| |  | | | | | SHUTTING DOWN Feed My Inbox will be shutting down on January 10, 2013. To find an alternative service for email updates, visit this page. | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Voters stay away from polling stations amid growing concerns at government's actions The second round of voting in Egypt's contentious constitutional referendum was marred by low turnout and delay as the crisis in the country continued. It was expected that the second round of voting would see an even lower turnout at the polls than the first round earlier this month, at which just 32% voted. Friday saw clashes between supporters of President Mohamed Morsi and opponents in Alexandria, resulting in 51 arrests. The voting process was divided over two stages because of a shortage of judges to oversee the ballots. Many had gone on strike in protest at a decree issued by Morsi late last month giving him judicial immunity. Morsi used the powers in the decree to call for a referendum on a draft constitution, whose validity has been disputed. The first round of voting saw 56% in favour of passing the draft constitution. Major cities such as Cairo favoured rejecting the draft, but there was a higher percentage of yes votes in the countryside. Hours before polls closed, Morsi's vice-president, Mahmoud Mekki, announced his resignation. The move was in part expected since the new charter would eliminate the vice presidency post. But Mekki hinted that the hurried departure could be linked to Morsi's policies. "I have realized a while ago that the nature of politics don't suit my professional background as a judge," his resignation letter, read on state TV, said. He said he had first submitted his resignation last month but events forced him to stay on. If, as seems likely, the constitution is approved, the divisions of the past few weeks between Morsi's Islamist supporters and secular and liberal opposition are set to continue. "I don't feel there will be stability after the voting, irrespective of the outcome, because all those involved don't care about the country and are only motivated by self-interest," said Mustafa Amin, a voter at a Giza poll station. Although the draft constitution is expected to be passed with a thin margin, the opposition to it and the furore it has caused remain entrenched. "The whole thing has become a mess," said retired army general Hussein Saleh. "We need stability irrespective of who's in charge, and we're not getting that," he said. Asked if the military should step in, he responded: "No, the army has no place in politics." Opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood has solidified. Saleh's daughter, Ghada, placed the blame for Egypt's current ills squarely at the Brotherhood's doorstep. "Muslims have never killed Muslims in Egypt before on such a scale," she said, in reference to the 5 December violence outside the presidential palace between Morsi supporters and opponents in which nine people died. "The Brotherhood does not own Islam. We have lived side by side with Christians who have a right to this country as much as we do, and now the Brotherhood is creating divisions. They have lost credibility, and we will not believe anything they say in future."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | US Tennis Association approves line judge's return to work after prosecutors said they did not have evidence to proceed A tennis referee whose career was almost ended by a charge that she murdered her husband with a coffee cup has been reinstated after the charge was dismissed for lack of evidence. Lois Goodman's attorneys said Friday in Los Angeles that the US Tennis Association approved her to resume judging matches in 2013. The organization confirmed her reinstatement. She was suspended after her arrest last August while preparing to work as a line judge at the US Open. Prosecutors dropped the murder case November 30, saying they had received additional information and were unable to proceed because of insufficient evidence. Goodman had been accused of bludgeoning her 80-year-old husband to death with a coffee cup. She said she was innocent, and her lawyers suggested Alan Goodman died in an accidental fall.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | New England Compounding Center's filing shields company from creditors while it sets up compensation fund for victims A pharmacy blamed for causing a deadly nationwide meningitis outbreak has filed for bankruptcy protection and said it is seeking to set up a fund to pay victims. Contaminated steroid injections from the New England Compounding Center are thought to have been responsible for 39 deaths and 620 illnesses. The chapter 11 filing in US bankruptcy court on Friday shields the company from the threat of creditor lawsuits while it establishes the fund. The company said in its filing that 130 lawsuits have been filed against it and 270 other people have claimed injury from the tainted drugs. "The number or lawsuits and demands is rising on a daily basis," the filing read. "The sheer volume and wide geographic distribution of cases bringing the prospect of chaotic, conflicting and value-destroying pretrial orders and remedies has necessitated