Carlo Fernandez

Amid domestic problems with its engineers, Qantas Airways Ltd. is looking at its Asian neighbors to boost its opportunities.According to the newspaper Nikkei, Qantas is in talks with Japan Airlines for a low cost carrier. The joint venture would have a capitalization of 10 billion yen ($115 million) to 20 billion yen, and would have each airline having a 30 per cent stake.

For more than 700 million people, the only constant in life are taxes, death and Facebook. Google, already earning billions with its search and e-mail service, has tried - but failed - several times to take Facebook's place in social networking.

Standard & Poor's has threatened to downgrade the U.S. sovereign rating, which is currently 'AAA', to 'D', meaning a default in the country's credit worthiness, if the government fails to honor U.S. Treasury debt payments. On this predicament, the IMF said: "At the opposite extreme, an excessively front-loaded adjustment could hurt the recovery. And a worsening of financial turmoil in European sovereign and bank debt markets could hurt U.S. growth through financial sector l...

The International Olympic Committee has encouraged athletes and other participants at the 2012 London Games to post comments on social media platforms or websites and tweet during the Olympics, but noted that athletes may be sanctioned or barred from competing if guidelines are not followed.

MasterCard Inc., operator of the second-largest electronic payments network, with card brands MasterCard MasterCard, Maestro and Cirrus, temporarily lost service on its website due to a cyber attack from hackers backing whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks.

A water buffalo has gored an Australian pensioner to death in the Philippines after the man slammed into the beast while driving home from a nightclub on his motorbike, police say.

Although most of the 22 million Australians are of British or Irish origin, the councilors at Sydney this week agreed to use the word "invasion" -- instead of "arrival" as proposed in the original plan, or "colonisation" as proposed in a compromise -- in its preamble to the council's new 2030 master plan.

Despite a 5% year-on-year dip in the overall market, iPhone shipments soared 13% quarter-on-quarter, with Apple becoming the top mobile device vendor in Australia for the first time, with nearly one third market share, Research firm International Data Corp.'s Q1 2011 Mobile Device Tracker revealed.

Diesel, the maker of jeans for hot girls, has released an app that allows you to slack off at work without having your boss catch you on Facebook. Diesel's new "Be Stupid at Work app" makes Facebook appear to be an Excel spreadsheet, which means you can update your status and read updates all you want without the guy who shares your cubicle or your boss noticing. Download the app at http://www.bestupidatwork.com/

Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications company, now offers the possibility to make and receive phone calls with superior sound quality with High Definition Voice.

The United States and North Korea are never in agreement with each other. They are in a dispute about South Korea, Pyongyang's nuclearization and arms proliferation, and many more. There have been tensions between them in the land, sea, and air, and they might as well take their dispute to the Internet.

On Sunday, a strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck near the coast of Indonesia's Papua province. There were no immediate reports of damage or tsunami warnings issued.Aside from Indonesia, during the past week moderate to strong earthquakes have hit Japan; nations in the Pacific like Fiji; Latin American countries like Chile and Argentina; Alaska in the United States; and even Antartica.

The Pine Island Glacier, West Antarctica’s biggest glacier, is melting 50 percent faster than in 1994, adding to a global increase in sea levels, by U.S. and U.K. scientists said in a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

After headline-grabbing hacking exploits against the likes of Sony Corp., the CIA, the U.S. Senate, and FBI partner Infragard, hacking group LulzSec said it won't stop its cyber exploits unless U.S. President Obama does one thing."If President Obama wears a shoe on his head throughout the entirety of his next big speech, we will cease fire on all targets forever," LulzSec said in its Twitter account on Saturday.But apparently, LulzSec is calling it quits, according to a farewell...

Distressed domain hosting outfit Distribute.IT and its offshoot Click n Go customers and assets have been acquired by Netregistry Group, the largest domain group in Australia.

We already have our top five most embarrassing tweets for the first half of the year.

The Australian government reached a deal yesterday with the nation's two largest telecommunications companies, Telstra and Optus, bringing the government's rollout of the National Broadband Network closer.

Research firm Gartner, Inc., said that by 2016, 50 percent of all major marketing automation vendors will develop applications specifically for Apple's iPad.

Most Australian internet users will have their web access censored next month after the nation's two largest internet providers agreed to block access to websites that have themes considered to be unsuitable by the Federal Government of Australia.Telstra and Optus have agreed to block access to 500 child abuse sites identified by the Australian Communications and Media Authority and additional sites provided by "reputable" international organizations.Some Internet users have lau...

Apple Inc. plans to introduce the iPhone 5 in September. The Cupertino, California-based manufacturer of the iPhone, the iPad and the iMac, delayed the release of the fifth generation iPhone to coincide with the release of the new iOS 5, according to a report.Bloomberg News, citing two people familiar with the plans, reports that the iPhone 5 will closely resemble the iPhone 4 but will have a more powerful chip and a more advanced camera.

LulzSec on Tuesday, in a document posted on Pastebin, called the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to put an eye on Marshal Webb, another hacker.

LG Electronics is releasing in Australia the LG Optimus 3D (P920), which claims to offer "the world's first 3D experience on a smartphone"."Now you can record, view and share 3D content in the palm of your hand - glasses free," Korea-based LG said in its website. " View pictures, videos and games on the large screen in 3D, upload content to YouTube's dedicated 3D channel or share your 3D content via the HDMI 1.4 connection to your 3D TV."

Nokia Oyj has unveiled the Nokia N9, a Meego-based, button-less touch screen smartphone, one of Nokia's finest works to date.

Australian domain registrar and web host Distribute.IT on Tuesday informed customers who had sites hosted on a number of its servers that their sites and emails were now considered "unrecoverable".

Following a joint effort by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United Kingdom's Scotland Yard, Ryan Cleary, a 19-year-old suspected major player of LulzSec, was arrested in Essex, England. Cleary is in custody at a central London police station and is being questioned on a suspicion of a Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act offence.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group that manages Internet addresses, approved a plan to usher in one of the biggest changes ever to the Internet's Domain Name System.

$1,300 per resident. Close to $1,300 (US$1,400) per resident above 17 in Australia were lost to gambling last year, the highest in the world, according to global gaming-industry consultants H2 Gambling Capital. Singapore, which recently built two mega casinos, was next on about US$1150. But as to wealth, Singapore has the highest concentration of millionaire households, with 15.5 percent of all households having at least $1 million, compared to only 1% in Australia.

A month after the finale of the successful 10th season, and a year after snarky judge Simon Cowell's departure and the exit of its founders from management, American Idol is up for another shake-up this year: Apollo Global Management, LLC, is taking over ownership for $509 million in cash.

Activision on Thursday announced that Annihilation, the third piece of downloadable content pack of Call of Duty: Black Ops will be available for Xbox 360 on June 28. The pack will be available for PlayStation 3 and Windows PC a month later.