Disney loses appeal of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” ruling
Label: LifestyleLOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Walt Disney Co. was ordered to pay the British creator of the television game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” $ 319 million after a Los Angeles court rejected the company’s request for a new trial.
Britain’s Celador International, which created the quiz show, sued Disney in 2004 alleging that the company hid some of the show’s U.S. profits from Celador.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena ruled on Monday that the lower court’s judgment was neither excessive nor based on speculation of profits owed.
A 2010 jury trial found that Disney and its domestic syndication company, Buena Vista Television, owed Celador $ 269.2 million and a federal judge added $ 50 million in interest.
“We are extremely disappointed with the decision, as ABC and Buena Vista Television continue to believe that they fully adhered to the ‘Millionaire’ agreement,” Walt Disney said in a statement on Tuesday.
Disney did not comment on further possible legal action.
“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” aired on Disney-owned broadcaster ABC from 1999 to 2002 and was credited with ushering in a new era of reality programming on U.S. television.
“I am pleased that justice has been done,” Celador Chairman Paul Smith said in a statement.
The game show, which started in Britain and later became an international hit, quizzes contestants on trivia for the top prize of $ 1 million. The show is now in U.S. syndication.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant)
TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law
Label: HealthWASHINGTON (AP) — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama‘s health care overhaul.
That’s because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges.
The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require coverage of virtually all FDA-approved drugs, while others will only require coverage of about half of medications.
Consumers will still have access to essential medications, but some may not have as much choice.
Connecticut, Virginia and Arizona will be among the states with the most generous coverage, while California, Minnesota and North Carolina will be among states with the most limited.
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Online:
Avalere Health: http://tinyurl.com/d3b3hfv
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
GOP leaders pluck conservative lawmakers, reveal growing divide
Label: BusinessWASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker John Boehner's decision to take plum committee assignments away from four conservative Republican lawmakers after they bucked party leaders on key votes isn't going over well with advocacy groups that viewed them as role models.
Reps. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan will lose their seats on the House Budget Committee chaired by Rep. Paul Ryan next year. And Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and David Schweikert of Arizona are losing their seats on the House Financial Services Committee.
The move is underscoring a divide in the Republican Party between tea party-supported conservatives and the House GOP leadership.
"This is a clear attempt on the part of Republican leadership to punish those in Washington who vote the way they promised their constituents they would — on principle — instead of mindlessly rubber-stamping trillion dollar deficits and the bankrupting of America," said Matt Kibbe, president of the tea party group FreedomWorks.
Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, would only say Tuesday that the party's steering committee chaired by the speaker made the decision "based on a range of factors."
Groups aligned with the tea party movement were generally big supporters of Huelskamp, Amash and Schweikert. Jones is viewed more as a conservative maverick than a tea party Republican. He has frequently siding against GOP leaders on a range of issues over the years. For example, he voted against the GOP budget because he opposed the changes proposed for Medicare.
Schweikert said it was made clear to him "I should vote for the team more."
"Look, we're walking into the 113th Congress with a smaller majority," Schweikert said. "I would have though the fixation would have been family unity. This isn't the way you start a family meeting."
"The GOP leadership might think they have silenced conservatives, but removing me and others from key committees only confirms our conservative convictions," Huelskamp said in a statement Tuesday. "This is clearly a vindictive move and a sure sign that the GOP establishment cannot handle disagreement."
All four lawmakers had voted against the summer 2011 deal negotiated between Republican leaders and President Barack Obama for extending the government's ability to borrow money in exchange for $1 trillion in spending cuts and the promise of another $1 trillion in reduced deficits. Three of the four, the exception being Schweikert, voted against the Ryan-written GOP budget blueprint that the House passed last March.
Their removal from key committees with jurisdiction over the two issues was viewed by some as a signal to other Republican lawmakers to look favorably on whatever final deal Boehner and Obama put together to avert a "fiscal cliff" combination of automatic tax increases and spending cuts in January.
"It's sending a clear message to get behind the leadership no matter what the policy is, and that is contrary to what the Republicans supposedly stand for," Freedomworks' Kibbe said.
"If it was intended to be a signal, it's going to be a weak signal because the majority of conservatives are going to do what they think is right based on principle," Jones, the North Carolina congressman, said.
Amash said he has not been told specifically why he was removed, only that it was not based on his votes and that he should go talk to leadership. He said he voted with the Budget Committee's leadership 95 percent of the time. He said the move is likely to make him more independent in the future.
"Being nice to leadership and playing well with them doesn't pay off," Amash said. "They expect a near total agreement with their approach."
The changes in committee assignments could bring about more discipline from the GOP on high-priority issues next Congress, but conservatives were taking the news as an attack on their priorities.
