By Tony Jimenez DUBAI | Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:39am EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Paul Lawrie believes his second-place finish in last year's DP World Tour Championship in Dubai was the springboard for his return to the Ryder Cup stage after a 13-year absence. The veteran Scot, winner of the British Open at Carnoustie in 1999, was in the doldrums for several...

By Jonny Hogg GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo | Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:55am EST GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Diplomats at the United Nations and regional mediators in Central Africa sought overnight Wednesday to ward off a deeper conflict after rebels widely believed to be backed by Rwanda captured the eastern Congolese town of G...

QUETTA, Pakistan | Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:33am EST QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A bomb blast killed three soldiers and two civilians in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Wednesday, security officials said. The bomb, attached to a motorcycle, exploded near a security vehicle escorting school children, officials said. Sixteen people were wounded. A Reuters repor...

By Robert Evans GENEVA | Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:27am EST GENEVA (Reuters) - Kris Kristofferson -- Oxford scholar, athlete, U.S. Army helicopter pilot, country music composer, one-time roustabout, film actor, singer, lover of women, three times a husband and father of eight -- seems ready to meet his maker. At least, that was the clear impression he l...

By Tom Bartlett LONDON | Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:24am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Lock forward Eben Etzebeth has taken his place in an unchanged South Africa side for Saturday's test against England at Twickenham after being cleared of eye gouging in last weekend's match against Scotland. Coach Heyneke Meyer, whose team have already beaten Ireland and Scot...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK | Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:16am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures retreated Wednesday after international lenders were unable to agree on emergency aid for Greece, and ahead of data on the U.S. labor market and consumer confidence. For a second week, euro zone finance ministers, the International Monetary F...

CAIRO | Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:01am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - A studio used by the Al Jazeera TV network in Cairo was set on fire on Wednesday in an attack that an employee said was carried out by a mob that had been chanting slogans against the Qatari-owned station. The studio overlooks Tahrir Square and is located near the scene of violent clashes between yout...

By Kaustubh Kulkarni and Naeem Abbas MUMBAI, India/FARIDKOT, Pakistan | Wed Nov 21, 2012 8:01am EST MUMBAI, India/FARIDKOT, Pakistan (Reuters) - India secretly hanged the lone survivor of the Pakistan-based militant squad responsible for a rampage through Mumbai that killed 166 people, sparking celebrations days before the fourth anniversary of t...

By Laurent Prieur NOUAKCHOTT | Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:54am EST NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - A French citizen has been kidnapped in Mali near the border with Mauritania and Senegal, a Mauritanian security source and Mauritanian state media said on Wednesday. The man had crossed into Mali from Mauritania by car on Tuesday morning and had been kidnapped near ...

DUBAI | Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:53am EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's parliament called off plans to grill President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said they must not act in the interests of Iran's enemies. Ahmadinejad's opponents in the 290-seat assembly dominated by conservatives wanted to question him about an econ...

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis AMMAN | Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:26am EST AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian warplanes bombed a Damascus suburb on Wednesday, opposition activists said, as heavy fighting raged for the second day on the outskirts, challenging President Bashar al-Assad's hold on the capital. MiG fighter jets hit the suburb of Daraya, situated amid farmland ...

By Tony Jimenez DUBAI | Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:22am EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Rory McIlroy is now so good he should be aiming to win at least one major championship every year, according to Europe's Ryder Cup talisman Ian Poulter. The Northern Irishman, 23, already has two majors to his name and cemented his status as world number one this season by beco...

By Nadia Damouni and Nicola Leske Wed Nov 21, 2012 7:19am EST (Reuters) - When Hewlett Packard acquired Autonomy last year for $11.1 billion, some 15 different financial, legal and accounting firms were involved in the transaction -- and none raised a flag about what HP said Tuesday was a major accounting fraud. HP stunned Wall Street with the allegations...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia | Wed Nov 21, 2012 6:53am EST MAKHACHKALA, Russia (Reuters) - An improvised bomb killed two policemen and one civilian in Russia's volatile North Caucasus on Wednesday and wounded five others, police said. The bomb went off in Dagestan, an internal mostly Muslim republic, which has been beset by violence blamed on insurgents seeking t...

