-- The Australian Department of Defence has chosen five IT vendors as finalists for the contract covering the computing and communications systems for a new joint operations command center. They include the Australian units of BAE Systems PLC and Raytheon Co., plus three companies based in Australia. The command center is scheduled to open by the end of 2008.

Global fact

123M: The number of Internet users in China as of the end of June, up 19.4 percent from the same time last year. The number of people using broadband connections was 77 million.

Source: China Internet Network Information Center, Beijing