commencing this case at this time." NECC, based in Framingham, just west of Boston, said it has hired accountant Keith Lowey to lead the effort to set up the compensation fund. "The company's goal is to provide a greater, quicker, fairer and less expensive payout to its creditors than they could achieve through piecemeal litigation," the filing read. In a statement, Lowey said: "Many families across the US have been impacted by this great tragedy, and it is difficult to comprehend the sense of loss so many people have experienced." "Everyone associated with New England Compounding Center shares that sense of loss," Lowey said. "We recognize the need to compensate those affected by the meningitis outbreak fairly and appropriately." Attorney Kimberly Dougherty, whose firm represents 30 plaintiffs, said NECC lawyers have said they intend to "do the right thing" for outbreak victims. "We are hopeful the defendants mean what they say," she said. "If they do mean that, we can all work together and resolve these things as quickly as we can." Dougherty said NECC has made it clear it doesn't have enough money to fully compensate victims "to the level and degree of their injury". She said her firm inspected the pharmacy before the bankruptcy filing and believes it has discovered other parties that might be liable, but she said she couldn't name them. "We're looking for additional people who are responsible here for the compromise that occurred," she said. New England Compounding Center was founded in 2006 by brothers-in-law Barry Cadden, the company's chief pharmacist, and Gregory Conigliaro. Compounding pharmacies custom-mix medications in doses or in forms that generally aren't commercially available. Meningitis is an inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. The fungal meningitis outbreak was discovered in Tennessee in September, though Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say the earliest deaths tied to the outbreak date back to July. Health officials say as many as 14,000 people received the steroid shots, mostly for back pain. In early October, the company issued a nationwide recall of the steroid and ceased operations. Later that month, Massachusetts moved to permanently revoke the company's pharmacy license after inspectors found unsterile conditions at its Framingham facilities. State officials charge the company with violating its state license, which permitted the company to make drugs only for individual patients based on specific prescriptions. Instead, state officials say, the company made large batches of drugs for broad
distribution. NECC had said it always strove to follow the laws in the states it operated in. According to Friday's filing, the bankruptcy court has granted the company extra time to file its schedules of assets and liabilities and statement of financial affairs.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Pontiff legally absolves and personally forgives ex-aide over theft of private documents, dubbed the 'Vatileaks' scandal The pope visited his former butler in prison on Saturday and pardoned him for stealing his private papers. After the 15-minute meeting, Paolo Gabriele was freed and returned to his Vatican City apartment where he lives with his wife and three children. The Vatican said he couldn't continue living or working there, but said it would find him housing and a job elsewhere soon. Pope Benedict XVI's pardon closes an embarrassing scandal for the Vatican which featured allegations of power struggles, intrigue, corruption and gay liaisons at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic church. "This is a paternal gesture toward someone with whom the pope for many years shared daily life," according to a statement from the Vatican secretariat of state. Gabriele, 46, was arrested in May after Vatican police found what they called an enormous stash of papal documents at his home. He was convicted of aggravated theft by a Vatican court in October and has been serving his 18-month sentence in the Vatican police barracks. He told investigators he gave the documents to the journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi because he thought the 85-year-old pope wasn't being informed of the "evil and corruption" in the Vatican and thought that exposing it publicly would put the church back on the right track. The leaked documents were first aired on Italian television then published in Nuzzi's book, His Holiness: Pope Benedict XVI's Secret Papers. The Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said the meeting was "intense" and "personal" and said that during it Benedict "communicated to him in person that he had accepted his request for pardon, commuting his sentence". The documents did not threaten the papacy directly and most appeared to discredit Benedict's trusted No 2, the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Gabriele insisted he acted alone but a Vatican computer expert, Claudio Sciarpelletti, was convicted in November of aiding and abetting Gabriele by changing his testimony to investigators about the origins of an envelope with Gabriele's name on it that was found in his desk. As supreme executive, legislator and judge in Vatican City, the pope had the power to pardon Gabriele even before he went to trial.