Canadian job creation seen sharply lower in December

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada‘s job market is expected to slow markedly in December to reflect the sluggish economy and employers’ fears about the U.S. fiscal crisis following outsized gains of over 50,000 jobs in two of the previous three months.

The median forecast in a Reuters poll is for the economy to add just 5,000 jobs in the month, with forecasts ranging from a loss of 20,000 positions to a gain of 21,000.

The forecast compares with employment growth of 59,600 in November, 1,800 in October and 52,100 in September.

The unemployment rate is seen ticking higher in the final month of the year to 7.3 percent from 7.2 percent.

Derek Holt, vice president of economics at Scotiabank, said he’s been surprised by the strength of job growth which he estimates to be the equivalent in the United States of about 1.5 million non-farm payroll jobs over the last three months.

“Here we are with the conundrum where we have zero growth in the Canadian economy, long predating the appearance of the greatest fiscal-cliff risks and yet we’re heaping on jobs like there’s no tomorrow,” Holt said.

Unlike the United States, Canada has long recovered all the jobs lost during the 2008-09 recession but the pace of hiring in 2012 was unsteady.

Benjamin Reitzes, economist at BMO Capital Markets, said if the 5,000-job forecast was accurate, it would put 2012 job growth at just 1.1 percent, “the weakest non-recession year since 1996.”

Canadian employers have faced uncertainty in one form or another during the recovery and are now fretting about the U.S. fiscal cliff, a set of tax hikes and spending cuts that will automatically take effect and could throw the United States into recession unless the White House and Congress reach an alternative agreement.

“For as long as Washington cannot agree on the new tax rules and spending focus, they’re not going to give business the confidence to go out and hire and engage in capital spending projects and that’s going to impede the pace of recovery until we get more clarity,” said Holt.

With the Canadian economy now expected to grow by far less in the fourth quarter than the Bank of Canada‘s projection of 2.5 percent, annualized, the blockbuster jobs growth of recent months looks suspect. The six-month trend shows more sustainable gains of about 21,000 a month.

The moderation means the Bank of Canada will be in no hurry to raise its benchmark interest rate, which it has held at 1.0 percent since September 2010.

Market players surveyed by Reuters in late November predicted the bank would resume hiking rates in the fourth quarter of 2013.

(Reporting by Louise Egan; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas

While it does have drawbacks just like anything else, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Surface is a great slate for those looking for a fresh new take on the modern tablet. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like very many people were looking for a fresh new take on the modern tablet this holiday season. In a recent note to investors, R.W. Baird analyst William Power recounted recent conversations had at retailers including Best Buy (BBY) and Staples (SPLS). While speaking with sales reps at the stores, Apple’s (AAPL) iPad was the most highly recommended tablet while Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire line and Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy Tab line were both recommended as alternatives. Microsoft’s Surface tablet, on the other hand, was not pushed by reps at either chain.

[More from BGR: Purported photo of new BlackBerry phone with QWERTY keyboard leaks]

From Power’s note, as picked up by Barron’s:

[More from BGR: Sprint salesman refuses to sell iPhone to customer, says his ‘fingers are too fat’ to use it]

Microsoft’s Surface, which Best Buy just recently started carrying, was not recommended to us by reps without us asking about it specifically. When asked about sales to date, reps noted that the device was new and indicated that early demand has been modest relative to the iPad and Kindle Fire. We would also note that the device was in stock at every store we contacted […] We contacted Staples stores in an effort to further gauge Microsoft Surface sales, though our impression from speaking with reps was tablets are not a major seller at Staples. Tellingly, Staples doesn’t currently carry the iPad. When pressed for details, Staples reps indicated that Surface volumes have been modest to date. Most reps told us that the primary appeal to Surface buyers is the ability to run Microsoft Office. Consistent with our Best Buy checks, the Surface was also in stock at all Staples stores we contacted. Outside of the Surface, the Google Nexus 10 was cited as another strong tablet option.

