Cable attacks company ‘tax abuse’

18 November 2012 Last updated at 07:14 ET

Vince Cable: “It is completely unacceptable when there is systematic abuse taking place”

Business Secretary Vince Cable has condemned corporate tax avoidance as “completely unacceptable”, saying there are “appalling stories of abuse”.

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show UK authorities should do more to stop it.

However, he said that tackling the issue required international agreement as well as domestic action.

His comments came after executives from Starbucks, Google and Amazon were grilled by MPs, although the firms say they operate within the tax rules.

The executives were questioned earlier this month by the Public Accounts Committee about how they used favourable European tax jurisdictions for their UK businesses.

Starbucks, for example, has made a taxable profit only once in its 15 years of operating in the UK. As a consequence, the company is thought to have paid just £8.6m in corporation tax over the period.

During the hearing with MPs, Starbucks admitted the Dutch government had granted a special tax deal on its European headquarters, which receives royalty payments from its UK business.

‘Intensive investigation’

Mr Cable told Andrew Marr: “The best off in society have got to contribute more, and that includes companies.”

Amazon’s Andrew Cecil was condemned by MPs for failing to answer questions

He acknowledged that smaller companies, many of which face competitive pressures from the major firms, will be angered by the situation.

“There’s nothing more galling to small and medium-sized enterprises when they are paying (tax), and others are dodging it,” Mr Cable said. “Our own tax authorities have got to be very tough on things like royalty payments, which is where a lot of the subterfuge takes place.”

However, he said that finding a solution was difficult, especially as the UK had to make itself attractive to inward investors. “The big question is whether you can get wider (international) agreement,” he said.

As companies are using favourable tax jurisdictions overseas there needs to “a combination of action at the international level as well as beef up our own capacity to deal with it”.

Mr Cable said: “It is quite difficult to drill down to what the problems are. Starbucks claims they are actually making losses in the UK. I don’t know whether they are not but you would need some pretty intensive investigation by the Inland Revenue to establish what exactly is going on, whether their transfer prices and their royalties are being fiddled or not.”

All the companies under fire over the amount of corporation tax paid said that they operated within the tax rules and regulations and have done nothing wrong.

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Israel, Gaza fighting rages on as Egypt seeks truce

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel bombed Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip from air and sea for a fifth straight day on Sunday, preparing for a possible ground invasion though Egypt saw “some indications” of a truce ahead.

Militant rocket fire into Israel subsided during the night but resumed in the morning with three rockets fired at the nearby coastal city of Ashkelon, the Israeli army said.

“As of now we have struck more than 1,000 targets, so Hamas should do the math over whether it is or isn’t worth it to cease fire,” Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, over Twitter.

“If there is quiet in the South and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel’s citizens nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack.”

Forty-eight Palestinians, about half of them civilians, including 13 children, have been killed in Israel’s raids, Palestinian officials said. More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel, killing three people and injuring dozens.

Israel unleashed intensive air strikes on Wednesday, killing the commander of the Hamas Islamist group that governs Gaza and spurns peace with the Jewish state. Israel’s declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and press Hamas into stopping cross-border rocket fire that has plagued Israeli border towns for years.

Air raids continued past midnight into Sunday, with warships shelling from the sea. A Gaza City media building was hit, witnesses said, wounding 6 journalists and damaging facilities belonging to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain’s Sky News.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the strike had targeted a rooftop “transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity”.

Two other predawn attacks on houses in the Jabalya refugee camp killed two children and wounded 13 other people, medical officials said.

These attacks followed a defiant statement by Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida, who told a news conference: “This round of confrontation will not be the last against the Zionist enemy and it is only the beginning.”

The masked gunman dressed in military fatigues insisted that despite Israel’s blows Hamas “is still strong enough to destroy the enemy”.

An Israeli attack on Saturday destroyed the house of a Hamas commander near the Egyptian border.

Casualties there were averted however, because Israel had fired non-exploding missiles at the building beforehand from a drone, which the militant’s family understood as a warning to flee, and thus their lives were spared, witnesses said.

