TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian stocks ended higher on Tuesday, helped by a strong showing from banks and other financial stocks as a German poll showed a sharp improvement in investor sentiment in Europe’s biggest economy.
The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> added 51.89 points, or 0.42 percent, to close at 12,282.36.</.gsptse>
(Reporting by Alastair Sharp)
Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News
MONTREAL (Reuters) – Half a century ago, a new crop of Quebec leaders sparked the so-called Quiet Revolution to eradicate the “Great Darkness” – decades of corruption that kept Canada‘s French-speaking province under the dominance of one party and the Catholic church.
The revolution’s reforms, including cleaning up the way lawmakers were elected and secularizing the education system, seemed to work, paving the way for decades of growth, progress and prominence as Canada emerged as a model of democracy.
Fifty years later, a public inquiry into corruption and government bid-rigging suggests the province’s politics are not as clean as Quebecers had hoped or believed.
Since May, when the inquiry opened in Montreal, Canadians have been getting daily doses of revelations of fraud through live broadcasts on French-language television stations. Corruption involving the Mafia, construction bosses and politicians, the inquiry has shown, drove up the average building cost of municipal contracts by more than 30 percent in Montreal, Canada’s second-largest city.
Last month, Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay resigned as did the mayor of nearby Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt. Both denied doing anything wrong, but said they could not govern amid the accusations of corruption involving rigging of municipal contracts, kickbacks from the contracts and illegal financing of elections.
Tremblay has not been charged by police. Vaillancourt’s homes and offices have been raided several times by Quebec’s anti-corruption squad, which operates independently of the inquiry, but no charges have been filed against him either. Police said the raids were part of an investigation but they would not release further details.
“Quebecers lived for several years under the impression that they had found the right formula, that their parties were clean,” said Pierre Martin, political science professor at the University of Montreal. Now, he said, “people at all levels are fed up.”
The inquiry must submit its final report to the Quebec government by next October. It has exposed practices worthy of a Hollywood noir thriller – a mob boss stuffing his socks with money, rigged construction contracts, call girls offered as gifts, and a party fundraiser with so much cash he could not close the door of his safe.
“Even though we are in the early days, what is emerging is a pretty troubling portrait of the way public contracts were awarded,” said Antonia Maioni, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada in Montreal.
Quebec’s Liberals, the force behind the Quiet Revolution, launched the inquiry as rumors of corruption swirled. The government then called an election for September, a year ahead of schedule, in what was seen as an attempt to stop damaging testimony hurting its popularity.
The tactic did not help. Jean Charest’s Liberals lost to the Parti Quebecois, whose ultimate aim is to take the French-speaking province, the size of Western Europe, out of Canada.
‘IT WASN’T COMPLICATED’
According to allegations at the inquiry, the corruption helped three main entities: the construction bosses who colluded to bid on contracts, the Montreal Mafia dons who swooped in for their share, and the municipal politicians who received kickbacks to finance campaigns.
In Quebec, the Mafia has been dominated by the Rizzuto family, with tentacles to the rest of Canada and crime families in New York and abroad. But recently the syndicate has been facing challenges from other crime groups in Montreal, according to the Toronto-based Mafia analyst and author Antonio Nicaso.
The reputed godfather of the syndicate, Vito Rizzuto, has been subpoenaed to appear before the commission, but the date for his testimony has not been set.
The hearings have zeroed in on four construction bosses and how their companies worked with the Mafia, bribed municipal engineers and provided funds for mayoralty campaigns in Montreal, the business capital for Quebec’s 8 million people.
“It’s not good for the economy,” said Martin. “It’s not good for any kind of legitimate business that tries to enter into any kind of long-term relationship with the public sector.”
Quebec’s anti-corruption squad has arrested 35 people so far this year, staging well-publicized raids on mayoral offices and on construction and engineering companies. The squad has arrested civil servants and owners of construction companies, among others.
“I now must suffer an unbearable injustice,” Tremblay said in a somber resignation speech earlier this month after a decade as mayor of Montreal, saying he could not continue in office because the allegations of corruption were causing a paralysis at City Hall.
Some of the most explosive allegations at the inquiry, headed by Quebec Superior Court Justice France Charbonneau, came from Lino Zambito, owner of a now bankrupt construction company, and from a top worker for Tremblay’s political party, Union Montreal.
Zambito, who is seen as one of the smaller players and who also faces fraud charges, described a system of collusion between organized crime, business cartels and corrupt civil servants, with payments made according to a predetermined formula.
“The entrepreneurs made money, and there was an amount that was due to the Mafia,” Zambito told the inquiry. “It wasn’t complicated.”
