Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba has broken its own one-day sales record on Singles Day - the world's largest online shopping event.
It has reported that it comfortably surpassed last year's total of $9.3bn after just over half a day of trading.
The first $1bn in sales was recorded within eight minutes of midnight.
The money spent on the Chinese day to celebrate being single dwarf the US flagship day of online discounts, Cyber Monday, which only registered sales of $1.35bn last year.
These figures come against the backdrop of a series of poor economic indicators from China.
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Portugal will be the second euro-country to install a far-left government in 2015, as the approval of a 'rejection motion' by 123 votes to 107 has sparked the fall of prime minister Pedro Passos' conservative government.
This comes just weeks after a minority centre-right coalition was formed following the country's general election in October.
Socialist Party leader Antonio Costa is now set to lead the new Portuguese government.
The outgoing prime minister says that while a left-wing coalition is “mathematically possible,” it is “politically illegitimate.”
Portugal's new government is expected to stick to economic reforms which the country has agreed to - but it will hope to do so at a slower pace than originally planed.
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Microsoft has finished the latest phase of the expansion of its data centre facility in Dublin, bringing the total amount invested in this site to more than €1bn.
The new centre is roughly the size of three football pitches - it will provide extra capacity for the company's cloud services, Office 365 and other online services.
“We are delighted to share details of further expansion of the Irish based data centre during our year of celebrations marking our 30th anniversary of investing in Ireland,” said Cathriona Hallahan, MD, Microsoft Ireland.
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Post offices could provide current accounts from early next year.
It would mean more than a thousand branches around the country would offer day to day transaction accounts to customers at a time when banks are cutting back on customer service.
Irish Independent reports that An Post's account would be accessible over the internet, by phone and using an app.
The account would offer a range of services already found in banks, including debit cards and ATMs, as well as plans to provide direct debit and standing order facilities.
