Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:44am EDT (Reuters) - Kuwait's government has given final approval to settlement with Iraq to end a standoff over Gulf-War-era debts and lift restrictions on Iraqi Airways flying to destinations in the West, Iraq's government said on Tuesday. The airline row was part of a broader dispute over billions of d...

By Robert Muller and Jan Lopatka PRAGUE | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:39am EDT PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas failed to win support on Tuesday from party rebels threatening to bring down his cabinet over an unpopular bill to raise taxes, raising the likelihood of an early election. The Czech Republic has maintained investor confidence ...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:38am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures fell on Tuesday on concerns the slow global economy will continue to dent corporate revenues, with a trio of Dow components appearing to confirm investor worries. United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) reported a 3.3 percent decline in third-quarter ear...

By Mike Collett-White LONDON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:36am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Paparazzi favorite Pippa Middleton is already a global celebrity. Now the 29-year-old sister of the future British queen is aiming to become a global brand. The woman whose appearance at the spectacular 2011 wedding between Kate Middleton and Prince William caused as mu...

KABUL | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:29am EDT KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday condemned a NATO operation that he said killed four children in the country's east, a claim the coalition said was possible. The operation took place in the Baraki Barak district of Logar province on Saturday, a statement released by Karzai's office said, addin...

SHANGHAI | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:29am EDT SHANGHAI (Reuters) - World number one Rory McIlroy has his sights firmly set on winning the money list on both major tours as he links up with most of his fellow European Ryder Cup heroes at this week's BMW Masters in Shanghai. For the first time since they stunned the United States in Medinah last month, McIlroy ha...

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:23am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican leaders in the U.S. Congress expressed surprise and doubt on Tuesday about President Barack Obama's comment in debate with Republican challenger Mitt Romney that the automatic spending cuts set for the new year "will not happen." At the same time, they said it was unclear whether ...

By Sui-Lee Wee BEIJING | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:19am EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - The subtle dropping of references to late Chinese leader Mao Zedong from two policy statements over the last few weeks serves as one of the most intriguing hints yet that the ruling Communist Party is planning to move in the direction of reform. Mao has always been held up a...

By Mariam Karouny BEIRUT | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:17am EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels are battling to seize an army base close to the main north-south highway and say its capture would be a big step towards creating a "safe zone" allowing them to focus on Bashar al-Assad's southern strongholds. For two weeks they have surrounded and attacked Wa...

By Mike Collett-White LONDON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:13am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Two Ethiopians who take to the London stage on Monday evening are living proof that dance really can change lives. Addisu Demissie, 30, and Junaid Jemal Sendi, 28, will perform in "A Holding Space", a dance collaboration which explores their extraordinary journey from t...

By Khalid Abdelaziz KHARTOUM | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:02am EDT KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese rebels killed two children and wounded eight other civilians when they shelled the main town in Sudan's oil-producing South Kordofan state on Tuesday, the army said - the third bout of shelling in the past two weeks. Sudan's army has been fighting SPLM-North ...

Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:55am EDT (Reuters) - Diversified U.S. manufacturer 3M Co (MMM.N) on Tuesday reported a 6.7 percent rise in third-quarter profit but cut its profit forecast for the full year as acquisition costs and a strengthening dollar hurt margins. The maker of products ranging from Post-It notes to films used in consumer electronics said net income was $1....

By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA | Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:35am EDT GENEVA (Reuters) - Lebanon has become the third of Syria's neighbors after Turkey and Jordan to register more than 100,000 refugees from Syria's civil war, the U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday. In all, more than 358,000 Syrians fleeing the 19-month-old conflict have registered in four n...

By Junko Fujita and Tim Kelly TOKYO | Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:13am EDT TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp plans to shut operations in a Tokyo office building that houses 8 percent of its Japan staff, one of the first concrete moves by the electronics and entertainment company to pave the way for 4,000 job cuts. The move, part of a still-unfolding restructuri...

By Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:03am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. oil and gas rush is cutting into jobless numbers, supporting a total of 1.7 million jobs this year, a number that will swell to almost 3 million by 2020, a leading consultant said in a study released on Tuesday. The report by forecaster IHS Global Insight ...

Tue Oct 23, 2012 6:35am EDT (Reuters) - Maria Sharapova is not convinced it is a good idea to give first round losers at next year's Australian Open a huge pay increase as part of a $4 million rise in overall prize money. Tournament organizers announced earlier this month that the total prize money pool at the opening grand slam of 2013 had risen to $30 million, ...

JERUSALEM | Tue Oct 23, 2012 6:35am EDT JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli officer was severely wounded on Tuesday when a bomb went off beside an army patrol along the border with the Gaza Strip, a military spokeswoman said. The attack came hours before the Emir of Qatar arrived in Gaza in the first visit by a head of state to the blockaded enclave since i...

By Paul Sandle LONDON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 6:28am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - British chip designer ARM beat quarterly profit forecasts on Tuesday, helped by the adoption of its most powerful processor technology in smartphones and tablet computers from the likes of Apple and Samsung. The Cambridge-based firm said on Tuesday its third-quarter pretax pro...

By John Whitesides WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 4:02am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It was billed as a debate on foreign policy, but that did not stop Democratic President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, from sparring repeatedly on issues that polls indicate are more important to voters: the economy and jobs. After two con...

