By Steve Keating TORONTO | Fri Nov 2, 2012 5:27pm EDT TORONTO (Reuters) - The Winter Classic became the latest casualty in a bitter labor dispute between National Hockey League (NHL) owners and players on Friday, when the league cancelled the showcase event with negotiations stalled. The New Year's day extravaganza featuring Original Six rivals t...

By Gabriel Debenedetti Fri Nov 2, 2012 5:22pm EDT (Reuters) - As early voting proceeds across the country ahead of Tuesday's presidential election, voters over 50 continue to be more likely than most to prefer Republican challenger Mitt Romney to President Barack Obama and to favor Romney's position on two issues that directly affect the elderly: healthca...

By Irene Klotz Fri Nov 2, 2012 5:19pm EDT CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Nov 2 - Initial analysis of the atmosphere of Mars from NASA's rover Curiosity has shown no sign of methane, a gas detected previously by remote sensors, researchers said on Friday. On Earth, more than 90 percent of the methane in the atmosphere results from living organisms and its presence ...

WASHINGTON/KHARTOUM | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:58pm EDT WASHINGTON/KHARTOUM (Reuters) - President Barack Obama renewed U.S. sanctions on Sudan on Friday, acknowledging Khartoum had resolved disputes with South Sudan but warning that Darfur and other conflicts still impeded normal ties, the State Department said. Khartoum reacted by accusing the United States of...

By Ibrahim Mshelizza MAIDUGURI, Nigeria | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:41pm EDT MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigerian troops shot dead at least 30 people during raids in the northeast city of Maiduguri, bastion of the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram, witnesses and hospital staff said on Friday. Boko Haram says it wants to create an Islamic state in Niger...

KHARTOUM | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:38pm EDT KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Rebels in Sudan's main oil state said on Friday they had killed scores of government troops in one of the largest clashes reported in the South Kordofan region in recent months. Sudan's armed forces were not available to comment on the report by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement North ...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:33pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended an unusual storm-shortened trading week with a selloff on Friday, as major indexes erased early gains sparked by a stronger-than-expected payrolls report. Energy stocks were a drag on the market after Chevron Corp, the second-largest U.S. oil company, pos...

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:14pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Three out of every four smartphones sold in the third quarter featured Google Inc's Android mobile operating system, as the gap between Google and Apple Inc-based phones widened further, according to a new research report. Shipments of Android-based smartphon...

JERUSALEM | Fri Nov 2, 2012 4:06pm EDT JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A senior Israeli official described Egypt's new government on Friday as a "shocking dictatorial force" and predicted there would be no high-level contacts between the two countries, but the Israeli government distanced itself from his comments. The remarks by Amos Gilad, a top aide to Defense M...

KIEV | Fri Nov 2, 2012 3:31pm EDT KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian opposition parties accused President Viktor Yanukovich's Party of the Regions of "stealing" several parliamentary seats as the vote count from Sunday's election neared completion on Friday. The Party of the Regions is set to retain a majority in the 450-seat parliament with their traditional co...

WASHINGTON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 3:26pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives has experienced three consecutive "wave" elections in which more than 20 seats changed hands, with the peak coming in 2010 when Republicans took control after gaining 63 seats. On Tuesday, voters will elect the 113th Congress. Even though public approval of Congre...

By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 3:23pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are dead even on a national level but Obama holds a slight edge in three of the most hotly contested states in Tuesday's election, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday. Obama leads Romney among likely v...

By Simon Evans Fri Nov 2, 2012 2:41pm EDT (Reuters) - The New York Giants are playing like defending Super Bowl champions, making a real bid for repeat success but on Sunday they come up against a Pittsburgh Steelers team that also knows about going all the way. The clash of two of the league's traditional teams at Metlife Stadium should be another fascin...

By Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Nov 2, 2012 2:35pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter users flocked to the micro-messaging network this week as Hurricane Sandy swept through the eastern U.S. seaboard, sending more than 20 million tweets about the storm between Saturday and Thursday, the company said. This far exceeds the 13.7 million tweets ...

