Vittorio Hernandez

BRW Magazine named on Wednesday financial services company Optiver as the best place to work in Australia. The list of the top 50 companies considered the best places to be employed was after a survey of 179 workplaces across the nation and feedback from more than 25,000 employees.

An 87-year-old retired Roman Catholic priest appeared on Wednesday before the Melbourne Magistrates' Court and was told by Magistrate Ann Collins there is sufficient evidence for him to stand trial for sex abuse.

A day after Philippine bishops asked the producers of the popular gay soap opera, My Husband's Lover, to be more careful in their provocative material, the station assured them that the sensitive real-life situations they present is produced with utmost prudence and in good taste.

A day before she lost in the Australia Labor Party leadership challenge on Thursday night, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard was the cover girl for Australian Women's Weekly. She was shown indulging in her favourite hobby - knitting. Was the cover photo, seen by many Australians as a put on, prophetic in the sense that Ms Gillard would now have more time to knit kangaroo toys for the royal baby of Prince William and Kate Middleton?

History repeated itself on Wednesday night as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) lost by a leadership vote. Julia Gillard got only 34 votes versus the 57 votes cast for Kevin Rudd, who is now back as prime minister of Australia.

The Australian share market rebounded today, as buyers moved in after China's central bank moved to restore calm. The People's Bank of China (PBoC) said liquidity risks in its financial markets are controllable and the unprecedented spike in interbank lending rates would gradually fade.

Local shares are finally improving decisively, with the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) up 1.6 per cent. This is largely making up for a 2 per cent slide over the previous two sessions.

Because of the high risk that other horses would also be infected, health authorities quarantined on Tuesday a property in Lowood, Brisbane Valley, Queensland, after a horse died of the Hendra virus. The virus is a bat-borne disease.

The White House sex scandal that almost destroyed the political career of then President Bill Clinton is back in the limelight because of the auction of the mementos that belong to former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

No less than the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has caught the attention of, My Husband's Lover, a new gay-themed soap opera that has been showing on prime time over local broadcasting giant GMA-7.

While a pioneering Philippine TV soap opera, My Husband's Lover, has been ruling it over the air waves because of the provocative theme of the show depicting a gay love story since it began airing on June 10, it just caught the attention of local bishops. However, in the U.S., a TV show producer by Disney, Good Luck Charlie, will even add a couple of lesbian parents for its final season. The episode will air in 2014.

It definitely is a bad hair week for Cupertino-based Apple as the company suffered one setback after another as its share prices tumbled down below $400, continues to lose market share to main rival Samsung, and on Tuesday, again lose to the South Korean tech giant in one of its court battles in Japan.

Regional markets remained under pressure on Tuesday as participants remain ill at ease with the conversation between Chinese lenders and the PBoC. The central bank is maintaining its hard line approach by being slow to add liquidity to its system, which in turn has seen short term interest rates remain at elevated levels. The main thrust of the PBoC stance is curtailing lending activity as a way of taking the heat out of the housing market. This initiative however is put the stability of the fin...

The Australian share market is clawing back ground after a day of selling across the Asian region, and weakness in European and US share markets overnight.

Due to his very busy schedule attending to pastoral work, Pope Francis did not show at a gala classical concert on Saturday featuring the compositions of renowned German composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

The weakening value of the Australian dollar would mean that motorists would pay more than $1.50 per litre of petrol within two weeks after the local currency declined 0.7 per cent to its lowest level since September 2010.

After beating Apple in sales and recently in a destruction test conducted by CNET, Samsung's Galaxy S4 won more trounced the competition by winning over the iPhone 5 in a speed test made by Which?, a consumer watchdog.

News of Apple cutting its iPhone order for the third and fourth quarters of 2013 sent the shares of the Cupertino-based tech giant plummeting to below $400. Business Insider quoted NASDAQ's real time price as of 11:20 a.m. that Apple (AAPL) share prices had gone down to $398.44 from the Friday closing price of $413.50.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) will teach Australian farmers how to use computer technology in their farms by holding the first Digital Rural Futures Conference on June 26 to 28 at the University of New England' Kirby SMART Farm near Armidale.

Based on supply chain checks, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said that Apple is cutting its iPhone order for the 3rd quarter of 2013 to 25 to 30 million units from 40 to 45 million. The reduction in order indicates the continuous downward slide suffered by the company founded by the late Steve Jobs under the stewardship of Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cranbourne's local council have just shut down the Casey Kids Playhouse on Monday over an advertisement in several Wed sites seeking more couples to join them in a sex orgy at the play centre on Saturday. However, the site continues to have an open Facebook page seen below.

Sellers returned from the weekend energised and keen to add to their work of recent weeks. Any sense that a new week might bring with it some consolidation after the falls of recent weeks was quickly dismissed. The fall for the market on Monday was its worst in 2 months taking the index back to levels seen at the start of the year.

Mining giant Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) will no longer push through with the planned sale of its $1.3-billion diamond business because of cautiousness among buyers.

In another show of support for gays in the U.S., American President Barack Obama has nominated eight openly gay men to be the country's ambassadors in different nations. Among the eight are John Berry, ambassador to Australia, and James Brewster, ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

Local shares are down 1.4 per cent at lunch, exceeding all of last week's losses in just two hours of trade. The defensive healthcare sector is bucking the trend, while all other industries are slumping significantly.

If the cartoon character Tweety were to see the feline breed Selkirk Rex, it would have said, "I thought I saw a poodle cat," not the standard "I thought I taw a puddy tat" whenever she spots Sylvester.

The Greens or other smaller political parties in Australia could play kingmaker in September when the country holds it election. The bigger role that a third political party will play looms because of the prospect that the country could have a hung parliament.

The LG Optimus F7 will be available at U.S. Cellular beginning June 27. If customers would opt for a two-year contract, they would only shell out $99.99, while off contract, the device would have a price tag of $299.99.

Over the weekend, another phone war was launched by Nokia Lumia 925, but it pitted the phone against Apple's iPhone 5.