By Debra Sherman Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:56am EDT (Reuters) - Medical device maker Medtronic Inc edited health journal articles and paid doctors millions of dollars for company-sponsored studies of its Infuse bone-grafting product used in spinal surgery, according to a U.S. Senate report published on Thursday. There were questionable ties between Medtronic an...

By Steve Ginsburg Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:54am EDT (Reuters) - LeBron chasing the ghost of Michael, Superman taking his talents westward, and a soft-spoken teenager ready to revitalize Big Easy basketball are just three of the provocative plotlines ready to play out in the upcoming NBA season. Throw in a new team in Brooklyn, Steve Nash wearing purple and gol...

By Mark Lamport-Stokes LOS ANGELES | Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:44am EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - With 16 NBA Championship banners hanging proudly from the rafters at their Staples Center home, Los Angeles Lakers players and their fans have become well accustomed to glittering success and lofty expectations. Going into their 2012-13 campaign, however, th...

By Simon Evans MIAMI | Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:42am EDT MIAMI (Reuters) - When LeBron James was first introduced to Miami Heat fans, after his 2010 free agency move from Cleveland, he made a promise that was latched upon as being typical of the brash, bragging coming from South Florida. Talking about winning multiple championships, James famously sai...

By Dominique Vidalon and Johnny Cotton PARIS | Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:37am EDT PARIS (Reuters) - The Rolling Stones will perform a short warm-up gig in Paris later on Thursday for a few hundred fans and announced on Twitter that they were selling tickets for 15 euros ($19.45) each at a music store in the centre of the city. Fans queued from the earl...

WASHINGTON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 10:22am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Contracts to buy previously owned homes rose far less than expected in September, an industry group said on Thursday, but the data continued to point to an improving tone in the housing market. The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed...

By Susan Heavey WASHINGTON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:38am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday endorsed Barack Obama's bid for re-election, citing the Democratic president's efforts to wind down the war in Afghanistan and tackle terrorism. "I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on," the Republi...

By Martinne Geller Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:31am EDT (Reuters) - Energy drinks do not always divulge how much caffeine they contain, and when an amount is listed on a label, it is not always accurate, Consumer Reports magazine has found. According to a study released on Thursday by the magazine, 11 of the 27 top-selling energy drinks in the United States do not...

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:25am EDT VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran appears to have nearly finished installing centrifuges at its underground nuclear plant, Western diplomats say, potentially boosting its capacity to make weapons-grade uranium if it chose to do so. Iran only disclosed the existence of the Fordow plant, built inside a mou...

By Jason Lange WASHINGTON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:32am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gauge of planned business spending was flat in September, a sign that heightened uncertainty is weighing on factories although new orders for long-lasting manufactured goods increased during the month. Other data on Thursday showed the number of Americans filing new ...

By Sherilee Lakmidas JOHANNESBURG | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:21am EDT JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's gold mines agreed a wage deal with unions on Thursday as the bulk of the gold sector's striking miners returned to work under threat of dismissal. The returns marked success of a sort for a new tough approach by mining firms, but at least 12,00...

By Catherine Bremer PARIS | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:17am EDT PARIS (Reuters) - France made a new attempt on Thursday to fix an annual day of remembrance for those who died in the 1954-62 Algerian war and independence struggles in Morocco and Tunisia that ended more than a century of French colonial rule. The Socialist-controlled Senate postponed to No...

NEW YORK | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:33am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks opened higher on Thursday on optimism the economies of both the U.S. and China may be recovering. Jobless claims fell by 23,000 in the latest week while the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said China's factory output should grow faster sequentially in the fourth quarter. I...

VIENNA | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:15am EDT VIENNA (Reuters) - Josef Fritzl, who held his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, has divorced his wife of 52 years for failing to visit him in prison, a magazine reported on Thursday. The country's most notorious living criminal, now 77, is serving a life sentence in a pris...

