LONDON | Sat Dec 15, 2012 2:14pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - International leaders on Saturday expressed horror at the Connecticut elementary school massacre, with Iran - at odds with the United States - calling the incident tragic and Pope Benedict conveying "heartfelt grief." Twenty-eight people, including the gunman, died in Friday's shooting spree in the ...

By Gabriela Baczynska and Alissa de Carbonnel MOSCOW | Sat Dec 15, 2012 12:19pm EST MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian riot police detained four opposition leaders and broke up a crowd of about 2,000 people who went ahead with a banned rally on Saturday to demand an end to Vladimir Putin's 13-year rule. The opposition chose a symbolic location, in front ...

JERUSALEM | Sat Dec 15, 2012 12:13pm EST JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Avigdor Lieberman confirmed on Saturday that he would run in next month's Israeli election, despite a corruption charge that prompted him to resign from the post of foreign minister. Authorities have said Lieberman will be charged over alleged irregularities in the promotion of an Israeli dip...

By Agnieszka Flak JOHANNESBURG | Sat Dec 15, 2012 9:17am EST JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Nelson Mandela, the 94-year-old former South African president and Nobel Peace laureate hospitalized with a lung infection, has successfully undergone a procedure to have gallstones removed, the government said on Saturday. "The former president underwent a proc...

JOHANNESBURG | Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:15am EST JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who has been in hospital for a week with a lung infection, has successfully undergone a procedure to have gall stones removed, the government said on Saturday. "The former president underwent a procedure via endoscopy to have the gall stones...

By Gabriela Baczynska and Maria Tsvetkova MOSCOW | Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:01am EST MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian riot police detained four opposition leaders on Saturday to stop them taking part in a banned rally against President Vladimir Putin in front of the former KGB security police's headquarters in Moscow. The rally was intended to celebrate the ...

By Dominic Evans BEIRUT | Sat Dec 15, 2012 8:00am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian warplanes bombed insurgents east of Damascus on Saturday and government forces pounded a town to the southwest, activists said, in a month-long and so far fruitless campaign to dislodge rebels around the capital. Jets bombarded the Beit Sahm district on the road leadi...

By Antoni Slodkowski and Linda Sieg TOKYO | Sat Dec 15, 2012 7:18am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese candidates made final appeals on Saturday ahead of an election expected to restore the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to power and give hawkish former premier Shinzo Abe a second shot at running the world's third biggest economy. An LDP...

By Tamim Elyan and Marwa Awad CAIRO/ALEXANDRIA | Sat Dec 15, 2012 5:34am EST CAIRO/ALEXANDRIA (Reuters) - Egyptians queued to vote on Saturday on a constitution promoted by its Islamist backers as the way out of a prolonged political crisis and rejected by opponents as a recipe for further divisions in the Arab world's biggest nation. Soldiers jo...

By Alastair Himmer TOKYO | Sat Dec 15, 2012 5:13am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - The abandonment of last Wednesday's Copa Sudamericana final following shocking accusations police had pulled guns on players should serve as a warning for Brazil's World Cup organizers, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on Saturday. Argentina's Tigre refused to emerge for the...

By Pete Sweeney SHANGHAI | Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:44pm EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's foreign exchange regulator has removed the $1 billion limit for foreign sovereign wealth funds, central banks and monetary authorities buying Chinese assets through the Qualified Institutional Investor Programme (QFII). The new regulations, published on the websi...

By Alissa de Carbonnel MOSCOW | Fri Dec 14, 2012 1:58pm EST MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia moved closer on Friday to adopting a law barring entry to Americans who violate human rights, the same day U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law a rights-linked trade bill Moscow finds objectionable. The tit-for-tat response came in a near-unanimous vote i...

By Himank Sharma Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:03am EST (Reuters) - Apple Inc shares fell 3.9 percent on Friday after the iPhone 5 debuted in China to a cool reception and two analysts cut shipment forecasts. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek trimmed his iPhone shipment estimates for the Jan-March quarter, saying that the technology company had started cutting orders t...

By Dan Williams JERUSALEM | Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:50am EST JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's offensive on Gaza has deterred Hamas from new hostilities despite its claims of victory and the front is now at its quietest in 20 years, a senior Israeli military officer said. Vastly lopsided shelling exchanges over eight days killed 170 Palestinians and 6 I...

By Yasmine Saleh CAIRO | Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:46am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Stone-throwing supporters and opponents of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi clashed in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on Friday ahead of a referendum on a new constitution that has divided the Arab world's most populous nation. Dozens of activists fought with clubs and sword...

By Jack Kim SEOUL | Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:43am EST SEOUL (Reuters) - When North Korea's Kim Jong-un commemorates a year of his rule next week, he will be able to declare he has fulfilled the country's long-held dream of becoming a "space powerhouse". In a mass parade in Pyongyang on Friday, tens of thousands of soldiers dressed in olive green and s...

