World

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio,  (Reuters) – Not long ago, Republican Mitt Romney’s crowds on the campaign trail were mostly in the hundreds, he was fading in the polls and his calls to create jobs by limiting government’s reach seemed overrun by his own missteps.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan,  (Reuters) – A 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl campaigner shot by the Taliban had defied threats for years, believing the good work she was doing for her community was her best protection, her father said yesterday.

ISTANBUL, (Reuters) – Turkey scrambled fighters and briefly detained a Syrian passenger plane yesterday, suspecting it of carrying military equipment from Moscow, while Turkey’s military chief warned of a more forceful response if shelling continued to spill over the border.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court justices yesterday vigorously challenged a University of Texas admissions program that favors some African-American and Hispanic applicants in a case that could determine how universities use affirmative action at campuses nationwide.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.,  (Reuters) – In an embarrassing mistake, Florida Governor Rick Scott gave out a phone sex hotline number to Floridians seeking information on a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.

OTTAWA, (Reuters) – Canada has no need to stop Huawei Technologies Co Ltd from doing business with Canadian telecommunications companies even though the Chinese equipment maker could very well try to engage in cyber-espionage for Beijing, a former Canadian intelligence official said yesterday.

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Venezuelan sovereign debt prices fell yesteday after socialist President Hugo Chavez won reelection, but the drop was limited because investors doubt he is healthy enough to serve a full six-year term.

MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – Mexico says it has killed the leader of the brutal Zetas drug gang, the most powerful kingpin to fall in a six-year battle against cartels, but in a surreal twist, his body was snatched from a funeral home by armed men.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Chevron Corp yesterday lost a U.S. Supreme Court bid to block an $18.2 billion judgment against it in Ecuador in a case over pollution in the Amazon jungle.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican officials said yesterday they had arrested a suspected drug cartel leader believed responsible for the murders in 2010 of dozens of migrants and an American who was killed as he jet skied on a lake on the Texas-Mexico border.

MONROVIA  (Reuters) – Nobel prize-winning rights advocate Leymah Gbowee has quit her post in Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s government, criticizing her fellow laureate for corruption and nepotism, her spokesman said yesterday.

SEOUL  (Reuters) – Isolated North Korea has rockets that can hit the US mainland, it said today, two days after South Korea struck a deal with the United States to extend the range of its ballistic missiles.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s strong performance in last week’s debate helped him pull ahead of President Barack Obama, a Pew Research Center poll showed yesterday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Two scientists who upended fundamental beliefs about biology by demonstrating that every cell in the body has the potential to grow into every other type of cell have won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

LEXINGTON – Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney offered a sweeping critique of President Barack Obama’s handling of threats in the Middle East in a foreign policy address in which he tried to present himself as a credible mainstream alternative.

CARACAS,  (Reuters) – Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez won re-election yesterday, quashing the opposition’s best chance at unseating him in 14 years and cementing himself as a dominant figure in modern Latin American history.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – China’s top telecommunications gear makers should be kept from the U.S.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli air force shot down a drone after it crossed into southern Israel yesterday, the military said, but it remained unclear where the aircraft had come from.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – One-eyed radical Islamist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri made his first appearance in federal court in New York yesterday after Britain extradited him to the United States to face trial and a potential life sentence on terrorism charges.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US President Barack Obama’s campaign and its Democratic allies raised $181 million in September for his re-election effort, the largest total that either side has announced yet in the 2012 campaign.