Egypt protests continue in crisis over Mursi powers

CAIRO (Reuters) - The assembly writing Egypt's constitution said it could wrap up a final draft later on Wednesday, a move the Muslim Brotherhood sees as a way out of a crisis over a decree by President Mohamed Mursi that protesters say gives him dictatorial powers.

But as Mursi's opponents staged a sixth day of protests in Tahrir Square, critics said the Islamist-dominated assembly's bid to finish the constitution quickly could make matters worse.

Two people have been killed and hundreds injured in countrywide protest set off by Mursi's decree.

The Brotherhood hopes to end the crisis by replacing Mursi's controversial decree with an entirely new constitution that would need to be approved in a popular referendum, a Brotherhood official told Reuters.

It is a gamble based on the Islamists' belief that they can mobilize enough voters to win the referendum: they have won all elections held since Hosni Mubarak was toppled from power.

But the move seemed likely to deepen divisions.

The constitution is one of the main reasons Mursi is at loggerheads with non-Islamist opponents who are boycotting the 100-member constitutional assembly. They accuse the Islamists of seeking to impose their vision for Egypt's future.

The assembly's legal legitimacy has been called into question by a series of court cases demanding its dissolution. Its popular legitimacy has been hit by the withdrawal of members including church representatives and liberals.

"We will start now and finish today, God willing," Hossam el-Gheriyani, the assembly speaker, said at the start of its latest session in Cairo, saying Thursday would be "a great day".

"If you are upset by the decree, nothing will stop it except a new constitution issued immediately," he said. Three other members of the assembly told Reuters there were plans to put the document to a vote on Thursday.

ENTRENCHING AUTHORITARIANISM

Just down the road from the meeting convened at the Shura Council, protesters were again clashing with riot police in Tahrir Square. Members of the assembly watched on television as they waited to go into session.

"The constitution is in its last phases and will be put to a referendum soon and God willing it will solve a lot of the problems in the street," said Talaat Marzouk, an assembly member from the Salafi Nour Party, as he watched the images.

But Wael Ghonim, a prominent activist whose online blogging helped ignite the anti-Mubarak uprising, said a constitution passed in such circumstances would "entrench authoritarianism".

The constitution is supposed to be the cornerstone of a new, democratic Egypt following Mubarak's three decades of autocratic rule. The assembly has been at work for six months. Mursi had extended its December 12 deadline by two months - extra time that Gheriyani said was not needed.

The constitution will determine the powers of the president and parliament and define the roles of the judiciary and a military establishment that had been at the heart of power for decades until Mubarak was toppled. It will also set out the role of Islamic law, or sharia.

The effort to conclude the text quickly marked an escalation, said Nathan Brown, a professor of political science at George Washington University in the United States.

"It is not going to be seen by anything other than a confrontational step," he said. "It may be regarded with hostility by a lot of state actors too, including the judiciary."

Leading opposition and former Arab League chief figure Amr Moussa slammed the move. He walked out of the assembly earlier this month. "This is nonsensical and one of the steps that shouldn't be taken, given the background of anger and resentment to the current constitutional assembly," he told Reuters.

Once drafted, the constitution will go to Mursi for approval, and he must then put it to a referendum within 15 days, which could mean the vote would be held by mid-December.

COURTS DECLARE STRIKE

Deepening the crisis further on Wednesday, Egypt's Cassation and Appeals courts said they would suspend their work until the constitutional court rules on the decree.

The judiciary, largely unreformed since the popular uprising that unseated Mubarak, was seen as a major target in the decree issued last Thursday, which extended his powers and put his decisions temporarily beyond legal challenge.

"The president wants to create a new dictatorship," said 38-year-old Mohamed Sayyed Ahmed, an unemployed man, in Tahrir.

Showing the depth of distrust of Mursi in parts of the judiciary, a spokesman for the Supreme Constitutional Court, which earlier this year declared void the Islamist-led parliament, said it felt under attack by the president.

In a speech on Friday, Mursi praised the judiciary as a whole but referred to corrupt elements he aimed to weed out.

"The really sad thing that has pained the members of this court is when the president of the republic joined, in a painful surprise, the campaign of continuous attack on the Constitutional Court," said the spokesman Maher Samy.

Senior judges have been negotiating with Mursi about how to restrict his new powers.

Mursi's administration insists that his actions were aimed at breaking a political logjam to push Egypt more swiftly towards democracy, an assertion his opponents dismiss.

The West worries about turbulence in a nation that has a peace treaty with Israel and is now ruled by Islamists they long kept at arms length.

