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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Kanye West, Kim Kardashian expecting 1st child

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A kid for Kimye: Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are expecting their first child.

The rapper announced at a concert Sunday night that his girlfriend is pregnant. He told the crowd of more than 5,000 at Revel Resort‘s Ovation Hall in song form: “Now you having my baby.”

The crowd roared. And so did people on the Internet.

The news instantly went viral on Twitter and Facebook, with thousands posting and commenting on the expecting couple.

Most of the Kardashian clan also tweeted about the news, including Kim’s sisters and mother. Kourtney Kardashian wrote: “Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!”

West, 35, also told concertgoers to congratulate his “baby mom” and that this was the “most amazing thing.”

Representatives for West and Kardashian, 32, didn’t immediately respond to emails about the pregnancy.

The rapper and reality TV star went public in March.

Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.

West’s Sunday night show was his third consecutive performance at Revel. He took the stage for nearly two hours, performing hits like “Good Life,” ”Jesus Walks” and “Clique” in an all-white ensemble with two band mates.

___

AP Writer Bianca Roach contributed to this report.

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Top 5 Kids Apps: Best Games

1. Bugs and Bubbles

Ages 3-up Overall rating: 5 out of 5 stars Why we like it: Fun, fast and good for building emerging math skills, Bugs and Bubbles contains 18 leveled sorting, classification games set in Uncle Bob’s Bubble Factory. The goal is to collect stickers by harvesting bubbles, requiring kids to apply skills of counting, sorting and remembering patterns in an elegant fashion. Need to know: The better you do, the greater the challenge, and progress can be saved over time on different devices. Watch a video review of this app here. Ease of use: 10/10 Educational: 10/10 Entertaining: 10/10 $ 2.99

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[More from Mashable: 7 Bad Moves That Hurt Facebook in 2012]

Chris Crowell is a veteran kindergarten teacher and contributing editor to Children’s Technology Review, a web-based archive of articles and reviews on apps, technology toys and video games. Download a free issue of CTR here.

While you’re at the grownup table this holiday season, the kids could be eating their vegetables and sitting quietly — what’s more likely is they’ll be playing on their smart devices.

[More from Mashable: 40 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed]

So we’ve rounded up the best 5 games that were included in this year’s Top 5 Kids Apps. All these games are not only a lot of fun, they’re also educational for your kids. The top game, Bugs and Bubbles, got 5 stars out of 5 for its perfect mix of entertainment and math teaching. There’s also room for pure fun with games like Build and Play and Rush Hour.

SEE ALSO: Mobile Apps Under Scrutiny: Is Your Kid’s Privacy at Risk?

Our friends at Children’s Technology Review shared with us these 5 top apps from their comprehensive monthly database of kid-tested reviews. The site covers everything from math and counting to reading and phonics.

Check back next week for more Top Kids Apps from Children’s Technology Review

Photo via Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

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Fiscal cliff deal would pale against expectations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Whether negotiated in a rush before the new year or left for early January, the fiscal deal President Barack Obama and Congress cobble together will be far smaller than what they initially envisioned as an alternative to purposefully distasteful tax increases and spending cuts.

Instead, their compromise, if they do indeed cut a deal, will put off some big decisions about tax and entitlement changes and leave other deadlines in place that will likely lead to similar moments of brinkmanship, some in just a matter of weeks.

Republican and Democratic negotiators in the Senate were hoping for an accord as early as Sunday on what threshold to set for increased tax rates, whether to keep current inheritance tax rates and exemptions and how to pay for jobless benefits and avoid cuts in Medicare payments to doctors.

An agreement would halt automatic across-the-board tax increases for virtually every American and perhaps temporarily put off some steep spending cuts in defense and domestic programs.

Gone, however, is the talk of a grand bargain that would tackle broad spending and revenue demands and set the nation on a course to lower deficits. Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner were once a couple hundred billion dollars apart from a deal that would have reduced the deficit by more than $2 trillion over 10 years.

The trimmed ambitions of today are a far cry from the upbeat bipartisan rhetoric of just six weeks ago, when the leadership of Congress went to the White House to set the stage for negotiations to come.