By Ben Hirschler LONDON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:11am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca's sales slumped by a bigger-than-expected 19 percent in the third quarter, underscoring the challenges confronting the drugmaker's new chief executive, Pascal Soriot. Faced with patent expires on once best-selling medicines and a thin pipeline of new drugs, the f...

By Anna Driver Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:10am EDT (Reuters) - ConocoPhillips (COP.N) reported a lower third-quarter profit on Thursday that beat analysts' estimates, as it produced more crude than expected from high-margin fields such as the Eagle Ford and Bakken. Shares of the U.S. oil and gas company rose 2 percent to $57.11 in premarket trading.Conoco and oth...

CAIRO | Thu Oct 25, 2012 9:03am EDT CAIRO (Reuters) - A Libyan militant suspected by Egypt of involvement in last month's attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya has been killed during a raid by Egyptian security forces in Cairo, a security official said on Thursday. The Libyan was killed on Wednesday in a raid targeting him and other militants with suspec...

VATICAN CITY | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:50am EDT VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Paolo Gabriele, Pope Benedict's former butler who was convicted this month for stealing papal documents and leaking them to the media, will be moved from house arrest to a Vatican jail cell, the Vatican said on Thursday. A statement said Gabriele would moved later on Thursday to the Vati...

By Jessica Wohl Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:50am EDT (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co's (PG.N) profit rose more than expected on Thursday, indicating that the world's largest household products maker is making progress after coming under pressure from activist investor William Ackman. P&G did not raise its key profit forecast for the fiscal year that began ...

By Rhys Jones and Alessandra Prentice LONDON/BASILDON, England | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:49am EDT LONDON/BASILDON, England (Reuters) - Ford will stop making vans in Britain next year, cutting 1,400 jobs on top of 4,300 to be axed in Belgium as part of a plan by the U.S. car maker to stem European losses expected to exceed $1.5 billion this year. It is...

WASHINGTON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:45am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gauge of planned business spending was flat in September, a sign that heightened uncertainty is weighing on factories although new orders for long-lasting manufactured goods increased during the month. The Commerce Department said on Thursday that non-defense capital goods orders excluding...

LONDON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:41am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - The WikiLeaks website began publishing on Thursday what it said were more than 100 U.S. Defense Department files detailing military detention policies in camps in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in the years after the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets. In a statement, WikiLeaks criticized regulations ...

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis AMMAN | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:32am EDT AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops bombarded a town near Damascus on Thursday and fighting raged in and around the northern city of Aleppo, a day before a proposed truce for a four-day Muslim religious holiday. President Bashar al-Assad's government was expected to make a statement later in ...

By Larry Fine SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:30am EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Pablo Sandoval blasted a record-tying three home runs to power the San Francisco Giants to a surprising 8-3 win over the Detroit Tigers and ace Justin Verlander in the opening game of the World Series on Wednesday. Sandoval became just the fourth player to hit thr...

By Estelle Shirbon LONDON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:08am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - British prosecutors wrapped up their case against former UBS (UBSN.VX) trader Kweku Adoboli on Thursday, opening the way for him to open his defense against charges of fraud and false accounting for trades that cost the Swiss bank $2.3 billion. After listening quietly from...

By Katharina Bart ZURICH | Thu Oct 25, 2012 7:52am EDT ZURICH (Reuters) - Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) will cut an extra 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.1 billion) of costs, including axing more jobs, as part of efforts to bolster its profits and capital position. Volatile financial markets, a dearth of deals and tighter regulations in the wake of the 2007...

By Edward Krudy NEW YORK | Thu Oct 25, 2012 7:25am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Consumers will have to dig deeper into their pockets next year to pay for costlier healthcare, more expensive grocery bills and higher taxes, an extra drag on the country's already slow-moving economy. The additional outlays look set to test the resilience of consumers, w...

