By Dominic Evans BEIRUT | Tue Dec 4, 2012 9:01am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - NATO told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday that any use of chemical weapons in his fight against encroaching rebel forces would be met by an immediate international response. The warning from NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen came as Syrian forces bombar...

GENEVA | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:51am EST GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations' top human rights official on Tuesday urged Iran to free an imprisoned female lawyer whose health is deteriorating due to a hunger strike and to lift a travel ban on her family. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said sh...

By Yeganeh Torbati and Daniel Fineren DUBAI | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:28am EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday it had captured a U.S. intelligence drone in its airspace over the Gulf in the last few days, but the U.S. military quickly denied having lost any unmanned aircraft in the Middle East. The incident highlighted tensions in the Gulf as th...

By Jack Kim SEOUL | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:16am EST SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's two main presidential contenders clashed on Tuesday in a debate over security policy as North Korea readied a rocket launch that is timed to coincide with the South's December 19 election. Both conservative Park Geun-hye, the daughter of South Korean dictator Park Chun...

MANILA | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:06am EST MANILA (Reuters) - The strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year pounded the southern island of Mindanao on Tuesday and about 40 people were dead or missing, media said, after the storm destroyed homes and brought down power and communication lines. Typhoon Bopha, with wind gusts of up to 195 kph (121 mph), ma...

By Ben Blanchard BEIJING | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:03am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - A group of 134 Nobel laureates including the Dalai Lama and author Toni Morrison have written to Chinese Communist Party chief and president-in-waiting Xi Jinping urging that he release detained Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and his wife. Liu, a veteran dissident involved i...

By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:01am EST JERUSALEM (Reuters) - For Benjamin Netanyahu, plans to expand Israeli settlements may risk a diplomatic crisis with Europe but could prove a good bet at the ballot box. With a January 22 election looming, the Israeli leader has defied long-standing international opposition to settlements an...

By Kate Holton and Guy Faulconbridge LONDON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:00am EST LONDON (Reuters) - London Mayor Boris Johnson heaped pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday by calling for a referendum on a deeply pared back British membership of the European Union. Johnson, speaking at a Thomson Reuters Newsmaker event, said the euro was a c...

HANOI/NEW DELHI | Tue Dec 4, 2012 7:39am EST HANOI/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Vietnam condemned on Tuesday China's claims to disputed South China Sea islands as a serious violation of its sovereignty after saying it was setting up patrols to protect its fisheries and accusing Chinese boats of sabotage. The condemnation of China's claims to the sea and its num...

By Alistair Lyon and Yasmine Saleh CAIRO | Tue Dec 4, 2012 7:07am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's opposition called for mass protests on Tuesday against the Islamist-led government's drive to hold a snap referendum on a new constitution after sweeping aside judicial obstacles. President Mohamed Mursi ignited a storm of protest when he temporarily a...

By Ed Stoddard GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:47pm EST GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Congo's government re-established control over the eastern city of Goma on Monday after rebels withdrew, and U.N. experts made new allegations that Rwandan soldiers took part in the insurgents' capture of the city. The M23...

By Maria Golovnina LONDON | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:47pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Socialite-turned-Kremlin-critic Ksenia Sobchak told Russian dissidents in London on Monday that growing repression at home would prompt more and more people to fight for change but warned that a full-blown revolution could d...

By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:44pm EST JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel rejected concerted criticism from the United States and Europe on Monday over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to expand settlement building after the United Nations' de facto recognition of Palestinian statehood. Washington urged Israel to reconside...

BELFAST | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:36pm EST BELFAST (Reuters) - At least five police officers were wounded during a riot at Belfast city hall in Northern Ireland on Monday after Irish nationalist councilors voted to remove the British flag from the building on all but 17 days of the year. Hundreds of protesters, many carrying British flags, clashed with police ...

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Erika Solomon CAIRO/BEIRUT | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:19pm EST CAIRO/BEIRUT (Reuters) - A Syrian foreign ministry spokesman, who was the most public face of Bashar al-Assad's government as it battled a 20-month-old uprising, has fled the country, a diplomat in the region said on Monday. Jihad al-Makdissi, who is in his 40s, pr...