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Law was set to go into effect on January 1 but judges' decision delays implementation until it can be argued in federal court A federal appeals court on Friday put the brakes on a first-of-its-kind California law that bans therapy aimed at turning gay minors straight. A three-judge panel of the ninth US circuit court of appeals issued an emergency order putting the law on hold until the court can hear full arguments on the measure's constitutionality. The law was set to take effect January 1. Licensed counselors who practice so-called "reparative therapy" and two families who say their teenage sons have benefited from it sought the injunction after a lower court judge refused the request. The law, which was passed by the legislature and signed by governor Jerry Brown this fall, states that therapists and counselors who use "sexual orientation change efforts" on clients under 18 would be engaging in unprofessional conduct and subject to discipline by state licensing boards. The appeals court's order prevents the state from enforcing the law, SB1172, while a different three-judge panel considers if the measure violates the First Amendment rights of therapists and parents. Liberty Counsel president Mathew Staver, whose Christian legal aide group is representing reparative therapy practitioners and recipients in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the law, applauded the court's decision to grant his request to delay its implementation. "This law is politically motivated to interfere with counselors and clients. Liberty Counsel is thankful that the 9th Circuit blocked the law from going into effect," Staver said. "This law is an astounding overreach by the government into the realm of counseling and would have caused irreparable harm."
Backers of the ban say the state is obligated to outlaw reparative therapy because the practice puts young people at risk and has been rejected by every mainstream mental health association. After signing SB1172, the governor called the therapies it would outlaw "quackery" that "have no basis in science or medicine." Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which helped fight for the law's passage, said the measure's supporters shouldn't read too much into Friday's order. "It's disappointing because there shouldn't even be a temporary delay of this law, but this is completely irrelevant to the final outcome," Minter said. The brief order issued Friday did not explain the panel's thinking. The ninth circuit has requested briefs on the case's broader constitutional issues but has not scheduled arguments. "California was correct to outlaw this unsound and harmful practice, and the attorney general will vigorously defend this law," said Lynda Gledhill, press secretary to state attorney general Kamala Harris. Earlier this month, two federal trial judges in California arrived at opposite conclusions on whether the law violates the Constitution. On December 4, US district judge Kimberly Mueller refused to block the law after concluding that the plaintiffs represented by Staver were unlikely to prove the ban on "conversion" therapy unfairly tramples on their civil rights and should therefore be overturned. The opponents argued the law would make them liable for discipline if they merely recommended the therapy to patients or discuss it with them. Mueller said they didn't demonstrate that they were likely to win, so she wouldn't block the law. Mueller's decision came half a day after US district judge William Shubb handed down a somewhat competing ruling in a separate lawsuit filed by a psychiatrist, a licensed counselor and a former patient who is studying to practice gay conversion therapy. Shubb said he found the First Amendment issues presented by the ban to be compelling. He ordered the state to temporarily exempt the three people named in the case before him.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | President asks congressional leaders to return from Christmas holidays ready to compromise before January 1 deadline President Barack Obama arrived in Hawaii on Saturday, having issued a demand that squabbling congressional leaders "cool off" over the holidays and adopt stopgap measures to avert the year-end fiscal cliff. In comments that signalled that the White House is coming to the conclusion that an overarching grand compromise is slipping from its grasp, Obama issued a statement tempering ambitions for a comprehensive deal to avert punitive tax rises and swingeing spending cuts. The president said he remained "ready and willing" to put his name to such an agreement. But he conceded that with just days left to head off the automatic roll-out of fiscal measures that could plunge the US back into recession, the pressing need was to just get something on the table to avoid the pain of tax increases hitting every American family in the new year. "In 10 days, we face a deadline. In 10 days, under current law, tax rates are scheduled to rise on most Americans. And even though Democrats and Republicans are arguing about whether those rates should go up for the