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)
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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Mursi, bruised by calls for his downfall, has rescinded a November 22 decree giving him wide powers but is going ahead with a referendum on Saturday on a constitution seen by his supporters as a triumph for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)
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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)
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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.
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BOSTON (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs bankers failed to raise red flags about Lernout & Hauspie‘s accounting irregularities more than a decade ago, costing speech recognition software pioneers at Dragon Systems nearly all of their life’s work and about $ 600 million, a lawyer told a jury on Monday in federal court.
“They were relying on Goldman to take care of them and whether or not they should be worried about these questions,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Alan Cotler said in his opening statement.
He kicked off what is expected to be a two-month courtroom battle in U.S. District Court in Boston.
The trial pits Janet and James Baker, a suburban Boston husband-and-wife team that launched Dragon from the living room of their home with $ 30,000, against Goldman Sachs, the iconic Wall Street bank whose reputation has been tarnished in more recent years on allegations it has treated some clients shabbily.
In the case brought by the Bakers, Goldman Sachs Group Inc denies civil claims that include gross negligence and breach of fiduciary duty. Opening statements from Goldman’s legal team could come later on Monday or early Tuesday when the trial resumes.
In 2000, just months after Belgium-based Lernout & Hauspie acquired Dragon for $ 580 million in an all-stock deal, the company collapsed in an accounting scandal that sent it reeling into bankruptcy.
The Bakers owned 51 percent of Dragon, but only sold a few million dollars worth of their stock because of restrictions, Cotler told a jury. He added that the couple later received a $ 70 million settlement from a group of companies that advised Lernout & Hauspie in the transaction with Dragon.
The Bakers and two other early Dragon employees are seeking at least several hundred million dollars in damages.
In 1999, Dragon Systems hired Goldman as its financial adviser. The company, started in 1982 in West Newton, Massachusetts, was struggling and Lernout & Hauspie emerged as a buyer when another suitor decided not to pursue a deal, according to Goldman’s defense in the case.
Cotler said a team of four Goldman bankers, led by Richard Wayner, gave favorable and positive advice about Lernout & Hauspie in the weeks before the deal closed. Goldman was about to earn $ 5 million for its work, court papers show.
Goldman’s team, however, had concerns about L&H’s exponential revenue growth in Asia. Cotler said Goldman did not even take one of most preliminary steps in vetting L&H’s revenue claims — contacting L&H customers in Asia.
In fact, the Goldman team internally was not satisfied with the answers it was getting from L&H on deal-critical red flag issues, particularly the company’s Asia revenue growth, Cotler said.
Still, during a conference call with Goldman’s Lernout & Hauspie expert in London, further positive assurances were given to Dragon’s leadership, Cotler said.
Only years later did the Goldman analyst from that call admit he wasn’t aware of the extent of Lernout & Hauspie’s Asian revenue growth. Had he known, he would have been skeptical, Cotler said.
“These were salt of the earth people who are geniuses at what they do,” Cotler said, describing the key figures at Dragon. But the world of Wall Street and high finance was unfamiliar terrain for them. It was the reason why they put their faith in Goldman, the best and biggest investment bank in the world, he added.
(Reporting By Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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OSLO, Norway (AP) — European Union leaders on Sunday hailed the achievements of the 27-nation bloc, but acknowledged they need more integration and authority to solve problems, including its worst financial crisis, as they arrived in Norway to pick up this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
Conceding that the EU lacked sufficient powers to stop the devastating 1992-95 Bosnia war, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that the absence of such authority at the time is “one of the most powerful arguments for a stronger European Union.”
Barroso spoke to reporters with EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and the president of the EU Parliament, Martin Schulz, in Oslo, where the three leaders were to receive this year’s award, granted to the European Union for fostering peace on a continent ravaged by war.
Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland will present the prize, worth $ 1.2 million, at a ceremony in Oslo City Hall, followed by a banquet at the Grand Hotel, against a backdrop of demonstrations in this EU-skeptic country that has twice rejected joining the union.
About 20 European government leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, will be joining the ceremonies. They will be celebrating far away from the EU’s financial woes in a prosperous, oil-rich nation of 5 million on the outskirts of Europe that voted in 1972 and 1994 in referendums to stay out of the union.
The decision to award the prize to the EU has sparked harsh criticism, including from three peace laureates — South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Adolfo Perez Esquivel from Argentina — who have demanded the prize money not be paid out this year. They say the bloc contradicts the values associated with the prize because it relies on military force to ensure security.
The leader of Britain’s Independence Party, Nigel Farage, in a statement described rewarding the EU as “a ridiculous act which blows the reputation of the Nobel prize committee to smithereens.”
Hundreds of people demonstrated against this year’s prize winners in a peaceful torch-lit protest that meandered through the dark city streets to Parliament, including Tomas Magnusson from the International Peace Bureau, the 1910 prize winner.
