Luxury handbags may exude the confidence of wealth, but take them with a grain of fancy salt -- the counterfeit business is booming. Around 2.5 percent of global imports to the US are counterfeit or pirated goods. This amounts to about half a trillion dollars' worth of merchandise, and these ill-gotten gains fund organized crime. According to Maysa Razavi, an attorney with the International Trademark Association, shoppers often don't know that "the same people who are counterfeiting are involved in human trafficking and terrorism." The next time you don a head-to-toe Gucci ensemble, keep in mind that the clutch you bought for a bargain could be lining the pockets of an underworld kingpin.

A REVOLUTIONARY hearing aid was just one of a number of new technological exhibits on show at the Men's Health Expo in Tamworth yesterday to coincide with Men's Health Week. A REVOLUTIONARY hearing aid was just one of a number of new technological exhibits on show at the Men's Health Expo in Tamworth yesterday to coincide with Men's Health Week. The hearing aid allows the person wearing it to focus on a specific conversation more clearly while drowning out any other noises in the room. It has been designed to select the best speech over noise using parallel processing through a new concept called syncro. Spokesman James Battersby for Oticon, which manufactures the hearing aid, said already the revolutionary device was a big hit in Australia after only being launched three weeks ago.