Further supporting the idea that Microsoft’s debut tablet wasn’t a big seller this holiday season, Twitter user A.X. Ian did a quick analysis of tweets discussing new tablets during a 24-hour period around Christmas Eve.

Based on his data, 1,795 people tweeted about getting a new iPad during that time span while 250 tweeted about their new Kindle Fires, 100 mentioned their new Nexus 10 tablets and just 36 tweets were posted by users who had received a new Surface.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Hot spots draw believers, but not doomsday

As the sun rose from time zone to time zone across the world on Friday, there was still no sign of the world’s end — but that didn’t stop those convinced that a 5,125-year Mayan calendar predicts the apocalypse from gathering at some of the world’s purported survival hot spots.

Many of the esoterically inclined expected a new age of consciousness — others wanted a party. But, in some places said to offer salvation from the end, fewer people showed up than officials had predicted — much to the disappointment of vendors hoping to sell souvenirs.

Here are some key places being marked by the fascination over doomsday rumors:

MEXICO

In an area of Mexico that was once the ancient Mayan heartland, spiritualists gathered in the darkness before dawn on Friday to prepare white clothes, drums, conch shells and incense. They believed the sunrise would herald the birth of a new and better age as a vast cycle in the Mayan calendar comes to an end.

Many people who came to Yucatan for the occasion were already calling it “a new sun” and “a new era.”

FRANCE

According to one rumor, a rocky mountain in the French Pyrenees will be the sole place on Earth to escape destruction. A giant UFO and aliens are said to be waiting under the mountain, ready to burst through and spirit those nearby to safety. But there is bad news for those seeking salvation: French gendarmes, some on horseback, blocked outsiders from reaching the Bugarach peak and its village of some 200 people.

Eric Freysselinard, head of local government, said the security forces had “partially stopped the new age enthusiasts as well as curious people from coming to the area.”

Meanwhile, some Bugarach residents dressed up like aliens, with tinfoil costumes and funnels and fake antenna on their heads, strolling around their village Friday to make light of the rumored UFO prophecy.

RUSSIA

Doomsday rumors have prompted some people across Russia to stock up on candles, water, canned foods and other non-perishable foods. The apocalypse has proven a good business, with some shops selling survival aid packages that include soap and vodka.

In Moscow, salvation has also been promised in the underground bunker for the former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — with a 50 percent refund if nothing happens. An underground stay was originally priced at 50,000 rubles ($ 1,625) but dropped to 15,000 ($ 490) a week ahead of the feared end.

The bunker, located 65 meters (210 feet) below ground, was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Now home to a small museum, it has an independent electricity supply, water and food — but no more room, because the museum has already sold out all 1,000 tickets.

BRITAIN

Hundreds of people have converged on Stonehenge for an “End of the World” party that coincides with the Winter Solstice.

Arthur Uther Pendragon, Britain’s best-known druid, said he was anticipating a much larger crowd than usual at Stonehenge this year. But he doesn’t agree that the world is ending, noting that he and fellow druids believe that things happen in cycles.

“We’re looking at it more as a new beginning than an end,” he said. “We’re looking at new hope.”

Meanwhile, end-of-days parties will be held across London on Friday. One event billed as a “last supper club” is offering a three-course meal served inside an “ark.”

SERBIA

Some Serbs are saying to forget that sacred mountain in the French Pyrenees. The place to be Friday is Mount Rtanj, a pyramid-shaped peak in Serbia already drawing cultists.

According to legend, the mountain once swallowed an evil sorcerer who will be released on doomsday in a ball of fire that will hit the mountain top. The inside of the mountain will then open up, becoming a safe place to hide as the sorcerer goes on to destroy the rest of the world. In the meantime, some old coal mine shafts have been opened up as safe rooms.

On Friday a New Age group called “The Spirit of Rtanj” was holding a conference there. Participants, however, said they expect not the end of time but the start of a new time cycle. Locals turned out to sell brandy and herbs.

