Vittorio Hernandez

The owner of the brothel where slain, chopped and cooked Indonesian transsexual sex trade worker used to work said on Thursday that there were indicators that the union of 27-year-old Mayang Prasetyo and her Australian husband Marcus Volcke was in trouble.

From a "No" to "Maybe," the Mayweathers continue to indicate interest in the dream match, with no less than Floyd Mayweather Sr confirming that a fight against Manny Pacquiao would be hard for his son than a bout with British boxer Amir Khan. While many boxing fans believe that if such a match would take place, Money May would be the likely winner, boxing journalist Jaime Ortega of BoxingNews24 thinks otherwise.

In the US, new claims for unemployment insurance fell by 1,000 in the latest week to 287,000, below forecasts for a result near 294,000. Wholesale sales fell 0.7% in August (forecast +0.7%) while inventories rose by 0.3% (forecast 0.3% gain).

A New York University study covering a century points to the introduction of the bikini or skimpy swimwear for the more than 400 per cent rise in skin cancer rates from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Human trials will start on cancer-fighting berry found only in Queensland after researchers from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane finished an eight-year study on the fruit.

Unbeaten and soon-to-retire American boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr said he would personally train Prince Jackson, the son of pop king Michael Jackson, how to box upon learning on Wednesday that the 17-year-old signed up as a member of the boxer's The Money Team.

No equity slide is ever linear, nor is a market rally, and I see the development from the central bank communication this week as a chance to break the eight-week down trend in global markets.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) named of Wednesday Australia as the best country to live in and its capital, Canberra, the best city where to reside.

Unlike trade on Tuesday the local market maintained its hefty losses for the duration of the session to fall to a fresh eight-month low for the third day. Losses were recorded in all sectors bar the defensive utilities with concerns of Germany's economy together with cuts to world growth forecasts by the IMF concerning some investors.

Floyd Mayweather Jr's Money Team has a new member and he is even richer than Money May himself. Proof of Prince Jackson's membership is his big black truck emblazoned with large Money Team stickers seen in Calabasas over the weekend.

Brisbane men have lately been in the news. A few weeks 28-year-old chef Marcus Volcke chopped his transgendered Indonesian wife, cooked her body in chemicals and committed suicide, a 47-year-old Brisbane man abducted a female German tourist and raped her similar to the sexual assault in Wolf Creek.

Marcus Volcke, the 28-year-old Australian chef who made headlines over the weekend by chopping his 27-year-old Indonesian transsexual wife, Mayang Prasetyo, and cooking parts of her body in chemicals in their Brisbane flat, was also a sex trade worker.

In times like the present, with volatility ramping and the intraday trading moving through the 100+ point range, I must remind myself that equities are at the top of the risk curve. They're therefore the first to see selling when nervousness is exposed.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) left on Tuesday the overnight cash rate unchanged at its record-low rate of 2.5 per cent, set in August 2013. However, the RBA decision did not deter lenders from revising some of their mortgage rates by offering season promotions such as cash-back deals and waived fees for new home loans.

In US economic data, the JOLTS index of job openings rose from 4.67 million to a 13-year high of 4.835 million in August. The IBD economic optimism index was unchanged at 45.2 in October. And chain store sales in the latest week were up 5.4% on a year ago, up from the 4.3% annual gain in the previous week.

After four rounds of nude selfie leaks, actress Jennifer Lawrence has broken her silence on what happened. She called the hacking incident a sex crime, not a sex scandal. Even just merely viewing the naked images is tantamount to perpetuating a sexual offence, she insisted.

The Australian sharemarket staged an impressive comeback this afternoon, with the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) closing just 0.2 per cent lower. Putting this recovery in context, local shares were slumping by as much as 1.5 per cent this morning; making it one of the biggest tumbles of the year and hitting an eight-month low in the process. Strong gains from the miners and an easing in financial sector selling were the main drivers.

Mining giant Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) rejected an offer to merge with Glencore that would have created a $160 billion mining and trading firm in August. Rio disclosed the offer made in July on Tuesday, but after thumbing down the proposed merger, there has been no contact about the deal between the two miners.

Australian shares are trading at their weakest levels in eight months, with the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) down 1.3 per cent at lunch. This follows slight falls on Monday in what was a quiet start to a holiday interrupted week. Global markets lost a little ground overnight with the DOW slipping by just 0.1 per cent.

A survey made by finder.com.au, one of the biggest comparison Web sites in Australia, found that an increase in the overnight cash rate by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) would likely come at the earliest by the third quarter of 2015.

Victorian police had identified on Monday the victim of a gruesome murder by a 28-year-old Australian chef of his transsexual Indonesian girlfriend who he chopped and the boiled in chemicals inside his Brisbane apartment.

The nude selfie leaked photo scandal continues to hound celebrities, this time round 4 of Fappening including naked men. Besides the usual hackers' favourites such as Jennifer Lawrence, Ariana Grande and Kim Kardashian, round 4 now has Winona Ryder and Nick Hogan, the son of wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose leaked photos were seen on message boards 4Chan and Reddit.

The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina has a possible hope for men who are suffering from congenital abnormalities on their penises or underwent trauma on their private parts. The hope comes in the form of male genitals grown in laboratories.

After beheading two American and two British hostages the past few weeks, the Islamic State (IS) surprised the world over the weekend by releasing on Thursday British headteacher David Richard Bolam after it abducted him in May 2014 while shopping in Libya.

Almost 200 Catholic bishops and some lay leaders would meet in the next two weeks in a synod that would have Pope Francis launch a major review of the church's teaching on family and result in changes towards marriage, living together and separation of couples.

Amid talks that unbeaten American boxer Floyd Mayweather is finally considering fighting Filipino eight-division title holder Manny Pacquiao if the congressman beats Chris Algieri on Nov 22, there is another boxing coup in the offing besides the higher chances of the Dream Match finally taking place.

The furor over the bending iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units has barely died down, yet, Apple is faced with another public relations crisis as #Hairgate threatens to be another headache for the Cupertino-based tech giant that was supposed to be enjoying brisk sales of its new flagship devices.

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will comprise the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015 in which it aims to act as a single market and production base.

Oxygen tank among divers would soon become optional following the discovery by scientists of a crystalline material that pulls oxygen out of the surrounding environment. The material, dubbed as Aquaman Crystal, uses cobalt to pull and release oxygen without the need for big storage tanks.