%. that's much slower than the 11.3% increase in trade with the european union. >>> the head of the federal reserve says the u.s. economy still needs a lot of support. janet yellen says she and her colleagues will continue to hold interest rates near zero.

toshiba is the world's second biggest producer of flash memory. company executives say they're planning to build a factory in central japan to make flash memory that can store 1 terra byte of data. they expect to start production in fiscal 2015. toshiba officials say the company will invest $5 billion in the plant. together with u.s. chipmaker sandisk. >>> managers at japanese companies are feeling the effects of an increase in the consumption tax. analysts at the bank of japan say prices of goos traded among companies in april rose more than 4%. now that's the 13th straight monthly rise, and the biggest jump in more than five years. people across japan started paying a higher sales tax last month. they went up from 5% to 8%. the analysts say the increase made a range of products more costly. corporate prices went up on average 4.1%. the analysts say they would have risen 1.4% without the consumption tax. a rise in the price of electricity for industrial use, for example, caused rates for electric power, gas, and water all to go up. many beer drin

shares of blue chip companies like it to toe motor and toshiba benefited from strong earnings report and their gains supported the index. the shanghai composite shed 0.2% to close at 2,011. china's consumer price inflation slowed a slower than expected rise in april and this hurt market sentiment. in manila, the key index jumped 1.2% to 6,847, its highest close in nearly a year. investors were encouraged by news that standard & poor's raised the country's credit rating. >>> now things are not looking too great for china, though. its economy will likely lose momentum this year. the organization for economic cooperation and development cut its growth forecast for gross domestic product to 7.4% in the world's second largest economy. now that's much lower than the previous estimate of 8.2% and below the chinese government target of around 7.5%. growth for 2015 is expected to slow down further to 7.3%. the organization says the downgrade reflects the government's efforts in curbing credit risks and controlling excess capacity. for insight, ai uchida spoke with daniel so in hong kong, a st

saying that intel has new chips, and take a look at some of these names that are involved, acor, toshibat is more powerful than you typically find. for those who might not remember, chrome books don't run windows. they run what looks like just the browser, google's chrome browser, let's people access the web. all the work is scored in the cloud. just a few weeks ago we had microsoft coming out with office for the ipad, now intel bringing out more chips on google's chrome operating system for chrome books, the old wintell partnership not what it used to be. it looks like they'll have up to 11 hours of battery life. so more op options for people out there. >> thank you very much, jon fortt. >>> the epic patent fight between samsung and apple ends with kind of a whimper, not a wallop in a silicon valley court yesterday as a jury ordered samsung to pay, that's a far cry from the 2.2 billion that apple sought. he says no matter what the financial outcome, apple may well emerge from the billion dollar legal battle the clear los loser. he joins us now. welcome to "power lunch." >> thanks for ha