Trying to ease tensions with judges, Mursi said elements of his decree giving his decisions immunity applied only to matters of "sovereign" importance, a compromise suggested by the judges.

A constitution must be in place before a new parliament can be elected, and until that time Mursi holds both executive and legislative powers. An election could take place in early 2013.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair and Tom Perry; Editing by Will Waterman and Giles Elgood)

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Italy, China sign deals worth US$1.27b

ROME: Italian and Chinese firms signed deals worth $1.27 billion (984 million euros) on Wednesday in Rome at talks attended by Prime Minister Mario Monti and senior Chinese politburo member Jia Qinglin.

The six deals included agreements between Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and Italian Internet provider Fastweb for $557 million and between China Everbright and Chinese-owned Italy-based yacht company Ferretti for $480 million.

"These agreements show that many sectors of the Italian economy can attract foreign investors, raising the growth potential of the country and expanding its international exchanges," Monti was quoted as saying in a statement.

Monti has sought to raise Italy's status among international investors.

After a visit to Qatar earlier this month, Italy and Qatar set up a two-billion-euro joint venture for making investments in Italy.

The two countries are set to sign another deal soon for a one-billion-euro fund for small and medium-sized enterprises, the government said.

-AFP/ac

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Times campaign: Get rid of outdated laws

After 20 years of economic reforms, our laws have still not been rid of obscure and obsolete provisions. Whether they are central or state, the laws continue to offer ample scope to 'authorities' to harass law-abiding citizens. You can be arrested, your homes and establishments raided, your businesses shut down, and your reputation affected (at least temporarily) -- for reasons that no right-thinking person would consider criminal or immoral. Unfortunately, there are 'sections' buried deep inside some 'Act' or the other that allow motivated arrests, raids, and other forms of state-sponsored action.

Also read: Statutory warning: Old laws hurt industry

Some of these 'legal provisions' were actually born out of the need of our erstwhile British rulers to keep us in line -- but have, incredibly enough, not been struck off the statute books because it now suits our Indian rulers to keep them handy. More often than not, they are 'enforced' to extract bribes, scare off political rivals, or 'settle scores'. Even business leaders who are known for their high ethical standards privately tell TOI that their companies at times have no choice but to 'take care' of the inspectors and other government officers who come calling. "Some of the rules and regulations they cite are unbelievably stupid and archaic, and they come in the way of doing business honestly. We all know why they do it. Apart from the harassment we are subjected to, it increases our cost of doing business," said a prominent and universally well-regarded industrialist.

If we pride ourselves as a liberal democracy, such laws must go.

This newspaper has often written against them, as and when they have been used to harass innocent people. Over the next few weeks, we will run a series titled 'OUTLAWS' on laws that have no place in a law-abiding society. Please post your comments and suggestions here.

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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing infections from surgery is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million.

The measures included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Practices were standardized at the seven hospitals.

The Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons directed the project. They announced results on Wednesday.

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Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

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Susan Rice Made Allies, Enemies Before Benghazi

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, on Capitol Hill this week answering questions about her role after the U.S. consulate attack in Benghazi, has become yet another player in the divide between the left and right, with her possible nomination as the next Secretary of State hanging in the balance.

But who was Susan Rice before she told ABC's "This Week" and other Sunday morning shows the attack was a spontaneous response to an anti-Islam film and not a premeditated act of terror? Four Americans died in the September attack.

Unlike many in government, Rice holds a rare claim to Washington, D.C.: she's a local. She hails from a prominent family with deep ties to the Democratic Party. She was born Nov. 17, 1964 to Emmett Rice, a deputy director at the Treasury Department who served as a member of Jimmy Carter's Federal Reserve board, and Lois Dickson Rice, a former program officer at the Ford Foundation who is now a higher education expert at the Brookings Institution.

McCain, Ayotte 'Troubled' After Susan Rice Meeting Watch Video

President Obama to Senator McCain: 'Go After Me' Watch Video

As a high school student at the all-girl National Cathedral School in Washington, Rice was known as an overachiever; valedictorian, star athlete and class president. After graduating high school in 1982, she went on to study history at Stanford, where she graduated as a Truman scholar and junior Phi Beta Kappa. Rice also attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

The family has roots in Maine. In an interview with the Portland Press Herald in 2008, Lois Dickson Rice said that she held the same high expectations for her children as her mother had held for her. According to the paper, Ambassador Rice's drive to achieve spanned generations. Her maternal grandmother, an immigrant from Jamaica, was named Maine State Mother of the Year in 1950. Rice's father was only the second African-American man to be chosen for the Federal Reserve board.

