Holiday fitness gifts trend from high-tech to basic

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Looking for the perfect holiday present for a fitness fan? Gift offerings this year range from apps that can store a run in the country to be viewed later to gadgets so sophisticated they measure quality of sleep as well as calories burned.There is also the revival of the humble foam roller, which experts say, like old-time push-ups, squats and planks, has never been more popular.Anita...

Read More..

Global firms’ tax pay ‘an insult’

3 December 2012 Last updated at 05:44 ETGlobal firms in the UK that pay little or no tax are an “insult” to British businesses, a committee of MPs says.Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge said HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) needed to be “more aggressive and assertive in confronting corporate tax avoidance”.Multinationals such as Starbucks and Amazon have come under fire for paying little...

Read More..

Italy votes for center-left candidate for premier

ROME (AP) — Italians are choosing a center-left candidate for premier for elections early next year, an important primary runoff given the main party is ahead in the polls against a center-right camp in utter chaos over whether Silvio Berlusconi will run again.Sunday’s runoff pits a veteran center-left leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, 61, against the 37-year-old mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, who has...

Read More..

Lindsay Lohan risks return to jail after double trouble

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Lindsay Lohan on Thursday faced the possibility of being sent back to jail after a tumultuous 24 hours in which she was arrested in New York for assault, and charged in California with reckless driving and lying to police over a June car crash.Lohan, 26, who has been to rehab, jail and court multiple times since a 2007 arrest for drunk driving and cocaine possession,...

Read More..

Analysis: Drugmakers step up search for hearing loss medicines

ZURICH/LONDON (Reuters) – When Swiss biotech firm Auris Medical wanted to recruit patients to test its experimental hearing loss drug, it decided to enlist partygoers deafened by firecrackers on New Year’s Eve.In the weeks leading up to December 31, 2005 it advertised in the subway and on radio stations in Munich and Berlin, urging victims of sudden firecracker-induced hearing loss to turn up at designated...

Read More..

Starbucks: We must do more on tax

2 December 2012 Last updated at 07:38 ETGlobal coffee chain Starbucks has said it is in talks with HM Revenue and Customs and the Treasury over how much UK tax it pays.It is one of several well-known firms that were criticised over the level of their corporation tax payments.The firm admitted that it “needed to do more” in the UK on tax.Meanwhile, Chancellor George Osborne has pledged more funds for...

Read More..

Cargo plane crashes in Brazzaville, 3 dead

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) — A cargo plane owned by a private company crashed Friday near the airport in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, killing at least three people, officials said.The Soviet-made Ilyushin-76 belonged to Trans Air Congo and appeared to be transporting merchandise, not people, said an aviation official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized...

Read More..

Katie Holmes in “Dead Accounts”: what did the critics think?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – With her marriage to Tom Cruise firmly ensconced in the rearview mirror, Katie Holmes has returned to Broadway to star in Theresa Rebeck‘s “Dead Accounts.”But the “Dawson’s Creek” actress who will forever be synonymous with one mega-star’s epic Oprah freakout, got credit from many critics for giving it the proverbial college try – although most reviewers savaged the production.“Dead...

Read More..

South Africa makes progress in HIV/AIDS fight

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — In the early 90s when South Africa‘s Themba Lethu clinic could only treat HIV/AIDS patients for opportunistic diseases, many would come in on wheelchairs and keep coming to the health center until they died.Two decades later the clinic is the biggest ARV (anti-retroviral) treatment center in the country and sees between 600 to 800 patients a day from all over southern Africa. Those...

Read More..

South Korea November exports show fragile, uneven global recovery

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean exports last month marked their first back-to-back growth of the year, but demand from the advanced economies was weak, data showed on Saturday, indicating any global recovery would be fragile at best.November exports grew by 3.9 percent over a year earlier to $ 47.8 billion on top of a revised 1.1 percent rise in October, while imports last month rose by 0.7 percent...

Read More..