China’s commerce minister voted out in rare congress snub: sources

BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s commerce minister was surprisingly blocked from a spot on the ruling Communist Party’s elite body during a conclave this week, sources said, a rare snub for an official that could raise questions about trade policies during his tenure.

The failure of Chen Deming to secure a seat on the 25-member Politburo marks one of the few surprises to emerge from the party’s five-yearly congress that wrapped this week with the anointing of a new slate of top leaders who will run the world’s second largest economy.

It is also the first time in more than two decades that an official designated for a Politburo spot has been voted out of the party’s 205-member Central Committee in elections. Central Committee membership is a prerequisite for a Politburo seat.

“Chen Deming was voted out during multi-candidate elections to the Central Committee,” one source told Reuters. State news agency Xinhua said there were eight percent more candidates than seats in a preliminary vote before the formal election on Wednesday.

Not being name as an alternate or full member during the party’s 18th congress means Chen, who was previously an alternate member, is almost certain to step down as commerce minister next March. Party regulations require cabinet ministers to be Central Committee members.

It is unclear why Chen, who was seen as a strong candidate for a vice premiership and at 63 is young enough to serve another five-year term under party rules, did not secure the votes for a seat on the Central Committee.

Tianjin Mayor Huang Xingguo, 58, who was elected a full member of the Central Committee, is front-runner to replace Chen as commerce minister, two sources with ties to the leadership said.

Ma Kai, 66, secretary general of the State Council, or cabinet, is tipped to become a vice premier now that Chen is out of the running, the sources said, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions for discussing secretive elite politics.

Until now, a politician designated to become a Politburo member has not been barred from the Central Committee since 1987, when Deng Liqun, an ultra-conservative and reviled Marxist ideologue, was voted out at the 13th congress in a deeply embarrassing fall from grace.

Chen’s imminent retirement as commerce minister, a post he has held since taking over from now disgraced politician Bo Xilai in late 2007, would come as China faces growing tension with major trade partners in Europe and the United States and Chinese officials warn of increasing protectionism.

China’s leaders set a goal for 10 percent export growth this year, but it is more likely to come in at around 7 percent as the world has struggled to recover from financial crisis.

DEFENDED RECORD

Some experts suggest that Chen’s age was the main factor in his ouster.

“Minister Chen didn’t get onto the Central Committee because of his age. He was born in 1949 and that makes him too old to serve a full term,” said a Commerce Ministry official who declined to be identified.

But exceptions to the mandatory retirement age of 65 are often made for cabinet ministers and provincial governors and politicians can become a vice premier before they turn 68.

Du Qinglin, 66, a vice chairman to parliament’s advisory body, was just elected to the Central Committee.

At a news conference last week on the sidelines of the congress, Chen declined to answer questions about whether he was being considered for a vice premier post, but he defended the ministry’s record at the World Trade Organisation.

“When you consider the volume of trade cases in which China is involved, we’ve won quite a few,” Chen said. “But we haven’t bragged about our wins, whereas some of our foreign colleagues have trumpeted theirs.”

Analysts said Chen had a reputation as a competent and moderate minister, suggesting his performance may not have been at the center of his failure to secure a central committee seat, and despite the questions that are bound to arise, policy would probably not change.

“China’s overall trade policy is not set by the ministry, but by the central government,” said He Weiwen, director of the China-U.S. Trade Research Centre at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

Under Chen, the ministry has increased its use of WTO legal processes, in part to gain experience. China has a relatively short history of participating in multilateral institutions and while it has lost most of WTO cases filed against it, most countries defending against complaints have the same problem.

Scott Kennedy, director of the Research Centre for Chinese Politics and Business at Indiana University said Chen’s departure from the Central Committee was puzzling and political motives could be at play.

“I don’t think he could be punished for his record as minister of commerce. I think overall he’s done a pretty decent job with the hand he has been dealt,” Kennedy said.