SANAA | Wed Nov 21, 2012 5:23am EST SANAA (Reuters) - A Yemeni military transport plane crashed near Sanaa airport and burst into flames on Wednesday, killing all ten people onboard, an airport official said. The plane came down in an abandoned produce market in the Hasaba district near the Yemeni capital's airport after suffering a technical problem, th...

HONG KONG | Wed Nov 21, 2012 4:58am EST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Ivan Lendl threw up his own Iron Curtain on Wednesday when reporters probed about the state of Andy Murray's mind and his game as Britain's newly minted Grand Slam champion switches his focus to the Australian Open. "I never get into the details of his game with anyone because it not necessary...

By Kate Kelland LONDON | Wed Nov 21, 2012 4:03am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Europe is experiencing its first sustained transmission of dengue fever since the 1920s with more than 1,300 people infected with the mosquito-borne disease in the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira. In a rapid risk assessment, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Co...

LONDON | Wed Nov 21, 2012 3:37am EST LONDON (Reuters) - British microprocessing firm Imagination Technologies' $60 million pursuit of the operating business of MIPS Technologies faces competition after the U.S. company received a higher bid from a rival firm. Imagination, which is looking to buy the MIPS business to gain patents and step up its challenge...

By Jahmal Corner LOS ANGELES | Wed Nov 21, 2012 3:10am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni took charge from the sideline for the first time on Tuesday as Los Angeles leaned heavily on their defense to earn a gritty 95-90 win over the Brooklyn Nets. D'Antoni was hired by the Lakers last week but had only been able to take the te...

Wed Nov 21, 2012 1:45am EST (Reuters) - South Korea's Choi Jin-ho will swap golf spikes for army boots and begin his military service after playing for an Asia-Pacific select side against China in next week's Nissan Cup. Just days after the Ryder Cup-style team event in Shenzhen from November 30 to December 2, Choi will begin 20 months of compulsory service, star...

NEW YORK | Wed Nov 21, 2012 1:17am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three-time world boxing champion Hector "Macho" Camacho was seriously wounded on Tuesday in a drive-by shooting in Puerto Rico, according to reports in the Puerto Rican press. Camacho, 50, was a passenger in a vehicle fired on by unknown gunmen in the Bayamon region of the island, just southwest...

NEW YORK | Wed Nov 21, 2012 12:14am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's approval rating has leaped 19 percentage points since superstorm Sandy slammed the state, as voters by a wide margin applaud his response to the crisis, a Rutgers-Eagleton poll said on Wednesday. The Republican governor, who will face re-election in 2013 and...

By Jonathan Stempel Tue Nov 20, 2012 10:35pm EST (Reuters) - A federal jury convicted a New York man on Tuesday of hacking into AT&T Inc servers and stealing the email addresses and other personal data of about 120,000 Apple Inc iPad users, a U.S. attorney in New Jersey said. Andrew Auernheimer, 27, was convicted by a Newark, New Jersey, jury of one c...

By David Lawder and Kim Dixon WASHINGTON | Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:17pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mark Warner, a Democratic senator who had a seat at the negotiating table for past failed attempts at a deficit reduction deal, says this time will be different. In an interview with Reuters, Warner said he was optimistic Congress would reach a deal to a...

NEW YORK | Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:15pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Yankees face a number of questions about their roster this offseason but removed some of the doubt about their rotation by signing pitcher Hiroki Kuroda to a one-year contract, the American League team said on Tuesday. Kuroda, 37, went 16-11 with a 3.32 earned run average in his deb...

