BELGRADE | Sat Dec 1, 2012 6:41am EST BELGRADE (Reuters) - Lawmakers in Serbia adopted a 2013 budget on Saturday, pledging to slash the deficit to 3.3 percent of national output and return the economy to growth of 2 percent as the government seeks new IMF funding. The Balkan country is running a budget shortfall this year of around 6.2 percent of gross d...

BEIRUT | Sat Dec 1, 2012 6:36am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian jets bombed rebel-held areas of Damascus on Saturday, residents said, and a countrywide Internet blackout entered its third day. Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad clashed with troops in most populated areas of the country, according to opposition activists. At least 40,0...

By Soe Zeya Tun MONYWA, Myanmar | Sat Dec 1, 2012 6:06am EST MONYWA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Buddhist monks marched in Myanmar's two biggest cities on Saturday to protest at police violence during a crackdown on demonstrators at a copper mine, while Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and a rights group called for an official inquiry. Activists sai...

SEOUL | Sat Dec 1, 2012 5:52am EST SEOUL (Reuters) - Four South Korean sailors abducted by Somali pirates 19 months ago were released on Saturday, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said. The MT Gemini, a tanker operated by Singapore-based Glory Ship Management, was hijacked by the pirates on April 30, 2011, with the four sailors, along with 21 non-Korean cr...

SEOUL | Sat Dec 1, 2012 5:32am EST SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea is to carry out its second rocket launch this year in December as South Korea holds its presidential election in a move that will likely trigger diplomatic tensions between the two Koreas and censure from the United States and Japan. State news agency KCNA said on Saturday that the launch o...

GAZA | Sat Dec 1, 2012 3:43am EST GAZA (Reuters) - One of six Palestinians shot and wounded by Israeli troops on Friday while protesting at the Gaza Strip boundary fence died on Saturday, hospital officials said. The fortified fence and a 300-metre-deep zone on the Palestinian side - on which Israel has regularly fired since 2009 with the declared aim of...

By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES | Sat Dec 1, 2012 1:12am EST LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An actress who said she was duped into appearing in an anti-Islam film that stoked violent protests against the United States across the Muslim world lost on Friday her second legal bid to force the video off YouTube. Denying a request by actress Cindy Lee Garcia for...

By Edmund Blair and Patrick Werr CAIRO | Fri Nov 30, 2012 3:52pm EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Egyptians protested against President Mohamed Mursi on Friday after an Islamist-led assembly raced through approval of a new constitution in a bid to end a crisis over the Islamist leader's newly expanded powers. "The people want to bring d...

Fri Nov 30, 2012 8:16am EST (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Mazda Motor Corp (7261.T) and their local Chinese partner, Changan Automobile Co Ltd (000625.SZ), said on Friday that they had obtained final approval from the Chinese government to split their three-way manufacturing and sales joint venture into two. Starting immediately, Changan Ford Mazda Automobi...

By Terril Yue Jones CHENGDU | Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:56am EST CHENGDU (Reuters) - Chinese and American soldiers finished a week-long disaster rescue exercise on Friday, furthering military ties between the two countries even as military tensions rise between China and U.S. military allies in the Pacif...

By Sylvia Westall KUWAIT | Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:53am EST KUWAIT (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people marched in Kuwait on Friday calling for a voter boycott, a day before a parliamentary election that looks unlikely to defuse tensions in the U.S.-allied, oil-producing Gulf country. Political activists and opposition politicians, who have already...

By Noeleen Walder and Emmanuel Jarry NEW YORK/PARIS | Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:52am EST NEW YORK/PARIS (Reuters) - Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has reached a preliminary agreement with the hotel maid who accused him of sexual assault last year to settle a civil lawsuit she brought against him, sources familiar with the case said. While a sou...

VIENNA | Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:46am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - Anti-Israel hackers, who the U.N. nuclear agency this week said had posted data online stolen from one of its servers, claimed in a new statement they had published confidential material obtained from the watchdog. The statement - in the name of a group with an Iranian-sounding name - was put on a w...

