(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates said he was not satisfied with the company's pace of innovation over the last few years, and that it had mishandled its ea rly mobile strategy. "We didn't miss cellphones, but the way that we went about it didn't allow us to get the leadership. It's clearly a mistake," Gates, Microsoft's former CEO, said in a rare interview with CBS. Gates hedged questions on whether he was happy with Chief Executive Steve Ballmer's performance. He said Ballmer had achieved a lot but that both he and Ballmer were not satisfied. … New report says federal regulators haven't kept safety promises made after 2009 air crash
WASHINGTON – Since a deadly airline crash in 2009, the government hasn’t kept its promise to ensure that major airlines are holding their smaller partners to the same safety standards, a federal watchdog says.
Syrian official says mortars explode near a presidential palace in Damascus
BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian official says mortars explode near a presidential palace in Damascus.
Man charged with slapping toddler on Minneapolis-Atlanta flight is now out of a job
MINNEAPOLIS – A man charged with slapping a toddler on a Minneapolis-to-Atlanta flight is out of a job, his former employer said Sunday.
Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids prepares for 18th annual 'Butterflies Are Blooming' exhibit
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids is getting ready to open its 18th annual “Butterflies Are Blooming” exhibit.
NJ pausing competition on Top 10 beaches; focuses on co-operation in aftermath of Sandy
SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. – As Jersey shore towns announce plans to work together this summer to welcome tourists back in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, a new poll finds that more than three-quarters of regular visitors to the shore say they’ll be back again this year.
Florida tourism agency reports that nearly 90 million tourists visit Sunshine State in 2012
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida’s tourism marketing corporation is reporting a record 89.3 million visitors came to the state in 2012.
Has the door shut on a diplomatic solution to Syria's conflict?
o A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
Southwest, subsidiary AirTran booking networks more combined, easier to buy single itinerary
DALLAS – Southwest Airlines Co. and its subsidiary AirTran Airways have combined more booking systems to make it easier to purchase flights on both.
London's designers frame fashion with fur and feathers
LONDON (Reuters) – Fur and feathers ruled the runway at London Fashion Week for autumn/winter 2013, liberally applied to cuffs and collars, hemlines and hood s to jazz up otherwise simple styles. American designer Tom Ford pieced together heavy coats from snippets of dyed fur and long, mane-like bristles traced the spine and neckline of a sequined zebra print evening dress. Eagle plumes topped the wide-brimmed hats of Issa London, while fur and feathers also adorned the block colour coats and dresses of PPQ. … Pakistan targets militants, Shiites end protest
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) -- Shiite Muslim leaders in southwestern Pakistan say they are ending three days of protests after the government launched an operation against militants responsible for a bombing targeting the minority sect that killed 89 people. Activists say Syrian missile strike kills 19
BEIRUT (AP) -- A Syrian missile strike leveled a stretch of buildings and killed at least 19 people in the city of Aleppo, leaving residents combing through the rubble to find those trapped beneath it, anti-regime activists said Tuesday. Seven French nationals kidnapped in Cameroon: radio
DAKAR (Reuters) – Seven French nationals have been kidnapped in northern Cameroon near the border with Nigeria, Radio France International reported on Tuesday. The station said the French embassy in Yaounde had confirmed that seven people were abducted by armed men on motorbikes and were being taken towards Nigeria. Cameroon Information Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said he could not confirm the report for now. The French foreign ministry said it was checking the information. The tourists were kidnapped at around 7 a.m. …
Alec Baldwin, NY photographer file harassment claims after altercation; police investigate
NEW YORK, N.Y. – New York City police are investigating harassment complaints made by actor Alec Baldwin and a New York Post newspaper photographer after an altercation.
