COPENHAGEN | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:44pm EST COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish pharmaceutical group H Lundbeck A/S said on Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted the submission of a new drug application for an antidepressant. Lundbeck and its Japanese partner Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd submitted the new antidepressant, vortioxetine,...

By Michael Holden LONDON | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:39pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - British television star Jimmy Savile is suspected of carrying out an unprecedented number of sex offences including 31 rapes, police said on Wednesday in their most comprehensive review of the scandal. Revelations about Savile, who died last year, provoked outrage across Br...

By Kerry Grens NEW YORK | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:19pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children born via cesarean section are slightly more likely than babies delivered vaginally to become heavy or obese, according to a new review of studies. The results don't prove that c-sections cause kids to put on weight, but Dr. Jianmeng Liu, one of the authors ...

LONDON | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:17pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have found the earliest evidence of prehistoric cheese-making from a study of 7,500-year-old pottery fragments that are perforated just like modern cheese strainers. Milk production and dairy processing allowed early farmers to produce food without slaughtering precious livestock, and mak...

LONDON | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:03pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - A copy of The Ten Commandments dating back two millennia and the earliest written Gaelic are just two of a number of incredibly rare manuscripts now freely available online to the world as part of a Cambridge University digital project. The Nash Papyrus -- one of the oldest known manuscripts contain...

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK | Wed Dec 12, 2012 1:19pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a new study of U.S. adults with glaucoma, Hispanics were the least likely to get routine follow-up testing to make sure their vision wasn't getting worse. With glaucoma, pressure inside the eye builds up over time, causing damage to the optic nerve.Many peopl...

WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 12, 2012 11:42am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on Wednesday he still has "serious differences" with President Barack Obama over how to resolve the year-end "fiscal cliff" as top Republicans vowed to stay in Washington until just before - and after - Christmas to reach a deal. "I wa...

By Fred Barbash WASHINGTON | Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:40am EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More public jousting in the "fiscal cliff" talks is expected from Democrats and Republicans on Wednesday in what has become a daily ritual of demanding more specific proposals to avert the steep tax hikes and budget cuts set for the end of the year. On Tuesday the Wh...

By Jill Serjeant LOS ANGELES | Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:16am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The actors of drama "Lincoln," musical "Les Miserables" and comedy "Silver Linings Playbook" led nominations for the Screen Actors Guild film awards on Wednesday, winning four nominations apiece, including best ensemble cast. Joining them among nominees for best m...

By Alexander Dziadosz KHARTOUM | Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:16am EST KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A peace deal for Sudan's Darfur region has been hindered by a lack of funding, the failure to disarm militias, attacks on peacekeepers and other problems nearly a year and a half after it was signed, a U.S. official...

By Samia Nakhoul and Khaled Yacoub Oweis MARRAKECH, Morocco | Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:12am EST MARRAKECH, Morocco (Reuters) - Western and Arab nations sympathetic to Syria's uprising against President Bashar al-Assad gave full political recognition on Wednesday to the opposition, reflecting a hardening consensus that the 20-month-old uprising might b...

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 12, 2012 10:03am EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc began rolling out a variety of new privacy controls on Wednesday, the company's latest effort to address user concerns about who can see their personal information on the world's largest social network. New tools introduced on Wednesday will ma...

Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:35am EST (Reuters) - Redbox kiosks owner Coinstar Inc (CSTR.O) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) said they will launch a video streaming service later this month to take on video rental giant Netflix Inc (NFLX.O). The companies are set to launch their Redbox Instant video streaming service more than ten months after they first inked a joint...

By Andrew Cawthorne CARACAS | Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:34am EST CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelans waited anxiously on Wednesday for more details of President Hugo Chavez's condition in Cuba after cancer surgery deemed successful by the government but still shrouded in secrecy. Supporters held prayer vigils around the South American nation, while opponent...

By Jack Kim and Mayumi Negishi SEOUL/TOKYO | Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:26am EST SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea successfully launched a rocket on Wednesday, boosting the credentials of its new leader and stepping up the threat the isolated and impoverished state poses to opponents. The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbi...

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor PARIS | Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:21am EST PARIS (Reuters) - France will deport foreign-born imams and disband radical faith-based groups, including hardline traditionalist Catholics, if a new surveillance policy signals they suffer a "religious pathology" and could become violent. A French Islamist shooting spree last M...

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:18am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. nuclear inspectors would be ready to go to Iran's disputed Parchin military complex if the Islamic state were to allow it during talks in Tehran later this week, a senior official said on Wednesday. The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes Iran has con...

NEW YORK | Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:17am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Paul McCartney jamming with Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder duetting with Roger Waters on a Pink Floyd song are just two of the acts in store at a benefit concert on Wednesday for victims of Superstorm Sandy, producers say. The "12-12-12" concert at New York's Madison Square Garden features a who's ...

By Tamim Elyan and Marwa Awad CAIRO | Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:11am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Efforts to resolve Egypt's rapidly worsening political crisis suffered a blow on Wednesday when the army abruptly postponed "unity" talks that the opposition had minutes earlier said they would attend. Confirmation that the secular, liberal opposition coalition wo...

Wed Dec 12, 2012 8:52am EST (Reuters) - Elon Musk-backed SolarCity Corp, the top U.S. installer of residential solar systems, increased the size of its initial public offering but said it expects a lower pricing, a day after an underwriter said the IPO had been postponed. The company said it now expects to sell 11.5 million shares at $8 each.The offering is likel...

By Manuel Mogato MANILA | Wed Dec 12, 2012 8:33am EST MANILA (Reuters) - U.S. and Philippine officials are expected to agree on an increase in the number of U.S. military ships, aircraft and troops rotating through the Philippines, Filipino officials said, as tensions simmer with China over its maritime claims. Though he made no direct reference ...