Israeli aircraft also bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a police headquarters.

Among those killed in air strikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding motorcycles, and several civilians including a 30-year-old woman.

ISRAELI SCHOOLS SHUT

Israel said it would keep schools in its south shut on Sunday as a precaution to avoid casualties from rocket strikes reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the past few days.

Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile interceptor system destroyed in mid-air a rocket fired by Gaza militants at Tel Aviv on Saturday, where volleyball games on the beach front came to an abrupt halt as air-raid sirens sounded.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it had fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, but there was also a growing number of calls from world leaders to seek an end to the violence.

British Prime Minister David Cameron “expressed concern over the risk of the conflict escalating further and the danger of further civilian casualties on both sides,” in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a spokesperson for Cameron said.

London was “putting pressure on both sides to de-escalate,” the spokesman said, adding that Cameron had urged Netanyahu “to do everything possible to bring the conflict to an end.”

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said the United States would like to see the conflict resolved through “de-escalation” and diplomacy, but also believes Israel has a right to self-defense.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that “there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees.”

Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unraveled with recent violence.

A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying “there is hope,” but it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.

In Jerusalem, an Israeli official declined to comment on the negotiations. Military commanders said Israel was prepared to fight on to achieve a goal of halting rocket fire from Gaza, which has plagued Israeli towns since late 2000, when failed peace talks led to the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising.

Diplomats at the United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt in the coming week to push for an end to the fighting.

POSSIBLE GROUND OFFENSIVE

Israel, with tanks and artillery positioned along the frontier, said it was still weighing a ground offensive.

Israeli cabinet ministers decided on Friday to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000 and around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan. … It will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favored to win a January election.

The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion over the New Year of 2008-09, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s maneuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Douglas Hamilton)

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Israel, Gaza fighting rages on as Egypt seeks truce

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel bombed Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip from air and sea for a fifth straight day on Sunday, preparing for a possible ground invasion though Egypt saw “some indications” of a truce ahead.

Militant rocket fire into Israel subsided during the night but resumed in the morning with three rockets fired at the nearby coastal city of Ashkelon, the Israeli army said.

“As of now we have struck more than 1,000 targets, so Hamas should do the math over whether it is or isn’t worth it to cease fire,” Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, over Twitter.

“If there is quiet in the South and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel’s citizens nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack.”

Forty-eight Palestinians, about half of them civilians, including 13 children, have been killed in Israel’s raids, Palestinian officials said. More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel, killing three people and injuring dozens.

Israel unleashed intensive air strikes on Wednesday, killing the commander of the Hamas Islamist group that governs Gaza and spurns peace with the Jewish state. Israel’s declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and press Hamas into stopping cross-border rocket fire that has plagued Israeli border towns for years.

Air raids continued past midnight into Sunday, with warships shelling from the sea. A Gaza City media building was hit, witnesses said, wounding 6 journalists and damaging facilities belonging to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain’s Sky News.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the strike had targeted a rooftop “transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity”.

Two other predawn attacks on houses in the Jabalya refugee camp killed two children and wounded 13 other people, medical officials said.

These attacks followed a defiant statement by Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida, who told a news conference: “This round of confrontation will not be the last against the Zionist enemy and it is only the beginning.”

The masked gunman dressed in military fatigues insisted that despite Israel’s blows Hamas “is still strong enough to destroy the enemy”.

An Israeli attack on Saturday destroyed the house of a Hamas commander near the Egyptian border.

Casualties there were averted however, because Israel had fired non-exploding missiles at the building beforehand from a drone, which the militant’s family understood as a warning to flee, and thus their lives were spared, witnesses said.

Israeli aircraft also bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a police headquarters.

Among those killed in air strikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding motorcycles, and several civilians including a 30-year-old woman.

ISRAELI SCHOOLS SHUT

Israel said it would keep schools in its south shut on Sunday as a precaution to avoid casualties from rocket strikes reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the past few days.

Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile interceptor system destroyed in mid-air a rocket fired by Gaza militants at Tel Aviv on Saturday, where volleyball games on the beach front came to an abrupt halt as air-raid sirens sounded.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it had fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, but there was also a growing number of calls from world leaders to seek an end to the violence.

British Prime Minister David Cameron “expressed concern over the risk of the conflict escalating further and the danger of further civilian casualties on both sides,” in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a spokesperson for Cameron said.

London was “putting pressure on both sides to de-escalate,” the spokesman said, adding that Cameron had urged Netanyahu “to do everything possible to bring the conflict to an end.”

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said the United States would like to see the conflict resolved through “de-escalation” and diplomacy, but also believes Israel has a right to self-defense.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that “there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees.”

Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unraveled with recent violence.

A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying “there is hope,” but it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.

In Jerusalem, an Israeli official declined to comment on the negotiations. Military commanders said Israel was prepared to fight on to achieve a goal of halting rocket fire from Gaza, which has plagued Israeli towns since late 2000, when failed peace talks led to the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising.

Diplomats at the United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt in the coming week to push for an end to the fighting.

POSSIBLE GROUND OFFENSIVE

Israel, with tanks and artillery positioned along the frontier, said it was still weighing a ground offensive.

Israeli cabinet ministers decided on Friday to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000 and around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan. … It will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favored to win a January election.

The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion over the New Year of 2008-09, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s maneuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Douglas Hamilton)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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RIM to spice BlackBerry 10 AppWorld with local flavors

WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) – Research In Motion is pushing for app quality, not quantity, with its make-or-break BlackBerry 10 devices set for launch on January 30, and targeting applications to customers in various regions.

RIM’s projected 100,000 apps – a record for any new platform at launch – will still be a fraction of those available on Apple Inc or Google Inc devices.

But it is a stronger showing than RIM’s PlayBook tablet computer which was slammed at its 2011 launch for a dearth of apps and incomplete software.

In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, RIM Chief Executive Thorsten Heins admitted that app libraries play a crucial role in the success or failure of smartphones. But he said the game is not just about numbers.

“The tactic we are deploying is by country and by region. We are aiming to have the most important 200 to 400 apps available, because many applications are regional and they really do have a regional flavor,” Heins said.

RIM says it aims to offer both the most popular applications in the market, and also those most relevant to Blackberry aficionados – people Heins described as hyper-connected multi-taskers who need to get things done.

RIM’s ultra-secure BlackBerry was once the smartphone of choice for government and corporate elites. But rivals have taken giant bites out of RIM’s market share, especially in North America, and the company’s stock has slumped. The BlackBerry remains popular in many emerging markets, partly for its popular BBM messaging system.

With this in mind, RIM has hosted events with developers across the globe.

“We’ve done 30 jam conferences in various cities all around the world, to get the bucket filled with meaningful local apps and not just a huge bunch of applications that you collect and throw at your audience,” he said. “It is a very, very targeted approach.”

Heins, who has met with customers and carriers in a series of whirlwind global tours, came across as relaxed and confident in the interview, in RIM’s Waterloo headquarters.

Speaking rapid fire English with just a hint of an accent from his native Germany, he acknowledged that RIM’s fate may depend on the success of BB10, but he said feedback from clients has been very encouraging.

RIM hopes its new line of BB10 smartphones will help it claw back market share from Apple’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s Android operating system. Developers say like what they see, but analysts are not convinced that RIM’s gamble on BB10 will succeed.

BIG NAME DRAWS

In terms of numbers, RIM’s app offering will remain far behind the Apple and Google app stores, each of which boast over 700,000 apps. But Heins said he was not worried.

“In my view it is really short-sighted to say, you have 600,000, you have 400,000 and you only have 100,000 apps, so you are not good,” he said.

“Look at how many actually get downloaded. … BlackBerry App World today is still the most profitable portal for application developers – it has the highest number of paid for downloads.”

In a small dig at his rivals, he added: “We don’t have 1,500 Solitaire apps. That is not what Blackberry is about.”

