Many big-name retailers from Gap to Toys R Us are partnering with banks, payment processors and Google to let shoppers tap their mobile phones instead of swiping their credit cards to pay for goods.

The Vatican says it is to conserve his strength, allow more people to see him and guard against attacks such as one on Christmas Eve, 2009, when a woman lunged at him and knocked him to the ground. He is believed to suffer from arthritis in the legs.

More than 100 regional commuter flights from rural airports had been canceled at Denver International Airport, but all runways were open, said airport spokeswoman Laura Coale.

 Gingrich is in a tight race with rivals Ron Paul and Mitt Romney in Iowa less than three weeks before the state's Republicans decide on January 3 who they want as their presidential candidate. It is anybody's guess at this stage as to who will win.

Sandra Bullock may be a first-time mom, but the Academy Award-winning actress says she’s ready for the holidays with her nearly-1-year-old son, Louis.

 The euro slipped in Asia on Monday, and was expected to struggle going into the year-end after the European Union agreed on deeper economic integration but fell short of a convincing plan to deal a decisive blow to the region's debt woes.

 As an opposition activist, Abu Ahmed spends a lot of time underground. In the basement of a building on the outskirts of Damascus, he led us into a secret passage carefully camouflaged in a corner.

 Artyom Kolpakov used to shrug when he came across occasional appeals on social media sites to protest against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his government.

"I didn't see the point really," he said.

 We expect a lot from the Super Bowl. We expect the players to play as hard and as recklessly as possible. We expect the commercials to be funny, the cheerleaders to be hot and the fans to be hanging on every snap. We expect all of these things because the NFL’s championship is the biggest, most watched spectacle of the year. It’s the one time, with the exception of the World Cup Final, that most people are tuned in to the exact same event.

 At a town hall in South Carolina on Friday afternoon, Cain said he will be making an announcement to "clarify what the next steps are." A news conference had previously been scheduled for today to highlight the opening of his national headquarters in his hometown of Atlanta, as well as the announcement of his campaign's freshly minted senior leadership team for the state of Georgia.

 The US Senate approved a vast military spending bill that tied strings to military aid to Pakistan and aimed to stem the spread of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles from Libya.