(Additional reporting by Lucy Hornby and Nick Edwards; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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Jamaica to abolish slavery-era flogging law

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica is preparing to abolish a slavery-era law allowing flogging and whipping as means of punishing prisoners, the Caribbean country’s justice ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said the punishment hasn’t been ordered by a court since 2004 but the statutes remain in the island’s penal code. It was administered with strokes from a tamarind-tree switch or a cat o’nine tails, a whip made of nine, knotted cords.

Justice Minister Mark Golding says the “degrading” punishment is an anachronism which violates Jamaica’s international obligations and is preventing Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller‘s government from ratifying the U.N. convention against torture.

“The time has come to regularize this situation by getting these colonial-era laws off our books once and for all,” Golding said in a Thursday statement.

The Cabinet has already approved repealing the flogging law and amendments to other laws in the former British colony, where plantation slavery was particularly brutal.

The announcement was welcomed by human rights activists who view the flogging law as a barbaric throwback in a nation populated mostly by the descendants of slaves.

“We don’t really see that (the flogging law) has any part in the approach of dealing with crime in a modern democracy,” said group spokeswoman Susan Goffe.

But there are no shortage of crime-weary Jamaicans who feel that authorities should not drop the old statutes but instead enforce them, arguing that thieves who steal livestock or violent criminals who harm innocent people should receive a whipping to teach them a lesson.

“The worst criminals need strong punishing or else they’ll do crimes over and over,” said Chris Drummond, a Kingston man with three school-age children. “Getting locked up is not always enough.”

The last to suffer the punishment in Jamaica was Errol Pryce, who was sentenced to four years in prison and six lashes in 1994 for stabbing his mother-in-law.

Pryce was flogged the day before being released from prison in 1997 and later complained to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which ruled in 2004 that the form of corporal punishment was cruel, inhuman and degrading and violated his rights. Jamaican courts then stopped ordering whipping or flogging.

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Sina banks on Weibo but weak fourth quarter guidance spooks investors

(Reuters) – Chinese Internet company Sina Corp said its fourth quarter will be hit by a softer economy and posted weaker-than-expected sales guidance, despite a stronger revenue contribution from its hot microblogging platform Weibo.

Shares in Sina fell 7 percent after it forecast adjusted net revenue of $ 132 million to $ 136 million in the current quarter, below analysts’ expectations for $ 151.9 million according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Sina, which makes most of its revenue from online advertising both on its website and Weibo, is facing stiff headwinds as firms slash advertising budgets due to a worsening economic outlook.

“We are going to see a weaker quarter for advertising overall in the fourth quarter,” said Charles Chao, Sina’s chief executive on an earnings conference call. The firm forecast Q4 advertising revenues would rise 6-8 percent from a year earlier.

Chao said Weibo contributed 16 percent to total revenue in the third quarter, up from 10 percent in the previous quarter. The platform, which is very popular with white-collar workers, university students and celebrities, had 424 million registered users at the end of the quarter, up from 368 million three months earlier.

Advertisers, like luxury brands, that traditionally don’t advertise with Sina’s main portal website flocked to Weibo to test out the social platform, Chao said.

There were about 230,000 Weibo advertising accounts in the quarter, and Sina was in the process of rolling out a online payment system and new Weibo advertising product to increase monetization at the end of the fourth quarter.

“We believe a ‘promoted feed advertising’ will become one of the major forms of (Weibo) advertising going forward,” said Chao, adding that the product will be effective also on mobile platforms, allowing Sina to tap into Weibo’s growth on mobile devices.

Q3 PROFIT BEAT

For the third quarter, Sina’s net profit was $ 9.9 million compared with a loss of $ 336.3 million a year earlier, and slighly ahead of analysts’ expectations of $ 7.5 million.

Sina’s quarterly advertising revenue rose 19 percent to $ 120.6 million, while non-advertising revenue rose 9 percent to $ 31.8 million.

The company started monetizing Weibo by offering special services to business accounts and selling VIP memberships to regular users earlier this year.

For its mobile-value-added-services business, Sina said it expects revenue to continue to decline due to new regulatory policies.

The company was also affected by a spat between Japan and China over islands in the East China Sea as Japanese automakers cut back on advertising in China. Chao said he expected the impact to last into the fourth quarter.