JOHANNESBURG | Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:55am EST JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African President Nelson Mandela is recovering from a lung infection that has kept the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader in hospital for the last five days, the government said on Wednesday. "Doctors attending to former President Mandela have reported that he has made progre...

By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY | Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:47am EST VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - After weeks of anticipation bordering on media frenzy, Pope Benedict solemnly put his finger to a computer tablet device on Wednesday and tried to send his first tweet - but something went wrong. Images on Vatican television appeared to show the first try didn'...

By Phil Stewart KABUL | Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:34am EST KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived on an unannounced visit to Kabul on Wednesday for talks with military commanders ahead of a decision on how large a U.S. military presence to keep in the country after the NATO mission ends in 2014. Panetta has not disclosed how large...

By Paul Sandle LONDON | Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:16am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Profit growth at Imagination Technologies has been dampened by higher research costs, overshadowing a 90 percent jump in shipments of chips containing its graphics technology used in products like Apple's iPad. Shares in the British company reversed early gains and were tradin...

LOS ANGELES | Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:04am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Director Quentin Tarantino's slavery era Western "Django Unchained" and mythological indie film "Beasts of the Southern Wild," were among the top film nominees on Tuesday for the annual NAACP Image Awards. The NAACP also nominated "Flight," starring Denzel Washington as an alcoholic airlin...

By Jill Serjeant and Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES | Wed Dec 12, 2012 7:03am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar, who helped introduce the sitar to the Western world through his collaborations with The Beatles, died in Southern California on Tuesday, his family said. He was 92. Shankar, a three-time Grammy winner with le...

By Zorianna Kit LOS ANGELES | Wed Dec 12, 2012 5:02am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After bringing J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy to life, filmmaker Peter Jackson is back in the world of Middle Earth with the author's prequel, "The Hobbit." The three-film series is due to open in U.S. theaters on Friday with "The Hobbit: An Unexpe...

By Lee Chyen Yee HONG KONG | Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:59am EST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese mobile phone makers chasing market share with lower prices in the world's biggest smartphone market will see their margins continue to be pressured as they upgrade to quad-core chips to satisfy demand from users for faster speeds and flashier graphics. Most sma...

By Dena Aubin NEW YORK | Wed Dec 12, 2012 1:11am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - The scandal at Autonomy, a UK software group bought last year by Hewlett-Packard Co, has some accountants wondering about the wisdom of new, global standards in the pipeline that would change how companies account for revenue. "Revenue recognition" is the most common type o...

LOS ANGELES | Tue Dec 11, 2012 10:02pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" landed a record-breaking 13 nominations for the Critics Choice Movie Awards on Tuesday, ahead of musical "Les Miserables" and indie comedy "Silver Linings Playbook". "Lincoln", starring Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln and Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, ...

By Dana Feldman LOS ANGELES | Tue Dec 11, 2012 9:17pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Bacon, whiskey and stilettos - this is not your mother's kitchen. This is "Epic Chef," YouTube's 20,000-calorie cooking spectacle that makes its debut on Friday. "The show is complete madness," producer Rob Czar told Reuters on a recent set visit in Los Angeles, whe...

NEW YORK | Tue Dec 11, 2012 9:12pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hollywood star Shia LaBeouf will make his Broadway debut as a petty thief opposite Alec Baldwin in a revival of the play "Orphans," press representatives for the play's producers said on Tuesday. LaBeouf, 26, who starred in such big-budget movies as "Indiana Jones" and the "Transformers" franchi...

LOS ANGELES | Tue Dec 11, 2012 8:09pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The popular TV show "Storage Wars" - in which treasure hunters bid to buy unseen items in abandoned units - is rigged, with producers sometimes planting valuable items among the junk, a former contestant said in a lawsuit on Tuesday. David Hester, one of the reality TV show's longest-servi...

By Irene Klotz Tue Dec 11, 2012 7:50pm EST (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket carrying a small robotic space shuttle lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Tuesday for the third flight in a classified military test program. The 196-foot (60-meter) rocket blasted off at 1:03 p.m. ET (1603 GMT) carrying the military's original X-...

By Matt Smith and Joseph Menn DUBAI | Tue Dec 11, 2012 7:13pm EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Hopes rose on Tuesday for a compromise agreement that would keep intrusive government regulation of the Internet from being enshrined in a global treaty. As a 12-day conference of the International Telecommunication Union drew near its Friday closing, the chairman...

By Mike Collett-White LONDON | Tue Dec 11, 2012 6:53pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - The Spice Girls took to the stage on Tuesday after the world premiere of a new musical loosely based on their meteoric rise to fame in the 1990s, earning huge cheers from an audience that only really got going at the encore. "Viva Forever!" was the brainchild of produce...

By Jason McLure Tue Dec 11, 2012 5:43pm EST (Reuters) - Researchers have named a newly discovered, prehistoric lizard "Obamadon gracilis" in honor of the 44th president's toothy grin. The small, insect-eating lizard was first discovered in eastern Montana in 1974, but a recent re-examination showed the fossil had been wrongly classified as a Leptochamops ...

SEATTLE | Tue Dec 11, 2012 5:22pm EST SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp has stepped up manufacturing of the Surface tablet, its new device designed to counter Apple Inc's iPad, and will introduce it to third-party retailers this week. The moves suggest Microsoft is seeing some demand for its first own-brand computer in the crucial holiday shopping seaso...

By Chris Wickham LONDON | Tue Dec 11, 2012 12:52pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist who urged people to "be curious" in the Paralympics opening ceremony, has landed the richest prize in science for his work on how black holes emit radiation. Wheelchair-bound Hawking won $3 million from Russian Internet entrepreneur ...