"As the sun rises this morning we can look at John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy and know the opposition is not just across the aisle, but in charge of our own side in the House of Representatives," Erick Erickson wrote on the conservative website, RedState. "All the time and energy I would otherwise have to spend to convince conservatives that these gentlemen would be a problem for the GOP has been spared. They've proven it themselves."
Four Things Google’s Nexus 4 Has in Common with the iPhone 4
Label: TechnologyBesides being each company’s flagship smartphone (and having the number 4 in their names), Google‘s new Nexus 4 and the 2010 iPhone 4 have a fair bit in common with each other.
This could be a good thing, if you remember just how popular the iPhone 4 was. Unfortunately, in this case it’s more of a bad thing, and hearkens back to “Antennagate” and the iPhone 4′s other problems. Do any of these features remind you of anything?
A glass back
With the iPhone 5, Apple finally moved from a crack- and scratch-prone glass backplate to a solid, aluminum unibody construction. Google doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that the former may have been a bad idea, however, and the Nexus 4 has a sparkly glass back surface.
While sparkly things obviously have their fans, the Nexus 4′s chassis also seems to lean towards the brittle side. Joshua Topolsky, who reviewed the Nexus 4 for The Verge, managed to crack the glass when he accidentally knocked his phone off the table. Meanwhile, Droid-Life’s Kellex found that setting the phone on a stone countertop caused its glass back to fracture in two.
No 4G
Even Topolsky’s glowing review of the Nexus 4 said “It feels slow,” and “There’s simply no way to ignore this deficit.” That’s because, like the iPhone 4, the Nexus 4 lacks a 4G radio (even though it has the chip to support one if it had it).
The iPhone 4, however, was released in 2010, when 4G was still a new thing and the Android “superphones” which supported it had enormous screens and horrible battery life. Today, even the iPhone has 4G. Possibly because of bad blood between Google and the wireless carriers, which appear to resent Google’s selling phones unsubsidized and sans “customizations,” the Nexus 4 does not.
Selling out fast
Every one of Apple’s iPhone models has sold out faster, and more dramatically, than the one before. Google’s Android devices, in contrast, haven’t tended to do so … although the new Nexus smartphones and tablets are starting to have this problem.
How bad is it? After Google finally got a new wave of Nexus 4s up for sale, they sold out in about a half-hour. Google claims that it hasn’t actually sold out, but even if you spotted the Nexus 4 on Google Play, chances are you ran into technical glitches which kept it out of your shopping cart. Tipster “Syko Pompos” told the Android Police blog how to get around this and place your order, but expect to wait months to receive it.
Public relations nightmares
It hasn’t quite reached Antennagate levels yet, perhaps partly because the Nexus brand isn’t as well-known as the iPhone (the iPhone 4′s antenna problems were actually shared by many smartphones). But most of the press coverage of the Nexus 4 lately has been about how you can’t get one. Or else, how if you want one you’ll have to either buy it on contract or pay a lot more to get it unsubsidized from T-Mobile.
On the plus side (for the Nexus), this problem is only partly caused by the Google Play store’s technical errors. The biggest reason it’s taking so long to get out to people is, like with the iPhone 4, simply how popular it is.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News
UK’s Prince William and wife Kate expecting a baby
Label: LifestyleLONDON (Reuters) – Britain‘s Prince William and his wife Catherine are expecting a baby, destined to be the country’s future monarch, although the mother-to-be is in hospital with a type of very acute morning sickness that sometimes indicates twins.
“Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a baby,” the prince’s office said in a statement on Monday, adding that Queen Elizabeth and the royal family were delighted.
The couple, officially known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, married in April last year, amid a global media frenzy and there has been much speculation, particularly in U.S. gossip magazines, about a possible pregnancy.
“It’s only been a matter of time. Everyone has been waiting for Kate to announce that she was pregnant,” Claudia Joseph, who has written a biography of the duchess, told Reuters.
A spokeswoman for the couple said 30-year-old Catherine, widely known as Kate, was in the King Edward VII Hospital in central London suffering from Hyperemesis Gravidarum, an acute morning sickness which causes severe nausea and vomiting and requires supplementary hydration and nutrients.
Professor Tim Draycott, a consultant obstetrician at the University of Bristol, said the condition was common in the early weeks of pregnancy but did not put the baby at any increased risk, although in extreme cases it can lead to the baby being born with a slightly low birth weight.
Draycott told Reuters it may also indicate more than one royal baby may be in the offing.
“Hyperemesis is slightly more common with twins,” said Draycott, explaining that the condition affected around one in 100 to 200 pregnant women.
William, a Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, was at her side and she is likely to remain in hospital for several days. There was no detail about when the baby was due, although the prince’s spokesman said she was less than 12 weeks pregnant.
“I’m delighted by the news that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are expecting a baby,” Prime Minister David Cameron said on his Twitter website. “They will make wonderful parents.”