Two years out of Stanford, Rice joined Massachusetts Democrat Michael Dukakis as a foreign policy aide during his 1988 run for president. After his defeat, Rice tried her hand in the private sector, where she went on to work as a management consultant with McKinsey and Company. After President Clinton's election in 1992, she joined Clinton's National Security Council, eventually joining her mentor, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

A profile of the diplomat from Stanford paints the Rices and Albrights as old family friends.

"The Rice and Albright kids went to school together and shared meals at Hamburger Hamlet," Stanford Magazine reported in 2000.

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Mursi opponents clash with police in Cairo

CAIRO (Reuters) - Opponents of President Mohamed Mursi clashed with Cairo police on Tuesday as thousands of protesters around the nation stepped up pressure on the Islamist leader to scrap a decree they say threatens Egypt with a new era of autocracy.

Police fired tear gas at stone-throwing youths in streets off the capital's Tahrir Square, heart of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year. Protesters also turned out in Alexandria, Suez, Minya and cities in the Nile Delta.

A 52-year-old protester died after inhaling teargas in Cairo, the second death since last week's decree that expanded Mursi's powers and barred court challenges to his decisions.

Tuesday's protest called by leftists, liberals and other groups deepened the worst crisis since the Muslim Brotherhood politician was elected in June, and exposed a divide between the newly empowered Islamists and their opponents.

Mursi's administration has defended his decree as an effort to speed up reforms and complete a democratic transformation. Opponents say it shows he has dictatorial instincts.

"The people want to bring down the regime," protesters in Tahrir chanted, echoing slogans used in the anti-Mubarak revolt.

Mursi's move provoked a rebellion by judges and battered confidence in an economy struggling after two years of turmoil.

Opponents have accused Mursi of behaving like a modern-day pharaoh, a jibe long leveled at Mubarak. The United States, a benefactor to Egypt's military, has expressed concern about more turbulence in a country that has a peace treaty with Israel.

"We don't want a dictatorship again. The Mubarak regime was a dictatorship. We had a revolution to have justice and freedom," 32-year-old Ahmed Husseini said in Cairo.

Some protesters have been camped out since Friday in Tahrir, and violence has flared around the country, including in a town north of Cairo where a Muslim Brotherhood youth was killed in clashes on Sunday. Hundreds have been injured.

Supporters and opponents of Mursi threw stones at each other and some hurled petrol bombs in the Delta city of el-Mahalla el-Kubra. A doctor said nine people were brought to hospital, but he expected numbers to rise to dozens.

SHOW OF STRENGTH

The protest was a show of strength by the non-Islamist opposition, whose fractious ranks have been brought together by the crisis. Well-organized Islamists have consistently beaten more secular-minded parties at the ballot box in elections held since Mubarak was ousted in February, 2011.

"The main demand is to withdraw the constitutional declaration (decree). This is the point," said Amr Moussa, former Arab League chief and presidential candidate who has joined the opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front.

Some scholars from the prestigious al-Azhar mosque and university joined Tuesday's protest, showing that Mursi and his Brotherhood have alienated some more moderate Muslims. Members of Egypt's large Christian minority also joined in.

Mursi formally quit the Brotherhood on taking office, saying he would be a president for all Egyptians, but he is still a member of its Freedom and Justice Party.

The decree issued on Thursday expanded his powers and protected his decisions from judicial review until the election of a new parliament expected in the first half of 2013.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said it gives Mursi more power than the interim military junta from which he took over.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an Austrian paper he would encourage Mursi to resolve the issue by dialogue.

Trying to ease tensions with judges outraged at the step, Mursi has assured Egypt's highest judicial authority that elements of the decree giving his decisions immunity would apply only to matters of "sovereign" importance. Although that should limit it to issues such as a declaration of war, experts said there was room for much broader interpretation.

In another step to avoid more confrontation, the Muslim Brotherhood cancelled plans for a rival mass rally in Cairo on Tuesday to support the decree. Violence has flared in the past when both sides have taken to the streets.

But there has been no retreat on other elements of the decree, including a stipulation that the Islamist-dominated body writing a new constitution be protected from legal challenge.

LEGITIMACY UNDERMINED

"The decree must be cancelled and the constituent assembly should be reformed. All intellectuals have left it and now it is controlled by Islamists," said 50-year-old Noha Abol Fotouh.

With its popular legitimacy undermined by the withdrawal of most of its non-Islamist members, the assembly faces a series of court cases from plaintiffs who claim it was formed illegally.

