HP may oust CEO

Hewlett-Packard's board convened yesterday to consider ousting CEO Leo Apotheker after less than a year on the job, and replacing him temporarily with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a source familiar with the matter said, reports Reuters.

HP's board of directors - facing shareholder lawsuits and intensifying criticism from investors - is thrashing out a host of issues, including whether to name Whitman as the interim CEO, the source told Reuters.

The storied Silicon Valley giant is fighting to restore its crumbling credibility. During his 11-month tenure, Apotheker slashed sales forecasts repeatedly, backtracked on promises to integrate Palm's webOS software into devices, and struggled to halt a 5% plunge in the share price.

The case against Zimbabwean Vikas Mavhudzi, accused of subversion, because of an alleged post on the social media site Facebook, has collapsed, says the BBC.

Prosecutors failed to retrieve the message he allegedly posted on prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai's page in February that praised Egypt's uprising.

He spent more than a month in jail before being granted bail on 31 March. Tensions between Tsvangirai and president Robert Mugabe are rising ahead of elections next year.

A Mexican man and woman jailed for sending online messages that mistakenly warned an elementary school was under attack were freed yesterday, an attorney for the pair said, states Reuters.

Gilberto Martinez, a math teacher, and Maria de Jesus Bravo, a local radio host, walked out of jail yesterday afternoon, said their lawyer Fidel Ordonez.

The pair had been behind bars for more than three weeks after using their Twitter accounts to say that gunmen had targeted a school in the city of Veracruz one afternoon in late August.

Facebook users were searching for a “dislike” button to express their annoyance with the social network's revamped news feed, according to Cnet.

Facebook yesterday rolled out a new version of its news feed, which breaks up top stores and recent posts into separate columns, and adds a new ticker-like column with live updates from friends. It's an effort by the social network to further emulate Twitter's real-time messages and updates.

But the changes have drawn a wave of complaints as people took to social networks - including Facebook - to express their annoyance, with many complaining about the clutter and confusion of all the extra feeds.