By Oliver Holmes and Mariam Karouny BEIRUT | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:38pm EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - Senior Lebanese intelligence official Wissam al-Hassan, who led the investigation that implicated Syria and Hezbollah in the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, was killed by a huge car bomb in Beirut on Friday. Hassan was also the brai...

By Ransdell Pierson Fri Oct 19, 2012 6:05pm EDT (Reuters) - Edwards Lifesciences Corp said U.S. health regulators widened the approved use of its Sapien artificial heart valve to include patients who are eligible for surgery but at high risk of serious surgical complications or death. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also approved delivering the hear...

LOS ANGELES | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:48pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood couple Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel have married in southern Italy, People magazine said on Friday. "It's great to be married, the ceremony was beautiful and it was so special to be surrounded by our family and friends," the couple told the U.S. celebrity magazine in an exc...

By Barbara Liston SANFORD, Florida | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:45pm EDT SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - Prosecutors want a Florida judge to impose a gag order on the Trayvon Martin murder case, saying lawyers for the man charged with murdering the unarmed black teenager threaten to taint the jury pool by trying the case "in the media and not in the courtro...

By Paul Sandle LONDON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:42pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - British police investigating alleged sexual abuse by BBC presenter Jimmy Savile launched a criminal inquiry on Friday, saying more than 200 potential victims had come forward since accusations he had preyed on children for decades. Allegations that flamboyant Savile, who died ...

By Chris Wickham LONDON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:29pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - It remains in the realm of science fiction for now but the discovery of a new planet just four light years away will reignite a race to find a twin of planet Earth that may host extraterrestrial life. The step change comes as the most powerful telescopes ever built are about...

By Jessica Toonkel NEW YORK | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:28pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Credit Suisse Group AG (MLPN.P) has put its $17.2 billion European exchange-traded fund business up for sale, according to sources familiar with the matter. BlackRock Inc (BLK.N) and State Street Global Advisors, the asset management arm of State Street Corp (STT.N), a...

By Vernell Hackett NASHVILLE, Tennessee | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:18pm EDT NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - After kicking up a storm with the success of "My Kinda Party", country music singer Jason Aldean is feeling the pressure for "Night Train" to keep up the pace of his rising star. Aldean, 35, scored his biggest hit to date with his fourth studio ...

DETROIT | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:13pm EDT DETROIT (Reuters) - A healthcare trust for retired U.S. autoworkers was $33 billion short of meeting obligations to cover medical costs of those retirees at the end of 2011, newly released federal documents show. The funding shortfall of $33 billion in the second year of the healthcare trust was 63 percent higher tha...

WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:04pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Polar bears' designation as a threatened species was challenged in a U.S. appeals court on Friday, with a lawyer for Alaska and other parties arguing that regulators had failed to back up the listing. Alaska and other plaintiffs that include hunters and the California Cattlemen's Association...

Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:00pm EDT (Reuters) - Test samples from the XL Foods meat plant in Alberta have come back negative for E. coli bacteria, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said on Friday, moving closer to a decision on whether to reopen the plant, which the agency closed because some of the plant's beef products were contaminated. Inspection officials t...

By Clare Hutchison and Shadia Nasralla LONDON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:59pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - One couple has boldly gone where no other has gone before by tying the knot in Britain's first Klingon wedding ceremony at a Star Trek convention to celebrate the much-loved TV series in London on Friday. The couple, 23-year-old Jossie Sockertopp and 29...

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK | Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:44pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Regardless of lifestyle and other health-related factors, heavier people were more likely than lean ones to be hospitalized for a variety of conditions in a new study from Australia. That was the case not just for obese people, but for the merely overweight as w...

Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:44pm EDT (Note: story contains expletive in paragraph five) (Reuters) - Tom Hanks, the "Big" star often cited for his family-friendly appeal, may have put a dent in his G-rated reputation on Friday when he uttered a particularly grown-up word on ABC's "Good Morning America."Hanks appeared on the show to promote his coming science fiction/philos...

BOSTON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:34pm EDT BOSTON (Reuters) - Apple Inc is removing old versions of Oracle Corp's Java software from Internet browsers on the computers of its customers when they install the latest update to its Mac operating system. Apple, which has previously included Java with installations of Mac OS X, announced the move on its support site...

Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:22pm EDT (Reuters) - New York City Campaign Finance Board voted to close a complaint against the 2009 mayoral campaign of Michael Bloomberg over $1.2 million in payments made by him to the Independence Party, according to a ruling. Bloomberg, who spent more than $100 million of his own money to win the 2009 vote, did not report the $1.2 million...

By Joseph Ax NEW YORK | Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:52pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York judge has banned up to 2,000 skateboarders from racing down a bustling stretch of Broadway after city officials said the unauthorized event known as "The Broadway Bomb" was a danger to pedestrians and motorists. For a decade, skateboarders from around the world ha...

Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:45pm EDT (Reuters) - The National Hockey League postponed another week of regular-season games on Friday because of the ongoing labor dispute with players. The NHL released a short statement on Friday announcing that all scheduled games up until November 1 had been scrapped because of the lockout.The regular-season was originally set to start o...

KUWAIT | Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:12pm EDT KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah said on Friday the Gulf Arab state's electoral system was deficient and that he had ordered partial changes, a move likely to anger the opposition. Sheikh Sabah dissolved the parliament of the major oil produce...

By Amy Norton NEW YORK | Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:11pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The popular supplement saw palmetto may be safe for men with urinary symptoms, a new study finds - but whether it actually works is a whole other matter. Saw palmetto is a fruit extract that some men take for the symptoms of an enlarged prostate - like difficulty uri...