BEIJING | Thu Oct 25, 2012 6:57am EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - A lawyer for disgraced former top Chinese politician Bo Xilai, who has been employed by the family to represent him, said on Thursday he was unable to say whether the government would allow him to represent Bo when the case comes to trial. Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, and his former police chief, Wang Li...

By Steve Stecklow LONDON | Thu Oct 25, 2012 4:47am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - An Iranian partner of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a Chinese company that has denied breaking U.S. sanctions, last year tried to sell embargoed American antenna equipment to an Iranian firm, according to documents and interviews. The buyer - an Iranian mobile-phone operator ...

By Larry Fine SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Oct 25, 2012 2:14am EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Pablo Sandoval had just three at-bats when San Francisco won the World Series two years ago, and Barry Zito was left off the roster altogether, but those forgotten Giants stood tall in the 2012 Fall Classic opener against Detroit on Wednesday. Sandoval bashed thre...

By Steve Ginsburg SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Oct 25, 2012 1:34am EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Justin Verlander conceded he was "out of sync" in the opening game of the World Series but the Detroit Tigers ace was unable to pinpoint the exact cause of his rare off night. Whatever the reason, the right-hander widely considered to be the game's best pitche...

By Jeff Mason BURBANK, California | Wed Oct 24, 2012 11:46pm EDT BURBANK, California (Reuters) - President Barack Obama suspended the levity during an interview with late-night TV talk show host Jay Leno on Wednesday to address a Republican Senate candidate's assertion that pregnancies resulting f...

SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Oct 24, 2012 11:43pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The San Francisco Giants, powered by three home runs from Pablo Sandoval, got the better of ace right-hander Justin Verlander to beat the Detroit Tigers 8-3 in the opening game of the World Series on Wednesday. Sandoval became just the fourth player to hit three homers in a World Seri...

Wed Oct 24, 2012 10:48pm EDT (Reuters) - U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp said it will introduce new rate plans for 4G tablets that offer customers up to 20 percent more data than rivals for the same price. Competition is heating up among wireless carriers to meet growing customer demand for data as more people buy handheld devices with Internet browsing ...

By Poornima Gupta SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:45pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amid the fanfare accompanying the noisy launch of the iPad mini this week, Apple Inc also took the wraps off new Mac computers. The facelift may help revitalize an important lineup that -- while seeing growth tail off in the early part of 2012 -- yields 14 per...

By Michael Shields and Corrie MacLaggan VIENNA/AUSTIN, Texas | Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:26pm EDT VIENNA/AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - International election monitors took a dim view on Wednesday of Texas' threat to prosecute them if they observe voting in the state a bit too closely on November 6. The exchange pitted the Vienna-based human rights watchdog ...

By James B. Kelleher CHICAGO | Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:19pm EDT CHICAGO (Reuters) - A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that an Illinois law limiting contributions to political campaigns can remain in force at least until the November 6 election. Passed in 2009, the law imposed a $5,000 limit on contributions from individuals, a $10,000 limit o...

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO | Wed Oct 24, 2012 7:40pm EDT CHICAGO (Reuters) - The latest data from a long-running study of hormone therapy suggests women who started taking hormone replacements within five years of menopause were 30 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease than women who started years later. The findings, reported on W...

By Bill Rigby SEATTLE | Wed Oct 24, 2012 7:32pm EDT SEATTLE (Reuters) - Firm sales numbers for Microsoft Corp's Windows 8 and its new Surface tablet will not be available for three months, but it may be clear long before then if it has a hit on its hands. "We can definitely gauge it by chatter," said Emily Chan, an analyst at Bernstein Research. ...

By Jeff Mason DAVENPORT, Iowa | Wed Oct 24, 2012 7:15pm EDT DAVENPORT, Iowa (Reuters) - President Barack Obama predicted passage of immigration reform and a deficit-reduction deal, offering a fresh glimpse of his second-term agenda as he fights for votes in the final stretch of the tight race for the White House. In a newspaper interview released...