Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:46am EST (Reuters) - Lawyers for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd filed a redacted copy of a 10-year patent licensing agreement between Apple Inc and Taiwan's HTC Corp in a U.S. court late on Wednesday following a judge's order. The Korean electronics company had earlier filed a motion to compel Apple -- with which it is waging a bitter legal battle o...

By Mehreen Zahra-Malik WANA, Pakistan | Thu Dec 6, 2012 5:34am EST WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's Taliban, one of the world's most feared militant groups, are preparing for a leadership change that could mean less violence against the state but more attacks against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, Pakistani military sources said. Hakimullah...

By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Dec 6, 2012 5:30am EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Almost 40 years to the day after the Apollo 17 crew snapped the famed "blue marble" image of Earth floating in space on December 7, 1972, NASA has unveiled "black marble" video views of the planet by night. The cloud-free pictures, taken with a high-resolution vis...

By Thomas Ferraro and Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 3:57am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in Congress and President Barack Obama consumed much of Wednesday talking up their positions on the "fiscal cliff" and though Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner spoke by phone, neither side offered any new compromises in p...

Thu Dec 6, 2012 3:20am EST (Reuters) - A small group of National Hockey League (NHL) owners and players appeared to be making some progress on Wednesday toward ending a costly lockout that threatens to wipe out a full season of play for the second time in seven years. Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby was among 18 players who met with six NHL owners at a ...

By Mark Lamport-Stokes LOS ANGELES | Thu Dec 6, 2012 3:17am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Jamal Crawford once again sizzled off the bench as the Los Angeles Clippers pounded the struggling Dallas Mavericks 112-90 with a commanding display on their home court on Wednesday. Crawford scored a game-high 20 points on seven-of 12 shooting while twice All...

Thu Dec 6, 2012 12:59am EST (Reuters) - Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Kobe Bryant become the youngest player to score 30,000 NBA career points during his team's 103-87 road win against the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday. Needing 13 more points to hit that mark before the start of the game, Bryant scored his 13th and 14th points on a short floating jumper wi...

By Doug Palmer WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 12:01am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate was poised on Thursday to approve legislation to punish Russian human rights violators as part of a broader bill to expand U.S. trade with the former Cold War enemy. The vote would send the package to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it into l...

By Rachelle Younglai WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 8:23pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican lawmakers took a firm stand on Wednesday against an Obama administration proposal that would make it easier for the president to increase the nation's debt limit, worried it would undercut their leverage to cut government spending. Republicans introduce...

By David Lawder WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:57pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner's purge of some dissident Republican congressmen from key committees may continue as he seeks to tighten control over his unruly caucus ahead of difficult votes on "fiscal cliff" issues. House Republican lawmakers said...

By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:23pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Asteroids and comets colliding with the moon not only pitted its surface but also severely fractured its crust, researchers with NASA said on Wednesday, in a finding that could help crack a Martian puzzle. On Mars, similar fracturing would have given water on the ...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:16pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leaders of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday blasted the Air Force for wasting $1 billion on a logistics support system that has now been canceled, calling it "one of the most egregious examples of mismanagement in recent memory." Committee Chairman Carl Levin, and the top...

By Irene Klotz SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:13pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Startup rocket company Space Exploration Technologies, which flies NASA cargo to the International Space Station, has landed its first launch contracts for the U.S. military, the company said on Wednesday. The U.S. Air Force will pay $97 million for a Falcon 9 roc...

By Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:48pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. securities regulators charged a Wells Fargo investment banker and nine others with fraud on Wednesday in connection with their alleged role in an insider-trading ring that earned more than $11 million by trading on tips about impending mergers. The Securities an...

By Jim Wolf WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:47pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. aerospace and arms companies are poised for 2.8 percent overall sales growth next year to about $224 billion, which would mark their 10th straight year of growth, barring steep Pentagon budget cuts, the industry's chie...

By Thomas Ferraro and Mark Felsenthal WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:36pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans and Democrats dug in on "fiscal cliff" talks on Wednesday, with both sides urging quick action but offering no compromises in a political stare-down that shows no signs of breaking. Less than a month before the onset of spending cuts a...

By Anthony Deutsch and Sara Webb AMSTERDAM | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:33pm EST AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - At least three crew members died when a cargo ship carrying cars sank after colliding with a container ship in the North Sea on Wednesday night, Dutch coastguards and media reports said. The coastguards mounted an air-and-sea rescue operation after the B...

By Ian Graham BELFAST | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:29pm EST BELFAST (Reuters) - A number of police officers were injured in Northern Ireland on Wednesday in a second night of rioting this week, just two days before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits to lend support to the province's fragile peace. Up to 1,600 pro-British loyalists, enraged at ...

By Steve Scherer ROME | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:21pm EST ROME (Reuters) - Italian former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gave a strong hint on Wednesday that he would stand in next year's election, declaring he would not allow Italy to spiral into recession and saying he had been "besieged by requests" to run. Though Berlusconi has repeatedly changed ...

By David Alexander WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:17pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Wednesday the White House budget office has directed it to begin planning how to implement billions of dollars in across-the-board spending reductions if Congress and the president fail to agree to avert the cuts before January 2. The decision r...

