COMPANIES

Queensland's banana industry is recovering after the Australian state was flooded in summer. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh forecast lower banana prices in the coming weeks from the peak of $15 a kilogramme due to expected bumper harvest from North Queensland.

The Mongolian government is seeking to increase its stake allocation in the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project from 34% to 50%, leaving its developers rethinking if it was a good deal at all to have initiated the project.

Payment networks Visa and MasterCard will impose the highest fees for even the smallest debit transaction for cards issued by JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup as allowed by a U.S. law that put caps on such fees.

While the iPhone 5 will be the center of everyone's attention, note that according to Antoine Saint Exupery, what's essential is invisible to the eye. Aside from betting that the iPhone 5 won't have radical changes, you should think outside the box when comprehending what happens on Oct. 4 and thereafter.

UK online brand ASOS had launched its first site ASOS exclusively for the electronic shopping savvy Australians beginning on Sept. 15.

The iPad will continue to dominate its rivals until 2014 according to a new report from the research firm Gartner.Apple's iPad will account for 73.4% of tablet sales worldwide and will hold that market dominance for years to come, said Gartner. Bad news for other tablet makers, the analysts also say that no other platform besides Android will have more than a 5% share of the tablet market during this time.

It seems like Apple's legal troubles are far from being resolved. Apple is now being sued by Taiwan's Via Technologies Inc. for patent infringement.

Lumped together the pay checks collected by the top executives of BHP Billiton, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Coles for financial year 2010-2011 alone and you’ll get more than $43 million, which is more than enough for an average Australian to last a lifetime.

The federal government stamped its environmental approval on the Chevron-led Wheatstone liquefied natural gas (LNG) project that experts said would lead to billion-dollars of investments but could disrupt the marine eco-system off the coast of Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) lost in a court case the regulator filed against search engine giant Google. ACCC complained that Google violated Australia's trade practices law by its using advertisement placements as basis for ranking of search results.

Four years after Australia’ competition watchdog labelled its search results as confusing and misleading, giant internet firm Google won the nod of the court, which declared on Thursday that the company hardly violated any provisions in the country’s consumer law.

Hewlett-Packard has named Meg Whitman, former eBay Inc. CEO and California candidate for governor as its new CEO replacing former chief Lee Apotheker after just 11 months in the position.

Four days after baggage handlers, ground workers and other Qantas employees struck on Tuesday, it will be the turn of the air carrier's engineers to pursue a similar job industrial action in Melbourne on Friday.

Before the iPad, there were netbooks and ultra-mobile PCs. HTC was known back then for mobile phones and it came to a surprise when they launched the HTC Shift back in 2008. The HTC Shift came with a TFT resistive touchscreen and Windows Vista Business. It was a pretty sweet setup with its sliding keyboard. Now it comes back to life with the developer preview Windows 8.

Economic slowdown could force Australian banks to downsize in the coming months, Swiss bank UBS warned on Thursday.

The investment traffic between Australia and its Asian neighbors is lopsided in favor of Aussies. Asian investments in Australia are 1.5 times that of Australian investment in Asia.

Environment Minister Tony Burke has approved the liquefied natural gas project proposed by Chevron in Western Australia’s Pilbara region following a rigorous assessment, he had approved Chevron’s proposed Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, "with strict conditions."

Apple donated thousands of free iPads to Teach for America.

Social networking sites roll-out their new features to users.

SAB Miller, the world’s second biggest brewer, has been accused of tax dodging. Anti-poverty agency ActionAid Australia has sent a copy of a report detailing the allegations to the Foreign Investment Review Board.

SABMiller’s expected takeover of Foster’s will make Coopers enter its 150th year in 2012 as the largest remaining Australian-owned brewer.

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Amazon has launched its new service that allows U.S. based Kindle users to borrow ebooks from 11,000 libraries across America. The service is now in the Beta testing stage in two libraries in Seattle and will eventually be available on other libraries in the U.S.

Electronic Arts and PlayFish's "The Sim Social", has topped the list of fastest growing FaceBook games with more than 50 million users playing the social game last week. The game attracted 15.5 million new users to take the top spot with 51.5 million total monthly players.

Microsoft will start updating the Mango OS for its Windows Phone in a "week or two" according to a senior staffer.

Dolby Laboratories and Research in Motion have reached an agreement and has agreed to a licensing deal.Under the agreement, RIM maker of BlackBerrys and PlayBooks will pay Dolby licensing fees to use some of Dolby's technologies. In return Dolby has dropped its two patent infringement lawsuits against the manufacturer.

High-end Australian department store David Jones reported its profit after tax dropped 1.5% to $170.8 million and sales fell 4.4% to $2053.1 million. David Jones attributed the decline the strong Aussie dollar and reduced consumer spending due to the global financial meltdown.

Eric Schmidt, Google Inc.'s CEO, stood up to U.S senators Wednesday to defend his company against allegations that it skews search results in favor of its own online services.

Foster's Group had expressed high hopes that the takeover of SABMiller of its company will mean Australian beers getting the exposure it deserved from beer aficionados around the world.The Australian beer giant accepted on Wednesday an improved takeover package worth from $10.1 billion from British-based brewer SABMiller.