wealthiest individuals, all of us – every single one of us – agrees that tax rates shouldn't go up for the other 98% of Americans," Obama said in a statement. Hew continued: "Every member of Congress believes that. Every Democrat, every Republican. So there is absolutely no reason – none – not to protect these Americans from a tax hike. "At the very least, let's agree right now on what we already agree on. Let's get that done." The statement was made just minutes after the president ended a phone call with John Boehner, the under-pressure Republican House speaker. On Thursday, Boehner was forced to withdraw a bill aimed at pushing his version of short-term fix to the growing crisis. The so-called 'plan B' proposal came amid stalled negotiations between the Republican leader and Obama and was intended to ratchet up the pressure on Democrats and the White House to bend further. But it was defeated in the House after a revolt from mainly Tea party-backed Republicans, who oppose all and any tax rise on individuals. As well as putting into question Boehner's credibility – with some suggesting that his position as speaker is now on the line – it puts into focus the challenge ahead in pushing any compromise through a deeply divided Congress. Obama's statement Friday – on the eve of a family trip to the president's home state of Hawaii – came amid growing frustration over the ongoing fiscal crisis, and the impact it was already having on the market; the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 120.88 points Friday. The president had initially been pushing a plan that would have seen tax revenues rise by $1.6tn over the next decade, with a hike in the rate for those earning upwards of $250,000 a year central to proposals. Boehner has argued that such a move would be a "crippling blow" and that it was not accompanied by a large enough swipe at federal spending. Instead his 'plan B' would have pushed more limited tax increases on those earning in excess of $1m. But even that was not enough to assuage Tea party Republicans in Congress. The White House has indicated that it is willing to move the threshold for those targeted for more tax to $400,000, but with anti-tax House representatives in no mind to compromise, it seems that this, or even a greater concession by Democrats to move the line to $500,000, will get much traction in the House, given the intransigence of Tea party Republicans. On Friday, Obama urged compromise from both sides of the aisle. "Everyone has got to give a little bit, in a sensible way," he said. Urging Republicans and Democrats to "cool off" over the Christmas break, he stressed that both sides needed to reach consensus when Congress reconvenes. "Now is not the time for more self-inflicted wounds, certainly not those coming from Washington," he said. Failure to strike a deal would result in the automatic triggering of $600bn worth of spending cuts and tax increases. This so-called fiscal cliff could be ruinous for the still fragile economic recovery in the US, experts have warned. Despite outwardly still hoping for a grand deal to be put in place, ending a cycle of America lurching from one eleventh-hour budget deal to the next, the White House is increasingly speaking about another short-term stop-gap measure. Obama said he is committed to reducing the deficit for the long-term health of the US economy "whether it happens all at once or whether it happens in several different stages". He added that immediate task was making sure that America avoids plunging off the fiscal cliff on 1 January with a deal that "lays the groundwork for further work on both growth and deficit reduction". Having outlined his latest appeal to Congress for a deal, albeit a more modest one, Obama boarded a plane to Hawaii. He leaves the difficult task of trying to hammer out a compromise with Republicans in Washington to his deputies. But the fiscal cliff is likely to weight heavily on the president's mind during the mini-break – aides confirmed that he will receive daily briefings. And in an indication that Obama is prepared to cut short his holiday to crack congressional heads further, officials said the return date to Washington is dependent on events.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Company estimates it will pay $7.8bn to 100,000 people and business who lost money because of April 2010 well blowout A federal judge gave final approval to BP's settlement with businesses and individuals who lost money because of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP PLC has estimated it will pay $7.8bn to resolve economic and medical claims from more than 100,000 businesses and individuals hurt by the nation's worst offshore oil spill. The settlement has no cap; the company could end up paying more or less. US district judge Carl Barbier, who gave his preliminary approval in May, made it final on Friday in a 125-page ruling released Friday evening. "None of the objections, whether filed on the objections docket or elsewhere, have shown the Settlement to be anything other than fair, reasonable and adequate," he wrote. BP and attorneys for the plaintiffs said they were pleased. "We believe the settlement, which avoids years of