Zambito said the Mafia got 2.5 percent of the value of a contract, 3 percent went to Union Montreal and 1 percent to the engineer tasked with inflating contract prices.
Tremblay did not respond to emails requesting comment on the allegations of corruption at city hall.
A former party organizer, Martin Dumont, alleged the mayor was aware of double bookkeeping used to hide illegal funding during a 2004 election.
Dumont said the mayor walked out of the room during a meeting that explained the double bookkeeping system, saying he did not want to know anything about it.
Dumont also described how he was called into the office of a fundraiser for Union Montreal to help close the door of a safe because it was too full of money.
“I think it was the largest amount I’d ever seen in my life,” Dumont said at the inquiry.
GOLF, HOCKEY, ESCORTS
The inquiry also saw videos linking construction company players with Mafia bosses. In one police surveillance video, a Mafia boss was seen stuffing cash into his socks.
A retired city of Montreal engineer, Gilles Surprenant, described how he first accepted a bribe in the late 1980s after being “intimidated” by a construction company owner. Over the years he said he accepted over $ 700,000 from the owners in return for inflating the price of the contracts.
Another retired engineer, Luc Leclerc, admitted to bagging half a million dollars for the same service. He said the system was well-known to many at city hall and simply part of the “business culture” in Montreal. He also got gifts and paid golf trips to the Caribbean with other businessmen and Mafia bosses.
Gilles Vezina, who is currently suspended from his job as a city engineer, concurred.
“It was part of our business relationships to get advantages like golf, hockey, Christmas gifts” from construction bosses, he told the inquiry in mid-November.
The gifts didn’t stop there. Vezina said he was twice offered the services of prostitutes from different construction bosses in the 1980s or early 1990s, which he said he refused.
The accusations are jarring for a country that prides itself on being one of the least corrupt places in the world, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International. But experts say corruption in Montreal was something of an open secret.
“The alarm signals have been going off here for 20 years and no one has done anything,” said Andre Cedilot, a former journalist who co-wrote a book on the Canadian Mafia.
Quebec’s new government has introduced legislation tasking the province’s securities regulator with vetting businesses vying for public contracts and allowing it to block companies that do not measure up.
Anti-corruption activist Jonathan Brun was not optimistic.
“You’ve got to use modern technology,” said Brun, a co-founder of Quebec Ouvert, a group that wants to make all information about contracts freely available rather than asking regulators to oversee individual companies. “You’ve got to change the entire system if you really want to fight corruption.”
(Writing by Russ Blinch; Editing by Janet Guttsman, Mary Milliken and Prudence Crowther)
Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News
(Reuters) – An election victory tweet from President Barack Obama — “Four more years” with a picture of him hugging his wife — was the most retweeted ever, but the U.S. election was topped by the Olympics as the most tweeted event this year.
Obama’s tweet was retweeted (repeated) more than 810,000 times, Twitter said as it published a list of the most tweeted events in 2012. (http://2012.twitter.com/)
“Within hours, that Tweet simultaneously became the most retweeted of 2012, and the most retweeted ever. In fact, retweets of that simple message came from people in more than 200 countries around the world,” Twitter spokeswoman Rachael Horwitz said.
Twitter users were busiest during the final vote count for the presidential elections, sending 327,452 tweets per minute on election night on their way to a tally of 31 million election tweets for the day.
The 2012 Olympic Games in London had the most overall tweets of any event, with 150 million sent over the 16 days.
Usain Bolt’s golden win in the 200 meters topped 80,000 tweets per minute but he did not achieve the highest Olympic peak on Twitter. That was seen during the closing ceremony when 115,000 tweets per minute were sent as 1990s British pop band the Spice Girls performed.
Syria, where a bloody civil war still plays out, was the most talked about country in 2012 but sports and pop culture dominated the tally of tweets.
Behind Obama was pop star Justin Bieber. His tweet, “RIP Avalanna. i love you” sent when a six-year-old fan died from a rare form of brain cancer, was retweeted more than 220,000 times.
Third most repeated in 2012 was a profanity-laced tweet from Green Bay Packers NFL player TJ Lang, when he blasted a controversial call by a substitute referee officiating during a referee dispute. That was retweeted 98,000 times.
This was the third year running that the microblogging site published its top Twitter trends, offering a barometer to assess the biggest events in social media.
Superstorm Sandy, which slammed the densely populated U.S. East Coast in late October, killing more than 100 people, flooding wide areas and knocking out power for millions, attracted more than 20 million tweets between October 27 and November 1.
European football made the list of top tweets when Spain’s Juan Mata scored as his side downed Italy 4-0 in the Euro 2012 final — sparking 267,200 tweets a minute.