NEW YORK | Fri Nov 2, 2012 2:31pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has announced it will not appeal against the decision to ban American cyclist Lance Armstrong for life and strip him of his seven Tour de France titles. WADA had the option of challenging the ruling that was made by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) ...

By Jeff Mason HILLIARD, Ohio | Fri Nov 2, 2012 1:54pm EDT HILLIARD, Ohio (Reuters) - President Barack Obama blasted Republican rival Mitt Romney on Friday for running an ad that falsely suggested Jeep was moving production to China, accusing his opponent of stretching the truth to scare voters in the final days of the campaign. Romney told a crow...

By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA | Fri Nov 2, 2012 1:17pm EDT KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda will tell the United Nations it is withdrawing its forces from military operations in Somalia and other regional hotspots after the world body accused it of supporting Congolese rebels, the security minister said on Friday. Minister Wilson Mukasa said the decisio...

By Alessandra Prentice LONDON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 1:16pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - An inquest into the death of a former Russian agent who died in London after being poisoned with a radioactive isotope could examine whether the British government is culpable in his murder, a lawyer said on Friday. Alexander Litvinenko, a Kremlin critic who had been gr...

By Jason Lange WASHINGTON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 1:07pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers stepped up hiring in October and a small increase in the jobless rate was due to more workers restarting their job hunts, a hopeful sign for a lackluster economy that has been a drag on President Barack Obama's re-election bid. Employers added 171,000 peo...

By Steve Holland MILWAUKEE | Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:54pm EDT MILWAUKEE (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney offered his closing argument to voters on Friday, asking Americans to decide whether they want more of the same from President Barack Obama or "real change" by electing him on Tuesday. Making a last-minute foray into Wiscon...

WASHINGTON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:43pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has renewed 15-year-old U.S. sanctions on Sudan, acknowledging that Khartoum has resolved disputes with South Sudan but warning that Darfur and other conflicts remain serious obstacles to normal ties, the State Department said on Friday. "The ongoing conflict in Southe...

By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:26pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An encouraging October jobs report may give President Barack Obama an 11th-hour campaign boost, but perhaps more importantly it denies Republican challenger Mitt Romney an opportunity to put an exclamation point on his argument that Obama has failed to turn aroun...

By Amy Norton NEW YORK | Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:11pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Does living near a bar encourage people to overindulge, or do heavy drinkers move to neighborhoods with easy access to alcohol? A new study suggests it may be the former for some people. Researchers in Finland found that of nearly 55,000 Finnish adults followed for s...

WASHINGTON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 12:11pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney said on Friday the uptick in the U.S. employment rate to 7.9 percent shows the economy continues to struggle. "Today's increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill," said Romney, who has made his...

By Colleen Jenkins ATLANTA | Fri Nov 2, 2012 11:31am EDT ATLANTA (Reuters) - Democratic claims that a large number of Americans could be prevented from voting because of photo identification laws are probably overstated based on evidence from Georgia and Indiana, the two states where the laws have been in place for multiple elections, Reuters fou...

PARIS | Fri Nov 2, 2012 11:16am EDT PARIS (Reuters) - Frenchman Gilles Simon booked his place in the Paris Masters semi-finals with a comprehensive 6-4 6-4 win over Czech fifth seed Tomas Berdych on Friday. The unseeded Simon, who reached the quarter-finals after Japanese Kei Nishikori withdrew with an ankle injury, had too much pace for Berdych in front...

By Martyn Herman LONDON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 10:38am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Even by the hyperbolic standards of English soccer the opening skirmishes of the new season have provided a dizzying overdose of the good, the bad and the downright ugly sides of what was once referred to as the beautiful game. The past week alone has provided a tumultuous m...

