28/03/2016 World Business Report

71 people have been killed in a bomb blast in the Pakistani

It happened near a playground, in a park that was full of families.

An off shoot of the Pakistani Taliban says it carried

and was targeting the city's Christian community.

Far-right protestors have stormed a square in Brussels where people

were paying their respects to victims of Tuesday's bomb attacks.

The demonstrators were forced away by riot police using water cannon,

after they stamped on a shrine to victims.

Syria's President Assad says the recapture of the ancient city

of Palmyra by government forces is a victory for his army's strategy

The group calling itself Islamic State took the city last year.

And India completes the semi final line up for cricket's T20 World Cup.

Virat Kohli led the side home to a six wicket victory over

Australia, finishing unbeaten with 82 off 51 balls.

India chased down Australia's total with five balls to spare.

Those are the latest headlines from BBC World News.

Now for the latest financial news and World Business Report.

New, cutting-edge Virtual Reality headsets start shipping today.

Is the future finally here, or is it just a gimmick giving a headache

With the next US rate hike seemingly put on hold.

We talk to a former Federal Reserve governor

Also in the programme: Batman versus Superman proves popular

at the box office - a welcome boost for Warner Brothers following

2016 has often been touted as the year virtual reality will

But as the first set of high quality headsets are delivered,

will the billions of dollars invested by firms really pay off?

Consumers can get hold of Oculus Rift from today priced at $600.

The company was bought by Facebook for $2 billion back in 2014.

It will be closely followed by HTC's Vive which launches next week

And then in October they'll be joined

by Sony's Playstation VR which is substantially cheaper at $400.

But the big question is, will the technology take off?

One firm which makes graphics computer chips says only 1% of all

computers worldwide are powerful enough to run the new headsets.

Joining me now from Hong Kong is Peter Yu, Founder of JetOne Motion,

Peter, thanks for being on the programme. From your point of view,

will these headsets really take off on a wider scale as opposed to just

for those hard-core gamers? Well, actually, now we are facing a

dilemma because people are actually on the sideline watching and see how

it goes with the Oculus Rift or Sony HT krment, that gives us the

opportunity to showcase the virtual reality experience in our location.

So you don't expect a massive surge in demand initially. You think

people will wait and just see how good this system is? Well, we see a

lot of clients buying the Oculus Rift, but when we tell them the

price, they just back off but not only the headset, but you have to

have powerful pieces. And the home piece is not going to cut it, OK,

for - for right now. So they have to invest heavily on the PC in order to

run it. Also as well - how many games are there out there that you

can actually use the headsets with anyway? Presumably there's not that

many games yet or what is the situation? Well, the games is not

really commercial-grade. We just use those that are available on the

Oculus share, those games are the type of games that people just tend

to develop that as a - as an experiment. So we really don't have

many commercial-grade games that really can show-case the power of

Oculus. Also as well - how is the technology progressing because the

likes of Facebook investing something like $2 billion in buying

Oculus as a company, presumably they see this as a long-term investments,

these headsets will get smaller, lighter, they'll become cheaper

eventually, won't they? Well, at the moment, only have the DK 2 in the

shops, so it's a business heavy. Not really comfortable when you wear it

for a long period of time because there's some hiccups with the PCs,

not really - you know, I will say it's not that really user-friendly.

I don't see that is going to make it at home for a long time. Not like I

said, the price as well as, you know, it's not really user-friendly

at the moment. OK. Interesting to get your perspective. Peter Yu,

thanks so much for joining us from Jet One Motion, which is a virtual

reality retailer based in Hong Kong. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

has taken 424 million dollars at the box office worldwide in its

first 5 days, despite poor reviews. In the US alone it hit a record

for a March debut raking in just over $170 million

at the box office - the Sharanjit Leyl has been checking out

the box office I understand it's really popular in

Asia, is that the case? It is indeed. I haven't seen it

personally, Sally, but I will tell you about the numbers here. If you

take a look at the overseas revenue, the film raked in some 254 million

of that amount that you mentioned, that's the fourth highest global

opening, and look where it's been making the money. It opened on more

than 4,000 screens in the US, nearly 2,000 screens in the UK, but guess

what? A whopping 16,000 screens in China. In fact, China accounted for

a fifth of the overseas market with about $57 million approximately from

those number of screens making the biggest opener for Warner Brothers

ever in that market. And China, as you know, has increasingly become a

market that Hollywood movie makers are targeting the Transformers movie

had a lot of Chinese brands willing featured for product placement and a

lot more Chinese and Asian actors in these fames. Ironman 3 and the last

Avengers, meant to be a special cut for China for ironman 3, but if you

look at where the funding is coming from, not just the revenue generated

from the number of Asian viewers but increasingly companies as well.

Mission: Impossible 5, for instance, was cofunded by Ali Baba. Thank you.

I'm going to see at some point, I know I am. I have three little boys.

Let's move on. Stubbornly low inflation is causing

a headache for central banks The ECB has already dipped

into negative rates, while some suggest the Bank of England's next

move could be a rate cut. Over in the US, Fed Chair Janet

Yellen has once again sounded the warning bell over the impact

of low inflation, partly caused by weak energy prices and expectations

for the next Fed hike have now been Alice Baxter caught up with

Former Federal Reserve Governor She asked if he is surprised

that the inflation rate in the US Given all that the Fed has done and

the Central Banks has done, it's a bit surprising that inflation is at

the low level that it is. Of course, the Fed is hope that all the action

it's undertaken will start to move inflation towards its 2% target.

We're seeing a bit of evidence of that, but I think the evidence is

still not clear. Do you think that Fed policy can actually stay ahead

of inflation? Well, right now it's trying to stay ahead of deflation or

at least it had been trying to stay ahead of deflation. I think we were

able to slay that dragon and now it's trying to get inflation to move

up, but not too much it's a difficult task. It's a mamma bear,

papa bear, too warm, just to get it right. I think that's what the Fed

is moving toward. When it comes to the issue of raising rates in the

United States, in December when Janet Yellen announced she was

incrementally going to raise them a little bit, lots of bits were down

we were going to see further rates in the near future. Where are you on

that now? So I thought it was quite clear in December that the Fed would

take a while before they undertook the next step. We have seen a little

bit of move up in I nation taking out the volatile food and energy

sectors but we haven't seen any wage pressure come in. My guess is until

there's some evidence of that, the Fed is going to be reluctant to

move. And so I don't think we would be before at least summer time,

let's say June at the earliest, that would see enough evidence to be able

to move. What about this growing trend towards negative interest

rates, we saw it in Japan and also across Europe. It's hugely

controversial. For sure. And so we used to think that you couldn't go

below 0 in interest rates because people were just hold cash instead.

But it's costly to hold cash because if you want to store a lot of your

wealth in cash, you have to have a place to store it and a safe place

the store it. So you can start to push interest rates down to the

level of storing for in safes and such. And people actually started to

look into this. How low interest rates can go? It might be how costly

is it to put cash into a safe? He was part of the FOMC in the US. Now

quickly markets. Just to mention Hong Kong is not open today for a

bank holiday. Many markets today is no action at all. Japan is open and

got about 20 minutes to go. We got a weaker Yen helping markets in Japan.

Also the price of oil still above $40 a barrel. So please notice that.

There's a quick look at some other currencies and a look at what gold

is doing. I'll see you soon as we review the papers.