Polish prosecutors to drop charges in CIA jail inquiry-report
WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish prosecutors have decided to drop charges against the country’s former intelligence chief made during an investigation into allegations the CIA was allowed to run a secret prison in Poland for al Qaeda suspects, a newspaper said on Tuesday. The daily Gazeta Wyborcza first reported early last year Zbigniew Siemiatkowski faced charges of exceeding his authority at the height of the U.S.-led “war on terror”. Government and legal officials have declined to comment on whether Siemiatkowski has ever been questioned or charged. …
Foreigners dump Canadian securities in December
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Foreign investors reduced their holdings of Canadian securities in December by C$1.9 billion ($1.9 billion), led by the biggest divestment of shares since November 2007 due to cross-border mergers and acquisitions, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday. In November, foreigners had added C$5.5 billion in Canadian securities to their portfolios, revised from C$5.6 billion previously. Nonresidents unloaded C$6.7 billion worth of equities in December as portfolio investors “rendered their Canadian shares to foreign direct investors,” Statscan said. …
Pressure mounts on Israel over Palestinian prisoner fast
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails declared a one-day fast on Tuesday in solidarity with four inmates whose hunger s trike has fuelled anti-Israel protests in the occupied West Bank. Samer al-Issawi, one of the four Palestinians who have been on hunger strike, has been refusing food, intermittently, for more than 200 days. His family says his health has deteriorated sharply. … 8 arrested in slaying of Russian councilman
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian investigators have now arrested eight people in the case of a city councilman found dead in a cement barrel, allegedly after he owed $80 million in a business deal gone awry.
Canada wholesale trade falls in December
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian wholesale trade shrank in December by a sharper-than-expected 0.9 percent on a reversal of the previous month’s gains in the computer and communications equipment industry, according to Statistics Canada data on Tuesday. Market players surveyed by Reuters had forecast, on average, a 0.4 percent drop in wholesale activity in the month. In volume terms, wholesale trade was also down 0.9 percent and inventories fell 0.6 percent. Sales in the machinery, equipment and supplies sector explained most of the weakness, sliding 4.1 percent. …
Venezuela's Maduro would win if Chavez goes: poll
CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro would comfortably win a presidential election should his boss Hugo Chavez's cancer force him out of power, according to an opinion poll. The first survey on such a scenario, by local pollster Hinterlaces, gave Maduro a potential 50 percent of votes, compared to 36 percent for opposition leader Henrique Capriles. Chavez returned to Venezuela on Monday after a long stay in Cuba to continue treatment at home for the disease that is jeopardizing his 14-year socialist rule of the South American OPEC nation. … 
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The number of Afghan civilians killed and wounded in the last half of 2012 rose sharply compared with the same period in 2011 as insurgents took advantage of warmer weather to carry out more attacks, the U.N. said Tuesday. 
LONDON (AP) -- A novelist, a duchess and a tabloid newspaper have made an explosive combination in Britain. 
YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) -- Armenia's president easily won a second term, according to preliminary election results Tuesday, but international observers said the vote "lacked competition." 
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) -- Oscar Pistorius says he shot his girlfriend to death by mistake, thinking she was a robber. 
PORT SAID, Egypt (AP) -- Hundreds of protesters in the restive city of Port Said have pressured government employees to leave work early as they enforced the third day of a general strike. 
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece's current account deficit narrowed last year to its lowest level since the country joined the euro, adding to evidence that the economy is slowly responding to h arsh austerity measures. The gap narrowed by 73 percent in 2012 to 5.58 billion euros ($7.45 billion), helped by falling imports and lower interest payments after a sovereign debt cut, the country's central bank said on Tuesday. … 
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Ten Kurdish defendants, including six former mayors, were released from jail on Tuesday in a trial of 175 people accused of links to militants, a further small step in Turkey's efforts to end a Kurdish insurgency. After more than three years in prison the defendants hugged family members as they emerged from the prison gates at dawn in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the mainly Kurdish southeast, and were greeted by the city's mayor. … 
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Arch foes Iran and the U.S. have found some common ground in the fight to save wrestling as an Olympic sport. 