“This is totally against the idea of Alfred Nobel who wanted disarmament,” he said, accusing the Nobel committee of being “too close to the power” elite.
Dimitris Kodelas, a Greek lawmaker from the main opposition Radical Left party, or Syriza, said a humanitarian crisis in his country and EU policies could cause major rifts in Europe. He thought it was a joke when he heard the peace prize was awarded to the EU. “It challenges even our logic and it is also insulting,” he said.
The EU is being granted the prize as it grapples with a debt crisis that has stirred deep tensions between north and south, caused soaring unemployment and sent hundreds of thousands into the streets to protest austerity measures.
It is also threatening the euro — the common currency used by 17 of its members — and even the structure of the union itself, and is fuelling extremist movements such as Golden Dawn in Greece, which opponents brand as neo-Nazi.
Barroso acknowledged that the current crisis showed the union was “not fully equipped to deal with a crisis of this magnitude.”
“We do not have all the instruments for a true and genuine economic union … so we need to complete our economic and monetary union,” he said, adding that the new measures, including on a banking and fiscal union, would be agreed on in coming weeks.
He stressed that despite the crisis all steps taken had been toward “more, not less integration.”
Van Rompuy was optimistic saying that EU would come out of the crisis stronger than before. “We want Europe to become again a symbol of hope,” he said.
The EU says it will donate the prize money to projects that help children in conflict zones and will double it with EU funds.
The European Union grew from the conviction that ever-closer economic ties would ensure century-old enemies like Germany and France never turned on each other again, starting with the creation in 1951 of the European Coal and Steel Community, declared as “a first step in the federation of Europe.”
In 60 years it has grown into a 27-nation bloc with a population of 500 million, with other nations eagerly waiting to join, even as its unity is being threatened by the financial woes.
While there have never been wars inside EU territory, the confederation has not been able to prevent European wars outside its borders. When the deadly Balkans wars erupted in the 1990s, the EU was unable by itself to stop them. It was only with the help of the United States and after over 100,000 lives were lost in Bosnia was peace eventually restored there, and several years later, to Kosovo.
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Jolla, a Finnish startup, launched a new mobile OS called Sailfish, which the company believes will become a legitimate alternative to the Coke and Pepsi of smartphone platforms: Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Learn more about the new OS.
Click here to view this gallery.
[More from Mashable: Jimmy Fallon and Mariah Carey Take on ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’]
It’s been awhile since the big tech companies launched products in time for the holiday shopping season. So this week, tech news has mostly been filled with cool scientific developments and — of course — drones.
We learned about Swiss researchers who created an underwater drone that resembles a sea turtle, and a father who built a DIY drone to track his kid walking from home to the bus each morning.
[More from Mashable: News Corp. Kills ‘The Daily’]
This week, we also took a look at new innovations: One groups of scientists created the lightbulb of the future, and another team built the largest-ever model of a functioning brain.
There was also plenty of mobile news. Read up on a new Finnish mobile OS that aims to be the alternative to iOS and Android, and about a Casio watch that syncs with your iPhone.
For these stories and more, check out this week’s Top 10 Tech gallery, above.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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LONDON (Reuters) – British astronomer Patrick Moore, who helped map the moon and inspired generations of star gazers with decades of television broadcasts, died on Sunday aged 89.
Moore presented BBC television‘s landmark “The Sky at Night” program for more than 50 years, making him the longest-running presenter of a single show in broadcasting history.
His old-fashioned appearance and rapid-fire delivery endeared him to television viewers and captured the imagination of future astronomers who paid tribute to the presenter and prolific author.
“Patrick would just sit in front of the camera for a whole episode … and just tell you about a constellation, about the stars, their names, their history,” British astronomer David Whitehouse told Sky News.
“It was captivating and the best example of communication and an expert sharing his enthusiasm that I have ever experienced.”
A space enthusiast from his early childhood, Moore’s television career coincided with the start of the space race between Russia and the United States.
“He was broadcasting before we actually went into space and he saw a change in our understanding of the universe,” British space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock told the BBC.
Moore, rarely seen without his trademark monocle, was also an enthusiastic musician and xylophone player and once accompanied a violin-playing Albert Einstein on the piano.
He never studied for a degree, building up his expertise through his own, single-minded enthusiasm, constructing an observatory in the garden of his southern England home.
His television show marked many astronomical landmarks, and he was broadcasting live when the first picture of the far side of the moon were returned by a Russian satellite.
Television schedulers were not always sympathetic to the significance of developments in space.
During the NASA Apollo 8 mission, Moore told viewers they were about to hear the voices of first men round the Moon in “one of the greatest moments in human history,” only to be interrupted by BBC switching the broadcast to a daily children’s show.
(Reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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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)
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