By Lisa Baertlein Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:14pm EST (Reuters) - Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) Chief Executive Howard Schultz on Wednesday said the coffee chain is in talks about paying income taxes in the UK, despite the fact the company has not made a profit in that market for many years. "We are engaged in discussions to make a contribution - despite the fact that w...

By David Henry and Rick Rothacker Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:10pm EST (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc said it is cutting 11,000 jobs worldwide, delivering the first of what investors expect to be a new series of steps to shrink the bank down to a more manageable and profitable size. The cuts, which amount to about 4 percent of the bank's workforce, carry the fingerprint...

By Ryan Vlastelica and Poornima Gupta NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:10pm EST NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc shares tumbled more than 6 percent on Wednesday, chalking up their biggest single-day loss in four years as fears grow about intensifying competition in the mobile device market. The sell-off, fueled by a forecast...

By Kevin Murphy KANSAS CITY, Mo | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:08pm EST KANSAS CITY, Mo (Reuters) - Moments after Kansas City Chiefs' player Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend multiple times, his mother frantically called 911 for help as the young woman lay dying, a recording of the emergency call shows. Belcher shot Kasandra Perkins in their bedroom shortly...

By Ryan Vlastelica NEW YORK | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:00pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - A volatile trading session ended with U.S. stocks mostly higher on Wednesday, even as Apple, the most valuable company in the United States, suffered its worst day of losses in almost four years. In a strange occurrence, Apple accounted for the entirety of the Nasdaq 10...

By Hilary Russ NEW YORK | Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:48pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Construction workers in the U.S. Northeast should see hiring pick up after years of job losses, as the region gears up efforts to rebuild after the devastation brought by Superstorm Sandy. New York City alone could gain roughly 10,000 new jobs for electricians, laborers, ca...

DUBAI | Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:39pm EST DUBAI (Reuters) - An earthquake measuring 5.5 in magnitude struck eastern Iran on Wednesday, killing eight people and injuring 12 others as emergency teams scrambled to rescue others and treat the injured, Iranian media reported. People fled their homes as the quake struck and brought walls and buildings down. But other...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:38pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner, locked in a stalemate over the "fiscal cliff," spoke by telephone this afternoon, a Boehner spokesman said. The spokesman offered no additional information, but the conversation marked the first time in a week th...

By Edmund Blair and Marwa Awad CAIRO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:32pm EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamists battled with protesters outside Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's palace on Thursday, after his vice president suggested amendments could be agreed to the draft constitution that has divided the nation. Fires burned in the streets near the palace perime...

By Jonathan Stempel and Liana B. Baker NEW YORK | Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:18pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday allowed sports fans to pursue a lawsuit accusing Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and various networks of antitrust violations in how they package games for broadcast on television or the Internet. U.S. D...

By Lisa Richwine NEW YORK | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:59pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Netflix Inc doesn't plan to pass along the cost of the rights to Walt Disney Co movies to subscribers, a senior executive at the video streaming company said on Wednesday. Netflix, which analysts estimate paid more than $350 million for the exclusive rights to stream Disn...

LOS ANGELES | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:59pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oprah Winfrey has selected "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" by first-time novelist Ayana Mathis as the second book in her newly re-branded book club, the media mogul said on Wednesday. Oprah's Book Club 2.0 will test whether Winfrey can sustain her power to propel books onto best-seller lists ...

By Suzanne Barlyn Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:57pm EST (Reuters) - A spike in website names related to crowdfunding suggests an upcoming wave of websites through which small businesses and entrepreneurs could raise investments using the online strategy, state securities regulators said on Wednesday. The website names have soared to 8,800 from fewer than 900 in Janu...

By Jessica Wohl Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:56pm EST (Reuters) - Opening their doors and offering sales on Thanksgiving did more than give retailers an early start to the holiday shopping season - the holiday actually may have drawn more shoppers than "Black Friday." Thirty percent of Americans surveyed in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll said they shopped either online or...

By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:55pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web's dominant social media companies. Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom...

Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:48pm EST (Reuters) - Cornerback Brandon Browner of the playoff-contending Seattle Seahawks will miss the rest of the National Football League's regular season after receiving a four-game ban for violating the league's policy on performance enhancing substances. The loss of Browner, who has started 28 consecutive games since joining Seattle in 20...

By Paul Lienert and Deepa Seetharaman DETROIT | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:47pm EST DETROIT (Reuters) - After failing numerous times to revamp its lagging Lincoln brand, Ford Motor Co (F.N) is preparing to try yet again with a new compact crossover aimed at younger drivers looking for a finely crafted but low-key luxury car. The Lincoln MKC, will be previ...

By Christine Kearney NEW YORK | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:46pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Zero Dark Thirty," filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow's action thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, was named best film of 2012 on Wednesday by the National Board of Review - the second accolade for the movie in one week. Bigelow was named best director and Jessica Ch...

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:39pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Studies suggesting that everything from cinnamon to lobster either raises or lowers a person's risk of cancer may sometimes be a bunch of baloney, a new report suggests. Researchers created a list of 50 random food items, then found studies from the last 35 years...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:36pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday that the country would go over a year-end fiscal cliff of tax hikes and spending cuts, unless Republicans agreed to Democrat's demand to raise tax rates on the richest U.S. households. "There is no prospect (for) an agreement that doe...