RIM has already said it plans business focused apps from the likes of Cisco WebEx, Box, SAP and Blackboard, as well as music and movie apps like TuneIn, Nobex and Popcornflix and gaming apps from developers like Gameloft, Halfbrick and Paw Print Games.

Heins has said social networks such as LinkedIn, Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook will all have apps for BB10 at launch. But he declined to name any of the other big name apps that RIM will have on board come launch day.

“Allow me to talk to you about this on January 30, otherwise I’m losing a lot of thunder,” he said.

(Editing by Janet Guttsman and Richard Chang)

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Tulsa Town Hall: Nutrition a valuable tool in health care

Weil spoke as part of the Tulsa Town Hall series of speakers.

The United States has an expensive health-care system that doesn’t produce good results, he said.

“Something is very wrong with this picture,” he said. “We’re spending more and more and we have less and less to show for it.”

Changes in diet can be an effective treatment for many conditions, but American physicians are functionally illiterate in nutrition, he said.

“The whole subject of nutrition is omitted in medical education,” he said.

There are many ways of managing diseases other than drugs, he said. Integrative medicine, which can include dietary supplements and practices like meditation, is the future of health care, he said.

The health system is resistant to change because of entrenched vested interests. That includes pharmaceutical companies that do direct-to-consumer advertising, which should be stopped, he said.

“As dysfunctional as our health-care system is at the moment – and it is very dysfunctional – it is generating rivers of money,” he said. “That money is going into very few pockets.”

Weil has developed an anti-inflammatory diet based on the Mediterranean diet but with Asian influences.

Inflammation is associated with some heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and some cancers, he said. And as a result, people should be eating real, unprocessed foods and whole grains. They should stay away from sugar-sweetened beverages, including fruit juice, he said.

“The new research that’s being done on sugar is not very comforting,” he said.

The aging process can’t be avoided, but age-related diseases can be avoided by proper care, he said.

“The goal should be to live long and well with a big drop off at the end,” he said.

Weil is the director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrative Medicine.

Tickets to the Tulsa Town Hall series are sold as a $ 75 subscription and cover five lectures. Tickets for individual lectures are not available.

To subscribe, visit tulsaworld.com/tulsatownhall, call 918-749-5965 or write to: Tulsa Town Hall, Box 52266, Tulsa, OK 74152.

Future speakers include journalist Ann Compton on Feb. 8; author James B. Stewart on April 5; historian and cinematographer Rex Ziak on May 10.

Original Print Headline: Speaker highlights nutrition

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Shannon Muchmore 918-581-8378
shannon.muchmore@tulsaworld.com
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New driver passenger ban ‘mulled’

17 November 2012 Last updated at 08:07 ET

Ministers may consider moves to ban young drivers in England and Wales from carrying anyone except family members as passengers, reports suggest.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin told the Daily Telegraph he was looking at ways of reducing road deaths involving newly-qualified motorists.

Insurers believe peer pressure on young drivers can lead them to take risks.

The Department for Transport says the issue is being considered but there are “no plans” for legislation.

The Association of British Insurers says drivers aged 17-24 are responsible for a disproportionately high number of crashes, deaths and claims.

It says an 18-year-old is more than three times as likely as a 48-year-old to be involved in a crash, and that a third of drivers killed in car accidents were under 25.

That was despite the fact that the under 25s form only one in eight of all car drivers.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Mr McLoughlin said he would consider measures put forward by the ABI which could cut the number of accidents involving young motorists.

Continue reading the main story

Other countries have adopted these measures and their experience has shown that they’re largely self-policing”

End Quote Malcolm Tarling Association of British Insurers

“I read regular reports where three or four young people have been killed in a car, and it’s a new driver, and you wonder what happened,” he told the newspaper.

“When I talk to young people who have recently passed their test, what they say sometimes is that peer pressure is put on them to go fast, to show off.

“They are not anticipating an accident, but something goes wrong. They are not drivers with a huge amount of experience by the very fact of their being new drivers. I think we have got to look at that.

“There is a suggestion as to whether you should look at a restriction whether anyone could carry passengers for six or nine months when they have first passed their test.

