LONDON (Reuters) – With so many fretting about the rapid ageing of European societies and the rising burden of old-age dependency, it’s easy to overlook the mini baby booms in many countries. Often apocalyptic headlines on the greying of major economies and the “pensions timebomb” sit oddly with a growing body of data and reports of rising births and recovering fertility rates in many European economies, notably Britain. Only this week, the inside pages of many UK newspapers dropped the little nugget that England this year is set to record the highest number of births in 40 years. …
Source: Toronto Blue Jays get Johnson, Buehrle, Reyes, others from Miami Marlins
MIAMI – The Blue Jays have made a blockbuster trade with the Miami Marlins that will drastically revamp Toronto’s roster.
France recognizes new Syria opposition
CAIRO/PARIS (Reuters) – France became the first European power to recognize Syria's new opposition coalition as the sole representative of its people and said on Tuesday it would look into arming rebels against President Bashar al-Assad once they form a government. Tw enty months into their bloody uprising against Assad, fragmented Syrian opposition groups struck a deal in Qatar on Sunday to form a broad coalition and their leader immediately appealed for European backing. … China party enshrines tighter oversight after Bo Xilai scandal
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s ruling Communist Party amended its guiding charter on Wednesday to tighten oversight of officials, a move reflecting the depth of concern about abuse of power in the wake of a scandal involving former political heavyweight Bo Xilai. The closing session of the five-yearly party congress also changed the party constitution to explicitly endorse reform and opening as “the path to a stronger China” and made a nod towards growing environmental problems by promoting “ecological progress” as part of the party’s development strategy. …
Analysis: Amazon faces new obstacles in fight for holiday dollars
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc's gift for dominating the holiday shopping season may lose some of its magic this year. The country's biggest brick-and-mortar reta ilers, from Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Target Corp to Toys "R" Us , are gunning for Amazon, competing more aggressively on price and offering speedier delivery through spruced-up websites and stores that double as distribution warehouses. The onslaught comes as Amazon's price advantage over physical retailers is being whittled down. … Party leader Hu Jintao steps down to clear the way for Xi Jinping to take the helm in China
BEIJING, China – President Hu Jintao has stepped aside as Communist Party leader to clear the way for Vice-President Xi Jinping to take the helm in China.
Pakistan agrees to free several Afghan Taliban prisoners
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan has agreed in talks with Afghan peace negotiators to free several Afghan Taliban prisoners, officials from both countries said on Wednesday, the clearest sign that Pakistan will put its weight behind Afghan reconciliation efforts. “We aren’t too certain whether they can play an important role in peace negotiations but it is a positive gesture from Pakistan in helping peace efforts,” an Afghan official told Reuters. …
President Hu Jintao has stepped aside as Communist Party leader to clear the way for Vice President Xi Jinping to take the helm in China. 
BAOQUANLING, China (Reuters) – China needs to replace millions of workers who have quit f arms for cities, but even its vast state power might not be able to transform the countryside into a network of big industrial farms capable of feeding its growing economy. Pulling together small plots of land to make larger operations and introducing modern mechanical techniques would help boost productivity, vital if China's agricultural sector is to meet soaring domestic food demand. … 
BOSTON (Reuters) – Corporate America is raising the volume of its plea that the U.S. government avert a year-end "fiscal cliff" that c ould send the nation back into recession, but chief executives aren't pushing the panic button just yet. With a heated election season in the rear-view mirror, executives are calling on the White House and congressional leaders to head off a self-imposed deadline that could bring $600 billion in spending cuts and higher taxes early in 2013 if they are unable to reach a deal on cutting the federal budget deficit. … 
BEIJING (Reuters) – Delegates to China's Communist Party congress will offer the first clues to a generational leadership succession on Wednesday after a preliminary vote on replacements for President Hu Jintao and others this week. After days of turgid speeches and rhetorical displays of party unity, the five-yearly congress will almost certainly approve Hu's "state of the nation" work report and an as yet unknown revision to the party charter. … 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – International human rights activists met senior White House officials on Tuesday to press President Barack Obama to take a tough line with leaders in Myanmar and Cambodia during his forthcoming Southeast Asia tour. The talks, which included Samantha Power, a top Obama adviser and outspoken expert on genocide, touched on what the president will say during his landmark visit to Myanmar to prod the quasi-civilian government to do more to curb sectarian violence, activists said. The visit, part of a November 17-20 swing through Southeast Asia, would be the first U.S. … 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday warned against extending all the U.S. tax breaks to give Washington additional time to broker a deficit reduction deal, saying it would create more uncertainty in the markets. The Obama administration and Congress have seven weeks to deal with the so-called "fiscal cliff," a scenario in which hundreds of billions of dollars in tax hikes and spending cuts start to take effect next year, driving the economy into recession. … 
From boats bobbing on the Great Barrier Reef, to hot air balloons hovering over the rainforest, and the hilltops and beaches in between, tens of thousands of scientists, tourists and amateur astronomers watched as the sun, moon and Earth aligned and plunged northern Australia into darkness during a total solar eclipse Wednesday. 
The moon blocked out the sun in a total solar eclipse today, briefly turning dawn back into night over parts of northern Australia and the southern Pacific Ocean. 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden voiced concerns about Ukraine's electoral process when speaking with the country's president, Viktor Yanukovi ch, on Tuesday, the White House said. Yanukovich, who is facing an impeachment threat after Ukraine's disputed October 28 election, had sent a congratulatory message after Biden and President Barack Obama won re-election last week, according to the White House. Biden then spoke with Yanukovich on Tuesday. … 
France's president just can't seem to win. 
