Esther Tanquintic-Misa

Woolworths Ltd on Friday revealed plans of spinning off its existing shopping centre assets into a real estate investment trust to maximise shareholder value, along with the intention to knock on investors for $506 million to help fund and push the deal.

The Malaysian Higher Court has rescheduled on Oct. 10 its initial hearing over the highly contested temporary operating license (TOL) granted to Australian rare earths miner Lynas Corp. that would jumpstart its Malaysian rare earths processing plant.

Sales of newly purchased vehicles in Australia jumped 9 per cent in September, an indication that consumers prefer to spend their money on high-ticket yet essential items compared to lower-priced yet unnecessary items such as probably those sold in retail sales.

Casting off concerns it will be helping a direct competitor, Australia has vowed it will assist Mongolia to achieve and expand its very own mining boom.

Hotels in Australia will soon be transporting guests in electric-charged service vehicles.

In what seemed to be a fitting testament to its strategic higher educational programmes and methods, the Melbourne University continued to lead Australia's universities in this year's Times Higher Education 2012-13 World University Rankings.

The highly contagious norovirus has recently struck some 20 Australians who were out in New Zealand for a skiing holiday.

Delays in securing much needed regulatory approvals in India have compelled Australian coal miner India Resources to cancel developing new projects in the power-crisis stricken country.

Sales of newly constructed Australian homes have fallen to a record-hitting 15-year low in August, an industry survey report by the Canberra-based Housing Industry Association (HIA) revealed on Wednesday.

A number of Australian computer rental businesses have admitted installing a "spyware" software on the laptops they rent out to customers, but argued these were intended only for security purposes, and that it never activated the supposed spy functions of the software.

State teachers in Queensland have decided to suspend a planned 24-hour strike later this month to mull over and decide the new pay offer forwarded by the state government.

Newmont Mining, the second-largest gold producing mining firm in the world, will be installing a global SAP system in its Australian operations in the next two months.

The republics of Congo and Cameroon have created a joint team to supervise the management of the iron ore deposits that are located along their common border as the owner of the Mbalam iron-ore project has been in an inconclusive takeover bid.

A year after it was announced that China's Sichuan Hanlong Group's has acquired Australia's Sundance Resources Ltd, the deal has yet to be sealed with the needed financing and skeptics are beginning to doubt if it will ever push through.

Australia Post, wanting to capture majority of the pie that caters to the growing online shopping activities of Australians, will acquire 50 per cent of Qantas Airways Ltd's freight business StarTrack for A$408 million ($422 million).

Home prices in Australia has risen for the fourth consecutive month in September, in what could be a confirmation that the rate cut is finally taking effect.

For the first time in three years, Nike Inc. reported its earnings for its fiscal 2013 first quarter ended August 31, 2012 had dipped 12 per cent, spurred by declining orders from China, prompting shares to immediately tumble on Thursday.

China's major listed steelmaker Baoshan Iron and Steel Co Ltd. had shutdown one of its steelmills in Shanghai, in an apparent surrender to the dangerously low and continued falling prices of iron ore and as well as waning global demand.

After a long and arduous eight-month stretch trying to prick the interests of potential buyers, Australia's top supermarket chain Woolworths Ltd was finally able to sell its Dick Smith Electronics chain for $20 million to private equity group Anchorage Capital Partners.

Australian gold mining firm Noble Mineral Resources Ltd is poised to receive A$85 million ($88 million) from Chinese firm Zhongrun Resources Investment Corp as it approved the latter's increased stake ownership bid into the company to 42 per cent.

Cash-stricken North Korea has earned US$100 million over the past year by selling more than 2 tonnes of its gold to China.

Shortly after a month that it announced it is cancelling the $30-billion expansion of the Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine mega project, global mining giant BHP Billiton has asked the state government of South Australia to extend the deadline coverage of the indenture agreement the two parties signed in October 2011.

Australia's dwindling mining activity has again tempered jobs, this time numbering 150, after mining giant Xstrata PLC announced the impending closure of its Cosmos nickel mine in Western Australia on falling prices of the commodity.

The Queensland state government has announced it is poised to construct a second shipping project in Gladstone harbour.

New Zealand dairy company Fonterra Co-Operative Group Ltd. on Wednesday said its payout to farmer shareholders will fall by 19 per cent as net revenues for the 2011-12 season had remained flat at $19.8 billion.

Prices of iron ore and its consequent by-product steel will find a hard time to rebound in at least the next six months, not until China's economic growth posts record giant leaps, the chief executive officer of Shale-Inland Holdings LLC, a diversified steel services company, said.

A new research by the Housing Industry Association (HIA) titled 'HIA-COLORBOND® steel Housing 100 Report' has shown that the number of new houses constructed by Australia's top 100 builders have fallen to an equivalent 7.3 per cent to 48,130 in 2011/12, the group's lowest level since 1996/97.

Lynas Corp., which is all set to fire up its rare earths processing facility in Malaysia in October, could once again get embroiled in a legal court battle after its temporary operating licence (TOL) has been put on hold by a Malaysian high court until Oct. 4 pending an injunction filed by opponents to the plant.

Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) has been forced to slash its 2015 earnings forecast as commodity miners and producers equally reduced budget allocations for project developments as a result of the debilitating global fiscal crisis dragging commodity prices down.