Vittorio Hernandez

South Korean tech giant Samsung literally rolled out the gigantic 85-inch ultra-high definition TV on Wednesday night in Sydney. The $40,000 device, soon to be available in retail outlets in Australian this month, features an Australian accent.

Marine Park Tour Operators in Australia are questioning the exclusion of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia by travel guide Lonely Planet. At the same time, some groups are questioning the inclusion of smaller dive sites in the list.

Because of the buzz over an upcoming Android OS that started in late 2012, among the 10 things that techies are expecting in the May Google 1/O is the roll out of the Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie.

Since Iceland has a very small population of 320,000 people, a lot of its citizens are related to each other distantly. To prevent Icelanders from committing the an unacceptable social practice of falling in love or marrying their close relatives, they are tapping technology's help.

Until April 16, 2013, Tuesday, there were only two rights that gays in New Zealand did not enjoy - the right to adopt children as a couple and the right to marry. The next day, the country's Parliament passed the Marriage Equality law that granted same-sex couples the right to marry, leaving only the right to adopt children as a couple as the only one right still denied them.

The local stock market has closed above the 5000 mark, albeit by a modest margin, after several days of commodity induced weakness. The ASX200 rose by one per cent, although mining and energy stocks remained on the outer with investors, being the only 2 sectors to end the session in the red.

An interesting job vacancy ad was posted in Weibo, China's counterpart of Twitter. The ad announced that a third-party security company in Beijing called Anquan is looking for a Chief Pornography Identification Officer.

The Australian market is edging higher by 0.8 per cent after the initial concerns relating to the Boston marathon bomb attacks have largely subsided. The mining and energy sectors are sliding modestly, while all other regions of the market are improving. The psychologically important 5000.0 is being tested (for both the ASX200 and the All Ords).

In a virtual admission that eight-division title holder Manny Pacquiao's stock is dwindling, boxing promoter Bob Arum agreed that if the fifth match between Manny and Juan Manuel Marquez would take place, the Mexican boxer would get the larger purse.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI kept his promise on Tuesday, April 16, to remain low key after he had resigned as pope on Feb 28, 2013. It was his 86th birthday, but his only public appearance was to celebrate Mass at the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

AT&T, the largest U.S. carrier, started on Tuesday to accept pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S4 on its Web site. The carrier would only accept orders for the 16GB model on black and white colours and the offer is limited to select areas for the meantime.

Dominance of Android smartphones in the global market will continue in the next two years, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday at the AllThingsD mobile conference in New York.

Gold continued on Tuesday its downslide as spot prices of the yellow metal, once considered a safe haven, tumbled down to $1,322.06 an ounce on Tuesday trading. It is the lowest price since January 2011, following last week's major drop which ended the 12-year winning streak of gold.

Marathon organisers are not fazed by the Monday bombing of the Boston Marathon. They insist these annual sport events that draw thousands of international participants will go on as scheduled, but with tighter security measures to ensure the safety of marathoners.

As more people shift to tablets, the pioneer tablet maker, Apple, has seen its market share shrink in favour of the Android tablet. Blame it on the price, but due to the higher price tags on Apple's iPad, more consumers are shifting to ones that use the Android OS that 2013 would likely end up as the Year of Android Slates.

Although cattle sales of the Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) rose in the first three months of 2013 to 41,186 from 29,646 compared to the same quarter in 2012, average price per head went down to $980 from $1,255.

Falling commodity prices continued to be the the main theme driving markets on Tuesday. Gold remains a high profile casualty having fall by 15%in the last week. 10% of that decline has taken place in the last 24 hours, although in recent Asian trade prices of the yellow metal have consolidated.

Pope Francis continues to break Vatican traditions, this time it involves the Swiss Guards.

The stiff rivalry between South Korean tech giant Samsung and American tech firm Apple continues through lawsuits. Samsung, after losing to Apple in a Tokyo District Court on Feb 28, elevated the matter to the Intellectual Property High Court (IPHC), based in Tokyo.

This is a good example of a judge who not only delivers justice, but also follows the law and did not exempt himself when he broke his own court rules.

About one-third of men fake orgasms and the reason why they act is out of love, kindness and sexual insecurity, said an American urologist who just released a book on male sexual health.

U.S. scientists have successfully grown in a laboratory for the first time a whole functioning kidney by removing kidney cells from a donor rat kidney and injecting the mixture of rate kidney and blood-vessel cells into a tough collagen scaffold which grew the entire body organ in culture.

Local stocks are once again under selling pressure following yet another slump in the price of gold, and explosions at the Boston Marathon which are being treated as a criminal investigation. US stocks sold off sharply in the final hour of trade following the explosions, with the Dow Jones Index falling 60pts in a matter of minutes.

Analysts blamed on Tuesday the April 12 decision of Cyprus to sell the bulk of its hold for the bear market on the yellow metal. For long considered a safe haven, gold logged its biggest one-day percentage drop in three decades.

People who ordered the Google Glass at the Google I/O in 2012 will get their pair in a few days. Glass Explorers, which manufactures the device, said on Monday that the first batch of glasses just came off the production line and will be immediately shipped.

With all indications of breaking another YouTube record, Psy's newest single, Gentleman, would likely spawn many parodies and a number of celebrities would likely dance the horse trot, similar to what happened to the South Korean K-pop artist's first megahit, Gangnam Style.

Doomsday prophets will likely connect the dots of three ongoing developments in the international arena and warn that the end of the world is near, just like they did in December 2012 when the end of the Mayan Calendar led to Apocalpse speculations.

A New South Wales Land and Environment Court judged favoured grapes over coal on Monday when he upheld a government ruling that stopped the expansion of mining giant Rio Tinto's (ASX: RIO) coal mine in the country's famous wine-growing region of Hunter Valley.

Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who save thousands of Jews from death during World War II, was made an honorary Australian citizen. He is the first person accorded such a recognition.