CAIRNS, Australia (Reuters) – A rare full solar eclipse plunged north Queensland into darkness for two minutes early on Wednesday , delighting the thousands of people who had gathered on the Australian state's beaches. In Cairns, the main city in north Queensland and a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, cloudy skies and occasional rain partly obscured the view, but elsewhere viewing conditions were more favorable. … 
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. politicians face a stark choice over the next six weeks: come together on a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, or pr epare for a recession as companies seek other places to invest, said the CEOs of NYSE Euronext and Honeywell International Inc . President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans have sounded conciliatory notes on the fiscal cliff since last week's election, but there is still plenty of skepticism in the business community on the chances of a deal, NYSE's Duncan Niederauer and Honeywell's David Cote told Reuters on Tuesday. … 
Christie's has auctioned off the famed Archduke Joseph Diamond for $21,474,525 including commission, a world auction record price per carat for a colorless diamond. 
Army prosecutors on Tuesday asked an investigative officer to recommend a de ath penalty court-martial for a staff sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers in a predawn rampage, saying that Staff Sgt. Robert Bales committed "heinous and despicable crimes." 
A look at what went wrong for the four U.S. generals who have led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan since 2008: 
He started with the woman who hired him at the secretarial school, befriending her and winning her confidence. She introduced him to her elderly mother, her children. Her grandchildren, nearing adulthood, were next. Soon, Thierry Tilly was almost a member of the family of aristocrats. 
Syria's political opposition has struggled to prove its relevance amid the civil war under a leadership largely made up of academics and exiled politicians. With its relaunch as a new organization, it has taken a different tack: choosing as its head a popular Muslim cleric who preaches sectarian unity and can fire up a crowd. 
The rain has tapered off and floodwaters no longer claw at houses, but the situation across much of Haiti remained grim on Tuesday following an autumn of punishing rains that have killed scores of people and that threaten to cause even more hunger across the impoverished nation. 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama spoke with world leaders on Tuesday, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, thanking them for sending congratulations on his re-election, the White House said. "In each call he thanked his counterparts for their friendship and partnership thus far and expressed his desire to continue close cooperation moving ahead," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday. … 
France on Tuesday became the first Western country to formally recognize Syria's newly formed opposition coalition as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people. 
Neither France nor Europe will intervene militarily to oust al-Qaida and its allies from northern Mali -- not even with air strikes, the French defense minister said Tuesday. 
Mikhail Gorbachev says he's feeling the effects of old age, but aims to stay active as long as he can. 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has faith in General John Allen to continue commanding U.S. forces in Afghanistan while under investigation for alleged inappropriate communication with a woman at the center of the scandal involving former CIA Director David Petraeus, the White House said on Tuesday. "He has faith in General Allen," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters, saying the president believed Allen was doing a good job in Afghanistan. Carney reiterated Obama's call for the Senate to move quickly to confirm Allen's successor, General Joseph Dunford. … 
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain's plan to force banks to shield their retail banking operations from riskier activities could create a "moral hazard" from the expectation that lenders will be bailed out if they hit trouble, a top banker said. "The language of ring fencing has huge risk of moral hazard," said Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland. "You are giving a charter in everyone's minds for the next time there is a problem inside the ring fence, it (the bank) gets bailed out by one mechanism or another. … 
LONDON (Reuters) – The chief operating officer of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) will quit this year as the agency's new head, David Green, embarks on a rec ruitment drive and overhaul to instil fresh faith in the beleaguered organisation. The SFO said on Tuesday that Christian Bailes would leave this financial year after agreeing a confidential exit package with the agency's former head, Richard Alderman. The latest senior SFO official to quit is expected to be replaced by a new chief financial officer, a spokesman said. … 
PARIS (Reuters) – President Francois Hollande, grappling a sickly economy and dismal ratings, urged the French public on Tuesday to judge him on his long-term succ ess in reviving the country's ailing industry and halting a 17-month rise in unemployment. Stressing that low French bond yields showed that markets believed his economic policies were credible, Hollande said a move to fund tax rebates for companies with small rises in sales tax should bolster output while preserving consumer spending. … 
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada pushed back the target to wipe out its federal budget deficit by a year on Tuesday, citing the impact of a weak global economy that has dampened commodity prices. The finance department projected bigger-than-expected federal budget deficits for this year and the following three years. It now sees a return to a small surplus in 2016-17, a year later than previously planned. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, updating his March budget, said the fiscal shortfall in the current year would be C$26 billion ($26 billion), up from the previous forecast of C$21.1 billion. … 
BISSAU (Reuters) – Guinea-Bissau's caretaker President Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo may have one of the world's toughest jobs – leading a country where cocaine smuggling is out of control, t he economy is in freefall and violence is the top means to political ends. But his biggest challenge is also the most fundamental: nearly seven months into his tenure, the European Union – once a source of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the state – refuses to recognize his administration. … 
The website's headlines trumpet al-Shabab's imminent demise and describe an American jihadist fretting over insurgent infighting. At first glance it appears to be a sleek, Horn of Africa news site. But the site -- sabahionline.com -- is run by the U.S. military. 
Zimbabwe's diamond conference was rocked by controversy over the Kimberley Process, the world diamond trade regulatory body, whose chairwoman was publicly asked to resign because she is American. 
Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood has sharply criticized Israel over its recent airstrikes that killed seven Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.