News of pop star Whitney Houston‘s death in February generated more than 10 million tweets, peaking at 73,662 per minute.
Romantic comedy “Think Like a Man” was the most tweeted movie this year, topping “The Hunger Games”, “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises.”
Rapper Rick Ross who notched his fourth No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart this year, was the most talked about music artist.
(Editing by Rodney Joyce)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LONDON (Reuters) – “The Hobbit” actor Ian McKellen said in an interview published on Tuesday that he had had prostate cancer for the last six or seven years, but added that the disease was not life-threatening.
McKellen, 73, played Gandalf in the hit “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy, and reprises the role in three prequels based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel “The Hobbit”.
The first of those, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”, recently had its world premiere in New Zealand, where it was shot under the directorship of Peter Jackson.
“I’ve had prostate cancer for six or seven years,” McKellen told the Daily Mirror tabloid. “When you have got it you monitor it and you have to be careful it doesn’t spread. But if it is contained in the prostate it’s no big deal.”
His representatives in London were not immediately available to comment on the interview.
“Many, many men die from it but it’s one of the cancers that is totally treatable,” added McKellen, one of Britain’s most respected actors who is also well known in Hollywood for appearances in the X-Men franchise.
“I am examined regularly and it’s just contained, it’s not spreading. I’ve not had any treatment.”
He admitted he feared the worst when he heard he had the disease.
“You do gulp when you hear the news. It’s like when you go for an HIV test, you go ‘arghhh is this the end of the road?’
“I have heard of people dying from prostate cancer, and they are the unlucky ones, the people who didn’t know they had got it and it went on the rampage. But at my age if it is diagnosed it’s not life threatening.”
“The Hobbit” opens in cinemas later this week.
(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Mobile devices that let people track how much they eat and exercise may help them shed pounds over and above the benefits of a typical weight-loss program, a new study suggests.
Researchers found overweight and obese adults lost an average of over eight pounds more when they had personal digital assistants (PDAs) and occasional phone coaching to help them in addition to a group program.
There’s no reason to think the same wouldn’t hold true for smart phone apps that can log nutrition and activity information and give real-time feedback, they said.
“The number one mechanism through which people lose weight is self-monitoring, just watching what you eat and keeping a record of it,” said Dr. Goutham Rao, from the NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois.
Rao, who wrote a commentary published with the new study, noted that programs for mobile devices are easily personalized – and readily available wherever people carry their phones or PDAs.
“I’m actually very optimistic that people who are motivated, who can couple the technology with in-person counseling and management are going to be very successful,” he told Reuters Health.
The new study included 69 overweight and obese people in their late 50s, on average, who were referred to a Veterans Affairs clinic for weight-loss support.
All were enrolled in 12 group sessions over six months, which focused on nutrition, exercise and behavioral changes to promote weight loss. Half of the participants were also given a PDA to record their food and activity throughout the day and had a coach who checked in with them by phone.
Most of the study subjects were men who didn’t know much about technology – which made them an extra hard group to reach, said lead researcher Bonnie Spring, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
After six months in the trial, people in the PDA group had lost an average of almost 10 pounds, and 41 percent of them had met the goal of losing at least five percent of their initial body weight. Those in the comparison group had dropped just over two pounds each, on average, and 11 percent had achieved the weight-loss goal.
And at the one-year mark – six months after the mobile devices were taken away – people who’d used the PDAs had managed to keep off most of the weight they initially lost, Spring’s team reported Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
“The issue has always been that it’s possible to help anyone lose weight as long as you invest enough time or money into the effort,” Rao said.
The benefits of using an app on a mobile device, he said, are that it can be cheaper and widely available – and can help re-engage people who are having trouble, unlike an in-person program with a specific end date.
Although PDAs have mostly fallen out of fashion, the researchers said smart phones can serve the same purpose as the devices used in the study. Spring said most weight-loss apps on the market haven’t been scientifically tested but may still help people drop extra pounds.
However, Rao added, there’s evidence that apps alone don’t have much of an impact on weight loss. It may be more helpful to think of the technology as something that augments help from a primary care doctor or nutritionist, he said.
Spring agreed.
“An app and some human support, coaching, nutrition education – that combination of things will help,” she told Reuters Health.
“The most important thing is to use the app for decision support and keeping track, but also to get the social support.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Rfk14F Archives of Internal Medicine, online December 10, 2012.
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s Islamist president has given the army temporary power to arrest civilians during a constitutional referendum he is determined to push through despite the risk of bloodshed between his supporters and opponents accusing him of a power grab.