"I outlined a framework that deals with reforming our tax code and reforming our spending," Boehner said as the leaders gathered on the White House driveway on Nov. 16.

"We understand that it has to be about cuts, it has to be about revenue, it has to be about growth, it has to be about the future," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said at the time. "I feel confident that a solution may be in sight."

And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., offered a bold prediction: "There is no more let's do it some other time. We are going to do it now."

That big talk is gone for now.

Senate negotiators were haggling over what threshold of income to set as the demarcation between current tax rates and higher tax rates. They were negotiating over estate limits and tax levels, how to extend unemployment benefits, how to prevent cuts in Medicare payments to doctors and how to keep a minimum income tax payment designed for the rich from hitting about 28 million middle class taxpayers.

But the deal was not meant to settle other outstanding issues, including more than $1 trillion in cuts over 10 years, divided equally between the Pentagon and other government spending. The deal also would not address an extension of the nation's borrowing limit, which the government is on track to reach any day but which the Treasury can put off through accounting measures for about two months.

That means Obama and the Congress are already on a new collision path.

Republicans say they intend to use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract more spending cuts from the president. Obama has been adamant that unlike 2011, when the country came close to defaulting on its debts, he will not yield to those Republican demands.

As the day ended Saturday, there were few signs of success on a scaled-back deal, but no one was declaring a stalemate either.

Lawmakers have until the new Congress convenes to pass any compromise, and even the calendar mattered. Democrats said they had been told House Republicans might reject a deal until after Jan. 1, to avoid a vote to raise taxes before they had technically gone up, and then vote to cut taxes after they had risen.

Republicans said they were willing to bow to Obama's call for higher taxes on the wealthy as part of an agreement to prevent them from rising on those less well-off.

Democrats said Obama was sticking to his campaign call for tax increases above $250,000 in annual income, even though in recent negotiations he said he could accept $400,000. There was no evidence of agreement even at the higher level.

Obama, who once proposed nearly $1.6 trillion in tax revenue over 10 years, would get about half of that if he succeeded in getting a $250,000 threshold over 10 years. At a $400,000 level, the revenue figure drops to about $600 billion over a decade.

Republicans want to leave the estate tax at 35 percent after exempting the first $5 million in estate value. Officials said the White House wants a 45 percent tax after a $3.5 million exemption. Without any action by Congress, it would climb to a 55 percent tax after a $1 million exemption on Jan. 1. Obama's proposal would generate more than $100 billion in additional revenue over 10 years.

Democrats stressed their unwillingness to make concessions on both income taxes and the estate tax, and hoped Republicans would choose which mattered more to them.

___

Associated Press writer David Espo contributed to this article.

___

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Dan Ariely Talks Creativity And Dishonesty

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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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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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Michigan Passes Law to Protect Social Media Accounts

Michigan passed a bill on Friday that prohibits employers and schools from asking employees and students for login information to their personal social media accounts.

House Bill 5523, signed by Governor Rick Snyder and introduced by state Rep. Aric Nesbitt, “prohibit[s] employers and educational institutions from requiring certain individuals to grant access to, allow observation of, or disclose information that allows access to or observation of personal internet accounts.”

[More from Mashable: An Epic Walk From Beijing to London Fueled by Social Media]

This means an employer or institution cannot require that you provide them with your username or passwords for sites like Facebook and Twitter. The bill is known as the “internet privacy protection act.”

“Potential employees and students should be judged on their skills and abilities, not private online activity,” Snyder said in a press release.

[More from Mashable: Facebook in 2013: More Growing Pains Ahead]

Michigan isn’t alone in adapting laws to the changing Internet social sphere.

Earlier this year, Delaware banned public and private schools from requiring students’ social media account information. The bill passed through the House in a unanimous vote. Months earlier, Maryland introduced a similar bill that would particularly benefit student athletes.

In September, California passed a law that barred companies from asking its workers to surrender their social media account passwords.

Will bills and acts similar to these become more commonplace in our local and national legislature? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

1. Alcohol Overload

You’re out of college, it’s not cool anymore – just ask your boss.

