Having just celebrated its tenth birthday the social network that has come to dominate the online advertising space has taken analysts by surprise by announcing revenues of $2.5 billion for the quarter ending March 31 this year. This represents an increase of 71 percent over the same period a year ago and was the fourth quarter in a row in which Facebook has beaten forecasts.

In addition to the order taking the country’s total F-35 fleet to 72 aircraft, Australia’s government also revealed that it plans to spend more than A$1.6bn on new facilities at two air bases in the states of New South Wales and the Northern Territory.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that the purchase would "ensure our edge as a regional power". He added the deal did not involve any new spending and would ensure that Australia’s defences remain strong.

A few years ago, the ability to capture and manipulate data was an exciting possibility. Organizations often pulled information from databases, which they would then export into Excel to manipulate and analyze. Today, however, static reporting is no longer enough. Recently there has been a shift in Information Technology from traditional Business Intelligence (BI), where reports are static, to data discovery, where the reports are focused on users, and are dynamic and easy to use.

As Joseph Tis, Senior Vice President, explains, 2013 was an important year for the Sierra Gorda open pit copper mine project. “In February of last year the project budget, valued at $4,000 million was updated. In the months that followed the project went on to complete a consolidated advance of 52.9 percent, reaching 91.2 percent in February 2014.”

The name José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín is one that is revered in Puerto Rico. Born in February 1898, he was a poet, journalist, politician and statesman, and to this day remains regarded as both the “Father of Modern Puerto Rico” and the “Architect of the Commonwealth”. In 1948 Marín became the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico and went on to spearhead an administration that would become lauded internationally for engineering significant economic, political and social reforms that immensely benefited the territory.

Since founding IOS 22 years ago at Chicoutimi in Québec, Réjean Girard has seen no fewer than four recessions and it's an achievement in itself that, as a service provider to the notoriously cyclic mining industry, the firm has managed to grow through each of them. It has forged a reputation well beyond Québec and Canada as an efficient and innovative operator.

Founded in 2005, its focus being to provide clients with management consulting and IT solutions, CONCIEL has expanded over the subsequent years to become a business tasked with solving its customers’ mission-critical problems through the innovative application of technology and expertise.

The artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector is a catch all classification for a diverse group of people who employ low-tech methods, with little in the way of equipment and no supervision, to extract metals – mainly gold.

It is almost impossible to avoid the messages about the importance of innovation that dominate business magazines, web sites, and conferences. At a most recent Annual Meeting of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, innovation joined “Big Data” and channel disruption as the three themes cited by CEOs, CMOs, and academic experts as most critical to the future success of business-to-business manufacturing firms. That emphasis is nothing new.

The agreement to join forces and respectively reshape their businesses will also see the two firms combining their consumer health units. Novartis will acquire GSK's cancer drugs business for $16 billion and sell its vaccines division, excluding the flu unit, to GSK for $7.1 billion.

In a separate deal, Novartis has agreed to sell its animal health division to Lilly for nearly $5.4bn. The firm said the moves would help it to focus on its key businesses.