“It did have an impact on our third quarter as well as our fourth quarter. We did see cancellations from customers related to Japanese automobiles in the month of September and it impacted the fourth quarter (too),” Chao said.

Sina shares fell 6.74 percent to $ 49.52 in extended trading. They closed at $ 53.10 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Richard Pullin)

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“Twilight Saga” ends with movie love letter to fans

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Twilight” fans bid an emotional farewell this week to Bella, Edward and Jacob in “Breaking Dawn-Part 2,” the romantic book and movie franchise that ignited a pop culture infatuation with blood-sucking vampires and werewolves.

The tumultuous love triangle between human girl Bella Swan, vampire Edward Cullen and werewolf Jacob Black, that has gripped avid fans known as “Twi-hards” for seven years, comes to a tantalizing end as “Breaking Dawn-Part 2″ hits movie theaters around the world.

The “Twilight” film franchise, based on a series of novels by Stephenie Meyer, rocketed the three main stars, Kristen Stewart (Bella), Robert Pattinson (Edward) and Taylor Lautner (Jacob), into the spotlight and the first four films have grossed more than $ 2.5 billion at the worldwide box office.

For director Bill Condon, who shot both parts of “Breaking Dawn” together and split into two movies post-production, the fifth and final film was all about the fans – who get a surprise twist to the ending.

“The real challenge was to make sure it was a satisfying climax,” Condon told reporters. “The film opens with an overture of all the main scenes from all five movies, and at the end, I…brought (it) back to the spirit of the old movies.”

The movie pays homage to the angst-ridden teenage romance between Bella and Edward that was underscored by the off-screen real-life romance between Stewart, 22, and Pattinson, 26.

“Breaking Dawn-Part 2″ shifts the action from a love story to a family story, as the Cullen clan recruit their extended vampire family to protect Bella and Edward’s daughter Renesmee from an ancient vampire coven.

“I think it’s very sweet, especially the ending of it, I think it’s very close to the book as well. It seems to be that it’s really made for the fans,” Pattinson told Reuters.

GOING OFF BOOK

While the past four films have stayed true to the books, author Meyer and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg came up with a plot twist that adds a major scene that may surprise movie-goers.

“(The action) is off screen in the novel because we only see what Bella sees, and this was just a way of making visual what some of the other characters might have seen,” Meyer told reporters.

“It does feel very surprising. There’s something new to see but to me it doesn’t seem like it’s going hugely off the page,” she added.

While the fourth film saw Bella’s human life draw to a conclusion when she died giving birth to a human-vampire hybrid baby with new husband Edward, “Breaking Dawn-Part 2,” sees Bella as a mother and a newly-transformed vampire.

“The coolest thing about vampire Bella is that I got to play her as a human for so long, and the special parts of each vampire are always informed by the great things that they were as a human and so I got to walk in those shoes,” Stewart told Reuters.

“Everything made total sense to me. I waited for so long (to play a vampire), once I finally got it, it was so comfortable, I couldn’t wait,” the actress added.

“The Twilight Saga,” first published in 2005, kicked off a wave of vampire or supernatural-themes books, films and TV shows including HBO’s “True Blood,” the CW TV network’s “The Vampire Diaries” and Richelle Mead’s “Vampire Academy” series of young adult novels.

As the sun sets on the franchise Meyer brought to life, the author said that while she didn’t rule out the possibility of finding more stories in the vampire-werewolf universe, she had closed the chapter on the Cullens.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get back to these (stories). Someday I’ll write down what was going to happen next. It’s sad knowing I don’t have another party with the kids again, I really hope I have a chance to at least see my friends again,” she told Reuters.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Marguerita Choy)

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A Good Reason — Pregnancy, Your Dog, Money, Anything — is Key to Quitting Smoking

Nov. 15 marks this year’s Great American Smokeout, when organizations across the country encourage smokers to quit the habit. Yahoo asked former smokers to offer to advice to those trying to stop smoking.