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For Senate leaders, is a 'cliff' deal a mission impossible?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Following a Friday meeting with congressional leaders, an impatient and annoyed President Barack Obama said it was "mind boggling" that Congress has been unable to fix a "fiscal cliff" mess that everyone has known about for more than a year.

He then dispatched Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, on a mind-boggling mission: coming up with a bipartisan bill to break the "fiscal cliff" stalemate in the most partisan and gridlocked U.S. Congress of modern times - in about 48 hours.

Reid and McConnell, veteran tacticians known for their own long-running feud, have been down this road before.

Their last joint venture didn't turn out so well. It was the deal in August 2011 to avoid a U.S. default that set the stage for the current mess. That effort, like this one, stemmed from a grand deficit-reduction scheme that turned into a bust.

But they have never had the odds so stacked against them as they try to avert the "fiscal cliff" - sweeping tax increases set to begin on Tuesday and deep, automatic government spending cuts set to start on Wednesday, combined worth $600 billion.

The substantive differences are only part of the challenge. Other obstacles include concerns about who gets blamed for what and the legacy of distrust among members of Congress.

Any successful deal will require face-saving measures for Republicans and Democrats alike.

"Ordinary folks, they do their jobs, they meet deadlines, they sit down and they discuss things, and then things happen," Obama told reporters. "If there are disagreements, they sort though the disagreements. The notion that our elected leadership can't do the same thing is mind-boggling to them."

CORE DISAGREEMENT

The core disagreement between Republicans and Democrats is tough enough. It revolves around the low tax rates first put in place under Republican former President George W. Bush that expire at year's end. Republicans would extend them for everyone. Democrats would extend them for everyone except the wealthiest taxpayers.

The first step for Reid and McConnell may be to find a formula acceptable to their own parties in the Senate.

While members of the Senate, more than members of the House of Representatives, have expressed flexibility on taxes, it's far from a sure thing in a body that ordinarily requires not just a majority of the 100-member Senate to pass a bill, but a super-majority of 60 members.

With 51 Democrats, two independents who vote with the Democrats and 47 Republicans, McConnell and Reid may have to agree to suspend the 60-vote rule.

Getting a bill through the Republican-controlled House may be much tougher. The conservative wing of the House, composed of many lawmakers aligned with the Tea Party movement who fear being targeted by anti-tax activists in primary elections in 2014, has shown it will not vote for a bill that raises taxes on anyone, even if it means defying Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

Many Democrats are wedded to the opposite view - and have vowed not to support continuing the Bush-era tax rates for people earning more than $250,000 a year.

Some senators are wary of the procedural conditions House Republicans are demanding. Boehner is insisting the Senate start its work with a bill already passed by the House months ago that would continue all Bush-era tax cuts for another year. The Democratic-controlled Senate may amend the Republican bill, he says, but it must be the House bill.

For Boehner, it's the regular order when considering revenue measures, which the U.S. Constitution says must originate in the House.

SHIFT BLAME

As some Democrats see it, it's a way to shift blame if the enterprise goes down in flames. House Republicans would be able to claim that since they had already done their part by passing a bill, the Senate should take the blame for plunging the nation off the "cliff."

And that could bring public wrath, currently centered mostly on Republicans, onto the heads of Democrats.

Voters may indeed be looking for someone to blame if they see their paychecks shrink as taxes rise or their retirement savings dwindle as a result of a plunge in global markets.

If Reid and McConnell succeed, there could be political ramifications for each side. For example, a deal containing any income tax hikes could complicate McConnell's own 2014 re-election effort in which small-government, anti-tax Tea Party activists are threatening to mount a challenge.

If Obama and his fellow Democrats are perceived as giving in too much, it could embolden Republicans to mount challenge after challenge, possibly handcuffing the president before his second term even gets off the ground.

It could be a sprint to the finish. One Democratic aide expected "negotiation for a day." If the aide is correct, the world would know by late on Saturday or early on Sunday if Washington's political dysfunction is about to reach a new, possibly devastating, low.

If Reid and McConnell reach a deal, it would then be up to the full Senate and House to vote, possibly as early as Sunday.

