Business news for Tue, 13 Nov 2007. 1283 news.

Aetna agreed to change its physician-ranking program nationwide in response to concerns that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has raised with several insurers.

THE share market opened higher, pushed up by the banks and strong gains on Wall Street which broke a losing streak overnight.

CHINA'S consumer prices last month shot to the highest rate in more than a decade, mainly driven by uncurbed food costs, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday. The increase of the key inflation gauge puts further pressure on the central bank to impose more stringent measures of economic control, analysts said. The Consumer Price Index in October jumped 6.5 percent compared to a year earlier, equal to the surge in August which was the highest since the seven percent hike recorded in December 1996. The growth last month followed September's rise of 6.2 percent. The combined CPI rose 4.4 percent in the first 10 months, said the statistics bureau. Li Maoyu, an analyst with the Changjiang Securities Co Ltd, said higher food costs remained a major influence in the CPI's October surge. Food prices, which make up about one-third of the CPI, rose 17.6 percent last month compared with a 10.6-percent gain through September. The growth did drop a little from the August gain

Shares in Babcock International hit a high for the year after the company revealed strong gains in revenues and profits.

TWO men in one VW Caddy Ecofuel car with 13 gas tanks drove into Shanghai yesterday after covering more than 20,000 kilometers on the EcoFuel Asia Tour 2007. This is the first time a European car powered by compressed natural gas has driven overland in China. Rainer Zietlow and photographer Franz Janusiewicz set out from Berlin on September 17 and drove through Czechoslovakia, Russia, Egypt, Nepal and Pakistan before arriving in China's Tibet highlands. They drove through Chengdu to reach Shanghai yesterday. While here, the adventurers will visit "Challenge Bibendum" in Anting Auto City tomorrow and on Friday. The event, organized by Michelin, showcases ecologically sustainable vehicles. The car will later follow the Chinese coast on its way to Vietnam, and will finish its 10-week journey at Thailand's Bangkok on November 27. The car has been modified to take nine CNG gas tanks inside the cabin and four smaller ones under the car, said Zietlow, 38, from Germany.

Boardroom practices at science, engineering and technology companies make them less likely to have women in senior positions than other sectors, the Cranfield report says

Survey says majority of kids who expect to get games as holiday gifts also expect to be sorely disappointed by their parents' choices of presents.

Many investors are hoping an end to the current credit crisis is around the corner, but several financial industry experts at the Standard & Poor's annual bank conference Tuesday in New York said banks have not even hit the last stretch.

(AP) -- McDonald's Corp. laid the foundation to perk up its beverage and breakfast offerings Tuesday with plans to add upscale coffee drinks, chicken biscuit sandwiches and breakfast burritos to its U.S. restaurants in the coming weeks. The addition of espresso coffee drinks, which are being ...

The L.A. man known as "acidstorm" admits he helped create a network of compromised computers that he helped control through IRC commands for more than a year.

Striking television and film writers took their fight to the money men Tuesday, marching on Wall Street to complain that the nation's media giants aren't sharing the wealth from their efforts to put content online.

Holiday travelers are as likely to have record high oil prices bite them at 30,000 feet as they are the gas pump.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is coming under pressure to rein in Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the president, over the radical stance he has taken on the country's nuclear programme

The shareholders of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio voted Tuesday by an overwhelming margin to approve Sirius' proposed acquisition of its rival.

Cavco is the seventh-largest manufactured-housing producer in the country, and most of its customers live in Arizona, California and New Mexico. But shipments fell 43 percent in its two major markets, Arizona and California, during the first eight months of the year compared the same period in 2006.

Annual report, sponsored by Salt River Project and the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, looks at growth and economic trends in the Hispanic community.

The US Airline Pilots Association said it has filed a request for a representation election at US Airways, setting up a battle with the incumbent Air Line Pilots Association.

Hugo Ch?vez, Venezuela's president, has warned that oil prices could reach $200 a barrel if the US invaded Iran