Seven people were killed and hundreds wounded last week in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and their critics besieging Mohamed Mursi’s graffiti-daubed presidential palace. Both sides plan mass rallies on Tuesday.
The elite Republican Guard has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the palace, which it ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades after last week’s violence.
Mursi, bruised by calls for his downfall, has rescinded a November 22 decree giving him wide powers but is going ahead with a referendum on Saturday on a constitution seen by his supporters as a triumph for democracy and by many liberals as a betrayal.
A decree issued by Mursi late on Sunday gives the armed forces the power to arrest civilians and refer them to prosecutors until the announcement of the results of the referendum, which the protesters want cancelled.
Despite its limited nature, the edict will revive memories of Hosni Mubarak’s emergency law, also introduced as a temporary expedient, under which military or state security courts tried thousands of political dissidents and Islamist militants.
But a military source stressed that the measure introduced by a civilian government would have a short shelf-life.
“The latest law giving the armed forces the right to arrest anyone involved in illegal actions such as burning buildings or damaging public sites is to ensure security during the referendum only,” the military source said.
Presidential spokesman Yasser Ali said the committee overseeing the vote had requested the army’s assistance.
“The armed forces will work within a legal framework to secure the referendum and will return (to barracks) as soon as the referendum is over,” Ali said.
Protests and violence have racked Egypt since Mursi decreed himself extraordinary powers he said were needed to speed up a troubled transition since Mubarak’s fall 22 months ago.
The Muslim Brotherhood has voiced anger at the Interior Ministry’s failure to prevent protesters setting fire to its headquarters in Cairo and 28 of its offices elsewhere.
Critics say the draft law puts Egypt in a religious straitjacket. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, the crisis has polarized the country and presages more instability at a time when Mursi is trying to steady a fragile economy.
On Monday, he suspended planned tax increases only hours after the measures had been formally decreed, casting doubts on the government’s ability to push through tough economic reforms that form part of a proposed $ 4.8 billion IMF loan agreement.
“VIOLENT CONFRONTATION”
Rejecting the referendum plan, opposition groups have called for mass protests on Tuesday, saying Mursi’s eagerness to push the constitution through could lead to “violent confrontation”.
Islamists have urged their followers to turn out “in millions” the same day in a show of support for the president and for a referendum they feel sure of winning with their loyal base and perhaps with the votes of Egyptians weary of turmoil.
The opposition National Salvation Front, led by liberals such as Mohamed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa, as well as leftist firebrand Hamdeen Sabahy, has yet to call directly for a boycott of the referendum or to urge their supporters to vote “no”.
Instead it is contesting the legitimacy of the vote and of the whole process by which the constitution was drafted in an Islamist-led assembly from which their representatives withdrew.
The opposition says the document fails to embrace the diversity of 83 million Egyptians, a tenth of whom are Christians, and invites Muslim clerics to influence lawmaking.
But debate over the details has largely given way to noisy street protests and megaphone politics, keeping Egypt off balance and ill-equipped to deal with a looming economic crisis.
“Inevitability of referendum deepens divisions,” was the headline in Al-Gomhuriya newspaper on Monday. Al Ahram daily wrote: “Political forces split over referendum and new decree.”
Mursi issued another decree on Saturday to supersede his November 22 measure putting his own decisions beyond legal challenge until a new constitution and parliament are in place.
While he gave up extra powers as a sop to his opponents, the decisions already taken under them, such as the dismissal of a prosecutor-general appointed by Mubarak, remain intact.
“UNWELCOME” CHOICE
Lamia Kamel, a spokeswoman for former Arab League chief Moussa, said the opposition factions were still discussing whether to boycott the referendum or call for a “no” vote.
“Both paths are unwelcome because they really don’t want the referendum at all,” she said, but predicted a clearer opposition line if the plebiscite went ahead as planned.
A spokeswoman for ElBaradei, former head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said: “We do not acknowledge the referendum. The aim is to change the decision and postpone it.”
Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman, said the opposition could stage protests, but should keep the peace.
“They are free to boycott, participate or say no, they can do what they want. The important thing is that it remains in a peaceful context to preserve the country’s safety and security.”
The army stepped into the conflict on Saturday, telling all sides to resolve their disputes via dialogue and warning that it would not allow Egypt to enter a “dark tunnel”.
A military source said the declaration read on state media did not herald a move by the army to retake control of Egypt, which it relinquished in June after managing the transition from Mubarak’s 30 years of military-backed one-man rule.
The draft constitution sets up a national defense council, in which generals will form a majority, and gives civilians some scrutiny over the army – although not enough for critics.
In August Mursi stripped the generals of sweeping powers they had grabbed when he was elected two months earlier, but has since repeatedly paid tribute to the military in public.