ISLAMABAD | Fri Nov 2, 2012 10:38am EDT ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Gunmen attacked a bus in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province on Friday, killing at least 18 people including a woman and a child, police said. Most of the victims died from fire caused by the attack at a petrol station in Khuzdar, a town about a four-hour drive from Quetta. The fire e...

By Alan Baldwin ABU DHABI | Fri Nov 2, 2012 10:15am EDT ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Formula One teams face a stiff hike in entry fees for next year's championship with the winning constructor having to pay $6,000 for every point scored this season as well as a basic charge of $500,000. The governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) spelled out...

By Jan Lopatka PRAGUE | Fri Nov 2, 2012 9:42am EDT PRAGUE (Reuters) - Petra Kvitova hopes her recent illness will not scupper her efforts to lead the Czech Republic's Fed Cup title defense on home soil in the final against Serbia this weekend. Kvitova pulled out of the WTA championships in Istanbul last week with a cold and had her first full tra...

By Alan Baldwin ABU DHABI | Fri Nov 2, 2012 9:24am EDT ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Max Chilton will have to wait until the end of the season before finding out whether he can secure a Formula One race seat with Marussia and become Britain's fourth driver on the starting grid. The 21-year-old took part in his first practice session at the Abu Dhabi Gran...

By Chris Wickham LONDON | Fri Nov 2, 2012 9:01am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - With oil becoming scarcer and more expensive, the economics of the industry may finally tip in favor of one of the most neglected areas of its business - the technology for cleaning up oil spills. Despite efforts by scientists to find new and more effective ways to deal with ...

By Benjamin Kang Lim and Ben Blanchard BEIJING | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:29am EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - China is set to promote two rising stars and possible future national leaders at a Communist Party congress opening next week, one taking the old job of disgraced former high-flyer Bo Xilai in the country's biggest metropolis, sources said. Southwester...

By Sarah O'Connor DUBLIN | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:28am EDT DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland sentenced former billionaire Sean Quinn to jail on Friday for failing to disclose assets he was hiding abroad, completing the fall from grace of the richest man in Ireland's "Celtic Tiger" boom. Quinn, whose four bill...

MOMBASA, Kenya | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:19am EDT MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - The union at Kenya's main port of Mombasa on Friday called off a strike after its management issued letters of employment to casual workers at east Africa's main trade gateway who were demanding permanent jobs. Simon Sang, secretary general of the dock workers union told workers the d...

By Agnieszka Flak JOHANNESBURG | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:16am EDT JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Striking miners at AngloGold Ashanti will return to work on Sunday at two mines where operations were suspended this week in a dispute over bonus payments, the world's third largest bullion producer said. The disruptions underscored the residual tensions between ...

GENEVA | Fri Nov 2, 2012 8:03am EDT GENEVA (Reuters) - The top U.N. human rights official urged China on Friday to address deep-rooted frustrations that have led to desperate forms of protest by Tibetans, including some 60 self-immolations since March 2011. "Social stability in Tibet will never be achieved through heavy security measures and suppression ...

By Margot Roosevelt BELOIT, Wisconsin | Fri Nov 2, 2012 7:58am EDT BELOIT, Wisconsin (Reuters) - To Tim Givhan, Obamacare shouldn't be an excuse for election-year polemics: "It's a lifeline." A former IT specialist, Givhan tripped on a machine at work and landed on his head, suffering neurological damage. His employer's insurance company wouldn't...

By Daren Butler ISTANBUL | Fri Nov 2, 2012 7:45am EDT ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in published remarks on Friday he was losing hope of building cross-party support for reforms that could see him installed in a newly empowered presidency but was determined to push the plans forward. Erdogan has dominated Turkish...

By Jill Serjeant LOS ANGELES | Fri Nov 2, 2012 7:17am EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Why learn French when you could learn Klingon? The language created more than 30 years ago for the "Star Trek" race of long-haired warriors has moved boldly into pop culture where few other alien tongues have gone before.With a new book about the classic Klingon sta...