By Oliver Holmes and Mariam Karouny BEIRUT | Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:04pm EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - Senior Lebanese intelligence official Wissam al-Hassan, who led the investigation that implicated Syria and Hezbollah in the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, was killed by a huge car bomb in Beirut on Friday. Hassan was also the brai...

SYDNEY | Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:47pm EDT SYDNEY (Reuters) - A lucky sailor is back on dry land after passengers and crew on a commercial flight from Canada helped find his crippled yacht adrift in rough seas hundreds of miles off the Australian coast, rescue authorities said. The Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Sydney was one of two diverted on Wednesday...

Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:42pm EDT (Reuters) - AT&T said on Friday it will contribute a stake in its wireless business to the company's pension plan worth $9.5 billion in an effort to secure the fund, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. AT&T filed for approval for the proposal with the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday. It said the ...

By Stephen Eisenhammer LONDON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:39pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Relatives of four British soldiers killed in the war in Iraq won the right to sue the government for negligence, in a landmark appeal court ruling on Friday that could open the door for other claims. Families of some of the soldiers who lost their lives in the 2003 U.S...

UNITED NATIONS | Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:33pm EDT UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council intends to impose sanctions on the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo's M23 rebels and others violating an arms embargo on the country, according to a draft statement to be formally adopted later on Friday. The Security Council's "Group of Experts" ...

KHARTOUM | Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:18pm EDT KHARTOUM (Reuters) - More than 900,000 people have been displaced or severely affected by fighting in two Sudanese border states, the United Nations said on Friday, sharply increasing its estimates and urging Sudan and rebels to let in badly needed aid. Fighting between Sudan's army and SPLM-North rebels broke out i...

By Jack Kimball BOGOTA | Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:03pm EDT BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Friday defended his signature law that returns land seized by illegal armed groups to peasants after leftist rebels assailed the measure at the start of peace talks. Negotiations to end five decades of war started out bumpy this week ...

By Amy Norton NEW YORK | Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:40pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women younger than 70 have a relatively low risk of abnormal growths in the upper part of the colon, a new study confirms - suggesting, researchers say, that many women can opt for less invasive colon cancer screening. Most experts recommend that people at average ri...

By Marwa Awad CAIRO | Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:11pm EDT CAIRO (Reuters) - The Muslim Brotherhood's political party, Egypt's biggest, chose veteran conservative Saad al-Katatni as its new leader on Friday to replace Mohamed Mursi who went on to become his country's first elected president. Katatni, 61, a microbiologist who joined the Islamist movement i...

NEW YORK | Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:09pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Broadway production team on Friday filed a $100 million fraud lawsuit against a stockbroker accused of jeopardizing the musical production of "Rebecca" by concocting an elaborate ruse that included fictional characters and a mysterious death. The suit against Mark Hotton, 46, comes days after ...

By Shadia Nasralla and Clare Hutchison LONDON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:04pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Not many 81-year olds would enjoy travelling across the world just to mingle with crowds of people dressed up in odd costumes, but William Shatner begged to differ as he faced thousands of fans at the Destination London Star Trek convention on Friday. S...

SEOUL | Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:46pm EDT SEOUL (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc's South Korean operation said on Friday it will quit the country, underscoring its struggle against Google Inc and local competitors expanding aggressively into mobile advertising and online services. South Korea is the first Asian country Yahoo is leaving, the firm said. An industry pionee...

By Marwan Makdessi DAMASCUS | Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:46pm EDT DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Mediator Lakhdar Brahimi will meet Syrian officials over the next few days in an effort to secure a brief ceasefire in the worsening war between President Bashar al-Assad's government and rebel forces. Brahimi, who arrived in the capital Damascus on Friday afternoon, ...

By Irene Klotz Fri Oct 19, 2012 11:25am EDT (Reuters) - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity tasted Martian dirt for the first time on Thursday, testing equipment needed to assess if the planet most like Earth in the solar system has or ever had the ingredients for microbial life. The sampling of about a baby aspirin's worth of Martian sand was slightly delayed wh...

By Alice Baghdjian LONDON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 11:21am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - A small British company has developed a way to create petrol from air and water, technology it hopes may one day contribute to large-scale production of green fuels. Engineers at Air Fuel Synthesis (AFS) in Teeside, northern England, say they have produced 5 liters of syn...

LONDON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 10:08am EDT LONDON (Reuters) - A Pakistani girl shot in the head by Taliban gunmen is "not out of the woods" but is doing well and has been able to stand for the first time, doctors at the British hospital treating her said on Friday. Malala Yousufzai, who was shot for vocally opposing the Taliban, was flown from Pakistan to Bir...

By Oliver Holmes BEIRUT | Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:45am EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - A huge car bomb exploded in a street in central Beirut during rush hour on Friday, killing at least eight people and wounding about 80, witnesses and officials said. It was not immediately clear if the explosion targeted any political figure in Lebanon's divided community bu...

By Adrian Croft MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan | Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:17am EDT MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - NATO's chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged the Afghan government on Friday to strive for free, fair and transparent elections in the 2014 presidential poll, saying they marked a critical...

BEIJING | Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:14am EDT BEIJING (Reuters) - China's navy and civilian maritime patrol vessels practiced on Friday stopping "illegal entry" into Chinese waters in the East China Sea, state media said, an area where Beijing is embroiled in a territorial dispute with Japan. State news agency Xinhua said the drill was the largest in recent year...

BESASLAN, Turkey | Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:11am EDT BESASLAN, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkey's army fired on Syria on Friday after two shells launched from Syria landed in Turkish territory, Turkish state broadcaster TRT reported, underlining how tension between the two neighbors remains dangerously high. TRT did not specify where the incident occurred and no furt...