Vittorio Hernandez

All his bags are almost packed and he is ready to go, but retiring Pope Benedict XVI is not leaving on a jet plane but is leaving behind his red shoes.

For weeks now a common market discussion has turned around the rise of the markets and the speed with which the ASX200 ascended to the 6000 mark. Over the course of this time there have been few outcomes to interfere with the rosier perspective adopted by the market. The last week has seen this paradigm revert to themes that were common place at the end of last year. European political risk and the state of US finances have returned to cast a pall over market sentiment.

The Australian sharemarket is lower today following an uncertain Italian election result overnight. The All Ordinaries index (XAO) is down 0.6 per cent or 31 pts to 5041.7.

Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has tapped the services of Chinese actress Olivia Mann to protest the brutal and inhuman way of killing animals in China for their fur.

Residents of the Urals region in Russia who were hit by the meteor shower have been converting the disaster into cash by collecting fragments of the meteorite and selling them.

Samsung smartphone owners would soon be able to make payments for their purchases by merely waving their units near a special reader. The privilege would be open to owners of smartphones with the Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that allows a phone to transmit information to a nearby reader without touching the reader.

Souvenir hunters would probably find the memorabilia that the family of scientist Francis Crick is putting up on sale at Heritage Auction a good bargain despite the opening bid set at $243,000.

With the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) set to meet again in the next few days to make another overnight cash rate decision, the central bank hinted on Tuesday that it may cut the current 3 per cent key lending rate to offset the impact of the strong Australian currency.

Just days before his official retirement on Feb 28, Pope Benedict XVI made a controversial decision on Monday by forcing Scottish Cardinal, Keith O'Brien to quit his post.

The Australian share market ended higher on Monday although it wasn't a flawless performance. Figures released mid-session revealed that activity in the Chinese manufacturing sector eased in the month of February. As a result the Aussie dollar and the share market retreated in response.

The Australian sharemarket has opened the week higher following strong global leads over the weekend.

With the increasing volume of data placed online, the need for better security protection for email or social networking accounts becomes stronger. Tech security experts said that the earlier use of biometric features had leveled up from the traditional fingerprint or facial recognition.

As smartphones become more popular with new technologies being imbedded in these mobile devices, the chances of theft of cellular phones are also on the rise. There is also the possibility that handheld units are misplaced or inadvertently lost. To help phone owners deal with these situations, developers have come up with apps that help the users track their lost or filched phones. Here are three of these apps available for Android users on Google Play.

Ita Buttrose may be the face of Australia, having been named Australian of the Year in January. But she may as well be the poster girl for senior sex. Actually, Ms Buttrose, 71, is also the ambassador for New South Wales' Senior Week. To drive home the message that older Australians still enjoy life despite retirement from the work force, she stressed to the younger generation that many of their grandparents continue to enjoy frolicking under the sheets.

Iran announced over the weekend the discovery of new deposits of raw uranium sufficient to provide the requirements of the Middle Eastern country's nuclear programme. The Iran Atomic Energy Organisation said it has identified 16 more sites for nuclear power stations.

Although no astral object larger than a kilometer is expected to threaten Earth for the next several hundred years that could result in a global disaster, members of the UN Office for Outer Space (UNOOSA) are not taking any chance. They proposed over the weekend for an international warning system that could track asteroids and generate the earliest possible red flags of potential collisions.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States released over the weekend a video of the Sun's solar flare that occurred on July 12, 2012 and the spectacular coronal rain display that followed.

Unlike Tom Albanese, his counterpart in Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton (BHP: ASX) Chief Executive Marius Kloppers insisted over the weekend that he was not sacked, and his retirement is part of the miner's succession plan in place since he was appointed to the top post six years ago.

Perth police raised on Tuesday the house of a male hacker who attempted to sell a prototype of Microsoft's new Xbox gaming console over eBay. The suspect, named as superDaE, tried to auction a Durango development kit for the new Xbox, said to be in time for Christmas 2013.

Is Vatican City jumping six centuries from the 15th to the 21st Century? At least one cardinal or papabili appears to bring modern ideas to the post about to be vacated by Pope Benedict XVI on Feb 28.

Vatican Radio confirmed on Friday that Pope Benedict XVI will close the @Pontifex Twitter account when he retires on Feb 28. His last tweet is expected to be on that day when he also says his last address and makes a final benediction.

At a time when even tech giants such as Dell are downsizing because of the weak business environment, a U.S.-based company that logged a 400 per cent increase in accounts the past 12 months is certainly impressive and truly blessed. Samasource, founded in 2008 by Harvard graduate Leila Janah, is a leading provider of data and content services. Its clients include Google, Walmart, eBay, the University of California San Francisco and Getty Images.

Majority of Australians believe that the September national election would be a contest between the Coalition and the Australian Labor Party. Which party would get a majority vote would determine who would be Australia's next prime minister.

The Australian sharemarket is starting to record a comeback following yesterday's hefty 2.2 per cent slump. The All Ordinaries index (XAO) is up 1.2 per cent or 58.6 pts to 5057.2. Concerns were high yesterday, which resulted in the local market's biggest daily pullback since May 2012. This Sunday's Italian leadership election was keeping investors at bay while U.S Congress has barely a week to deal with the Fiscal Cliff spending cuts drama.

It seems that more and more earthings are getting tired of the planet and want to venture into outer space, which used to be the domain of NASA scientists, American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. Now, the list is getting longer to include Indians, tourists, miners and even a porn star who goes by the name of Coco Brown.

3D imaging or stereoscopy is a technique used for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereoscopic for binocular vision. Most methods used present two offset images separately to the left and right eye of the viewer. This advance imaging technique is being used in several media such as film photography, digital photography, motion picture, and even on smartphones. Recently, this technique has become available to writing using the world's first 3D printing pen c...

While many women lie about their age when they reach 40, this 104-year-old granny from Michigan had to because of a Facebook technical glitch.

At the rate that Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth of Britain, is hitting the news for his jokes, he could give any court jester a run for his money. On Wednesday, the Joke (Duke) of Edinburgh once more made the frontpages of British dailies when he joked that the Philippines must be half-empty because the other half is working as nurses in his country.

If scare minerals found on Earth are called rare earth, what about other minerals in other planets or the moon? Would you call it rare moon or rare jupiter or rare mars? What such resources would be called has not yet been settled since miners, space industrialists and academics are still currently exploring the idea of mining in other planets and the moon. They gathered on Wednesday in Sydney to tackle these possibilities and the logistics involved.