A month long HIV blocker that women could use for protection without their partners knowing? Major new research is beginning in Africa to see whether a special kind of vaginal ring just might work.

Giving women tools to protect themselves when their partners won't use a condom is crucial for battling the AIDS epidemic. Women already make up half of the 34.2 million people worldwide living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS; even more — 60 percent — in hard-hit Africa are women.

Scientists say there has been a freak event in Greenland this month: Nearly every part of the massive ice sheet that blankets the island suddenly started melting.

Even Greenland's coldest place showed melting. Records show that last happened in 1889 and occurs about once every 150 years.

A semi-official Iranian news agency says police hope to work with Facebook to fight cyber-crimes and pornography — a turnabout in Tehran's stance toward the social networking giant that it previously banned after activists used it as an organizing tool.

A Tuesday report by ISNA quotes Gen. Kamal Hadianfar, head of Iran's cyber-police, as saying the country is trying to remove pages on Facebook created by Iranian citizens that promote pornography and prostitution.

Brazil's well-heeled socialites swear by them. Legions of slum-dwellers from the country's hillside "favelas" don them almost every day. Minimum wage earners behind juice bar counters use them, as do newly minted millionaires and, alarmingly, construction workers.

In Brazil, literally everyone wears Havaianas, the now world-famous brand of rubber and plastic flip-flops that's celebrating its 50th birthday this year.

More consumers are buying the least expensive iPhones and iPads, a new phenomenon that is causing Apple's breakneck growth rate to slow.

On Tuesday, Apple Inc. revealed that both revenue and net income posted increases of just over 20 percent — cause for celebration at most companies, but meager by Apple standards.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday that Israel will act immediately if it discovers that Syria transferred chemical or biological weapons to Hizbullah.

Lieberman told Israel Radio: "For us, that's a casus belli, a red line."

Yemeni warplanes killed at least five al-Qaida-linked militants in overnight airstrikes against hideouts in the southern Abyan province, a security official said Tuesday.

The official said the attacks late on Monday concentrated on the al-Mahfad area, where militants took refuge after they were driven out from strongholds in the city of Zinjibar and the nearby town of Jaar, both of which the army recaptured from militants two months ago.

A radio signal being transmitted out of a submarine base is likely behind reports of garage doors mysteriously failing to open and close in southeastern Connecticut, the U.S. Navy said Monday.

The signal is part of the Enterprise Land Mobile Radio system, which is used by the military to coordinate responses with civil emergency workers, said Chris Zendan, a spokesman for submarine base in Groton.

Prem Watsa, one of Canada's best-known value investors, has nearly doubled his stake in BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. to 9.9 percent, according to a regulatory filing Monday.

The increase makes him the largest shareholder in the struggling company and identifies a buyer for shares that other investors have been unloading.

Business software maker VMware is buying computer networking specialist Nicira for nearly $1.3 billion.

The deal announced Monday will expand VMware's product line in the rapidly growing field of computer "virtualization." The term refers to software that lowers the costs of running data centers by enabling a single computer to function like multiple machines.