“There will be no tragedy, no doomsday,” said resident Dalibor Jovic. “It was supposed to happen at 12:12 and I think that time has passed. So, we can now go on with our lives and be happy to be alive.”

TURKEY

A small Turkish village known for its wines, Sirince, has also been touted as the only place after Bugarach that would escape the world’s end. But on Friday journalists and security officials outnumbered cultists. This outcome disappointed local business people who had prepared a range of doomsday products to sell, including a specially labeled Doomsday wine and Turkish delight candy whose “best before” date was Dec. 21, 2012. One restaurant prepared a special “last meal” menu that included a “heaven kebab” and “forbidden fruit dessert.”

ITALY

Another spot said to be spared: Cisternino, a beautiful small town in southern Italy in an area of trulli, traditional dry stone huts with conical roofs. The notion that Cisternino could be a safe haven at world’s end derives from an Indian guru, Babaji, who said “Cisternino will become an island” at world’s end. His followers built a community in Cisternino centered on an ashram built in 1979. Hotel bookings are up this weekend.

Mayor Donato Baccaro told the AP that the beauty of the place has inspired many foreigners to live there. “This confirms that this place has a special energy,” he said.

CHINA

A fringe Christian group has been spreading rumors about the world’s impending end, prompting Chinese authorities to detain more than 500 people this week and seize leaflets, video discs, books and other material.

Those detained are reported to be members of the group Almighty God, also called Eastern Lightning, which preaches that Jesus has reappeared as a woman in central China. Authorities in the province of Qinghai say they are waging a “severe crackdown” on the group, accusing it of attacking the Communist Party and the government.

U.S.

Dozens of Michigan schools canceled classes for thousands of students to cool off rumored threats of violence and problems related to doomsday. The fears were exacerbated by the recent shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which “changed all of us,” the school system in Genesee County said. “Canceling school is the right thing to do.”

___

Associated Press writers Florent Bajrami in Bugarach, France; Mansur Mirovalev in Moscow; Peppino Ciraci in Cisternino, Italy; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Paisley Dodds in London; and Dejan Mladenovic in Mount Rtanj, Serbia, contributed to this report.

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Year in Review: Meningitis Outbreak Still a Challenge

As part of the Year in Review series, MedPage Today reporters are revisiting major news stories and following up with an analysis of the impact of the original report, as well as subsequent news on the topic. Here’s what’s happened with the fungal meningitis outbreak since we published our first report.

The fungal meningitis outbreak that made headlines in the fall was “unprecedented,” in the words of the of the clinicians at the eye of the storm.

What’s more, “we’re not out of the woods yet,” said Tom Chiller, MD, deputy director of the CDC’s mycotic diseases branch.

The outbreak was unprecedented for its size, for the spectrum of disease, for the clinical challenges that faced doctors, and for the way the pattern of illness has changed since the outbreak began, Chiller told MedPage Today.

It also has enormous implications for patients, their families, hospitals, and insurers, said Carol Kauffman, MD, a fungal infections expert at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich.

“The extent and repercussions of this outbreak, in comparison to other smaller outbreaks, are really amazing,” Kauffman told MedPage Today. “The huge morbidity and, for some, mortality, is enormous.”

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The outbreak, which has been linked to an injectable drug widely used to control chronic pain, has also seen the FDA under attack for not doing more to monitor so-called “compounding pharmacies.”

And the FDA has responded by saying it did not have clear authority to intervene, even though worries about the pharmacy in question, the New England Compounding Center (NECC) of Framingham, Mass., date back to at least 2002.

The agency is now asking for its authority to be clarified, although an organization representing compounding pharmacies has told lawmakers the FDA had all the power it needed, but just dropped the ball.

The bottom line from a public health standpoint is that as of Dec. 17, the CDC had recorded 620 cases of disease and 39 deaths. And more are likely, according to Chiller: “We’re still in the middle of this thing.”

Compounding Out of Bounds

The outbreak can be said to have started in the summer, when NECC made 17,675 vials of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, an injectable steroid, and shipped them to 76 healthcare facilities in 23 states.