MUMBAI, India (AP) -- India's government has imposed new taxes on gold to try to curb imports fueling a wide trade deficit. The policy is fighting against strong cultural forces that have made India the world's largest gold buyer. 
AMMAN (Reuters) – A Syrian army rocket attack on a rebel-held district in the city of Aleppo killed at least 20 people and left another 25 missing, opposition activists said on Tuesday. "The rocket brought down three adjacent buildings in Jabal Badro district. The bodies are being dug up gradually. Some, including children, have died in hospitals," Mohammad Nour said by phone from Aleppo. He said testimony from survivors indicated that another 25 people were still under the rubble. (Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Amman newsroom) 
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran is prepared to ease Western concerns about Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for pledges from the U.S. and others about the country's ability to enrich uranium, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said Tuesday. 
GENEVA (Reuters) – Typhoid has broken out in an opposition-held region of Syria due to people drinking contaminated water from the Euphrates River, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. An estimated 2,500 people in northeastern Deir al-Zor province are infected with the contagious disease, which causes diarrhea and can be fatal, the United Nations agency said. "There is not enough fuel or electricity to run the pumps so people drink water from the Euphrates which is contaminated, probably with sewage," the WHO representative in Syria, Elisabeth Hoff, told Reuters by telephone. … 
PARIS (Reuters) – Ford , PSA Peugeot Citroen and Toyota led European car sales to a new low in January, kicking off 2013 with an 8.5 percent decl ine, the Association of European Automakers said on Tuesday. Registrations fell to 918,280 new cars, the Brussels-based industry body said in a statement, the slowest January since its records began in 1990, as austerity measures and unemployment hit consumer spending. Ford, which is cutting back its European production capacity with three plant closures to stem regional losses, recorded a 26 percent sales plunge to 61,544 cars. … 
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A Palestinian group says hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails are refusing food for one day in solidarity with four other inmates who are on hunger strike. 
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan women and girls are increasingly victims of violence with a 20 percent increase last year in the number killed or injured even though the number of civilian casualt ies fell for the first time in years, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Reinforcing fears about a rise in insecurity as foreign combat troops prepare to leave by next year, the United Nations said the country faced a growing threat from the return of armed groups. … 
YEREVAN (Reuters) – Armenian President Serz h Sarksyan promised on Tuesday to make the country secure and stable after cruising to victory in an election which international vote monitors said lacked real competition. But Sarksyan faces a challenge in his second five-year term to prevent tensions increasing with Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh that could lead to a new war in the South Caucasus, where pipelines carry Caspian oil and gas to Europe. Preliminary results showed Sarksyan won 58.6 percent of the votes cast in Monday's election, enough to avoid a second-round run-off. … 
LONDON (Reuters) – One of Britain's most celebrated authors has launched a withering attack on the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, branding her a "shop-window mannequin" with a plastic smile whose only role in life is to breed. In an unusually scathing public attack on a royal, Hilary Mantel said the princess had no personality, a "perfect plastic smile" and appears to have been designed by a committee. The writer's comments about the pregnant 31-year-old wife of Prince William sharply divided public opinion. … 
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain's financial regulator on Tuesday fined Lloyds Banking Group 4.3 million pounds ($6.7 million) for failing to handle complaints relating to insurance sold on loans and mortgages p roperly. The Financial Services Authority said failings in the bank's systems and controls resulted in up to 140,000 customers experiencing delays in receiving compensation for being mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI). ($1 = 0.6460 British pounds) (Reporting by Matt Scuffham; editing by Rhys Jones) 
ROME (Reuters) – As Italy's parliamentary elections approach, the parties ba ttling to win over undecided voters are focusing increasingly on tax, the issue that polls show matters most to an electorate struggling after more than a year of austerity. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has singled out the hated IMU housing tax as the centrepiece of his campaign, promising not only to abolish it but to refund last year's payments in cash at post office counters. …