FANLING, Hong Kong | Sun Nov 18, 2012 5:08am EST FANLING, Hong Kong (Reuters) - Miguel Angel Jimenez fired a final round five-under 65 to become the oldest player to record a European Tour victory with a one-stroke triumph at the Hong Kong Open on Sunday. The Spaniard completed the tournament on 15 under par to edge out Sweden's Fredrik Andersson Hed, wh...

By Ian Ransom MELBOURNE | Sun Nov 18, 2012 3:55am EST MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Local favorite Adam Scott cruised to a four-stroke victory in the $1 million Australian Masters on Sunday as Ian Poulter's title defense fizzled out with a bogey-strewn back nine at Melbourne's Kingston Heath Golf Club. The world number five Scott showed great composure o...

Sun Nov 18, 2012 12:22am EST (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Clippers have continued their impressive opening to the NBA season, matching their best start to a year in franchise history by thumping the Chicago Bulls 101-80 at Staples Center on Saturday. The victory was the fifth straight for the Clippers, who were led by big man Blake Griffin's double-double and Jama...

PRAGUE | Sun Nov 18, 2012 12:01am EST PRAGUE (Reuters) - Tomas Berdych and Radek Stepanek used a roaring home crowd to come back from a set down on Saturday, putting the Czech Republic 2-1 up over holders Spain and a win away from the Davis Cup title. The Czech pair looked tired from the opening singles matches that went late on Friday but triumphed 3-6 ...

By Ian Ransom MELBOURNE | Sat Nov 17, 2012 11:37pm EST MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The desire to improve can drive professional athletes to distraction, but for Australian golfer Rika Batibasaga it became a dangerous obsession that saw him handcuffed and thrown into a Florida mental institution. In 2008, Batibasaga, whose father played international ru...

Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:49pm EST (Reuters) - National Hockey League (NHL) and players' union officials will meet again on Monday in New York in a bid to resolve the bitter two-month-old labor dispute, the league said on Saturday. Weekend discussions between NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly and NHL Players' Association (NHLPA) special counsel Steve Fehr led to the dec...

By Jazmine Woodberry TUCSON, Arizona | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:47pm EST TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. Representative Ron Barber, a former aide to Gabrielle Giffords who was wounded alongside her in a deadly 2011 shooting, has won a full term in Congress after defeating Republican Martha McSally in a closely contested race. Barber, 67, wh...

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE | Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:55pm EST ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House did not heavily alter talking points about the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, an official said on Saturday. "If there were adjustments made to them within the intelligence community, that's common, and that's something they would have done ...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller GAZA/JERUSALEM | Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:44pm EST GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the "Iron Dome" defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that ...

ZURICH | Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:43pm EST ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss drugmaker Roche's cancer drug Avastin failed to make a statistically significant difference to survival rates of patients with a common form of brain cancer in a late-stage study, the company said on Saturday. The Phase III AVAglio study presented at the Society for Neuro-Oncology congress in ...

By Conor Humphries DUBLIN | Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:12pm EST DUBLIN (Reuters) - At least 5,000 people marched to the offices of Ireland's socially conservative prime minister on Saturday to call for clearer guidelines on abortion following the death of a woman denied a termination. It was the largest of a wave of protests across Ireland in recent days...

By Jonny Hogg KINSHASA | Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:33pm EST KINSHASA (Reuters) - U.N. attack helicopters hit rebel positions in eastern Congo on Saturday after insurgents gained ground in heavy fighting with government troops and took control of a town, the United Nations said. The clashes to the south of the town Kibumba mean the rebels have advanced t...

Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:09pm EST PARIS (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people, joined by Catholic church leaders, marched in cities across France on Saturday to protest against government plans to legalize same-sex marriage. Demonstrators, holding banners with slogans such as "don't touch civil marriage", "all born from the union of a man and a woman" and "one father...

By Steve Keating AUSTIN, Texas | Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:06pm EST AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel roared to pole position at the U.S. Grand Prix on Saturday with the German perfectly placed to claim a third straight Formula One title in his milestone 100th race. Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, 10 points behind the championship leader ...

By Yasmine Saleh CAIRO | Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:44pm EST CAIRO (Reuters) - A group of technical advisers helping to write Egypt's new constitution resigned on Saturday, saying they would draw up a draft of their own because their voices were not being heard, state news agency MENA said. The resignations further complicate a drafting process delayed b...

ARBIL, Iraq | Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:26pm EST ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani said on Saturday the region was fully prepared to defend itself, after a skirmish between Iraqi forces and Kurdish troops along their disputed internal border. Tensions have been building between the autonomous Kurdish region and the central governmen...

WARSAW | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:34pm EST WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's Deputy Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak said he would resign from the government after unexpectedly losing a battle for the leadership of the junior coalition partner on Saturday, but there was no threat to the stability of the coalition. Janusz Piechocinski, a 52-year-old member of parliamen...

By Francesca Landini MILAN | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:29pm EST MILAN (Reuters) - Prime Minister Mario Monti rejected suggestions on Saturday that Italy should seek aid from its euro zone partners to bind a new government to strict reform conditions after elections likely to be held in March. Monti's comments, in a panel discussion at Milan's Bocconi Un...

By Renee Maltezou ATHENS | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:17pm EST ATHENS (Reuters) - Thousands of Greeks protesting against austerity policies rallied in Athens on Saturday to mark a bloody student uprising almost four decades ago against the military junta that ruled the country at the time. The annual protest often becomes a focal point for groups protest...

DUBAI | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:04pm EST DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States has denied visas to Iranian officials hoping to attend a U.N. meeting in New York, Iran's state news agency reported on Saturday. The Iranian judiciary's Human Rights Headquarters said in a statement that the United States denied visas to members of an Iranian delegation that planned...

