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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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)
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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)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
REDFORD, Michigan (Reuters) – Making no visible headway in direct talks with Republicans, President Barack Obama took to the road on Monday to apply pressure on his political opponents to agree to a “fiscal cliff” deal that would raise taxes on the richest Americans.
Wearing shirtsleeves with no suit coat and speaking in front of an array of auto workers, Obama plunged into his new campaign a month after winning re-election on a vow to raise taxes on the wealthiest and take care of the middle class.
Obama made his appeal in Michigan where his popularity is high due in part to the 2009 government bailout of the state’s auto industry. He won Michigan easily in the November 6 election.
Now, Obama is trying to convince Americans that congressional Republicans need to avert a year-end fiscal crisis by increasing taxes on people making more than $ 250,000 a year.
If no agreement is reached by January 1, Bush-era tax cuts on all Americans expire and spending cuts agreed to last year kick in, a scenario known as the fiscal cliff that could hurl the economy back into recession.
A typical middle-class family of four, Obama said, would see an income tax hike of $ 2,200 a year if no deal is done.
“How many of you can afford to pay another $ 2,200?” he asked workers at a Daimler automobile manufacturing plant near Detroit. “That’s a hit you can’t afford to take.”
Polling shows most Americans would blame Republicans if the country goes over the fiscal cliff, and pressure has been building from some Republicans for House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner to get an agreement quickly, even if it means tax hikes on the wealthiest.
Obama painted a stark picture of what would happen if bipartisan talks fail.
Consumer spending would go down because families would have less expendable income, meaning businesses would have fewer customers and the economy would go into a “downward spiral,” he said.
“There’s good news,” he said. “We can solve this problem.”
Republicans accuse Obama of not proposing sufficient cuts to entitlements, like the Medicare health insurance program for seniors, to make a tax increase more palatable to Republicans.
The two sides have hit back at each other with rhetorical broadsides and appear no closer to an agreement than they did a month ago. The White House and Boehner’s office held more talks on Monday.
The Michigan trip was Obama’s second to hammer away on the fiscal cliff theme, after a stop in Pennsylvania on November 30.
(Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)
Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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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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
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)
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)
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