Tue Oct 23, 2012 3:49am EDT (Reuters) - Bad bounces and stone cold silent bats cost the St Louis Cardinals their last chance to return to the World Series and defend their title, the team said after a 9-0 drubbing by San Francisco in the National League Championship Series decider. The Giants' victory in San Francisco gave them a 4-3 triumph in the best-of-seven ...

By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick BOCA RATON, Florida | Tue Oct 23, 2012 3:17am EDT BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama scolded challenger Mitt Romney for being "all over the map" on foreign policy in their final presidential debate on Monday, but the Republican appeared to have passed the "commander-in-chief" test of lookin...

By Susan Cornwell and Lucy Shackelford WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:55am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, faced off on Monday in their last debate before the November 6 presidential election. Here is some fact-checking of claims made by the two candidates. OBAMA: ROMNEY SAID THE...

By Arshad Mohammed WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:51am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At times, it was as if Mitt Romney had come to praise Barack Obama's foreign policy rather than to bury it. Monday night's foreign policy debate between the Republican presidential nominee and the Democratic president was striking for the frequency with which Romne...

By Matt Spetalnick BOCA RATON, Florida | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:36am EDT BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) - Mitt Romney passed up on his last best chance to put President Barack Obama on the defensive over his handling of a deadly September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Libya when the Republican challenger held fire on the issue in their final debate...

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:33am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama, in some of his most blunt remarks to date, said on Monday that Osama bin Laden would have escaped if the United States had sought Pakistan's permission ahead of the raid on the al Qaeda leader's compound. Obama administration officials have previously justified t...

By Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:18am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney vied on Monday over who was Israel's strongest defender but both agreed that a military strike over Iran's nuclear program must be a "last resort." Tehran's nuclear program, which the West suspects ...

By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:56am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Horses and bayonets" became the most memorable catch phrase of the debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on Monday night, as the Democratic president reached far back into the past to paint the Republican's foreign policy ideas as outdated. Romney has crit...

Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:45am EDT (Reuters) - Chicago's swarming, suffocating defense squeezed the life out of the Detroit Lions in a 13-7 victory on Monday that kept the Bears at the top of the NFC North. The Bears stifled the visiting Lions' offense for the entire game until Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford threw a 12-yard touchdown pass to Ryan Broyles with just...

By Paul Eckert WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:24am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney vowed on Monday to get tough on China's trade policies, but they mostly used the Asian giant as a foil to air competing domestic economic programs in their final debate before the November 6 election. In a sh...

WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 12:44am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ellen DeGeneres, an American entertainer and prominent gay rights advocate, received the highest U.S. award for achievement in comedy on Monday. Receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at the Kennedy Center, the national showcase for arts, DeGeneres was praised as a pioneering fem...

By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick BOCA RATON, Florida | Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:02pm EDT BOCA RATON, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama aggressively attacked Republican challenger Mitt Romney on foreign policy on Monday in their third and final debate in an effort to blunt his opponent's surge in the polls with two weeks left until Electio...

By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Oct 22, 2012 11:07pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Chief Executive Marrisa Mayer promised to modernize Yahoo's websites and make them more smartphone-friendly in her debut appearance at the helm of the struggling company, faulting it for...

Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:59pm EDT (Reuters) - U.S. Open champion Webb Simpson, one of three players to win a major with the controversial long putter, says he is not worried by a possible ban but believes that outlawing the club would be wrong. American Simpson has already begun practicing with a conventional 'short' putter in anticipation of a possible rule change, t...

By Julien Pretot GENEVA | Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:58pm EDT GENEVA (Reuters) - Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life on Monday after the International Cycling Union (UCI) ratified the United States Anti-Doping Agency's (USADA) sanctions against the American. The decision effectively destroyed Armstrong's l...

WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:25pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Monday that newspaper reports that Iran and the United States had agreed to hold one-on-one talks on Tehran's nuclear program were "not true." Obama made the comment at a debate on foreign policy. The New York Times quoted unnamed U.S. administration officials...

By Chikako Mogi TOKYO | Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:10pm EDT TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares edged higher on Tuesday but sentiment was cautious, after global shares faltered overnight on weak corporate results and outlook, and with Asia's corporate reporting season underway. South Korea's POSCO backed by Warren Buffett will on Tuesday kick off the earning...

By Poornima Gupta SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:00pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc is expected to make its biggest product move on Tuesday since debuting the iPad two years ago, launching a smaller, cheaper tablet into a market staked out by Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc. Apple hopes to beat back their charge onto its home turf of...

By Bill Berkrot Mon Oct 22, 2012 9:51pm EDT (Reuters) - The extended shutdown of a sister company of the pharmacy at the center of the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak may exacerbate drug shortages for some hospitals and healthcare providers as the number of infection cases neared 300, U.S. health regulators said. Ameridose, a drug manufacturer owned by th...

By Dan Whitcomb LOS ANGELES | Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:52pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Filmmaker Tony Scott had an anti-depressant and sleep aid in his bloodstream when he leapt to his death from a suspension bridge in August, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office said on Monday. Preliminary autopsy results confirmed that Scott's death, which baffle...

By Martinne Geller and David Morgan NEW YORK/WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:37pm EDT NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Food and Drug Administration said on Monday that it was investigating reports of five deaths that may be associated with Monster Beverage Corp's namesake energy drink, and the company's shares fell more than 14 percent. Monste...