RETAIL/CONSUMER GOODS

To combat fake online pharmacies selling Viagra, Pfizer launches its own website to sell directly to its customers

Australian clothing companies allegedly use cheap labor to produce their garments.

The famous cosmetic brand manufacturer Johnson & Johnson loses its license in India due to an ordered case by the Food and Drug Administration after 15 batches of baby powder products were found sterilized by an irritant and cancer-causing component.

In 2011, a college student from the University of Alberta, Josh Le, were only one pair of jeans for 15 months and to his surprise found that the germ level of the garment was not worrisome. Could the same thing be said of shirts?

Chocolate manufacturers, it seems, are following the model of smartphone, tablet and TV makers by coming up with larger models of their products.

To change the wrong notion that many people have about lovemaking, often caused by first exposure to sex through pornographic movies, a start-up company in New York is attempting to educate the public about what real love making is.

Almost 10 per cent of 3,500 of 36,000 dining establishments in New South Wales failed the state's hygiene test. Among their violations are preparation of food in dirty kitchens and failure to control the spread of bugs.

The Click Frenzy online sale in Australia is making a comeback. Organisers assured Aussie consumers that the crash would not happen again.

For price sensitive techies, now is a good time to consider buying a new tablet or computer with technology firms and sellers offering bargain deals.

Australia's largest gambling business, the Crown Casino in Melbourne, lost $32 million to a foreign high-stakes gambler who used an Ocean Eleven-style heist, reports said.

Sprint may be looking at a modified Z10 for release while Lenovo is speculating a takeover of the BlackBerry company.

The MWC Congress is the stage for several smartphones and tablets, but there are some handsets that grab your attention.

Schweppes drinkers in New Zealand should be warned that it could also produce pain and blood because of glass fragments found in five flavors - lemonade, tonic water, soda, dry ginger ale and soda lemonade twist. The affected drinks are those in 300 ml clear glass bottles with best before dates between Jan 10, 2014 and Jan 30, 2014.

DNA tests confirmed over the weekend that dinners tainted with horse meat had reached schools. The discovery prompted British councils to push for the withdrawal of processed beef dishes from menus following the confirmation that the equine meat hidden in cottage pies was sent to 47 schools.

As couples celebrate Valentine's Day on Thursday, Feb 14, one inevitable aftermath of all the romance that happens would be felt about nine months later. That means a spike in baby births in mid-November as husband and wives or beaus celebrate heart's day by going out on a date, exchanging gifts and sweet nothings, dining and drinking, and capping the night with sex that often leads to pregnancies.

Nexus 4 is gone again in Australia after only days of being available. Both the 8GB and 16GB variants of the Google flagship smartphone has just returned to Google Play site, but now buyers are doused with cold water again.

Thirteen McDonald's outlets the past two weeks across Australia had been using the fastfood chain's Aussie nickname, Macca's, to celebrate Australia Day. They will temporarily use that name until Feb 3.

Due to reports that traces of horse meat were found in hamburgers sold in some of UK and Ireland supermarkets, McDonald's Australia launched a new app that would allow diners to track where the ingredients came from, including if horse meat was used.

To celebrate Australian Day on Jan 26, McDonald's in Australia is temporarily changing the name of 13 stores across the country to Macca's, the Aussie nickname of the popular fast-food chain.

Australian shoppers on the lookout for great, massive bargain finds may well ought to splurge these first few months of 2013 as retail businesses prepare to further slash already discounted items for sale just to be able to overcome the sector's burgeoning sales slump and somehow boost profit.

For 2013, the California-based kitchen appliances maker Dacor will release the first wall oven using Android OS. The wall oven has a dimension of 30 inches and its Android controller is powered by a seven-inch device called Discovery IQ controller.

As expected, Australian shoppers filled up shopping malls on Wednesday, Boxing Day, for reduced prices of items which saved buyers an estimated $600 million across the country.

Cash registers will be ringing ka-ching, ka-ching from Friday as different parties will be held all over the world to celebrate - not the Mayan New Year - but the failure of the Mayan Long Count Calendar prediction that the world would end on Dec 21, 2012.

Business information analysts at IBISWorld reveal the industries can set to cash in - or lose out - on our good intentions for 2013. What do consumers wish as the the New Year approaches?

Australians would most likely patronage or buy items sold locally, such as gadgets, if only they were priced cheaper than counterparts sold overseas, a study by MasterCard released on Friday showed.

The Australian Bankers' Association (ABA) said the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has again confirmed that Australian households and borrowers are not paying more for their mortgages and business loans even though banks do not pass on RBA cash rate cuts in full.

Facebook, the largest social media network in the world with over 500 million members, is cashing in on the Christmas spending mode of netizens by launching in the United States a section called Gifts.

While Australian retailers felt some form of relief with the apparent success of Click Frenzy on Nov 20, a major retailer forecasts a wave of retail collapses in 2013.

Success or failure? The Click Frenzy on Nov 20 in Australia was met with mixed reviews with a major retailer calling the event a runaway success, while critics who bit the hype that it was the sale that would stop the nation were disappointed not only because of the Web site's crash but also the flimsy deals made available.