By Simon Evans MIAMI | Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:03pm EST MIAMI (Reuters) - It is no surprise to see elite NFL quarterbacks such as Tom Brady and Drew Brees racking up big numbers in yardage this season but what is increasingly noticeable is the number of less accomplished quarterbacks joining them. Three quarterbacks have already passed the 3,000 yard ...

By Lisa Dembiczak SEATTLE | Tue Nov 20, 2012 8:57pm EST SEATTLE (Reuters) - A Google expert witness testified on Tuesday that Microsoft will make roughly $94 billion in revenue through 2017 from its Xbox game console and Surface tablet that use Google's patented wireless technology. Michael Dansky, an expert for Google's Motorola Mobility unit, t...

Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:32pm EST (Reuters) - Xoma Corp said its experimental combination of two drugs met the main goal of lowering hypertension better than a treatment based on either of the drugs alone in a late-stage study, sending the biotechnology company's shares up 6 percent. The combination of perindopril arginine and amlodipine besylate showed statistically s...

By David Beasley ATLANTA | Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:17pm EST ATLANTA (Reuters) - Thanksgiving travelers who pass through the five major U.S. airports that still allow indoor smoking in designated public rooms face a hidden health hazard, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday. A study by the federal health agency found that seco...

Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:16pm EST (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it approved a seasonal flu vaccine produced by Novartis using animal cell culture rather than the traditional manufacturing using chicken eggs - a speedier process that could help build stockpiles in the event of a pandemic. The vaccine, to be sold by the Swiss drugmaker...

Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:00pm EST BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Opposition trade unions protesting Argentina's economic policies brought public transportation and the country's crucial grain exports to a halt on Tuesday in the first general strike since President Cristina Fernandez took office five years ago. Demonstrators burned tires to block roads and vandalized a handfu...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams GAZA/JERUSALEM | Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:40pm EST GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and pledged to work for a truce in the Gaza Strip "in the days ahead". As the two began late-night talks in Jerusalem, Palestinian rocket fir...

By Emily Flitter and Basil Katz NEW YORK | Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:56pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday charged a former SAC Capital employee with insider trading in a series of transactions that hedge fund titan Steven A. Cohen had personally signed off on. In what they called "the most lucrative" insider-trading scheme ever, pro...

By Kevin Yao BEIJING | Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:04pm EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's soaring wages and strengthening currency might blunt the competitive edge of exporters that have seen average pay double since 2007, but it won't stop firms worldwide making a collective $100 billion bet on setting up shop here this year. Although foreign direct invest...

Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:46pm EST (Reuters) - Flight attendants at US Airways Group Inc, looking to bring more pressure on the carrier to reach a contract agreement, voted by a 94 percent margin to authorize a strike, their union said on Tuesday. The workers, represented by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, twice this year voted down a proposed contract with US...

By Susan Kelly Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:44pm EST (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it has approved a heart pump made by HeartWare International Inc's that supports blood flow in people with failing hearts who are awaiting a transplant. The company's shares rose 9.2 percent.HeartWare's left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, is designed to ...

By David Morgan WASHINGTON | Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:40pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. administration on Tuesday proposed new health insurance rules aimed at ending discrimination against the sick and guaranteeing minimum benefits for millions of Americans who are expected to obtain coverage under President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law....

NEW YORK | Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:39pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind the "Sesame Street" character Elmo, resigned on Tuesday following new allegations that he had sex with an underage boy, adding to an ongoing controversy involving one of America's most popular children's brands. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Cecil Singleton is ...

By Kerry Grens NEW YORK | Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:38pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A leading group of women's physicians is urging drug regulators to make birth control pills available over-the-counter. "We need to do something about the unintended pregnancy problem in the U.S. This is one way," said Dr. Kavita Nanda, one of the authors of the sta...

By Angela Moon NEW YORK | Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:38pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street halted its two-day rally on Tuesday, after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank lacks tools to cushion the economy from the impact of the "fiscal cliff." The day's biggest disappointment was Hewlett-Packard Co shares (HPQ.N), which sank t...