“There are suggestions about them only perhaps being allowed to take a family member to drive a car when you are learning, you have to have a qualified driver in the car. So these are all sorts of areas that I think we can look at.”

It comes six weeks after the Association of British Insurers called for an overhaul in the system – suggesting people should spend a year learning to drive and urging the introduction of a graduated licence for the first six months after passing a test.

ABI spokesman Malcolm Tarling denied that a restriction on who young drivers could carry as passengers would be difficult to enforce.

He said: “In terms of policing, you could use that argument for just about anything, really.

“Other countries have adopted these measures and their experience has shown that they’re largely self-policing.

“Of course there will always be people who will look to avoid the law, but the reality is if you impose something like this, and encourage people to follow it, international experience has shown that that is exactly what people do.”

But Neil Greig from the Institute of Advanced Motorists said forcing young motorists to carry only family members with them in the car would not necessarily make them safer drivers.

“Young drivers themselves admit that they are lacking experience, but we don’t believe that restricting people – such as curfews at night and restricting the number of passengers they can carry – is the way to develop that experience.

“They need the opportunities to get to learn, by doing these things, by carrying young people, by going out at night – how else can they learn?”

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “Improving the safety and ability of young drivers is a key priority for the government, which is why we have made the driving test more realistic – and are also considering how to improve training for drivers after they pass their test.

“There are no plans to introduce graduated licensing in England and Wales.

“However, we are working with young people, the insurance industry, and other key partners to identify what more can be done to ensure that newly qualified drivers are properly prepared and drive safely.

“We will consider carefully any ideas that reduce the risks of accidents involving young drivers.”

BBC News – Business

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Canadian October home sales dip, latest sign of cooling

TORONTO (Reuters) – Sales of existing homes in Canada fell in October from September and year-over-year sales were down as well, the Canadian Real Estate Association said on Thursday in the latest signal that the housing market is slowing.

The industry group for Canadian real estate agents said sales were down 0.1 percent in October from September. Actual sales for October, not seasonally adjusted, were down 0.8 percent from a year earlier.

The housing market, which roared higher in 2011 and the first half of 2012, started to slow after the government tightened rules on mortgage lending in July in a bid to cool the market and prevent home buyers from taking on too much debt.

“Housing market trends in Canada for 2012 can be characterized as before and after regulatory changes,” TD Economics senior economist Sonya Gulati said in a research note.

“In the first half of the year, sales and price gains were modest, but positive. More stringent mortgage rules and tighter mortgage underwriting rules have ‘purposely’ knocked the wind out of the housing market sails,” she said.

The home sales data showed diverging paths in Canadian housing depending on location. In Toronto and Vancouver, where sales and price gains were red hot in 2011 and early in 2012, the market has been cooling. But markets in the resource-rich western provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta have been gaining strength.

“Opinions differ about how sharply sales have slowed depending on the local housing market,” Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist, said in a statement.

Led by Calgary, sales in October were up from a year earlier in almost two-thirds of local markets. Sales remained blow year-earlier levels in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, CREA said.

“These results suggest that the Canadian housing market overall has returned to a more sustainable pace,” Klump said.

CREA’s Home Price Index rose 3.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month in which gains in prices slowed, and the slowest rate of increase since May 2011.

While tighter mortgage rules have worked to slow the market, TD’s Gulati said the big question is what will happen when that temporary cooling effect wears off in early 2013.

“What happens thereafter is less certain. The low interest rate environment could pull homeowners back onto the market, causing home prices to once again trek upwards. Alternatively, an absence of pent-up demand may leave the market in a bit of a lull until interest rate hikes resume in late 2013,” she wrote.

“Under either scenario, it is safe to say that there is a low probability of out-sized home price gains over the near-term.”

A total of 402,322 homes traded hands via Canadian MLS systems over the first 10 months of 2012, up 0.8 percent from the same period last year and 0.4 percent below the 10-year average for the period, the data showed.

The number of newly listed homes fell 3.8 percent in October following a jump in September. Monthly declines were reported in almost two-thirds of local markets, with Toronto and Vancouver exerting a large influence on the national trend.