FIRST PERSON | I remember when I quit smoking one weekend. It was a Saturday night and I was pre-gaming with some friends before going out. Someone suggested taking a smoke break, and I went along to be with the crowd. Last thing I remember was having a great time, surrounded by secondhand smoke from cigarettes and Black & Milds. Then I woke up the next morning with a fresh pack of Newports in my purse. There was a few missing from the pack. I wasn’t sure who bought these cigarettes for me, but the taste in my mouth told me who smoked them. That was the first time I realized that I’d have to change my friends if I was going to change my lifestyle.

However, that didn’t happen until over a year later.

Make the choice and follow through

The moment I found out I was pregnant, I knew my cigarette days had to be over. The people that I partied with were not of the “best friends forever” variety, so it was not an impossible challenge to stop going out with them.

Being pregnant turned me off to the smell of smoke, anyway. It was after I gave birth that I had to really stick to my guns about quitting. I haven’t smoked in more than two years, but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t crave a cigarette every now and then. I doubt those cravings will go away completely, but my child is my motivation to stay away for good.

You don’t have to have a child to quit smoking. The most important thing to keep in mind is the reason why you need to quit. It can be for your health, for your dog, to save money — anything. Anything that you feel passionate about, keep it in your mind because, without a reason, you’re not going to make it. You may fail, and that’s OK. But never give up.

It may be tough to make changes to your life or change your friends, but that’s a necessary change to make if you want to succeed. At least keep yourself away from temptation until you having a good handle on your life as an ex-smoker.

The easy thing about quitting is after you stomp out your cigarette, you quit. It’s up to you if you want to light another one up.

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Stock futures erase gains, Wal-Mart falls after results

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures were flat on Thursday, with investors again finding few reasons to buy amid weak results from retail giant Wal-Mart and tensions in the Middle East.

Futures were off their highs of the session, continuing a trend of equities having difficulty holding onto gains. Futures had also indicated gains Wednesday morning, but stocks turned lower midday and ended down more than 1 percent.

Eroding gains in Dow futures, Wal-Mart Stores fell 3.2 percent to $ 69 in premarket trading after reporting third-quarter revenue that missed expectations and saying macroeconomic conditions continued to pressure its customers.

“This is troubling because it flies in the face of other retail data we’ve seen lately, which has been positive,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst, Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh. “There’s not much out there convincing investors that things are getting any better.”

Target Corp eased back to $ 61.36 before the bell even as the company reported higher quarterly profit.

Overseas, Israel launched a major offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza, killing the military commander of Hamas in an air strike and threatening an invasion of the enclave. Egypt said it recalled its ambassador from Israel in response.

Crude oil may be the most directly impacted by the tensions in the region, with any disruption to oil supply leaving crude vulnerable to a spike in prices. Brent crude rose 1 percent and is up 4.7 percent over the past two weeks.

“Nothing over there seem stable, and investors are concerned other countries could be pulled into the conflict. You’re going to see oil jump on that threat,” Forest said.

S&P 500 futures were flat but still slightly above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 25 points and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 2.75 points.

With Wednesday’s drop, both the Dow and Nasdaq ended at their lowest levels since late June. The S&P 500 is down 5.1 percent in the six sessions since election night. Wednesday marked the benchmark index’s lowest close since July 25.

Investors may seek bargains at these levels, and a round of stronger economic data could prove to be a catalyst, but many analysts say strong gains may be hard to come by until at least one of the many global macroeconomic headwinds have been resolved.

“There’s all this uncertainty out there, and the market is unbalanced because those who want to buy can be very discriminate about the price they want to buy at,” Forest said.

The market will also watch the latest economic data, with weekly jobless claims, October consumer prices and a November read on New York manufacturing all due out at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT). The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank releases its November business activity survey at 10 a.m.

Claims are seen rising by 20,000 to 375,000 while consumer prices are seen up 0.1 percent, compared with a 0.6 percent rise in September, according to a Reuters poll. The Empire State manufacturing survey is seen coming in at -6.7, compared with -6.16 in October. The Philly Fed survey is seen dropping to 2 from 5.7 in October.

While the President and Congress are unlikely to reach a definitive agreement for weeks, investors will continue to monitor the situation regarding the fiscal cliff, a series of mandated tax increases and spending cuts will start to take effect early next year that could push the U.S. economy into a recession.