So far the army and police have taken a relatively passive role in the protests roiling the most populous Arab nation.
(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair and Yasmine Saleh; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
World News Headlines – Yahoo! News
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – U.S. software pioneer John McAfee, facing deportation from Guatemala to Belize to answer questions over the death of a neighbor, has bought himself some time with legal appeals, the Guatemalan government said on Sunday.
McAfee’s lawyers have filed a request with a local court to grant him leave to stay in Guatemala until his legal appeals against deportation have been settled, which could take months.
“The government of Guatemala respects the courts and we have to wait for them to make a decision,” said Francisco Cuevas, a spokesman for the Guatemalan government.
The government initially said it would deport him straight away after rejecting McAfee’s request for asylum on Thursday.
Guatemala has been holding the former Silicon Valley millionaire since he was arrested on Wednesday for illegally entering the country with his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend.
Officials in Belize want to question McAfee as a “person of interest” in the killing of fellow American Gregory Faull, his neighbor on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye.
The court has up to 30 days to rule on his request, but McAfee’s lawyers said on Sunday they expect a ruling in the American’s favor as early as Monday.
“We are filing a series of papers with the court to attempt to keep me here long enough for the world to see the injustice of sending me back to Belize,” McAfee said in an online news conference on Sunday evening.
McAfee has been evading Belizean officials for nearly a month, saying he fears they want to kill him, and that he is being persecuted for speaking out about corruption in the country’s ruling party. Belize’s prime minister has rejected McAfee’s claims, calling him paranoid and “bonkers.”
McAfee’s attorney, Telesforo Guerra, said that if his request with the court is successful, McAfee would be allowed to stay in the country until the legal suits have been resolved.
His lawyers have filed several injunctions against government officials, alleging McAfee’s rights were violated because his asylum request was not given proper consideration.
McAfee said on Saturday he wanted to return to the United States, and Guerra said he had filed a motion that would require Guatemalan authorities to deport him there and not to Belize.
The eccentric tech pioneer, who made his fortune from the anti-virus software bearing his name, has been chronicling life on the run in a blog, www.whoismcafee.com.
(Editing by Dave Graham; editing by Todd Eastham)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
MADRID (Reuters) – Thousands of health workers, on strike since last month, marched on Sunday in Madrid to protest against budget cuts and plans from the Spanish capital’s regional government to privatize the management of public hospitals and medical centers.
It was the third time doctors, nurses and health workers have rallied since the local authorities put forward a plan in October to place six hospitals and dozens of medical practices under private management. The plan also calls for patients to be charged a fee of 1 euro for prescriptions.
Workers launched an indefinite strike last month against the plan, which has not been endorsed by the centre-right government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Health workers in the capital are striking Monday-Thursday each week and seeing patients only on Fridays, while also responding to emergencies.
Spain’s 17 autonomous regions control health and education policies and spending. They have all had to implement steep cuts this year as the country struggles to meet tough European Union-agreed deficit targets.
Dressed in white scrubs, the protesters shouted slogans such as “Health is not for sale” and “Health 100 percent public, no to privatizations”.
“Of course, privatization can be reversed. Actually the question is not if it can be reversed, because privatization should never have a future,” said Luis Alvarez, an unemployed man from Madrid attending the demonstration.
Belen Padilla, a doctor at Madrid’s hospital Gregorio Maranon, said one million citizens had already signed a petition rejecting the plan.
(Reporting by Reuters Television; Writing by Julien Toyer; Editing by Peter Graff)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
9 December 2012 Last updated at 06:49 ET
China’s economic growth rate may be gathering pace again, as the government released strong industrial output and retail sales figures.
Industrial production rose by 10.1% in November, compared with a year earlier, according to the official data from the National Bureau of Statistics.
This was better than expected, and the strongest performance since March.
At the same time, China’s retail sales increased by 14.9%. This was also the best showing for eight months.
‘Sweet spot’
The official economic data are the first to be released since the Communist Party appointed its new leaders last month.
The figures will be good news for them, but also for the world economy, as China’s factory output is indicative of global demand for the country’s consumer products.
Until the end of September, China had seen seven consecutive quarters of a slowing economic growth rate, due to both falling exports and weak domestic demand.
The data for the current three months from October to December will be released in the new year. For July to September, the rate of growth was 7.4%, down from 7.6% in the first quarter the year, and 9.2% for 2011 as a whole.
Other data released on Sunday showed that Chinese inflation rose slightly to 3% in November – from 2.7% in October.
“The Chinese economy is in the sweet spot now with rebounding GDP growth, rebounding earning growth and low inflation,” said Lu Ting, China economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
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