It is an offence in Queensland to carry an unconcealed gel blaster in public from February 1, with police urging owners of the toy guns to be fully aware of their responsibilities or face harsher penalties including jail time.

THE crumbling Pie Face fast-food chain has been hit with a second lawsuit in the US.

RUSSIA’S central bank has announced a dramatic hike of its key rate from 10.5 to 17 per cent to try to halt an out-of-control slide in the rouble.

The Australian dollar is slightly higher after oil prices started to stage a recovery.

Michelle Rex signed up to a plan in 2007 and made fortnightly payments totalling $8,000, thinking it was a savings plan. By the time she spoke to a financial counsellor, she was already $2,000 over her maximum payout amount.

The typical Australian is now worth more than $260,000, knocking Switzerland off the top of the global rich list.

While most coal-fired generators are demolished after their use-by date, the defunct Wallerawang power station in central-western NSW is being repurposed to help with Australia's renewable energy future.

More than 1,000 people flock to the KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa in search of diamonds.

Chinese retailer JD.com could disrupt not only Australia’s bricks-and-mortar shops but its online sector as well.

SUNRICE has forecast a 40 per cent lift in full-year profit.

SUPER funds are forecast to end 2014 up by between five and eight per cent — less than half last year’s return.

An 80-year-old pensioner on Queensland's Sunshine Coast lost his life savings in an online scam, which uses identities like Dick Smith and trusted brands like the ABC to promote them.

South-east Queensland drivers filling up their tanks this weekend will be paying the highest prices of all the capital cities in Australia for unleaded petrol, with the fuel cycle showing although prices are slow to rise, they are even slower to come down again.

CHINA’S gross domestic product turned out to be 3.4 per cent larger last year than originally announced.

THE big four banks have lost their appetite to lend to greenfield toll road projects.

TELSTRA is in talks to buy Asian undersea cable operator Pacnet in a deal that could be worth as much as $1 billion.

TELSTRA has signed a $390m contract to plan and design services to support the NBN rollout, for a term of up to four years.

The Dow Jones index briefly hit a new record of 23,000 but has since retreated slightly, while the Australian share market is headed for a slightly lower open.

Will Australia's housing market be the same in the aftermath of the pandemic?

Construction on Sydney's newest city centre will begin before the end of the year, with the NSW government releasing first images of how it will look.

ABC Radio Adelaide takes a look at what has happened at Sanjeev Gupta's previous acquisitions ahead of the revitalisation of Whyalla's Arrium steelworks.

THE slide in oil prices has caused sharp losses among some of Wall Street’s biggest names — the latest in a series of bad bets made by star investors.

LEIGHTON will announce a sale of its services business this afternoon after the construction giant this morning entered a trading halt, sources said.

ASIC says the chance of it backing a plan to rescue Planet Platinum is the same as “a snowflake in hell”.

Millions of investors have learnt the hard way this week that bull runs do not last forever.