Mursi issued the decree on November 22, a day after he won U.S. and international praise for brokering an end to eight days of violence between Israel and Hamas around the Gaza Strip.

Mursi's decree was seen as targeting in part a legal establishment still largely unreformed from Mubarak's era, when the Brotherhood was outlawed.

Though both Islamists and their opponents broadly agree that the judiciary needs reform, Mursi's rivals oppose his methods.

Rulings from an array of courts this year have dealt a series of blows to the Brotherhood, leading to the dissolution of the first constitutional assembly and the lower house of parliament elected a year ago. The Brotherhood dominated both.

The judiciary blocked an attempt by Mursi to reconvene the Brotherhood-led parliament after his election victory. It also stood in the way of his attempt to sack the prosecutor general, another Mubarak holdover, in October.

In his decree, Mursi gave himself the power to sack that prosecutor and appoint a new one. In open defiance of Mursi, some judges are refusing to acknowledge that step.

Mursi has repeatedly stated the decree will stay only until a new parliament is elected - something that can happen once the constitution is written and passed in a popular referendum.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Seham Eloraby, Marwa Awad and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo and Michael Shields in Vienna; Writing by Edmund Blair and Tom Perry; Editing by Anna Willard, David Stamp and Alastair Macdonald)

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Experts comb for clues in deadly German blaze

TITISEE-NEUSTADT, Germany: Experts sifted through a fire-ravaged workshop for the disabled in Germany on Tuesday, hunting for the cause of a fierce blaze there that killed 14 people.

Most of the dead from the fire which began on Monday at the centre in the southwestern town of Titisee-Neustadt in Germany's Black Forest region were disabled, police said.

A 50-year-old female carer was also killed, they said, while another nine people were hurt although their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.

"Fire experts from the criminal police and accident investigators were on site during the night gathering evidence," a police spokesman told AFP.

Hundreds of firefighters backed by helicopters had battled the fire at the workshop run by the Roman Catholic Caritas welfare association for the mentally and physically disabled which made Christmas decorations among other things.

Candles have been placed outside the modern building whose windows were broken, and police stood at the entrance while more officers combed through the blackened interior.

Up to 60 people were in the centre at the time of the fire, which broke out just before 2 pm (1300 GMT) and spread quickly, damaging one floor of the site in Titisee-Neustadt, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the city of Freiburg.

Pope Benedict XVI sent his condolences, saying in a telegram he would remember in his prayers the victims of this "tragic accident", according to the Freiburg archbishopric.

A memorial service has been planned for Saturday at a local cathedral, the mayor's office said.

Among the dead were 13 disabled people, of whom 10 were women. They were all aged between 28 and 68, according to a police statement.

The cause of the fire was still unclear. "The investigations are not yet finished" but are continuing "relentlessly", police said.

On Monday police had said an explosion had taken place.

It was not clear whether chemicals were stored in the building but the workshop's activities included the treatment of wood.

Gotthard Benitz, of the Titisee-Neustadt fire service, told AFP that the fire began on the ground floor of the building which also had a basement and an upper floor.

"The victims were all on the same floor where the fire was," he said adding this was the only area to have sustained fire damage and the stairwell had remained smoke-free meaning those on the other two floors had been able to use it.

"We have no evidence that there were any shortcomings in the existing fire safety system," he added.

He also said firefighters were prepared for dealing with an emergency at the workshop as practice fire alarms were regularly carried out there, with the last one having been last year.

Two firefighters were lightly injured by smoke and spent the night under observation in hospital.

On Monday another local fire chief Alexander Widmaier had said firefighters were on the scene within six minutes and that there had been a "massive" amount of smoke that filled the building "extremely quickly".

The head of Caritas in Germany, Peter Neher, told ZDF public television that emergency practice drills were done regularly.

"But everyone knows who has taken part in such a drill, that the practice is one thing and when it's really an emergency situation, everyone reacts very individually," he said.

Local resident Dietlinde Kerler said she had thought a practice drill was underway initially as she watched from her balcony.

"Those in wheelchairs came out of the back and they even carried one... Only then did we notice that it was smouldering, that it was burning, the real thing," she said.

-AFP/ac

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Cash transfer scheme will be a game changer step for 2014 general elections: Chidambaram

NEW DELHI: Gearing up for the next general elections, scheduled in 2014, the Congress on Tuesday termed its big-ticket plan to directly transfer cash to various social welfare beneficiaries as "game changer" and "politically revolutionary" step for UPA-II.