lengthy litigation, is good for the people, businesses and communities of the gulf and is in the best interests of BP's stakeholders," company spokesman Scott Dean said. "Today's decision by the court is another important step forward for BP in meeting its commitment to economic and environmental restoration efforts in the gulf and in eliminating legal risk facing the company." A statement from plaintiffs' attorneys Steve Herman and Jim Roy praised the settlement program's administrator, Pat Juneau. "This settlement has and will continue to bring the people and businesses of the gulf the relief they deserve," the attorneys wrote. The April 2010 blowout of BP's Macondo well triggered an explosion that killed 11 rig workers on the Deepwater Horizon and spilled more than 200m gallons (757m liters) of oil into the gulf, closing much of it for months to commercial and recreational fishing and shrimping. There is still a lot of litigation left, including a trial to identify the causes of BP's blowout and assign percentages of fault to the companies involved, Barbier wrote. That trial is scheduled next year. He said it averts worries that litigation could continue for 15 to 20 years, as it did after the Exxon Valdez and Amoco Cadiz oil spills, creating a secondary disaster for those affected. Barbier has not ruled on a medical settlement for cleanup workers and others who say exposure to oil or dispersants made them sick. The agreement covers people and businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and some coastal counties in eastern Texas and western Florida, and in adjacent gulf waters and bays. BP has already begun paying claims before the law required it, and is doing so "in an impressive fashion," Barbier wrote. He said the claims center processed 4,500 claims a week in November and has authorized nearly $1.4bn in payments, and BP also has paid about $405 million on nearly 16,000 claims during a transitional process that ended June 4. Barbier noted that lawyers' fees won't come out of settlements: BP has agreed to pay them separately. As part of the settlement, BP will pay $2.3bn to cover seafood-related claims by commercial fishing vessel owners, captains and deckhands. That fund is the settlement's only limit, Barbier wrote. He said that it is about five times the average industry gross revenue from 2007 to 2009 and, according to evidence provided, more than 19 times the revenue the industry lost in 2010. After Barbier's preliminary approval in May, thousands of people opted out of the settlement to pursue their cases individually. More than 1,700 changed their minds and asked to be added back in by a December 15 deadline, Barbier said. Still unresolved are environmental damage claims brought by the federal government and Gulf Coast states against BP and its partners on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, and claims against Switzerland-based rig owner Transocean Ltd. and Houston-based cement contractor Halliburton. BP also has paid or agreed to pay settlements of a record $4.5bn in criminal penalties, including $1.3m in fines. US district judge Sarah Vance has scheduled a January 29 hearing to accept or reject that plea agreement with the US Department of Justice, which also includes guilty pleas to criminal charges involving the workers' deaths and to lying about the amount of oil spilled from the blown-out well.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Coachella, the annual gathering in California, set sail to the Bahamas last week for its first festival at sea. How would the culture clash of rock and luxury cruises turn out? "There is something about a mass-market luxury cruise that is unbearably sad. It's maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it's not these things, quite. It's wanting to jump overboard." Thus wrote the late American writer David Foster Wallace in a 1997 essay about his week on a luxury cruise, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. What Foster Wallace would have made of the SS Coachella, a music festival that had its maiden voyage last week, can, alas, only be surmised. But at least Jarvis Cocker, who headlined the festival with Pulp, was on hand to point out the occasionally startling gap between the concept of a music festival and a luxury ship, the Celebrity Silhouette, sailing between Florida and the Bahamas. "If someone told us 15 years ago we'd be singing this on a cruise," mused Cocker about Common People – a song about those who pretend to be prolier than they are, now sung to a roomful of people rocking out less than a stone's throw from various duty-free Estée Lauder and Bulgari concession stands – "I'd have said, are you sure?" Like Cocker, I, too, was initially puzzled about the SS Coachella, and one of the things that puzzled me was what the hell he was doing on it. Other brain ticklers before boarding included whether an annual American festival associated with beautiful, monied, west coast hipsters could really lure its customers to spend $900-$2,000 (£550-£1,250) for a few days on a vacation mode more generally favoured by grandparents than festivalgoers – even if they included bands and DJs such as Hot Chip, Grimes, James Murphy and