Vittorio Hernandez

The future of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games could be at risk as more cities realise how expensive it is to host the sporting event held every four years. This logistical concern was highlighted after Oslo withdrew this week its bid to be the host city for the 2022 Winter Games.

Apple claimed that there were only 9 complaints of bending iPhone 6s, but it seems there are more than 9 based on recent postings in Instagram. There were seven recent postings complete with pictures in the photo sharing site.

More United Arab Emirates boys will probably want to be a cop when they become adults, if only for the perks of having a Bugati Veyrons or Lamborghini Aventadors as their service vehicle. Soon, the Google Glass could be another added attraction as the Dubai Police Department includes the high-tech glass in their equipment.

If Cupertino-based Apple has its #bendgate woes, rival Samsung has its #gapgate problem. Like Apple, only a few units of Samsung's phablet, the Galaxy Note 4, has a thin gap between the screen and the walls of the case.

The Western Australian government ordered on Thursday the closure of the beach at Kelpid Beach in Wylie Bay, following a shark attack on a 23-year-old man. The victim, Sean Pollard from Bunbury, lost both an arm and a hand, plus suffered injuries on his leg.

The ECB meeting was the highlight of overnight trade but investors had to wait until President Mario Draghi's press conference for some real direction. After sounding very aggressive and showing willingness to do whatever it takes to spur the economy in past weeks, investors interpreted Mario Draghi's language as less dovish - he failed to say that the committee is ready to adjust the size and composition of purchases. Analysts feel this was a step back from what Draghi's recent comment...

With his patented crotch grab pose, music icon Michael Jackson would have been the perfect endorser of a new viral trend to promote a testicular cancer awareness campaign if he were still alive. Using the hashtag #FeelingNuts, the campaign has tapped celebrities to have a photo of themselves grabbing their private parts and then challenging others to do the same in the tradition of the highly successful Ice Bucket Challenge that raised over $100 million.

A Twitter war has started after Gunther Gettinger, the EU commissioner designate of Digital Economy and Society blamed the female celebrities on Monday in Brussels for the furor that their leaked nude selfies caused. He was quoted by BBC as saying, "IF SOMEONE IS dumb enough as a celebrity to take a nude photo of themselves and put it online, they surely can't expect us to protect them."

The recovery that stirred the spirits of optimists this morning was fading at lunchtime and not long afterwards the ASX 200 had made a new low for the session. There were no developments in particular that saw the mood shift, and one factor that united the 2 halves of the day was the fact that the majority of sectors remained in the red over the entire session, The ASX200 ending down by 0.7 per cent at 5,298.5 points.

Notwithstanding #bendgate or the viral video that shows iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones bend when placed inside pants pocket for a long period of time, Australians are not deterred and want to join the more than 10 million people who bought one of the Apple flagship devices within 24 hours of its launch. Many Aussies are willing to wait for one month to receive their order of the bendable phone, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

A fat finger caused $617 billion bad orders on Wednesday at the Japanese stock exchange. Fortunately, the amount was cancelled before it was matched, otherwise, it could have caused a disaster in the financial markets because of the huge amount involved.

Germany may not be in the top 10 ranking of the just released Times Higher Education world university rankings, but insofar as students from other countries as concerned, German universities are number 1 if only because the country is 100 per cent tuition-free.

The small cap space in the US finally breached the 10% correction level overnight as the Russell 2000 extended its slide.

Nestle Fitness launched a campaign to remind women to have regular check-ups to help prevent breast cancer. By hiding a secret camera in the female model's bra, the company discovered that males too are "checking out" the model's mammary glands by way of stares or hidden glances.

A renowned Israeli psychic who was famous in the 1970s for bending spoons using only his mind may be the bane of Apple, not teens who just walk into a device store and attempt to bend the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus using their bare hands.

In US economic data, the ADP national employment index showed that 213,000 private sector jobs were created in September, just above forecasts. Construction spending fell by 0.8% in August, short of forecasts for a 0.5% gain. And the ISM manufacturing index eased from 59.0 to 56.6 in September, short of forecasts for a reading near 58.5.

The Filipino couple behind the 2013 viral video in which female teenagers stomp a puppy to death was sentenced by the Regional Trial Court in the Philippine province of La Union to life imprisonment.

Local investors have had little opportunity to savour the gains of the pre-ceding session. The 0.5 per cent gain for the ASX 200 on Tuesday was erased in short order at the open today. Buyers were invisible at the open and the ASX 200 shed 48 points at the low point of the morning. The selling pressure eased over following hours and in the hour leading up to lunch a good portion of the losses were neutralised. The signals sent from US and European markets overnight were mixed. On the one hand a ...

Global equities have just capped the worst quarter of trade since 2012. However, the US market has just logged its seventh consecutive quarterly gain. That is a concern for me.

With almost every Australian above the age of 10 owning a mobile phone, payphones have become a relic of the past, as useless as the pager. But telco giant Telstra has taught of a brilliant way to recycle these things by converting them into Wi-Fi hotspots.

A media group in Iraq aired on Saturday on national television a satire on the Islamic State (IS). However, to protect the cast and production people from the beheading knives of members of the extremist organisation who are the subject of the comedy, the scriptwriter is anonymous, while some actors names do not appear on the opening or closing billboard.

Queensland Ombudsman Phil Clarke ruled on Tuesday that strip searches on female inmates detained at the Townsville Women's Correctional Centre were illegal. Clarke's decision prompted prisoner advocate Debbie Kilroy to push for disciplinary action on the perpetrators.

The ongoing social media war between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr could be an indicator of the exciting times ahead if the dream match between the two boxers would push through. That bout could provide both champions multimillion dollar payments that would be the envy of other professional athletes.

A 24-year-old male Briton complained of rape while attending the Oktoberfest beer festival in Theresienwese, Munich. The unnamed victim went behind a bush to urinate when two men approached him and said they wanted to have sex with him.

Over the course of Tuesday afternoon the ASX 200 slowly edged higher ending the day up 0.54 per cent at 5292.8 points. In doing so the market was able to make new highs for the session, although the improvements felt as though they were made on shifting sands. The best that could be said for the market at present is that sellers have exhausted themselves, and the index has drifted higher in their absence.

The start to Tuesday's session on the ASX followed a familiar pattern of trade, in that sellers dominated once more. The initial plunge for the index saw a loss of 11 points at the low point of the morning. From the lowest ebb the market recovered to push back into positive territory, albeit rather briefly. A status quo was then established which saw the market pivot around the un-changed level in the late morning trade. The softer tone for the second session of the week was at least consiste...

Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong caused the closure on Monday of Standard Chartered and other banks in the administrative region. It were not just over-the-counter services that were closed, even ATMS and cash deposit machines in some areas were also affected.

Australian supermarket giant Coles is figuratively eating humble bread after the federal court ordered it on Monday to place signs for three months that it passed off par-baked bread as freshly baked. In other words, Coles is forced to admit that it used false advertising and was cheating consumers.

Despite the insulting "Miss Pac Man" name-calling and tweeting of old photos of losing a boxing match to Mexican boxer Juan Manuel Marquez, Filipino congressman and eight-division title holder Manny Pacquiao is not mad at rival Floyd Mayweather Jr.