BABY WILL BE KING, OR QUEEN
William, Queen Elizabeth’s 30-year-old grandson, is second in line to the British throne, and their first child will become the third in succession when he or she is born.
Last year Britain and other Commonwealth countries which have the queen as their monarch agreed to change the rules of royal succession so that males would no longer have precedence as heir, regardless of age.
The agreement also means an end to a ban on a future monarch marrying a Catholic, a stipulation dating back some 300 years.
Britain’s royal family are currently riding the crest of popularity on the back of William and Kate‘s wedding and the queen’s diamond jubilee this year which has witnessed nationwide celebrations.
“It’s something everyone can look forward to, just like their wedding brought the whole nation together,” said Johanna Castle, 25, a sales assistant in an east London homewear and fashion store.
The young royal couple have become global stars after some two billion people tuned in to watch their glittering marriage ceremony and the sumptuous display of pageantry that accompanied it, and barely a day goes by without a picture of Catherine appearing in the pages of Britain‘s royalty-obsessed newspapers.
The duchess, the first “commoner” to marry a prince in close proximity to the throne in more than 350 years, is now a fashion icon, with her attire scrutinized every time she steps out in public and followed by legions of women around the world.
U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle were one of the first to send congratulations, an indication of the young royals’ popularity across the Atlantic.
“I know they both feel that having a child is one of the most wonderful parts of their lives. So I’m sure that will be the same for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
With their fame has come unwanted attention, and there was anger in Britain when topless photos of Kate relaxing on holiday were published in a French magazine in September.
The pictures rekindled memories of the media pursuit of William’s mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi.
“I will be very surprised if this isn’t handled with the utmost tact and sensitivity,” said media commentator Steve Hewlett. “Newspapers realize there’s a huge amount of goodwill towards Will and Kate, and they take their cue from their readers.”
“DADDY’S LITTLE CO-PILOT”
Kate made her last public appearance on Friday when she returned to her old school – a minor event that nonetheless generated live television coverage on news channels – when she looked healthy and joined in a game of hockey with pupils.
Earlier in the week William had hinted at a pregnancy during a visit to Cambridge in central England when they were given a home-made baby suit emblazoned with the words “Daddy’s little co-pilot”, a reference to William’s job.
“When I gave it to him he said ‘I’ll keep that’, and handed it to his aide,” said Samantha Hill.
Joseph, author of “Kate: The Making of a Princess”, said she believed the couple, who currently live in north Wales where the prince is based as a search and rescue pilot, had been waiting for the right moment to have a baby.
“My feeling has always been that they were not going to take the spotlight away from the queen in her Jubilee. But now 2013 is going to be William and Kate’s year,” she said, adding the couple would make wonderful parents.
“We have seen her with children and she is lovely with them, she’s got the natural touch, and her parents run a party business and she has spent a lot of time with children,” Joseph said. “(William) he has always talked about wanting children, so I am sure he is delighted.”
(Additional reporting by Tim Castle, Peter Schwartzstein and Natalie Huet in London and Steve Holland in Washington; editing by Paul Casciato)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Fossil fuel subsidies in focus at climate talks
Label: HealthDOHA, Qatar (AP) — Hassan al-Kubaisi considers it a gift from above that drivers in oil- and gas-rich Qatar only have to pay $ 1 per gallon at the pump.
“Thank God that our country is an oil producer and the price of gasoline is one of the lowest,” al-Kubaisi said, filling up his Toyota Land Cruiser at a gas station in Doha. “God has given us a blessing.”
To those looking for a global response to climate change, it’s more like a curse.
Qatar — the host of U.N. climate talks that entered their final week Monday — is among dozens of countries that keep gas prices artificially low through subsidies that exceeded $ 500 billion globally last year. Renewable energy worldwide received six times less support — an imbalance that is just starting to earn attention in the divisive negotiations on curbing the carbon emissions blamed for heating the planet.
“We need to stop funding the problem, and start funding the solution,” said Steve Kretzmann, of Oil Change International, an advocacy group for clean energy.
His group presented research Monday showing that in addition to the fuel subsidies in developing countries, rich nations in 2011 gave more than $ 58 billion in tax breaks and other production subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. figure was $ 13 billion.
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has calculated that removing fossil fuel subsidies could reduce carbon emissions by more than 10 percent by 2050.
Yet the argument is just recently gaining traction in climate negotiations, which in two decades have failed to halt the rising temperatures that are melting Arctic ice, raising sea levels and shifting weather patterns with impacts on droughts and floods.
In Doha, the talks have been slowed by wrangling over financial aid to help poor countries cope with global warming and how to divide carbon emissions rights until 2020 when a new planned climate treaty is supposed to enter force. Calls are now intensifying to include fossil fuel subsidies as a key part of the discussion.
