Al-Qaeda making comeback in Iraq, officials say
BAGHDAD (AP) — Al-Qaeda is rebuilding in Iraq and has set up training camps for insurgents in the nation's western deserts as the extremist group seizes on regional instability and government security failures to regain strength, officials say. / Iraq has seen a jump in al-Qaeda attacks over the last 10 weeks, and officials believe most of the fighters are former prisoners who have either escaped from jail or were released by Iraqi authorities for lack of evidence after the U.S. military withdrawal last December. Many are said to be Saudi or from Sunni-dominated Gulf states.

Teenage School Activist Survives Attack by Taliban
At the age of 11, Malala Yousafzai took on the Taliban by giving voice to her dreams. As turbaned fighters swept through her town in northwestern Pakistan in 2009, the tiny schoolgirl spoke out about her passion for education — she wanted to become a doctor, she said — and became a symbol of defiance against Taliban subjugation. / On Tuesday, masked Taliban gunmen answered Ms. Yousafzai’s courage with bullets, singling out the 14-year-old on a bus filled with terrified schoolchildren, then shooting her in the head and neck. Two other girls were also wounded in the attack. All three survived, but late on Tuesday doctors said that Ms. Yousafzai was in critical condition at a hospital in Peshawar, with a bullet possibly lodged close to her brain.

Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu calls for early elections
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Tuesday night that he is disbanding his right-wing government and calling for early elections, blaming a coalition deadlock over how to slash nearly $4 billion from next year's budget. / Speculation has been rife for months that Netanyahu's inability to pass a 2013 budget would force him to dismantle what has been one of Israel's longest-serving coalition governments. Parliamentary elections, which were expected to take place in October 2013, will probably occur by February.

Jordan's king appoints PM to prepare for elections
Jordan's King Abdullah appointed reformist politician Abdullah Ensour as Prime Minister on Wednesday to prepare for the country's first post-Arab Spring parliamentary election, due by early next year, a palace statement said. / The monarch had dissolved Jordan's tribally dominated parliament last week, half-way through its four-year term, paving the way for the election that should be held within four months under constitutional reforms enacted last year. U.S.- and French-educated Ensour, who replaces Fayez al-Tarawneh, another veteran politician, has a long career as a lawmaker and has held senior government posts in successive administrations.

Chavez foes face long odds despite vote gains
A veteran of Venezuela's long-suffering political opposition compared Sunday's presidential election to a soccer game played on a hill. / Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles defended a parking lot-sized goal on the downhill half while President Hugo Chavez's team manned a pixie goal on the uphill side, said Ramon Guillermo Aveledo. "And the referees also kicked the ball for him," Aveledo said of the incumbent.

Greek police fire tear gas as 40,000 vent a nation's anger during Merkel's visit
From high-school students to pensioners, tens of thousands of Greek demonstrators swarmed into Athens yesterday to show the visiting German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, their indignation at their country's continued austerity measures. / Flouting the government's ban on protests, an estimated 40,000 people – many carrying posters depicting Ms Merkel as a Nazi – descended on Syntagma Square near the parliament building. Masked youths pelted riot police with rocks as the officers responded with tear gas.

Gang-rape trial shocks France and sparks row over justice system
A harrowing trial over the alleged gang rape of teenage girls in the high-rise tower blocks of a poor Paris suburb has shocked France, exposed a culture of youth violence and threatens to spark a row over the justice system when verdicts are delivered this week. / Nina and Stephanie – not their real names – said that for years they were too scared to speak out about what they allege were months of almost daily gang rapes when they were 15 and 16, growing up on rundown estates in Fontenay-sous-Bois outside Paris. In 2005, Nina was left unconscious by one final brutal beating following years of abuse and told a female police officer. What followed was a trial that has shaken the country as it struggles to deal with a spate of gang rapes of teenage girls by youths on estates across France.

India’s Embrace of Foreign Retailers
A long-festering controversy about whether India should allow foreign retailers like Wal-Mart into the country has often been cast as a battle between millions of small shopkeepers and large corporate interests. But in much of the country, including in this eastern city, the issue often divides Indians as much by age as by their livelihoods./ Those younger than 25, a group that includes about half the country’s 1.2 billion people, appear quite open and eager to try foreign brands and shopping experiences, researchers say. They already while away their afternoons at Western-style malls like the year-old P&M mall here where they try on T-shirts by Benetton, eat pizza from Domino’s and watch movies in a Mexican-owned theater chain, Cinepolis.

Scottish independence referendum deal imminent
Alex Salmond is on the brink of a historic deal with David Cameron to stage a single question referendum on Scottish independence in two years' time after ministers from the Scottish and UK governments met in Edinburgh on Tuesday. / Officials from both administrations have been tasked with putting the final touches to the legal arrangements which would allow Salmond to stage his referendum with the authority of MPs at Westminster. The two leaders are due to meet early next week to sign the final agreement to pass an order at Westminster which will give the Scottish parliament the powers to stage the vote, due to take place in autumn 2014.

David Cameron: the Tories are for everyone
David Cameron will seek to prevent Ed Miliband's "one nation" Labour driving him from the common ground of British politics on Wednesday, asserting that his brand of compassionate Conservatism is not just for the strong, but also the best way to help the poor, the weak and the vulnerable. / Despite a conference full of tough messages on burglary, welfare and sometimes social issues, the prime minister will insist: "My mission from the day I became leader was … to show the Conservative party is for everyone, north or south, black or white, straight or gay."