"It will be a game changer," finance minister P Chidambaram said at a press conference at the Congress headquarters here.

"It is a politically revolutionary step. It was a promise we made in the 2009 manifesto," added rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, who accompanied Chidambaram.

On Monday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced direct cash payout of social sector benefits and subsidies to the beneficiaries from Jan 1, 2013, in 51 districts across 14 states. The scheme would be rolled out all over the country by 2013-end - just months ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

The significance of the move for the Congress can be gauged from the fact that the party's de facto number 2 Rahul Gandhi, who now heads the its poll coordination panel, would address a meeting of the Congress committees of the 51 districts where the scheme will begin.

Chidambaram denied the move was politically motivated.

"It has nothing to do with elections," he said, adding the move would help plug leakages and duplication in implementation of social sector schemes and result in savings for the government.

He rubbished the opposition's charge of the cash transfers being an attempt to bribe the voters. "It is absurd," Chidambaram said, reacting to the opposition remark.

Ramesh described the policy initiative as "aap ka paisa, aap ke haath", aimed at ensuring the right of the poor was delivered to them at their door-step.

The cash amount would be transferred to the beneficiaries' bank accounts linked to their Aadhaar cards.

The poor in the villages, who would not be able to go to a bank branch, would be able to get cash through an expanded network of banking correspondents, said Ramesh.

Chidambaram said the government would start with scholarships and old-age pension schemes and cover other welfare plans including various subsidies.

However, he clarified that "complex" issues like food, fertiliser and cooking gas cylinder subsidies would be taken up later only when the government is more confident and the bottlenecks in the implementation of food and fertiliser subsidies are addressed.

"We are prudent, we don't want to stumble and fall," he said.

The scheme is expected to cut down leakages and corruption in the implementation of various social sector schemes and distribution of subsidised items.

The cash transfers scheme is expected to reap rich electoral dividends in the same manner the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) worked for the UPA-I.

"MGNREGS brought lasting benefit to millions and cash transfers will bring lasting benefit to millions," said Chidambaram.

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CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.

The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said blacks represented more than half of new infections in youths. The estimates are based on 2010 figures.

Overall, new U.S. HIV infections have held steady at around 50,000 annually. About 12,000 are in teens and young adults, and most youth with HIV haven't been tested.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

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GOP Senators More Troubled After Rice Meeting

Emerging from a closed-door meeting, three Republican senators said Tuesday they are more troubled than ever with comments made days after the deadly Sept. 11 raid in Libya by Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador and President Barack Obama's possible choice for secretary of state.

Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte met privately with Rice and acting CIA Director Michael Morell for more than an hour on her much-maligned explanations of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Ayotte said Rice told the lawmakers that her comments in a series of national television interviews five days after the attack were wrong. However, that failed to mollify the three lawmakers, who have talked about blocking her nomination if the president taps her to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn't get concerning evidence that was leading up to the attack on the consulate and the tragic death of four brave Americans and whether Ambassador Rice was prepared, or informed sufficiently, to give the American people the correct depiction of the events that took place," McCain told reporters.

Said Graham: "Bottom line I'm more disturbed now than I was before that 16 September explanation."

Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Dick Durbin on 'This Week' Watch Video

The three insisted that they need more information about the Libyan raid before they even consider Rice as a possible replacement for Clinton.

"I'm more troubled today," said Ayotte, who argued that it was clear in the days after the attack that it was terrorism and not a spontaneous demonstration prompted by an anti-Muslim video.

Despite lingering questions over her public comments after the Benghazi attack, Rice has emerged as the front-runner on a short list of candidates to succeed Clinton, with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., seen as her closest alternative.

The strong statements from the three senators clouded Rice's prospects only two days after Republican opposition seem to be softening. Rice planned meetings on Wednesday with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who is in line to become the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Corker said Tuesday that he had concerns with a possible nomination.

"When I hear Susan talk she seems to me like she'd be a great chairman of the Democratic National Committee," Corker said. "There is nobody who is more staff supportive of what the administration does. That concerns me in a secretary of state."

Rice's series of meetings on Capitol Hill will be a critical test both for Republicans, who will decide whether they can support her, and the administration, which must gauge whether Rice has enough support to merit a nomination.

A senior Senate aide said the administration was sounding out moderate members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, such as Corker and Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga. Assessing the prospects for Rice before Obama makes any announcement would avoid the embarrassment of a protracted fight with the Senate early in the president's second term and the possible failure of the nominee.

Rice is scheduled to meet with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., her most vocal critic on Capitol Hill, and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. McCain and Ayotte are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

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