Pulp, instead of more traditional activities such as conga line dancing. Also, wasn't this begging for a repeat of the Titanic disaster, of which, as it happens, this year was the centenary? Once again, we would have a giant liner carting around people brimming with self-entitlement and hubris. Admittedly, there would probably be a few more trucker hats and "ironic" tattoos than in 1912 but, really, have we learned nothing from history? Happily, the SS Coachella did not sink. In fact, the ship has just finished the second leg of its tour, a round trip between Fort Lauderdale and Jamaica, with a new set of extravagantly hatted passengers but the same bands, Gawd bless 'em all, especially the exhausted-looking crew. As for the other questions, by the time the boat docked back again in Fort Lauderdale, most were resolved. But when we first boarded there last Sunday afternoon, hastily arranged into separate queues and brusquely informed not to worry about our luggage, it all felt terrifyingly unknowable. What on earth would a floating music festival be like? The answer, it turned out, was like a combination of Las Vegas and summer camp, with what looked like the vast majority of passengers there more for the "sitting round the pool and getting buzzed on Heinekens" portion of the festival than the "listening to music" element, which, to be fair, is not unlike your average festival. But the imbalance felt more notable here as there were far fewer people on board than there are at your average music festival. When Pulp performed on the first night, organisers were so worried about how few people were attending that they temporarily shut off part of the theatre. But it was hard to tell how many people were on the boat anyway. It certainly did not feel like it was anywhere near its 2,885 capacity and one Coachella employee told me that tickets had sold "um, medium well". The problematic part of the equation of SS Coachella was not Coachella but the cruise. SS Coachella was extremely fun but cruises are, quite frankly, ridiculous and no amount of many supremely hipster activities such as "wine tasting with James Murphy" (of LCD Soundsystem) and "nail art with Alexis from the Sleigh Bells", which the Coachella people might gamely put on the schedule disguise this, especially if you have to walk past a store selling Chanel handbags every time you leave your room. In fact, some parts of cruises are downright appalling. Let's talk food, shall we? Aside from the canteen-style Oceanview Cafe, where the food was included in the ticket price, there were various fancy-pants restaurants around with names that suggested in certain corners of the Celebrity Silhouette that it was still 1987: Tuscan Grille, Murano, Aquaspa. Out of sheer masochism, my friend and I decided to dine at Qsine on our last night, where eating would be, we were promised, "an adventure". What it turned out to be was an irritation even greater than the name of the restaurant. Qsine resolved the question of what would happen if the Aberdeen Angus Steak House attempted to copy the Fat Duck with dishes on the menu (which was on iPads, obviously) such as "sushi lollipops" and "puréed cauliflower and apple". I could not imagine Jarvis partaking in Qsine. And where was Jarvis anyway? Hot Chip were frequently spotted, playing with their babies by the pool or tucking into breakfast. But few had seen Cocker offstage and by the third day rumours began to abound. Someone saw him eating pizza on his own in the cafe. Someone else claimed to have seen him sitting in the hot tub at sunset. But really, his presence on this boat, which by the second night was beginning to feel like an outtake from The Hangover 3: Chaos on Water, seemed so improbable that some suspected he was helicoptered off after his set on the first night. He would have left on a high if he had. Pulp's set was thrillingly good, and even more so for feeling so intimate (ie undersubscribed). Cocker, stunned at finding himself on what he superfluously mentioned was his first cruise, had fun with it, strutting like the classy front man he is and dropping plenty of "m'hearties" and "ahoy" in between songs from Different Class, His'n'Hers and a semi-striptease during This is Hardcore. Then there was Grimes, who performed twice, and filled the cheesy Sky Lounge with songs so entrancing that some in the audience appeared to be having a religious experience and the ceiling's disco ball quivered. And it was lurking at the back of Grimes's gig on the last night that I resolved my final question, for there was Jarvis. In his tweed suit on the high seas, Cocker looked utterly unflappable, even when surrounded by loud people all asking extremely irritating questions, including and not limited to "Can I take a Facebook photo with you?" and "Can you tell I'm from Australia?" Had he had any qualms about performing on a cruise ship, I asked? "Not qualms, exactly, but I didn't know what to expect, you know? But it's been good fun, hasn't it?" he replied. "And the gig was great because everyone was so close so you could see the audience for once." But what on earth had he been doing for the past few days – learning nail art? Chugging Heinekens? Shopping at Bulgari? "Bits and bobs," he said, and then laughed: "Oh you know, I've been writing a novel."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Minute-by-minute report: Mikel Arteta's second-half penalty gives Arsenal victory at the DW Stadium