By Joseph Akwiri MOMBASA, Kenya | Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:25am EST MOMBASA, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenya does not expect its already suffering tourist trade to see any improvement until after a presidential election in March because of fears of a repeat of the ethnic violence that rocked the country when Mwai Kibaki was re-elected in 2007. Tourism is one ...

BRASILIA | Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:21am EST BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff remains highly popular despite a stalled economy and political scandals that have tarnished the reputation of her ruling Workers' Party, an opinion poll published on Friday showed. Rousseff's personal approval rating rose slightly to 78 percent from 77 percent...

By Oliver Holmes BEIRUT | Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:17am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's rebel leadership and the United States seized on Russian pessimism over President Bashar al-Assad's future to urge Moscow to help push its ally into ceding power and end the battles closing in around his capital. "We want to commend the Russian government for finall...

By Mark John BRUSSELS | Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:57am EST BRUSSELS (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande called on Friday for like-minded EU countries to push ahead with further, deeper integration, even if it means leaving behind more Eurosceptic states which insist on protecting sovereignty. Speaking after a two-day summit on the debt crisis...

JERUSALEM | Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:57am EST JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman resigned on Friday after being charged with fraud and breach of trust, in a move that could have repercussions on next month's election. "I have decided to resign my post as foreign minister and deputy prime minister and ... also to remove my (parliam...

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:23am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear agency expects to reach a deal with Iran next month enabling it to resume a stalled probe into suspected nuclear weapon research in the Islamic state, the chief U.N. inspector said after returning from Tehran on Friday. Even though the International Atomic En...

By Jon Herskovitz BOTSHABELO, South Africa | Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:26am EST BOTSHABELO, South Africa (Reuters) - A billboard of a smiling President Jacob Zuma reminds Botshabelo residents his ruling ANC will hold an important meeting down the road next week to shape the future of South Africa. But behind the giant poster, people see little to smile ...

By Alexei Anishchuk MOSCOW | Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:31am EST MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday U.S. legislation to punish Russian violators of human rights would hurt relations with Washington, but called for a measured response. "This is a purely political and unfriendly a...

By Steve Gutterman and Oliver Holmes MOSCOW/BEIRUT | Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:27am EST MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels are gaining ground and might win, Russia's Middle East envoy said on Thursday, in the starkest such admission from a major ally of President Bashar al-Assad in 20 months of conflict. "One must look the facts in the face," Russ...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan | Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:24am EST KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden car near a NATO base in southern Afghanistan on Thursday soon after a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, killing two people and wounding 16, Afghan and NATO officials said. His spokesman said there was no indica...

By David Chance SEOUL | Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:04am EST SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's next step after rattling the world by putting a satellite into orbit for the first time will likely be a nuclear test, the third conducted by the reclusive and unpredictable state. A nuclear test would be the logical follow-up to Wednesday's successful rocket lau...

JERUSALEM | Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:02am EST JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will be indicted for fraud and breach of trust, charges that may lead him to resign, but the Justice Ministry dropped more serious corruption allegations in a nearly 12-year-old case. The announcement comes just weeks before a January 22 election in ...

By Steve Scherer and Giselda Vagnoni ROME | Thu Dec 13, 2012 9:56am EST ROME (Reuters) - Outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and the man most likely to succeed him brushed off Silvio Berlusconi's latest turnaround on Thursday as speculation grew that the billionaire might drop out of the election race. Monti, speaking in Brussels, refused...

By Giles Elgood CAIRO | Thu Dec 13, 2012 8:55am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - A leading opposition figure warned of more blood on the streets when Egyptians vote on a new constitution championed by Islamist President Mohamed Mursi amid a growing political crisis. In the referendum this Saturday and next, Egyptians must accept or reject a basic law that h...

DUBAI | Thu Dec 13, 2012 7:27am EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog were in Tehran on Thursday for talks on Iran's disputed nuclear program, but there was no sign they would gain access to the Parchin military complex as requested. The Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) said "no plans were announced yet for inspectors to vis...

By Kiyoshi Takenaka TOKYO | Thu Dec 13, 2012 6:32am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan scrambled fighter jets on Thursday after a Chinese government plane entered what Japan considers its airspace over disputed islets in the East China Sea, escalating tension between Asia's two biggest economies. Japan protested to China over the incident but China brus...

BERLIN | Thu Dec 13, 2012 5:40am EST BERLIN (Reuters) - A leading member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition accused Britain on Thursday of adopting an uncooperative attitude towards the European Union that could cause a "disintegration" of the bloc. Rainer Bruederle, parliamentary leader of the Free Democrats (FDP) who share power with Merkel...

SHANGHAI | Thu Dec 13, 2012 5:18am EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has launched a Kindle store for China, the company said on Thursday, selling Chinese electronic books for the mobile Kindle application, in a move that could soon see the device launched in China. The launch of the store could pave the way for a roll-out of Amazon's Kindle device ...

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 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...