That was problematic in itself: The company was licensed as a compounding pharmacy, meaning in principle it was allowed only to make up small quantities of specialized drugs, after getting a prescription from a doctor for an individual patient.

Instead, it was acting more like a large-scale drug manufacturer, and had been for some years, according to Massachusetts officials, which should have placed it under the FDA’s authority.

The manufacturing scale played a key role in what ensued: more than 13,000 people were exposed to the drug when they got injections – mainly into the spine – to control chronic pain.

They were also exposed to a fungal contaminant in the steroid vials, later found to be a black mold called Exserohilum rostratum, which only rarely causes human disease.

Oddly, the index case for the outbreak, reported to health authorities on Sept. 18, was a 56-year-old man in Nashville who had a case of meningitis apparently associated with the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus.

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Death! Sex! How Comic Books Bump Their Sales

In comic book publishing, the decision to kill off a long-running and beloved character may seem, at first glance, like a terribly unwise business move. But when Marvel Comics released its latest issue of Amazing Spider-Man—#700, which ends with Peter Parker, the webbed crusader’s alter ego, getting murdered—the issue began flying off the shelves.

“The sales are phenomenal,” says Axel Alonso, the editor in chief at Marvel Comics, “Amazing Spider-Man #700 has sold nearly 250,000 copies in print alone; final digital orders aren’t in yet. This is the best-selling comic book at this price-point of the last decade, at least.”Photograph Courtesy Marvel

Marvel isn’t the first comics company to lift sales by employing a shocking new creative direction. In fact, it’s actually a common practice, which gained attention in the 1970s but reached new heights in the early 1990s, when DC Comics destroyed its most famous character, Superman, in a publishing event that fueled sales across the world.

Here are four of the most surefire, lucrative, and reliably controversial methods that comic book creators use to gain readership and boost the bottom line.

I. Embrace alternative lifestyles

Gay characters are nothing new—an X-Men superhero called Northstar came out of the closet in 1992—but the subject is still controversial enough to cause a public outcry. The comic Life With Archie No. 16, which featured the first same-sex wedding in the series’ otherwise conservative history, hit newsstands in early 2012 and quickly became a target for One Million Moms, a conservative group that called for Toys R Us to stop selling the comic or be boycotted. The threat didn’t work. “[The Million Moms] really propelled the book,” says Archie Comics Chief Executive Jon Goldwater. “It was selling well anyway, but they made it a collector’s item. Last I heard it was selling on eBay for $ 50.” Dan Parent, a writer and illustrator who has worked for Archie for 20 years and penned the gay wedding issue, says he’d “love to send the Million Moms a big box of chocolates and flowers, to thank them for helping the Life With Archie book to sell out. It was a marketing dream.”

II. Court ethnicity

Marvel Comics unleashed an entirely new Spider-Man in August 2011. The costume was the same, but under it was a half-African American, half-Latino teenage boy named Miles Morales. Glenn Beck discussed the new biracial Spider-Man on his radio show. “The new Spider-Man looks just like president Obama,” he said. “I think a lot of this stuff is being done intentionally.” Stan Lee, the legendary comic book writer who co-created Spider-Man, dismisses the conspiracy theories. In fact, he says bringing a little ethnicity to comics is nothing new for his company. “Years ago at Marvel, in the 60s, we had a war book called Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos,” he says. “We introduced a black soldier, an Italian soldier, a Jewish soldier. We had every ethnic group represented in this platoon. And I was told, ‘Oh this book will never sell in the South.’ Or ‘it will never sell in the West.’ Or the North, or the East, or wherever the marketing department was worried somebody would be offended. But it was one of our best-selling books ever!”

III. Sex it up

Superheroes have always been synonymous with sex—their costumes aren’t skintight by accident—but in recent years, the characters have gotten far more steamy and intense. Several new titles released as part of DC Comics “New 52″ relaunch in 2011 included intimate scenes with over-the-top NSFW drawings. Catwoman #1, published in September 2011, gained attention for the eponymous character’s violent sex scene with Batman.