President Barack Obama Wednesday reiterated his position that marginal tax rates would have to rise to tackle the nation’s deficits. Taxes on capital gains and dividends also could rise as part of the negotiations, pushing investors to sell this year and pay lower taxes on their gains.

(Editing by Theodore d’Afflisio)

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Canada’s Carney says rate hikes “less imminent”

TORONTO (Reuters) – Interest rate hikes have become less imminent than the Bank of Canada once expected, although rates are still likely to rise, central bank Governor Mark Carney said in an interview published on Saturday.

“Over time, rates are likely to increase somewhat, but over time, so a less imminent timing relative to our expectation,” Carney said in an interview with the National Post newspaper.

Canada’s economy rebounded better than most from the global economic recession, and the Bank of Canada is the only central bank in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that is currently hinting at higher interest rates.

But Carney has also made clear that there will be no rate rise for a while, despite high domestic borrowing rates that he sees as a major risk to a still fragile economy.

“We’ve been very clear in terms of lines of defense in addressing financial vulnerabilities,” he said in the interview. “And the most prominent one, obviously, in Canada, is household debt.”

He said the bank was monitoring the impact of four successive government moves to tighten mortgage lending, which aimed to take the froth out of a hot housing market without causing a damaging crash in prices.

A Reuters poll published on Friday showed the majority of 20 forecasters believe the government has done enough to rein in runaway prices, preventing the type of crash that devastated the U.S. market.

The experts expect Canadian housing prices to fall 10 percent over the next several years, but they do not expect the recent property boom to end in a U.S.-style collapse.

(Reporting by Janet Guttsman; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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Texas Instruments cuts 1,700 jobs, winds down tablet chips

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Texas Instruments is eliminating 1,700 jobs, as it winds down its mobile processor business to focus on chips for more profitable markets like cars and home appliances.

Texas Instruments said in September it would halt costly investments in the increasingly competitive smartphone and tablet chip business, leading Wall Street to speculate that part of the company’s processor unit, called OMAP, could be sold.

The layoffs are equivalent to nearly 5 percent of the Austin, Texas-based company’s global workforce.

“A sale would have been better than a restructuring but a restructuring is certainly better than nothing,” Sanford Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said.

TI has been under pressure in mobile processors, where it has lost ground to rival Qualcomm Inc. Leading smartphone makers Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have been developing their own chips instead of buying them from suppliers like TI.

Instead of competing in phones and tablets, TI wants to sell its OMAP processors in markets that require less investment, like industrial clients like carmakers.

TI is expected to continue selling existing tablet and phone processors for products like Amazon.Com Inc‘s Kindle tablets for as long as demand remains, but stop developing new chips.

“This year, the Kindle runs on the OMAP 4 and next year’s Kindle is slated, we believe, for OMAP 5. We believe that program is well along to completion and do not expect that the termination of OMAP will disrupt those plans,” said Longbow Research analyst JoAnne Feeney.

Amazon had reportedly been in talks to buy the mobile part of OMAP.

TI said it expects to take charges of about $ 325 million related to the job cuts and other cost reduction measures, most of which will be accounted for in the current quarter. Its previously announced financial targets for the fourth quarter do not include these costs, TI said.

The company, which has 35,000 employees around the world, expects annualized savings of about $ 450 million by the end of 2013 from the action.

TI shares rose to $ 29 in after-hours trading after closing at $ 28.76, down 2 percent on Nasdaq.

(Reporting By Sinead Carew in New York and Noel Randewich in San Francisco; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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Anne Hathaway reveals oatmeal paste diet for ‘Les Miserables’

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Hollywood starlet Anne Hathaway credits a strict diet of dried oatmeal paste for helping her shed some 25 pounds (11 kg) for her role in the forthcoming big screen musical “Les Miserables.”

“I had to be obsessive about it – the idea was to look near death,” Hathaway told Vogue about preparing for her role as the consumptive prostitute Fantine in the musical version of Victor Hugo‘s classic 19th century French novel.