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 250,000 security personnel employed to keep order after clashes continued in Alexandria ahead of divisive vote Egyptians have begun voting in the second and final phase of the country's bitterly divisive constitutional referendum which has sparked weeks of unrest. But with clashes continuing between supporters and opponents of the Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, on Friday in Alexandria there is little sign that the result of the vote will end Egypt's political crisis. Saturday's vote is taking place in 17 of Egypt's 27 provinces with about 25 million eligible voters. Around 250,000 security personnel have been deployed nationwide to try to keep order during the vote. Unofficial results for the first phase of the referendum on 15 December showed about 56% approval to 43% rejection for the draft constitution on a low turnout of 32%. The prospects of a win for the noes are poorer in Saturday's vote. Opponents of Morsi, who include liberals, leftists and secular Egyptians, say the draft favours the Islamists, including the president's Muslim Brotherhood, and will create a new Mubarak-style autocracy in betrayal of the revolution that overthrew the former dictator last year. The president's supporters say the new constitution will secure democracy and accuse the opposition of trying to use the streets to overturn their victories at the ballot box over the past two years. "I came early to make sure my 'no' is among the first of millions today," oil company manager Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz told Associated Press as he waited outside a polling station in the Dokki district of Giza. "I am here to say no to Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood," he added. Another Giza voter, accountant and mother of three Sahar Mohamed Zakaria, said: "I'm voting yes for stability." Hanaa Zakim, a Christian from Fayoum province, where Islamist groups have traditionally had strong support, said she was also voting yes for stability and an end to the country's deepening economic problems. Most Christians are seen to oppose the draft. She said: "I have a son who didn't get paid for the past six months. We have been in this crisis for so long and we are fed up." If the constitution is approved, Morsi will call for the election of parliament's lower chamber to be held within two months while giving the upper chamber legislative powers until then. The upper chamber, known as the Shura council, was elected by less than 10% of registered voters. It is dominated by Islamists.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Uncertainty over former European commissioner's plans for elections, which are expected in February The Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, tendered his resignation to the president on Friday after 13 months in office, opening the way for a highly uncertain national election in February. The former European commissioner, appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis a year ago, has kept his own political plans a closely guarded secret but he has faced growing pressure to seek a second term. President Giorgio Napolitano is expected to dissolve parliament in the next few days and has indicated that the most likely date for the election is 24 February. In an unexpected move, Napolitano said he would hold consultations with political leaders from all the main parties to discuss the next steps. In the meantime, Monti will continue in a caretaker capacity. European leaders including German chancellor Angela Merkel and European commission president José Manuel Barroso have called for Monti's economic reform agenda to continue, but Italy's two main parties have said he should stay out of the race. Ordinary Italians are weary of repeated tax hikes and spending cuts and opinion polls offer little evidence that they are ready to give Monti a second term. A survey this week showed 61% saying he should not stand. Monti, who handed in his resignation during a brief meeting at the presidential palace shortly after parliament approved his government's 2013 budget, will hold a news conference on Sunday at which he is expected clarify his intentions. He has not said clearly whether he intends to run, but he has dropped heavy hints that he will continue to push a reform agenda that has the backing of Italy's business community and its European partners. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's return to the political arena has added to the already considerable uncertainty about the centre-right's intentions and increased the likelihood of a messy and potentially bitter election campaign. The billionaire media tycoon has fluctuated between attacking the government's "Germano-centric" austerity policies and promising to stand aside if Monti agrees to lead the centre-right, but now appears to have settled on an anti-Monti line.
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