But sex in comics can come bearing consequences—as an issue of Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer series proved in February. Buffy, after discovering she’s pregnant, decides to get an abortion. “We wanted to court controversy,” admits Scott Allie, the editor in chief at Dark Horse Comics. “We were fed up with America’s glamorization of teenage pregnancy and wanted to do a story that explored the reasonable choice of terminating a pregnancy.” He says they anticipated the media headlines and even worked with their marketing department to encourage them, but “I don’t know that they really impact sales. Since it is a genuinely controversial issue, it probably costs us as many sales as it gets us.” In the end, Allie says, the issue sold well, but not in record numbers. “I think in order to do controversy in a way that would really boost sales, we’d have to try a little harder,” he says. “And that’s not a great reason to do it.”

IV. Kill your icons

Comic books have been killing off popular characters since the early 1970s, when Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy was murdered by the Green Goblin, which, at the time, was akin to superhero heresy. Since then, seemingly immortal characters like Superman, Robin the Boy Wonder, and Captain America have all been killed off at one time or another, usually followed by a tsunami-size media response and a comic-buying frenzy. “As far as what kind of controversy equates to biggest sales, it’s always been and always will be the death of a major character,” says Brandon Zuern, the store manager of Austin Books & Comics in Austin, Tex. “I think death in comics is way overused, but people keep buying them.” The best part of killing an iconic character is that the fans do most of the work for you. “The story kind of markets itself,” says Marvel Comics Editor in Chief Alonso. “You just get the word out, and people want to know more. ‘Peter Parker Death’ has been the No. 1 trending topic on Yahoo for the last two days, which speaks volumes about their love for Peter Parker.”

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Suspected US drone kills 3 al-Qaida men in Yemen

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Three al-Qaida militants were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike in southern Yemen, Yemeni security officials said, the fourth such attack this week and a sign attacks from unmanned aircraft are on the upswing in the country.

The officials said the three men were hit as they were riding in a Land Cruiser in el-Manaseh village on the outskirts of Radda in Bayda province. Dozens of local al-Qaida-linked fighters protested the drone strikes after traditional Islamic Friday prayers.

Earlier this week another suspected U.S. drone strike killed two militants in Radda itself, Yemeni security officials say, and seven were killed in two other strikes in the southeastern province of Hadramawt. Four suspected drone strikes a week is uncommon in Yemen.

According to statistics gathered by the Long War Journal before Saturday’s attacks, the United States “is known to have carried out 41 airstrikes” this year against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the group’s branch in Yemen is known. That makes for an average of around three to four strikes per month.

The Journal, a product of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that was founded by former U.S. officials, says that since December 2009, the CIA and the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command are known to have conducted at least 54 air and missile strikes inside Yemen, excluding Saturday’s suspected attack.

AQAP overran entire towns and villages — including Radda — last year by taking advantage of a security lapse during nationwide protests that eventually ousted the country’s longtime ruler. Backed by the U.S. military, Yemen’s army was able to regain control of the southern region but al-Qaida militants continue to launch deadly attacks on security forces that have killed hundreds.

Also on Saturday, two gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed an intelligence officer in the southeast, security officials said. They said that the officer, Mutea Baqutian, was on his way to work in Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt province, when the men stopped his car, gunned him down, and fled.

The government has blamed al-Qaida militants for similar assassinations of several senior military and intelligence officials this year. The bullet-riddled body of Major al-Numeiry Abdo al-Oudi, deputy director of the security department of al-Qitten in Hadramawt, was found in the town’s suburbs last week. He had been kidnapped earlier in the month.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity according to regulations.

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Seif, who is commander of Yemen’s central military region, said the Defense Ministry has deployed an infantry brigade in the northeastern province of Marib to stop armed tribesmen who maintain cordial ties with al-Qaida from attacking oil pipelines and power generating stations, as well as to counter al-Qaida militants.