BEIRUT | Sat Nov 17, 2012 1:38pm EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels said they captured an airport used by Syria's military near the Iraqi border on Saturday, strengthening their hold on the recently seized border town of Albu Kamal. President Bashar al-Assad's forces have retaliated by bombing the airport with fighter jets, said Ziad al-Amir, a local oppositi...

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE | Sat Nov 17, 2012 11:37am EST ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will meet with congressional leaders in the week after Thanksgiving to discuss ways to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of expiring tax cuts combined with massive spending reductions, the White House said on Saturday. "Everyone expressed the desire to...

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE | Sat Nov 17, 2012 11:03am EST ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to escalating violence between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a White House official said on Saturday. Ben Rhodes, White House de...

BAGHDAD | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:51am EST BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least seven foreign Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims were killed and another 25 wounded when a car bomb went off in the Iraqi city of Balad on Saturday, police and hospital sources said. A parked car blew up near a restaurant on the outskirts of Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, killing pilgrims...

BEIRUT | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:17am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels captured an airport used by Syria's military near the Iraqi border on Saturday, activists said, a move which they said would allow them to maintain their hold on the recently seized border town of Albu Kamal. President Bashar al-Assad's forces have...

BERLIN | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:14am EST BERLIN (Reuters) - Turkey will formally ask NATO on Monday to set up missiles on its border with Syria due to growing concern about spillover from a 20-month-old civil war in its neighbor, a German newspaper reported on Saturday. The Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung, which did not cite its sources, also said that up ...

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Crispian Balmer GAZA/JERUSALEM | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:08am EST GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the prime minister's office, after Israel's cabinet authorized the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists, preparing for a possible ground invasion. Isr...

By Angel Krasimirov SOFIA | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:06am EST SOFIA (Reuters) - In one of Bulgaria's biggest anti-austerity rallies for years, thousands of people protested on Saturday against the government's handling of the weak economy and called on the cabinet to resign. Supporters of the opposition...

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:32am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has postponed until 2014 the planned start-up of a research reactor which Western experts say could potentially offer the Islamic Republic a second route to produce material for a nuclear bomb, a U.N. report showed. Tehran has continued to install cooling and moderator c...

PARIS | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:18am EST PARIS (Reuters) - Syria's opposition coalition is to appoint an envoy to France, French President Francois Hollande said after meeting the head of the Syrian National Coalition on Saturday. A French diplomatic source said the official would act as a representative of the coalition, becoming ambassador once a provisiona...

By Tarek Amara TUNIS | Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:17am EST TUNIS (Reuters) - A second Tunisian Salafist held in custody ‮‮‮‮‬since protesters ransacked the U.S. embassy in Tunis in September has died after a hunger strike, his lawyer and the Justice Ministry said on Saturday. Muhammed Bakhti died in hospital on Saturday, two days after 26-year-old studen...

By Edmund Blair CAIRO | Sat Nov 17, 2012 6:54am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Fifty people, mostly children, were killed when a train slammed into a school bus as it crossed tracks in a city south of Cairo on Saturday, state media and officials said. All but two of the dead were children, aged around four to eight, said a senior security official in Assi...

FANLING, Hong Kong | Sat Nov 17, 2012 5:23am EST FANLING, Hong Kong (Reuters) - Michael Campbell survived two major scares but the New Zealander remains on course to end a seven-year title drought at the Hong Kong Open. The 43-year-old started Saturday's third round with a one-stroke advantage and after scrambling to shoot a one-under-par 69, he was join...

By Simon Akam and Pascal Fletcher FREETOWN | Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:16am EST FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leoneans crowded polling stations to vote on Saturday, saying they wanted to elect leaders who would bring prosperity to the poor, conflict-scarred West African state after a decade of recovery from civil war. The presidential and parliamentary po...

By David Brunnstrom SINGAPORE | Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:40am EST SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that reaching a deal to resolve America's budget crisis is critical to its global leadership and national security and would bolster efforts to project U.S. economic power around the world. Speaking in Singapo...

By Mark Lamport-Stokes LOS ANGELES | Sat Nov 17, 2012 3:19am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers gave their fans a taste of the 'Showtime' basketball promised by their new coach Mike D'Antoni with a rousing 114-102 home win over the Phoenix Suns on Friday. Though D'Antoni was not courtside to take charge of his firs...

By Mark Lamport-Stokes LOS ANGELES | Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:49am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles Lakers point guard Steve Nash will be sidelined for "at least another week" because of a small fracture in his left leg, the National Basketball Association team said on Friday. The twice former Most Valuable Player has missed seven games, includi...

Sat Nov 17, 2012 1:18am EST (Reuters) - The New York Knicks became the last team to taste defeat this season with a 105-95 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies at the FedExForum in Tennessee on Friday. One day after manufacturing a fourth quarter comeback against San Antonio, the Knicks (6-1) were unable to repeat the feat as Memphis center Marc Gasol racked up 24 point...

By Ian Ransom MELBOURNE | Sat Nov 17, 2012 12:11am EST MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Tiger Woods's taxpayer-funded visits Down Under did nothing to help Australia's ailing golf tour, which is stuck in a losing battle for relevance unless it does more to embrace Asia, according to five-times British Open champion Peter Thomson. Woods's tournament appearan...

By Mark Lamport-Stokes LOS ANGELES | Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:20pm EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Six-time NBA champion Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was honored by the Los Angeles Lakers in a moving and often emotional ceremony on Friday when a bronze statue of the Hall of Famer was unveiled outside the Staples Center. Jabbar, the NBA's all-time leading scorer wi...