Obama back in Ohio after a difficult week
Buffeted by the winds of post-debate polls, President Obama returned Tuesday to the eye of battleground politics: Ohio. / Obama reminded students at Ohio State University in Columbus that voter registration for the election Nov. 6 ended Tuesday night, and he urged stragglers to sign up and participate in early voting. The president even offered free transportation.

Yum gains from rebounding China performance
The owner of the Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC chains, Yum Brands Inc., said Tuesday that its fiscal third-quarter net income rose by 23% on a turnaround in its fast-growing China division and higher demand in the U.S. / The Louisville, Ky., company (YUM) raised its earnings guidance for the year. Shares rose nearly 4% in after-market trading. The company also upped its record pace of restaurant openings in China, opening 192 locations. It expects to open at least 750 stores this year, up from its prior forecast of at least 700 new restaurants.

A Bigger Paycheck on Wall Street
It still pays to be on Wall Street. / The financial industry in New York has slashed jobs by the thousands over the last two years. For those who remain, annual compensation in total is at near-record levels, according to a report released Tuesday by the New York State comptroller. Since the financial crisis, Wall Street firms have wrestled with two competing market forces. Faced with a heavier regulatory burden, a lethargic economic recovery and the loss of once-big moneymakers like complex derivatives tied to mortgages, the banks have instead tried to cut their biggest expense: people. Yet there persists a view on Wall Street that profits can’t come simply by holding the line on costs — big pay is still needed to lure talent from other firms.

South Africa Has a Black ‘Idol.’ The Surprise Is That It’s a First.
When Khaya Mthethwa breathed out the last notes of Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass,” a song he had heard for the first time that same day, the judges of “Idols SA,” the South African version of “American Idol,” were blown away. / Beyond the usual jitters of a contestant on a reality television program, singing his heart out and hoping for his big break, the weight of pop culture history weighed on Mr. Mthethwa’s shoulders: would he finally become the first black contestant to win “Idols” in his country? At first glance, it might seem strange in a nation where 80 percent of the population is black that a singing contest decided by a popular vote had failed for years to produce a single black winner.

A-Rod's struggles at plate hurting Yankees
NEW YORK (AP) — For all of his home runs, All-Star accolades and huge salaries, Alex Rodriguez finds himself in a most familiar spot this season. / A-Rod is an October lightning rod. With every swing and miss, memories of his amazing run during the New York Yankees' championship season in 2009 fade even further. Instead, fans are becoming more and more vocal, calling for manager Joe Girardi to drop him from the No. 3 spot in the lineup.

Year after Jobs' death, how high can Apple fly?
Imagine Tom Brady leaving the New England Patriots and the team putting together, by some measures, its best season ever the following year. / That's what Apple has done in the year since Steve Jobs died Oct. 5, 2011. The company he co-founded, was banished from and ultimately saved has been on a magic carpet ride of outsized market value, revenue and sales projections. Much of the success goes to Jobs, who put his beloved creation on the path to glory, and whose fingerprints are all over its current and future plans.

Be warned: your computer may be stealing your money
Almost a third of all fraudulent banking transactions now originate from the customer's own computer, as cyber criminals use increasingly sophisticated malware to hijack accounts. / To combat the ever-present threat of online crime, financial institutions across Europe have developed multiple security mechanisms such as encrypted card readers and complex security questions when customers log on to their accounts. But experts are warning that the latest software used by criminals to steal money from people's accounts is becoming so clever that it fools the bank into thinking that they are making a legitimate online transaction.

French and U.S. Physicists Win Nobel Prize
Two physicists who developed techniques to peer in on the most intimate relations between light and matter won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday. They are Serge Haroche, 68, of the Collège de France and the école Normale Supérieure, in Paris, and David J. Wineland, also 68, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado. / They will split eight million Swedish krona, or about $1.2 million, and receive their award in Stockholm on Dec. 10. Their work, the academy said, enables scientists to directly observe some of the most bizarre effects — like the subatomic analogue of cats that are alive and dead at the same time — predicted by the quantum laws that prevail in the microcosm, and could lead eventually to quantum computers and superaccurate clocks.

Study Finds That the Number of Protestant Americans Is in Steep Decline
For the first time since researchers began tracking the religious identity of Americans, fewer than half said they were Protestants, a steep decline from 40 years ago when Protestant churches claimed the loyalty of more than two-thirds of the population./ A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that it was not just liberal mainline Protestants, like Methodists or Episcopalians, who abandoned their faith, but also more conservative evangelical and “born again” Protestants. The losses were among white Protestants, but not among black or minority Protestants, the study found, based on surveys conducted during the summer.

End the electoral college
Vladimir Putin had an election in Russia. This week, Hugo Chavez had one in Venezuela. Last spring, Nicholas Sarkozy lost one in France. / In each case, the outcome was decided by the majority of voters in their country. Such direct democracy is a foreign concept in the USA, where we require neither direct voting nor a majority to lead our nation. The reason is an arcane institution: the Electoral College. In the U.S., presidents are not elected by the people but by 538 "electors" who award blocks of votes on a state-by-state basis. The result is that presidents can be -- and have been -- elected with fewer votes than their opponents. Indeed, various presidents have taken office with less than 50% of the vote.