Nationally, there were 6.5 months of inventory at the end of October, little changed from the reading of 6.4 months at the end of September.

(Editing by Peter Galloway)

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Canadian October home sales dip, latest sign of cooling

TORONTO (Reuters) – Sales of existing homes in Canada fell in October from September and year-over-year sales were down as well, the Canadian Real Estate Association said on Thursday in the latest signal that the housing market is slowing.

The industry group for Canadian real estate agents said sales were down 0.1 percent in October from September. Actual sales for October, not seasonally adjusted, were down 0.8 percent from a year earlier.

The housing market, which roared higher in 2011 and the first half of 2012, started to slow after the government tightened rules on mortgage lending in July in a bid to cool the market and prevent home buyers from taking on too much debt.

“Housing market trends in Canada for 2012 can be characterized as before and after regulatory changes,” TD Economics senior economist Sonya Gulati said in a research note.

“In the first half of the year, sales and price gains were modest, but positive. More stringent mortgage rules and tighter mortgage underwriting rules have ‘purposely’ knocked the wind out of the housing market sails,” she said.

The home sales data showed diverging paths in Canadian housing depending on location. In Toronto and Vancouver, where sales and price gains were red hot in 2011 and early in 2012, the market has been cooling. But markets in the resource-rich western provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta have been gaining strength.

“Opinions differ about how sharply sales have slowed depending on the local housing market,” Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist, said in a statement.

Led by Calgary, sales in October were up from a year earlier in almost two-thirds of local markets. Sales remained blow year-earlier levels in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, CREA said.

“These results suggest that the Canadian housing market overall has returned to a more sustainable pace,” Klump said.

CREA’s Home Price Index rose 3.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month in which gains in prices slowed, and the slowest rate of increase since May 2011.

While tighter mortgage rules have worked to slow the market, TD’s Gulati said the big question is what will happen when that temporary cooling effect wears off in early 2013.

“What happens thereafter is less certain. The low interest rate environment could pull homeowners back onto the market, causing home prices to once again trek upwards. Alternatively, an absence of pent-up demand may leave the market in a bit of a lull until interest rate hikes resume in late 2013,” she wrote.

“Under either scenario, it is safe to say that there is a low probability of out-sized home price gains over the near-term.”

A total of 402,322 homes traded hands via Canadian MLS systems over the first 10 months of 2012, up 0.8 percent from the same period last year and 0.4 percent below the 10-year average for the period, the data showed.

The number of newly listed homes fell 3.8 percent in October following a jump in September. Monthly declines were reported in almost two-thirds of local markets, with Toronto and Vancouver exerting a large influence on the national trend.

Nationally, there were 6.5 months of inventory at the end of October, little changed from the reading of 6.4 months at the end of September.

(Editing by Peter Galloway)

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Exclusive: Facebook offering e-retailers sales tracking tool

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc wants more credit for making online cash registers ring.

Facebook will begin rolling out on Friday a new tool which will allow online retailers to track purchases by members of the social network who have viewed their ads.

The tool is the latest of the new advertising features Facebook is offering to convince marketers that steering advertising dollars to the company will deliver a payoff.

Facebook, with roughly 1 billion users, has faced a tough reception on Wall Street amid concerns about its slowing revenue growth.

“Measuring ad effectiveness and outcomes is absolutely crucial to all types of businesses and marketers,” said David Baser, a product manager for Facebook’s ads business who said the “conversion measurement” tool has been a top customer request for a long time.

The sales information that advertisers receive is anonymous, said Baser. “You would see the number of people who bought shoes,” he said, using the example of an online shoe retailer. But marketers would not be able to get information that could identify the people, he added.

The conversion tool is specifically designed for so-called direct response marketers, such as online retailers and travel websites that advertise with the goal of drumming up immediate sales rather than for longer-term brand-building.

Such advertisers have long flocked to Google Inc’s Web search engine, which can deliver ads to consumers at the exact moment they’re looking for information on a particular product.

