Barnes & Noble said Thursday it is reviewing its options for its Nook e-book and e-book catalog business and might separate it from its core bookstore business.

The company also lowered its yearly guidance. The news sent shares down 30 percent in morning trading.

Last March, I embarked on a mini-road trip around Tasmania, an island off the southeast corner of Australia. Tassie, what Aussies affectionately call their smallest state, is a nature-lover's dream, with enough history and culinary delights to satisfy urbanites. While its landscape has similarities to New Zealand's North Island, with lush, rocky, "Lord of the Rings" countryside, it is unequivocally Australian, with carnivorous marsupials, eucalyptus forests and a mellow, rustic spirit.

Tasmania is best explored by car, which can be daunting for independent travelers. Like other Commonwealth countries, motorists in Australia drive on the left, in cars where the driver sits on the right. Yet it is rather easy to "hire" a car in Australia. Foreign drivers licenses in English are honored, and insurance is incorporated into the affordable rental package.

Northern California scientists say they have found a possible explanation for the honey bee die-off: A parasitic fly that hijacks the bees' bodies and causes them to abandon hives.

The symptoms mirror colony collapse disorder, in which all the adult honey bees in a colony suddenly disappear. The disorder continues to decimate hives in the U.S. and overseas.

This tuna is worth savoring: It cost nearly three-quarters of a million dollars.

A bluefin tuna caught off northeastern Japan fetched a record 56.49 million yen, or about $736,000, Thursday in the first auction of the year at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. The price for the 593-pound (269-kilogram) tuna beat last year's record of 32.49 million yen.

She's married into the royal family, and now the former Kate Middleton is moving to take on her new role by choosing the charities she will support.

St. James's Palace said Thursday that the Duchess of Cambridge has accepted honorary positions with charities that deal with a range of issues, including tackling drug addiction and helping young people.

Now that the Queen of Soul has found her king, she's focusing on the key details of her upcoming wedding, including the place, the entertainment and, most important, the dress.

"You know I am very hands-on. There is no way in the world anyone else could do my wedding other than myself, along with whomever I select to do various things," she told The Associated Press.

After seeing "The Mountaintop" on Broadway, Laurence Fishburne went backstage, stunned.

He was looking to toast his old friend, Angela Bassett. The two had costarred in the intense Tina Turner biopic "What's Love Got to Do With It?" but Fishburne had seen something special pour out of Bassett on this night.

Fiat has added five percent to its majority ownership of Chrysler.

The Italian automaker got the added stake by making a car in the U.S. that gets 40 miles per gallon of gas.

Yahoo's previous turnaround attempts have flopped under three different leaders with dramatically different backgrounds — former movie mogul Terry Semel, beloved Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and profanity-spewing Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz.

Now, the struggling Internet company is making yet another unorthodox choice with Wednesday's announcement that it has lured Scott Thompson away from a lower-profile job running eBay's thriving PayPal service to step into the pressure-packed position as Yahoo's fourth CEO in less than five years.

The Academy Award for visual effects is shaping up into a showdown among such heroes as Harry Potter, the X-Men, the Transformers and Captain America.

Oscar organizers Wednesday announced 10 finalists for the visual-effects prize.