By David Alexander WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:09pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The African Union war against al Shabaab in Somalia this past year has left the Islamist group "largely in a survival mode" and is instructive for confronting the region's extremist groups in the future, the head of U.S. Africa Command said on Monday. General Carter...

By Aruna Viswanatha and Dena Aubin WASHINGTON/NEW YORK | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:01pm EST WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Regulators on Monday charged the Chinese arms of five top accounting firms with securities violations over their refusal to produce certain audit papers for U.S.-listed Chinese companies. The Securities and Exchange Commission began...

By Marja Novak and Srdjan Zivulovic LJUBLJANA/MARIBOR, Slovenia | Mon Dec 3, 2012 4:40pm EST LJUBLJANA/MARIBOR, Slovenia (Reuters) - At least 12 people were injured when police clashed with protesters in Slovenia's second city Maribor on Monday, in the latest of a series of rallies against budget cuts and graft in the financially-troubled Alpine ...

MOSCOW/BEIJING | Mon Dec 3, 2012 4:00pm EST MOSCOW/BEIJING (Reuters) - Russia and China urged North Korea on Monday not to go ahead with a plan for its second rocket launch of 2012, with Moscow saying any such move would violate restrictions imposed by the U.N. Security Council. North Korea's state news agency on Saturday announced the decision to launch...

By Michael Holden LONDON | Mon Dec 3, 2012 3:56pm EST LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Prince William and his wife Catherine are expecting a baby, destined to be the country's future monarch, although the mother-to-be is in hospital with a type of very acute morning sickness that sometimes indicates twins. "Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess...

By Tom Perry and Marwa Awad CAIRO | Mon Dec 3, 2012 12:01pm EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's Supreme Judicial Council has cleared the way for a referendum on a new constitution which President Mohamed Mursi hopes will end a political crisis that has split the country. Some judges had called for their colleagues to shun the December 15 plebiscite, wh...

By Andy Bruce and Lucy Hornby LONDON/BEIJING | Mon Dec 3, 2012 8:56am EST LONDON/BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese manufacturing returned to growth in November for the first time in over a year and the deep downturn in euro zone factories eased slightly, according to business surveys on Monday. Monday's purchasing managers indexes (PMIs) suggested Chin...

By Rodrigo Campos NEW YORK | Mon Dec 3, 2012 9:17am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 could rise for a fourth straight day on Monday as U.S. stocks were set to open higher on upbeat factory data from China, but concerns over budget dealings in Washington are expected to keep traders cautious. China's economy picked up in November even as a...

By Umesh Desai and Pete Sweeney HONG KONG/SHANGHAI | Sun Dec 2, 2012 4:06pm EST HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese search engine company Baidu Inc paid a lower interest rate than Google Inc when it sold $750 million in 10-year bonds last month. China's three dominant dot-com names - Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent Holdings Ltd - have successfully ...

By Maayan Lubell JERUSALEM | Sun Dec 2, 2012 9:26am EST JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday brushed off world condemnation of Israel's plans to expand Jewish settlements after the Palestinians won de facto U.N. recognition of statehood. "We will carry on building in J...

By Erika Solomon BEIRUT | Sun Dec 2, 2012 9:12am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian army forces pounded rebel-held suburbs around Damascus with fighter jets and rockets on Sunday, activists said, killing at least ten and wounding dozens in an offensive to stop rebels closing in on the capital. Rebels planned to push into the city center from their str...

BERLIN | Sun Dec 2, 2012 9:08am EST BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who aims to win a third term in 2013, said on Sunday she would talk to the opposition Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) on forming a coalition if she cannot rule with her present partners the Free Democrats (FDP). Opinion polls signal exactly such a scenario, with a s...

By Tamim Elyan and Tom Perry CAIRO | Sun Dec 2, 2012 8:33am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Protests by Islamists allied to President Mohamed Mursi forced Egypt's highest court to adjourn its work indefinitely on Sunday, intensifying a conflict between some of the country's top judges and the head of state. The Supreme Constitutional Court said it would no...