ROME | Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:43am EST ROME (Reuters) - Italy's center-left Democratic Party has increased its lead over the center right ahead of an election expected in March, while the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo has slipped slightly, a poll showed on Friday. The poll by the SWG polling institute showed the Democratic Party (P...

By Dominic Evans BEIRUT | Fri Nov 30, 2012 7:10am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian air force jets bombarded rebel targets on Friday close to the Damascus airport road and a regional airline said the violence had halted international flights to the capital. Activists said security forces clashed with rebels trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad ...

VIENNA | Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:48am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - Any military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities may lead to the country withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a pact designed to prevent the spread of nuclear arms, a senior Iranian official said on Friday. In case of an attack, "there is a possibility that the (Iranian) parliament f...

By Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS | Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:46am EST UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the world body to issue its long overdue "birth ...

By Matthew Bigg JAKARTA | Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:44am EST JAKARTA (Reuters) - China's plan to board and search ships that illegally enter what it considers its territory in the disputed South China Sea could spark naval clashes and hurt the region's economy, Southeast Asia's top diplomat warned on Friday. Seeking to ease alarm over the issue, China s...

By Edmund Blair and Marwa Awad CAIRO | Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:22am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - An Islamist-led assembly raced through approval of a new constitution for Egypt on Friday to end a crisis over President Mohamed Mursi's newly expanded powers, but opponents responded with another rally in Cairo against the Islamist leader. "The people want to br...

By Samuel Shen and Kazunori Takada SHANGHAI | Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:19am EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's state-backed electronic payment services giant, China UnionPay, launched an international arm tasked with speeding its expansion overseas, heating up competition with rivals such as Visa Inc (V.N) and Mastercard Inc (MA.N). The move underscores ...

SHANGHAI | Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:34pm EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Apple Inc's latest iPhone has received final clearance from Chinese regulators, paving the way for a December debut in a highly competitive market where the lack of a new model had severely eroded its share of product sales. China is Apple's second-largest market and its Chinese fans are eagerly...

By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:39am EST UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly is set to implicitly recognize a sovereign state of Palestine on Thursday despite threats by the United States and Israel to punish the Palestinian Authority by withholding much-needed funds for the West Bank government. A resolu...

VIENNA | Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:37am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear agency chief said on Thursday a hacking incident involving one of its servers was "deeply regrettable" but suggested that no sensitive information related to Iran's atomic activities had been stolen. Yukiya Amano said the hacking - first ...

By Oliver Holmes BEIRUT | Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:13am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels battled forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad just outside Damascus on Thursday, forcing the closure of the main airport road, and the Dubai-based Emirates airline suspended flights to the Syrian capital. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that fi...

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA | Thu Nov 29, 2012 8:53am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - North Korea has made further progress in the construction of a new atomic reactor, the U.N. nuclear chief reported on Thursday, a facility that may extend the country's capacity to produce material for nuclear bombs. Pyongyang "has continued construction of the light water re...

By Tom Perry and Marwa Awad CAIRO | Thu Nov 29, 2012 8:18am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - The body writing Egypt's new constitution began a session to vote on a final draft on Thursday, a move President Mohamed Mursi's allies in the Muslim Brotherhood hope will help end a crisis prompted by a decree expanding his powers. Mursi is expected to call for nat...

By Ali al-Rubaie HILLA, Iraq | Thu Nov 29, 2012 7:57am EST HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - Bombs in two majority Shi'ite Muslim cities in southern Iraq killed 28 people on Thursday, police and hospital sources said, in an attack aimed at spreading sectarian strife in the country. Scores more were wounded in the blasts, which struck during a month that is...

By Norihiko Shirouzu SHANGHAI | Thu Nov 29, 2012 7:47am EST SHANGHAI (Reuters) - General Motors Co unveiled its latest global research center in China on Thursday, where it hopes to take advantage of the country's vast supply of engineering graduates to drive its development of a new generation of electric vehicles. China's auto market has grown ...