But some analysts say there is room for Facebook to make inroads if it can demonstrate results.

“The path to purchase” is not as direct on Facebook as it is on Google’s search engine, said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with research firm eMarketer. But she said that providing information about customer sales conversion should help Facebook make a stronger case to online retailers.

“It lets marketers track the impact of a Facebook ad hours or days or even a week beyond when someone might have viewed the ad,” said Williamson. “That allows marketers to understand the impact of the Facebook ad on the ultimate purchase.”

Marketers will also have the option to aim their ads at segments of Facebook’s audience with similar attributes to consumers that have responded well to a particular ad in the past, Baser said.

Online retailer Fab.com, which has tested Facebook’s new service, was able to reduce its cost per new customer acquisition by 39 percent when it served ads to consumers deemed most likely to convert, Facebook said. Facebook defines a conversion as anything from a completed sale, to a consumer taking another desired action on a website, such as registering for a newsletter.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

Shares of Facebook, which were priced at $ 38 a share in its May initial public offering, closed Thursday’s regular session at $ 22.17.

In recent months, Facebook has introduced a variety of new advertising capabilities and moved to broaden its appeal to various groups of advertisers.

Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in October that Facebook saw multi-billion revenue opportunities in each of four groups of advertisers: brand marketers, local businesses, app developers and direct response marketers.

Facebook does not disclose how much of its ad revenue, which totaled $ 1.09 billion in the third quarter, comes from each type of advertiser. Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser estimates that brand marketers and local businesses account for the bulk of Facebook’s current advertising revenue.

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced a similar conversion measurement service for big brand advertisers, such as auto manufacturers, partnering with data mining firm Datalogix to help connect the dots between consumer spending at brick-and-mortar and Facebook ads.

And Facebook has rolled out new marketing tools for local businesses such as restaurants and coffee shops, including a revamped online coupon service and simplified advertising capabilities known as promoted posts.

The new conversion measurement tool is launching in testing mode, but will be fully available by the end of the month, Facebook said.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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CDC Report: Number of U.S. Adults with Diabetes Has Skyrocketed

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the findings from its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) on Thursday, which focused on the prevalence of diabetes among American adults. The MMWR stated that the number of new cases of diabetes, particularly type 2 diabetes, has risen dramatically in the last 15 years across the country, especially in some of the southern states.

The report looked at self-reported data collected from the participants of the study between the years of 1995 and 2010. The data was sorted and analyzed using a CDC system known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to determine whether or not the average rate of diabetes had increased over time, and if so, by how much.

Here is some of the key information to emerge from the CDC’s latest MMWR release about diabetes.

* According to the MMWR, diabetes prevalence was higher than 6 percent of the adult population in only three states at the start of the study in 1995. Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., also had a greater than 6 percent prevalence of adult diabetes at that time.

* In 2010, at the conclusion of the study, every U.S. state, along with Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., reported a prevalence of diabetes among its adult population that was greater than or equal to 6 percent. In addition, six states as well as Puerto Rico reported a prevalence of diabetes among their adult populations of greater than or equal to 10 percent.

* All of the participants in the study were 18 years or older. The study was conducted through telephone surveys.

* According to a report by Reuters regarding the study, Oklahoma was the state that had the largest increase in the percentage of adults living within its borders who have been diagnosed with diabetes. Kentucky was next, followed by Georgia, Alabama, Washington and West Virginia.

* Linda Geiss, the lead author of the study, told CNN on Thursday that she was surprised by the research team’s findings, saying that the “level of increase was shocking to me.” Specifically, Geiss was referring to the fact that the team found that the number of adults living with diabetes increased by at least 100 percent in 18 different states over the course of their research.

* The states that charted the highest percentage increases in the number of new diabetes cases also have had some of the highest increases in the number of adults who are considered obese, according to the CNN report.

* Geiss told CNN on Thursday that a person “should know that” they “can prevent the disease or delay it” by getting more exercise, adjusting their diet, and losing weight.

Vanessa Evans is a musician and freelance writer based in Michigan, with a lifelong interest in health and nutrition issues.

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