DUBAI | Sun Dec 2, 2012 8:17am EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has suspended the death sentence for a computer programmer convicted on charges of running a pornographic website after he "repented for his actions," his lawyer was quoted as saying on Sunday. Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian citizen and Canadian resident, was arrested in 2008 while visiting relatives...

By Sylvia Westall KUWAIT | Sun Dec 2, 2012 7:46am EST KUWAIT (Reuters) - Kuwaitis elected a new parliament that is expected to be more cooperative with the government than its predecessor after an opposition boycott of the poll and protests that divided the Gulf Arab state. The election was the second this year in the oil-rich state, where a seri...

TOKYO | Sun Dec 2, 2012 7:43am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - A tunnel on a major highway in central Japan collapsed on Sunday, killing at least three people and starting a blaze, Japanese media reported. Attempts to rescue those still trapped inside the smashed tunnel, which began spewing smoke after concrete ceiling panels fell onto the road, have been interrup...

By Rafiq Shirzad JALALABAD, Afghanistan | Sun Dec 2, 2012 7:42am EST JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Suicide attackers detonated bombs and fired rockets outside a major U.S. base in Afghanistan on Sunday, killing five people in a brazen operation that highlighted the country's security challenges ahead of the 2014 NATO combat troop pullout. Lo...

By Amie Ferris-Rotman HERAT, Afghanistan | Sun Dec 2, 2012 5:54am EST HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Ghaus worked in Iran for five years but has nothing to show for it. All he has are memories of being jailed, beaten and sent home to Afghanistan. Afghanistan's oil-rich western neighbor has for years been a destination for Afghans seeking work or ...

By David Chance SEOUL | Sun Dec 2, 2012 5:49am EST SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said it would carry out its second rocket launch of 2012 as its youthful leader Kim Jong-un flexes his muscles a year after his father's death, in a move that South Korea and the United States swiftly condemned as a provocation. North Korea's state news agency announ...

By Alistair Lyon and Tamim Elyan CAIRO | Sat Dec 1, 2012 5:16pm EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi called a December 15 referendum on a draft constitution on Saturday as at least 200,000 Islamists demonstrated in Cairo to back him after opposition fury over his newly expanded powers. Speaking after receiving the final draft of ...

By Oliver Holmes BEIRUT | Sat Dec 1, 2012 5:11pm EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian jets bombed rebel-held areas of Damascus on Saturday, residents said, as the opposition indicated it could accept an international peacekeeping force if President Bashar al-Assad is forced from power. Warplanes attacked the Damascus suburbs of Kafar Souseh and Darraya,...

By Jibran Ahmed PESHAWAR, Pakistan | Sat Dec 1, 2012 2:50pm EST PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A missile fired from a drone killed four people, including a Yemeni fighter linked to al-Qaeda, when it hit their car in northern Pakistan on Saturday evening, intelligence and tribal sources said. The strike at Sheen Warsak village in South Waziristan ...

By Alistair Lyon and Tamim Elyan CAIRO | Sat Dec 1, 2012 7:18am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamist crowds demonstrated in Cairo on Saturday in support of President Mohamed Mursi, who is racing through a constitution to try to defuse opposition fury over his newly expanded powers. Many thousands assembled outside Cairo University, waving Egyptian flag...

BRAZZAVILLE | Sat Dec 1, 2012 7:16am EST BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - A cargo plane crashed into houses near Brazzaville Maya-Maya airport while attempting to land in a thunderstorm on Friday, killing at least 32 people, a Congolese Red Cross official said on Saturday. "We have already pulled 32 bodies from the crash site, but there could be more victims," th...

By Ed Stoddard and Kenny Katombe GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo | Sat Dec 1, 2012 7:10am EST GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Rebel fighters, singing and brandishing weapons, pulled out of Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern border city of Goma on Saturday, raising hopes regional peace efforts could advance negotiations to en...