By Noah Barkin BERLIN | Thu Nov 29, 2012 7:42am EST BERLIN (Reuters) - In Germany, election campaigns are supposed to be all about parties, policies and platforms, most definitely not personalities. Now that is about to change. Angela Merkel, at the peak of her political powers, is gearing up to run for a third term and what she hopes will be a p...

KABUL | Thu Nov 29, 2012 7:34am EST KABUL (Reuters) - A roadside bomb exploded under a passenger van in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing 10 people, most of them women and children, government officials said. Eight people were wounded in the blast in the Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province, President Hamid Karzai's office said in a statement....

By Thomas Escritt and Fatos Bytyci AMSTERDAM/PRISTINA | Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:50am EST AMSTERDAM/PRISTINA (Reuters) - Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla fighter in Kosovo who served briefly as prime minister, was acquitted of war crimes for a second time on Thursday, clearing the way for his return to mainstream politics but angering Serbia. The r...

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Alistair Lyon AMMAN | Thu Nov 29, 2012 4:03am EST AMMAN (Reuters) - Violent protests that shocked Jordan this month have mostly subsided, but unprecedented chants for the "fall of the regime" suggested a deeper malaise in a kingdom so far spared the revolts reshaping the Arab world. Anger over fuel subsidy cuts undoubte...

By Ruma Paul and Nivedita Bhattacharjee DHAKA/CHICAGO | Wed Nov 28, 2012 1:56pm EST DHAKA/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Three supervisors of a Bangladeshi garment factory were arrested on Wednesday as protests over a suspected arson fire that killed more than 100 people raged on into a third day, with textile workers and police clashing in the streets of a...

By Tamim Elyan and Yasmine Saleh CAIRO | Wed Nov 28, 2012 1:42pm EST CAIRO (Reuters) - The assembly writing Egypt's constitution said it could wrap up a final draft later on Wednesday, a move the Muslim Brotherhood sees as a way out of a crisis over a decree by President Mohamed Mursi that protesters say gives him dictatorial powers. But as Mursi...

By Stephanie Nebehay and Noah Browning GENEVA/RAMALLAH, West Bank | Wed Nov 28, 2012 10:03am EST GENEVA/RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - More European states joined France on Wednesday in backing a Palestinian bid for limited statehood, but Britain held back, saying it wanted an assurance that the Palestinians would not pursue Israel through the I...

By Katharine Houreld ISLAMABAD | Wed Nov 28, 2012 9:57am EST ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan and the United States have restored full military and intelligence ties after relations hit a low point last year, and Islamabad will take further steps to support a nascent Afghan peace process, Pakistan's foreign minister said on Wednesday. Full cooperat...

By Edmund Blair CAIRO | Wed Nov 28, 2012 8:23am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - Hundreds of demonstrators were in Cairo's Tahrir Square for a sixth day on Wednesday, demanding that President Mohamed Mursi rescind a decree they say gives him dictatorial powers, while two of Egypt's top courts stopped work in protest. Five months into the Islamist leader's t...

LONDON | Wed Nov 28, 2012 8:18am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Wednesday it would support a Palestinian bid for a diplomatic upgrade at the United Nations if it were assured that the Palestinians would return to peace talks and would not pursue Israel through the International Criminal Court. The United Nations is due to hold a vote on Thursday ...

CAIRO | Wed Nov 28, 2012 8:16am EST CAIRO (Reuters) - A Cairo court on Wednesday sentenced to death seven Egyptian Christians tried in absentia for participating in an anti-Islam video that was released on the Internet in September and prompted violent protests in Muslim countries. "The seven accused persons were convicted of insulting the Islamic religi...

By Dominic Evans BEIRUT | Wed Nov 28, 2012 8:05am EST BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two car bombs exploded in an attack that killed at least 34 people on Wednesday in a district of the Syrian capital loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The explosions struck the eastern neighborhood of Jaramana, home to many of Syria's Druze minority as well as Christians wh...