COMPANIES

As major Australian retailers absorb the ongoing crunch in the sector, players also point the blame on rent fees that further sap away the measly margin, if any, they were able to make.

The Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA), which has been focussing its protected industrial action on raising awareness of the Qantas management plan to offshore jobs, is today marking the two month anniversary of qantaspilots.com.au by thanking the 50,000 individual Australians who have visited the site since its launch in July, and the 22,000 who have signed the online petition to keep Qantas pilots in the cockpit.

Virgin Australia and Delta Air Lines announced on Monday a code sharing agreement on trans-Pacific flights beginning Nov. 6, 2011.

Samsung Electronics filed an appeal against a court ruling banning the sales of Galaxy tablet computers in Germany. In the latest news of the legal battle between the two smartphone technology giants, the South Korean company also accused Apple Inc. of patent infringement in Australia.

Unable to market in full swing its line of Galaxy tablet computers due to global legal disputes with giant tech firm Apple, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics asked Australian and German courts to invalidate an earlier ruling from a German court that prevents the consumer electronic maker to sell its new products internationally.

Samsung Electronics Co. filed a countersuit against Apple in Australia, while also appealing a German court ruling, intensifying a global legal dispute between the two tech companies.

The four-hour walk-out of about 3,800 baggage handlers, ground staff and caterers of Qantas is scheduled Tuesday, but a day ahead of the work stoppage, the air carrier canceled on Monday 28 flight and delayed 27 more by up to 35 minutes.

More confirmation of the weakness of Australia's retail industry came out on Monday as investment firm Premier reported a 49 per cent drop in profit for its retail businesses.

A McDonald's drive through in Sydney suffered its second robbery within a span of one week.

Indian billionaire G.V. Krishna Reddy wants to acquire a stake in Hancock Prospecting, owned by Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest woman. He agreed to pay $1.26 billion to acquire a 79 percent share in the coal assets, Bloomberg reports.

Siemens AG, Europe's largest engineering firm, will be totally out of the nuclear power station business, according to its top honcho Peter Loescher.

Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto has capitalized on near record-low yields to slash debt costs as company bond sales in the US this month reached $40 billion while Australia’s market remains frozen.

Amid a suggestion by a Sony PSP ad that smartphones should only be used for "texting your grandma", maybe Nintendo just made a bad product, and a device that shows three-dimensional images without the glasses are not what gamers are looking for. This would not be surprising, as prior to the success of the Wii console, Nintendo had its share of missteps.

Britain's largest online fashion retailer ASOS is set to lure Australian shoppers with a standalone website down under.

From highly anticipated, the iPhone 5 is turning out as old and out of style, i.e. if you believe Martin Fichter, acting president of HTC America. He says that iPhones are not that cool anymore as his daughters college classmates are now touting Android phones from Samsung Electronics and HTC.

Canada-based Research In Motion Ltd. might share the same fate.When PlayBook was released, RIM's best-case scenario was it would be able to sell a tablet version of the BlackBerry. The worst-case scenario, was like the others, RIM's tablet couldn't gain ground against Apple Inc.'s iPad.

Chevron’s Australian subsidiaries have inked a sale and purchase agreement with Kyushu for the delivery of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Wheatstone Project in Western Australia.

An ex-Samsung manager has admitted that he leaked early information about the iPad to representatives from an "expert network" firm and a hedge fund

Major US airlines announced Tuesday they would limit available seats to reduce the airlines' costs while driving up ticket prices. Airline stocks went up following the announcement.

The Falcon is on the slide, in terms of overall sales since last year, according to Ford Australia but the carmaker remains optimistic that the setbacks it incurred in the local market during the past few quarters would be reversed by the entry of its newly-overhauled flagship sedan.

Australian retailer Myer is spending $9 million on a new website aimed at making the store the country's largest online department store. Myer targets to generate up to $40 million in annual sales from the new portal.

More than 3000 Qantas staff plan to stop work on Monday September 20. The planned industrial action is to take place in the morning peak period in most airports around Australia, which will last four hours.

Facebook is postponing its initial public offering (IPO) planned in October or November and will go public late next year instead.

To avoid disruption to passenger travel during the planned Sept. 20 strike by about 3,800 union employees, Qantas will use larger aircraft and redeploy staff.

A massive chemical factory is currently burning on Dacre Street in Canberra's central business district. The fire hit Mitchell, an industrial suburb 5 kilometres north of Canberra, but is close to residential homes.

Paypal will further innovate their services by integrating new features, including easy access to PayPal anytime, anywhere.

Apple is reportedly planning an upgrade to its MacBook Pro notebooks with a marginal speed bump in time for the holiday season.

Police in London arrested Thursday a UBS trader suspected of making unauthorized trading the previous day that caused Switzerland's largest bank to lose nearly $2 billion.

Sleek, stylish and modern are some of the words apt to describe the new Windows 8 courtesy of Bill Gates’ Microsoft.