State TV meanwhile aired a meeting between President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and eight Yemeni sailors who were rescued last week by forces of Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region after being held for nearly three years by Somali pirates.

The Puntland government says that its forces captured the hijacked Panama-flagged MV Iceberg 1 on Sunday after a siege that lasted two weeks. They freed the eight Yemeni sailors together with five Indians, two Pakistanis, four Ghanaians, two Sudanese and a Filipino. The ship was hijacked March 29, 2010.

Hadi congratulated the eight sailors for their safety and ordered the government to compensate them for their suffering.

Eqbal Yassin, a relative of one of the freed sailors, told The Associated Press that the hijackers had allowed some sailors to phone their relatives and convey the pirates’ demand for $ 5 million ransom. He said he was told by his relative that the hijackers killed a Yemeni sailor who tried to escape. He gave no further details.

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Apple still said to account for 87% of North American tablet traffic as Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 gain

Apple’s (AAPL) share of the global tablet market is in decline now that low-cost Android slates are proliferating, but the iPad still appears to be the most used tablet by a huge margin. Ad firm Chitika regularly monitors tablet traffic in the United States and Canada and in its latest report, Apple’s iPad was responsible for almost 90% of all tablet traffic across the company’s massive network.

[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]

Using a sample of tens of millions of impressions served to tablets between December 8th and December 14th this year, Chitika determined that various iPad models collectively accounted for 87% of tablet traffic in North America. That figure is down a point from the prior month but still represents a commanding lead in the space.

[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]

The next closest device line, Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire tablet family, had a 4.25% share of tablet traffic during that period, up from 3.57% in November. Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy tablets made up 2.65% of traffic, up from 2.36%, and Google’s (GOOG) Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets combined to account for 1.06% of tablet traffic in early December.

“Despite these gains by some of the bigger players in the tablet marketplace, there has been a negligible impact to Apple’s dominant usage share,” Chitika wrote in a post on its blog.

This article was originally published by BGR

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MSF warns Kenya not to send more refugees to stricken camp

LONDON (Reuters) – Conditions in a camp for Somali refugees in Kenya are deplorable and a government plan to send in thousands more would pose a major risk to health, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Friday.

Kenya has more than half a million refugees from Somalia, which has lacked an effective central government since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.

A series of bombings, shootings and hand-grenade attacks blamed on Somali militants prompted the government on December 18 to stop registering asylum seekers and refugees in urban areas.

A Kenyan official said more than 100,000 refugees must now head to the remote Dadaab camp in the country’s remote north. Amnesty International said the order breached international law.

Dadaab camp was set up 20 years ago and already houses four times the population it was built for. Hunger and disease outbreaks are common.

MSF says its inhabitants suffer from overcrowding and poor sanitation that recent floods had worsened.

“The assistance provided here in Dadaab is already completely overstretched and is not meeting the current needs,” said Elena Velilla, MSF’s head of mission in Kenya.

In the last month, the number of children admitted to Dadaab’s hospital for severe acute malnutrition has doubled to around 300, MSF said. Sixty-three of those were taken to intensive care this week after developing serious complications.

Most of the sick are also suffering from acute watery diarrhea or severe respiratory tract infections, MSF said.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Pending home sales hit two-and-half year high in November

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose in November to their highest level in 2-1/2 years, an industry group said on Friday, further evidence of a strengthening housing market recovery.

The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, increased 1.7 percent to 106.4 – the highest level since April 2010 when the home-buyer tax credit expired.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected signed contracts, which become sales after a month or two, to rise 1.0 percent after a revised 5.0 percent increase in October. It was the third straight month of gains.

“Home sales are recovering now based solely on fundamental demand and favorable affordability conditions,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.

Pending home sales were up 9.8 percent in the 12 months through November.

The housing market has turned the corner after a dramatic collapse, which dragged the economy through its worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Home sales and prices are rising, encouraging builders to undertake new construction projects.

Home resale contracts were up in three of the country’s four regions. They were unchanged in the South.

(Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Neil Stempleman)

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C. African Republic president seeks foreign help

BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — The president of Central African Republic on Thursday urgently called on France and other foreign powers to help his government fend off rebels who are quickly seizing territory and approaching the capital, but French officials declined to offer any military assistance.

The developments suggest Central African Republic could be on the brink of another violent change in government, something not new in the history of this resource-rich, yet deeply impoverished country. The current president, Francois Bozize, himself came to power nearly a decade ago in the wake of a rebellion.

Speaking to crowds in Bangui, a city of some 600,000, Bozize pleaded with foreign powers to do what they could. He pointed in particular to France, Central African Republic’s former colonial ruler.

About 200 French soldiers are already in the country, providing technical support and helping to train the local army, according to the French defense ministry.

“France has the means to stop (the rebels) but unfortunately they have done nothing for us until now,” Bozize said.

French President Francois Hollande said Thursday that France wants to protect its interests in Central African Republic and not Bozize’s government. The comments came a day after dozens of protesters, angry about a lack of help against rebel forces, threw rocks at the French Embassy in Bangui and stole a French flag.

Paris is encouraging peace talks between the government and the rebels, with the French Foreign Ministry noting in a statement that negotiations are due to “begin shortly in Libreville (Gabon).” But it was not immediately clear what, if any, dates have been set for those talks.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, meanwhile, spoke via phone with Bozize, asking the president to take responsibility for the safety of French nationals and diplomatic missions in Central African Republic.

U.S. officials said Thursday the State Department would close its embassy in the country and ordered its diplomatic team to leave. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the evacuation publicly.

The United Nations Security Council issued a press statement late Thursday reiterating its concern about the situation in the country and condemned the attacks.

“The members of the Security Council reiterate their demand that the armed groups immediately cease hostilities, withdraw from captured cities and cease any further advance towards the city of Bangui,” the statement reads.

Bozize’s government earlier reached out to longtime ally Chad, which pledged to send 2,000 troops to bolster Central African Republic’s own forces. But it was unclear if the Chadian troops had all arrived, and even then, it is far from certain if the combined government forces could withstand rebel attacks.

At least four different rebel groups are involved, though their overall numbers could not immediately be confirmed.

Central African Republic, a landlocked nation of some 4.4 million people, is roughly the size of France. It has suffered decades of army revolts, coups and rebellions since gaining independence in 1960 and remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

The rebels behind the most recent instability signed a 2007 peace accord allowing them to join the regular army, but insurgent leaders say the deal wasn’t fully implemented.

Already, the rebel forces have seized at least 10 towns across the sparsely populated north of the country, and residents in the capital now fear the insurgents could attack at any time, despite assurances by rebel leaders that they are willing to engage in dialogue instead of attacking Bangui.

The rebels have claimed that their actions are justified in light of the “thirst for justice, for peace, for security and for economic development of the people of Central African Republic.”

Despite Central African Republic’s wealth of gold, diamonds, timber and uranium, the government remains perpetually cash-strapped. Filip Hilgert, a researcher with Belgium-based International Peace Information Service, said rebel groups are unhappy because they feel the government doesn’t invest in their areas.

“The main thing they say is that the north of the country, and especially in their case the northeast, has always been neglected by the central government in all ways,” he said.

But the rebels also are demanding that the government make payments to ex-combatants, suggesting that their motives may also be for personal financial gain.

Bozize, a former military commander, came to power in a 2003 rebel war that ousted his predecessor, Ange-Felix Patasse. In his address Thursday, Bozize said he remained open to dialogue with the rebels, but he also accused them and their allies of financial greed.

Those allies, he implied, are outside Central African Republic.

“For me, there are individuals who are being manipulated by an outside hand, dreaming of exploiting the rich Central African Republic soil,” he said. “They want only to stop us from benefiting from our oil, our diamonds, our uranium and our gold.”

___

Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writer Sarah DiLorenzo in Paris contributed to this report.

Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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