By Dan Levine and Alexei Oreskovic Mon Nov 5, 2012 7:14pm EST (Reuters) - An Apple lawsuit against Google's Motorola Mobility unit over alleged patent abuse was thrown out on Monday just hours before trial, a setback for the iPhone maker in its efforts to gain leverage in the smartphone patent wars. The two rivals were set to square off in a Madison, Wisc...

WASHINGTON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 7:01pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two congressional oversight committees will hold hearings next week on the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak linked to tainted steroid injections and one panel has invited an official from the compounding pharmacy involved, aides said on Monday. The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce ...

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Florida | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:53pm EST ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Florida voters cast fewer early ballots in the 2012 presidential election than in 2008, but they submitted more absentee ballots than they did four years ago, according to statewide elections figures released on Monday. Overall, almost 40 percent of Flori...

LONDON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:33pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish photographer Jordi Ruiz Cirera has won the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize in London for his picture of a young woman in Bolivia whose religious conservatism made her uncomfortable before the camera. Ruiz Cirera, 28, is based in the British capital and was one of four photographers...

LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:24pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Brad Pitt has turned his talents to creating furniture for a luxury design house with a high-end collection inspired by both Art Nouveau and Art Deco, according to Architectural Digest. Pitt, who collaborated on the collection with U.S. furniture designer Frank Pollaro, discussed his ...

By Dhanya Skariachan NEW YORK | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:16pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Staples Inc, the largest U.S. office supply retailer, has agreed to install "Amazon Lockers" in its U.S. stores, a Staples spokeswoman said on Monday. The Amazon lockers at Staples will allow online shoppers to have packages sent to the office supply chain's stores. A...

By Basil Katz NEW YORK | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:08pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld the conviction and 86-year prison sentence of a Pakistani neuroscientist for shooting at FBI agents and soldiers after her arrest in Afghanistan. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said a lower court judge had not erred in...

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK | Mon Nov 5, 2012 6:04pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For people who have had a negative colonoscopy, less-invasive screening options may work just fine for follow-up cancer tests, a new analysis suggests. "No one screening test is right for everyone," lead researcher Amy Knudsen, from the Institute for Technology A...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:57pm EST UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council's Taliban sanctions committee on Monday added the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, accused of high-profile attacks in Afghanistan, to a U.N. blacklist, the United States said. The Security Council committee's move also singled out ...

By Alina Selyukh WASHINGTON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:53pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are essentially tied on the eve of Election Day, but the Democrat has a slight edge in some of the pivotal states where the election will be decided, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling released on Monday. Na...

Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:50pm EST (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday New Yorkers affected by superstorm Sandy will be allowed to vote in Tuesday's U.S. election in any polling place by presenting an affidavit. Cuomo said he was signing an executive order on Monday that will allow voters to cast ballots at voting stations other than the ones to whi...

WASHINGTON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:44pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House race between U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney remained a cliffhanger in four critical states that may tip the outcome of Tuesday's election, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on the eve of the election. Incumbent Obama maintained a 4 p...

By Poornima Gupta Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:42pm EST (Reuters) - The U.S. cable industry, hoping to revive innovation and beat back the emergence of online video, is turning for ideas to Silicon Valley. Leading players from Time Warner Cable to Comcast Corp will next year set up a showpiece research center in the heart of a region that has spawned recent momentou...

By Patricia Zengerle FAIRFAX, Virginia | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:16pm EST FAIRFAX, Virginia (Reuters) - Presidential elections typically end with a flurry of late rallies, as candidates hopscotch across the country to make last-minute appeals, in person, to as many voters as possible. But there is little evidence to show that the frenzied late campaign...

By Scott Malone BOSTON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:13pm EST BOSTON (Reuters) - Thousands of music fans clogged a Boston street on Monday to hear Grammy award-winning rock band Aerosmith perform a free concert in front of the apartment building where the musicians began their career four decades ago. The band blared out hits including "Walk This Way" and ...

By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:08pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - John Lennon held out the promise he could bring out more musical greatness in legendary guitarist Eric Clapton in a letter that could fetch as much as $30,000 when it is sold at auction next month, the organizers of the sale said on Monday. The signed, hand-written...

LONDON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 5:06pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Monday won the less than resounding backing of European newspapers, which concluded he had done just about enough to deserve re-election in preference to a flip-flopping Republican challenger. Support for the incumbent was often based more on what he had avoided - an economi...

LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 4:34pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A newly discovered work by American author Truman Capote detailing a Mediterranean cruise with the rich and famous is set to be published in Vanity Fair, the magazine said on Monday. The vignette "Yachts and Things," which will appear in the December issue available across the United States...

Mon Nov 5, 2012 3:44pm EST (Reuters) - Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Mary Blige and dozens of other musicians and celebrities helped raise some $23 million for victims of Hurricane Sandy on NBC television, while a Day of Giving on ABC TV networks raised more than $10 million. The American Red Cross said the one-hour NBC telethon on Friday, featuring performances...

Mon Nov 5, 2012 3:13pm EST (Reuters) - St Jude Medical Inc said on Monday its procedure that deadens nerves near the kidneys helped lower blood pressure in a small study of patients whose hypertension could not be controlled with drugs. Patients in the study who were treated with the Enlightn renal denervation system saw an average reduction of 28 points in systo...

NEW YORK | Mon Nov 5, 2012 2:08pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - The pace of growth in the U.S. services sector slowed modestly in October, though a measure of employment improved to its highest in seven months, underscoring expectations the economic recovery will remain modest. The Institute for Supply Management said its services index eased to 54.2 last mon...