Hathaway, 30, told the December edition of the magazine, that she first lost 10 pounds (5 kg) to begin filming and then later dropped another 15 pounds (7 kg) by eating nothing but two thin pieces of oatmeal paste a day.

“Looking back on the whole experience – and I don’t judge it in any way – it was definitely a little nuts,” said “The Dark Knight Rises” actress. “It was definitely a break with reality, but I think that’s who Fantine is anyway.”

Extreme body changes have become part of Hollywood lore, even factoring into the marketing of films. Natalie Portman received much publicity for dropping some 20 pounds (9 kg) for her Oscar-winning role as a ballerina in 2010′s “Black Swan.”

Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the famished star of the life-or-death thriller “The Hunger Games,” made waves last week vowing never to diet for a role.

Hathaway said it was a rocky transition back into everyday life after filming.

“I was in such a state of deprivation – physical and emotional,” she said. “When I got home, I couldn’t react to the chaos of the world without being overwhelmed. It took me weeks till I felt like myself again.”

Directed by Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”), “Les Miserables” is scheduled to be released on December 25 in the United States and is seen as a strong contender for Oscar nominations. The film version of the stage musical also stars Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Mohammad Zargham)

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Stock futures rise, helped by Cisco results

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures rose on Wednesday, indicating that equities could rebound after a series of weak sessions on strong results from Cisco and two retail chains.

The S&P 500 has fallen 3.8 percent over the past five trading days, with most of the losses driven by uncertainty over the looming U.S. “fiscal cliff” and concerns about Europe‘s economic troubles.

The index closed below its 200-day moving average for a fourth day in a row on Tuesday, a technical indicator that suggests recent declines could gain momentum.

Trading has been volatile, with positive momentum difficult to sustain.

“It seems as if every minor rally we get, gets sold into, a trend that has been both consistent and concerning,” said Christian Wagner, chief executive officer at Longview Capital Management in Wilmington, Delaware. “This could be the new normal until the fiscal cliff gets resolved, and that will make for a difficult environment.”

Economic reports on Wednesday include October retail sales, which are on tap for 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) and are seen dropping 0.2 percent. In September, sales climbed 1.1 percent. Also, the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting will be released later on Wednesday.

Cisco Systems Inc reported first-quarter earnings and revenue late Tuesday that beat expectations, sending the stock soaring 7.3 percent to $ 18.08 in premarket trading Wednesday. The networking company and Dow component also forecast flat earnings and slower revenue growth for the current quarter.

Cisco, viewed as a harbinger for spending on information technology because of its global reach and customers across all sectors, could lend support to the tech sector.

Technology shares <.GSPT> have dropped almost 10 percent over the past two months, dragged down by earnings disappointments from Google and others. Tech was the worst performing sector on Tuesday.

“For Cisco to beat expectations in an environment like this is great and speaks to the solid management at the company,” Wagner said. “Hopefully this will do something for the tech sector, which has been so hurt by Apple lately.”

Apple , the most valuable U.S. company, has tumbled in recent months by 20 percent from its peak.

S&P 500 futures rose 4 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures added 57 points and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 10.5 points.

Macroeconomic issues will likely play a major role in how stocks trade as investors grapple with the impact of Europe‘s debt crisis and the fiscal cliff, a series of large, mandated tax hikes and spending cuts that start to take effect next year.

Analysts say serious fiscal negotiations are still weeks away, but that the failure to reach a deal in Congress could tip the world’s largest economy into recession.

European shares <.FTEU3> were 0.5 percent lower as Greece’s unresolved crisis raised questions about the region’s potential for economic growth, while anti-austerity strikes across southern Europe added to concerns that fiscal reforms would be politically difficult to implement.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said she expected a real solution for Greece rather than a quick fix.

In earnings news, Abercrombie & Fitch Co soared 25 percent to $ 39 before the bell after posting a steep rise in its third quarter. Staples Inc rose 5 percent to $ 11.81 after posting earnings that beat expectations.

U.S. stocks fell in a volatile session Tuesday, pressured by Microsoft Corp which fell after the surprise departure of a key executive. However, retail names outperformed after Home Depot raised its outlook.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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