Ivory Coast: New prime minister named

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — President Alassane Ouattara has tapped Foreign Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan to serve as prime minister in a new government one week after the surprise dissolution of cabinet.The appointment of Duncan, a member of the PDCI party of former President Henri Konan Bedie, was announced at a press conference Wednesday by Amadou Gon...

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Tablets, discounters top U.S. holiday shopping lists: Reuters/Ipsos

(Reuters) – Move over computers, your sleek siblings are the prized gift of the holidays.One-third of U.S. consumers are thinking about buying an electronic tablet this holiday season, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted for Thomson Reuters. And 22 percent of those who want one of the hot devices said they plan to cut back on other holiday purchases...

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OB/GYNs back over-the-counter birth control pills

WASHINGTON (AP) — No prescription or doctor’s exam needed: The nation’s largest group of obstetricians and gynecologists says birth control pills should be sold over the counter, like condoms.Tuesday’s surprise opinion from these gatekeepers of contraception could boost longtime efforts by women’s advocates to make the pill more accessible. But...

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Autonomy ‘misled HP on finances’

20 November 2012 Last updated at 14:58 ET Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. HP chief executive Meg Whitman: “We uncovered a whole host of very concerning accounting improprieties”Computer maker Hewlett Packard has asked US and UK authorities to...

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AP Exclusive: Syrian rebels seize base, arms trove

BASE OF THE 46TH REGIMENT, Syria (AP) — After a nearly two-month siege, Syrian rebels overwhelmed a large military base in the north of the country and made off with tanks, armored vehicles and truckloads of munitions that rebel leaders say will give them a boost in the fight against President Bashar Assad‘s army.The rebel capture of the base of the Syrian...

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Woman hits ‘like’ on Facebook, gets arrested in India

The police in Mumbai arrested Monday a 21-year-old college student Shaheen Dhada for a Facebook status update and her friend Renu Srinivasan for clicking “Like” on the update. The case is the latest in a string of recent crackdowns on Internet speech in India.The update had criticized a general strike called by a political party, the right-wing Shiv Sena,...

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Repeat testing common among Medicare patients

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In a new study, up to half – or more – of older adults on Medicare who had a heart, lung, stomach or bladder test had the same procedure repeated within three years.Those tests typically aren’t supposed to be routinely repeated, researchers said. For some of them, such as echocardiography and stress tests for heart function,...

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Comet to cut hundreds more jobs

19 November 2012 Last updated at 10:59 ETThe insolvent electrical chain Comet is cutting hundreds more jobs, its administrators have said. Deloitte said there would be a further 735 redundancies at its head office, central functions and across its home delivery network.This is in addition to 330 redundancies already...

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Turbulence on Cuba-Italy flight leaves 30 bruised

ROME (AP) — An airliner flying from Havana to Milan abruptly plunged some 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) when it hit unusually strong turbulence over the Atlantic on Monday, terrifying passengers and leaving some 30 people aboard with bruises and scrapes, airline officials said.The flight continued to Milan’s Malpensa airport after the plane’s captain determined...

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Wii U: New console launches in a sea of gadgets

NEW YORK (AP) — In the six years since the last major video game system launched, Apple unveiled the iPhone and the iPad, “Angry Birds” invaded smartphones and Facebook reached a billion users. In the process, scores of video game consoles were left to languish in living rooms alongside dusty VCRs and disc players.On Sunday, Nintendo Co. is launching the...

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