By John Gaudiosi RALEIGH, North Carolina | Mon Nov 5, 2012 2:03pm EST RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Actor William Shatner is having a moment. A couple of years after CBS canceled his Twitter-inspired "$#*! My Dad Says" TV comedy, Shatner is at the top of the tech world. The former "Star Trek" captain, now 81, is featured in Blindlight Apps ...

SANTIAGO | Mon Nov 5, 2012 1:27pm EST SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chilean President Sebastian Pinera is planning to shuffle his cabinet this week to allow ministers with presidential ambitions to exit, the head of a political party that is part of the governing right-wing coalition said on Monday. Pinera's embattled conservative bloc suffered a loss in last mon...

By Samuel P. Jacobs MINNEAPOLIS | Mon Nov 5, 2012 1:24pm EST MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - He's sold hot dogs in Minnesota and spent summers in Colorado. His mother lives in Florida and Ohio looks just like his native Wisconsin. Whatever the swing state, Paul Ryan finds a way to call it home. Addressing one of his largest crowds of the 2012 presidentia...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Mon Nov 5, 2012 1:19pm EST UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. delegations sharply criticized the United Nations' management on Monday for an almost "total breakdown in communications" with the world body's 193 member states after superstorm Sandy slammed into the U.S. East Coast a week ago. The head of U.N. secu...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK | Mon Nov 5, 2012 1:14pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were flat to slightly lower in thin trading on Monday a day before the presidential election as traders were reluctant to place bets until the winner of the very close race is known. Shares of Apple rose, helping the Nasdaq composite index, after it announced b...

By Jonathon Burch ANKARA | Mon Nov 5, 2012 1:08pm EST ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey puts four former Israeli military commanders, including the head of the army, on trial in absentia this week for the 2010 killing of nine Turks on a Gaza-bound aid ship. The trial, which begins in Istanbul on Tuesday, will further test relations between the one-time s...

By Tova Cohen TEL AVIV | Mon Nov 5, 2012 12:46pm EST TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Microsoft expects its newly launched Windows Phone to become a strong challenger in the smartphone market, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Monday. Google's Android and Apple's iPhone devices dominate the smartphone market. However, Microsoft unveiled its Windows 8 pro...

By Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Papadimas ATHENS | Mon Nov 5, 2012 12:38pm EST ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's government presented a new austerity package to parliament on Monday as a week of strikes and protests kicked off over proposals that lawmakers must approve if the country is to secure more aid and stave off bankruptcy. Parliament is expected...

By Mariam Karouny and Tom Perry BEIRUT | Mon Nov 5, 2012 12:34pm EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - An Islamist suicide car bomber killed at least 50 Syrian security men in Hama province on Monday, an opposition group said, in what would be one of the bloodiest single attacks on President Bashar al-Assad's forces in the 20-month-old uprising. Another day of ...

By Poornima Gupta and Sinead Carew SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK | Mon Nov 5, 2012 12:24pm EST SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc sold 3 million of its new iPads in the first three days the tablet computers were available, driving optimism for a strong holiday quarter despite intensifying competition. Sales of the 7.9-inch iPad mini and fourth...

By Andrew Hammond DUBAI | Mon Nov 5, 2012 12:16pm EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Five bombs exploded in the heart of the Bahraini capital Manama on Monday, killing two Asian street cleaners, officials said, and prompting mutual accusations from activists and a government trying to put down a mostly Shi'ite pro-democracy uprising. The Interior Ministry sai...

RAMALLAH, West Bank | Mon Nov 5, 2012 11:30am EST RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The body of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is set to be exhumed on November 26, eight years after his death, as part of an investigation to see if he was murdered, a diplomat said on Monday. Two senior Swiss forensic experts are already in the West Bank to discus...

NEW YORK | Mon Nov 5, 2012 11:17am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - The pace of growth in the U.S. services sector slowed modestly in October, though a measure of employment improved to its highest in seven months, underscoring expectations the economic recovery will remain modest. The Institute for Supply Management said its services index eased to 54.2 last mo...

By Emma Farge GENEVA | Mon Nov 5, 2012 11:08am EST GENEVA (Reuters) - Switzerland's neutrality is being tested as Brussels and Washington raise pressure over gaps in sanctions against Iran, in particular measures against its oil industry. While Switzerland has replicated the western line on Libyan and Syrian economic sanctions, it has reasserted ...

STOCKHOLM | Mon Nov 5, 2012 10:35am EST STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden has charged a man of Rwandan origin with taking part in the killings of thousands of people during the 1994 genocide in his homeland, the prosecutor's office said on Monday, the first such case in the Nordic country. The man, an ethnic Hutu from Rwanda who is now a Swedish citizen, was ...

LOS ANGELES | Mon Nov 5, 2012 10:20am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Pop band No Doubt was forced to remove a new Wild West-themed music video and issue an apology after getting complaints from the Native American community, saying its intention was "never to offend, hurt or trivialize" their culture or history. The Southern California band - made up of...

LONDON | Mon Nov 5, 2012 10:14am EST LONDON (Reuters) - British celebrity Sharon Osbourne has had a double mastectomy after discovering she was carrying a gene that increased the risk of her developing breast cancer, she told Hello! magazine in an interview published on Monday. Osbourne, 60, told the publication that the decision was a "no-brainer" in th...

ABU DHABI | Mon Nov 5, 2012 10:12am EST ABU DHABI (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday ordered an investigation into the way historic child abuse claims in a Welsh children's home were examined. The move, announced during a trip to Abu Dhabi, comes after a pedophile victim told the BBC that an unidentified Conservative Party figure ...

By Claire Davenport BRUSSELS | Mon Nov 5, 2012 8:18am EST BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission is to release a swathe of radio spectrum to give mobile and internet companies more space for rolling out faster fourth-generation (4G) wireless services. Monday's announcement means an extra 120 MHz of spectrum will be available for 4G from 201...