Reid and McConnell have been through bitter fights before. The deficit reduction and debt limit deal that finally was secured last year was a brawl that ended only when the two leaders agreed to a complicated plan that secured about $1 trillion in savings, but really postponed until later a more meaningful plan to restore the country's fiscal health.

That effort led to the automatic spending cuts that form part of the "fiscal cliff."

Just months later, in December 2011, Reid and McConnell were going through a tough fight over extending a payroll tax cut.

In both instances, it was resistance from conservative House Republicans that complicated efforts, just as is the case now with the "fiscal cliff."

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Will Dunham)

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Egypt opposition says Islamists trying to stifle dissent

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s opposition accused President Mohamed Mursi‘s Islamist allies of trying to muzzle dissent on Friday after prosecutors decided to investigate whether prominent government critics were guilty of sedition.

The probe, which comes a month after Mursi replaced the chief prosecutor, further sours the political climate as the leader and his opponents face off over a new constitution that became law on Wednesday.

Critics of the new charter say it uses vague language, fails to enshrine the rights of women and minorities and does little to champion the rights of Egyptians who rose up last year to overthrow army-backed strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Supporters say it protects personal rights that were often trampled upon during the Mubarak era and a subsequent spell of army rule.

The constitution text won about 64 percent approval in a two-stage referendum but Mursi’s opponents vowed to continue protests and rejected his calls for a national dialogue.

Prosecutors ordered the inquiry into three of the president’s most prominent opponents on Thursday – former Arab League chief Amr Moussa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei and leftist Hamdeen Sabahy.

Moussa and Sabahy both challenged Mursi for the presidency in a June election which followed the 2011 uprising.

The prosecutor’s office said the three had been accused of inciting supporters to rise up and overthrow Mursi, the country’s first fairly elected leader.

Mursi’s critics saw an attempt to intimidate them into silence and vowed to continue challenging his rule.

“I believe this is orchestrated by the Brotherhood leadership,” Hussein Abdel Ghani, a spokesman for the country’s main opposition umbrella group, told Reuters. “The Mubarak regime used to order the same tactics.”

“But we are going to use our full rights, our civil tactics, to demonstrate our opposition to this regime,” he said.

The charged atmosphere makes it harder for Mursi to bolster his authority and muster a consensus for unpopular austerity measures vital to preventing a weak economy from collapsing.

AN END TO TURMOIL

Mursi is hoping that the quick adoption of the constitution and holding elections to a permanent new parliament soon will help end the long period of turmoil since Mubarak’s overthrow in February 2011 that has wrecked the economy.

But the Egyptian pound tumbled to its weakest in almost eight years this week after the constitution was approved. People unnerved by the continued political tension rushed to hoard dollars and gold.

The government ordered new restrictions on foreign currency apparently designed to prevent capital flight. Leaving or entering with more than $ 10,000 cash is now banned.

Mursi was propelled into office thanks to the rallying power of his Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s main opposition group under Mubarak that was banned from formal politics for decades.

Ahmed Sobeih, a spokesman for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, dismissed Abdel Ghani’s accusation of an organised legal campaign against Mursi’s opponents.

“We must get away from the language of mutual accusations,” he said, adding that “dozens” of similar complaints had been filed against Brotherhood leaders.

Mursi appointed Chief Public Prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim when he assumed sweeping new powers on November 22. Ibrahim’s predecessor, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, had served for many years under Mubarak.

Judicial sources said the inquiry against Moussa, ElBaradei and Sabahy followed a complaint from lawyers sympathetic to Mursi.

The trio are part of the National Salvation Front, an alliance of political groups that has spearheaded street protests against the government.

“The mere referral of these complaints to an investigative judge and the accompanying public announcement is already cause enough for serious concern,” said Heba Morayef, Egypt director at New York-based Human Rights Watch.

A spokesman for Moussa said the accusations against him were groundless.

“What we read in the papers are several allegations that we have denied over and over in the past few months,” said Ahmed Kamel, a spokesman for Moussa’s Congress Party. “They are completely unfounded and have no relation to reality.”

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Egypt opposition says Islamists trying to stifle dissent
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