“I think it is manifestly clear … that this is a massive missing piece of the climate change jigsaw puzzle,” said Tim Groser, New Zealand’s minister for climate change.
He is spearheading an initiative backed by Scandinavian countries and some developing countries to put fuel subsidies on the agenda in various forums, citing the U.N. talks as a “natural home” for the debate.
The G-20 called for their elimination in 2009, and the issue also came up at the U.N. earth summit in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year. Frustrated that not much has happened since, European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Monday she planned to raise the issue with environment ministers on the sidelines of the talks in Doha.
Many developing countries are positive toward phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, not just to protect the climate but to balance budgets. Subsidies introduced as a form of welfare benefit decades ago have become an increasing burden to many countries as oil prices soar.
“We are reviewing the subsidy periodically in the context of the total economy for Qatar,” the tiny Persian gulf country’s energy minister, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, told reporters Monday.
Qatar’s National Development Strategy 2011-2016 states it more bluntly, saying fuel subsides are “at odds with the aspirations” and sustainability objectives of the wealthy emirate.
The problem is that getting rid of them comes with a heavy political price.
When Jordan raised fuel prices last month, angry crowds poured into the streets, torching police cars, government offices and private banks in the most sustained protests to hit the country since the start of the Arab unrest. One person was killed and 75 others were injured in the violence.
Nigeria, Indonesia, India and Sudan have also seen violent protests this year as governments tried to bring fuel prices closer to market rates.
Iran has used a phased approach to lift fuel subsidies over the past several years, but its pump prices remain among the cheapest in the world.
“People perceive it as something that the government is taking away from them,” said Kretzmann. “The trick is we need to do it in a way that doesn’t harm the poor.”
The International Energy Agency found in 2010 that fuel subsidies are not an effective measure against poverty because only 8 percent of such subsidies reached the bottom 20 percent of income earners.
The IEA, which only looked at consumption subsidies, this year said they “remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, where momentum toward their reform appears to have been lost.”
In the U.S., environmental groups say fossil fuel subsidies include tax breaks, the foreign tax credit and the credit for production of nonconventional fuels.
Industry groups, like the Independent Petroleum Association of America, are against removing such support, saying that would harm smaller companies, rather than the big oil giants.
In Doha, Mohammed Adow, a climate activist with Christian Aid, called all fuel subsidies “reckless and dangerous,” but described removing subsidies on the production side as “low-hanging fruit” for governments if they are serious about dealing with climate change.
“It’s going to oil and coal companies that don’t need it in the first place,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Abdullah Rebhy in Doha, Qatar, and Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report
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Karl Ritter can be reached at www.twitter.com/karl_ritter
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
GOP moves on fiscal cliff, WH dismisses it
Label: BusinessWASHINGTON—Fiscal negotiations in Washington moved forward Monday as Republicans offered a new proposal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. The White House dismissed the proposal as an unbalanced effort that would hurt the middle class.
The GOP plan included $800 billion in new government revenue by eliminating tax code write-offs while extending current tax rates for all income levels. President Barack Obama has insisted that tax rates for high earners must be hiked.
Republicans estimated they could save $300 billion by cutting discretionary spending, $600 billion in "health savings," $200 billion in changes to the consumer price index and another $300 billion in mandatory spending.
"This is another attempt to jump-start substantive, good-faith negotiations toward a bipartisan solution that can be enacted soon, a stark contrast to the unserious proposal the White House put forward last week," House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement accompanying the proposal's release.
Boehner based his proposal on a plan former President Bill Clinton's chief of staff Erskine Bowles presented last year to Congress' Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. But Bowles rejected the comparison Monday, saying in a statement that when he presented a plan to the committee he "simply took the mid-point of the public offers put forward during the negotiations to demonstrate where I thought a deal could be reached at that time."
Last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner delivered a plan to Capitol Hill on behalf of the White House calling for $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years plus $400 billion in savings in entitlement programs. The proposal was flatly rejected by Republicans, who oppose any effort to end tax cuts for the nation's highest earners and advocate deeper spending cuts, particularly in entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
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White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer slammed the GOP proposal.
"The Republican letter released today does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill," Pfeiffer said in a statement Monday. "Their plan ... provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve."
The president took to Twitter on Monday to boost grass-roots support for his plan to end George W. Bush-era tax cuts for high-income earners—families who annually earn $250,000 or more.
"High end tax cuts do least for economic growth & cost almost $1T," Obama tweeted during Monday's chat in response to a question about why the president doesn't favor maintaining low tax rates for everyone. "Extending middle class cuts boosts consumer demand & growth," the president added.
Both parties have been engaging in a public campaign to pressure each other as Congress is forced to come to an agreement before the Jan. 1 deadline when automatic spending cuts and tax increases will go into effect. Each side has accused the other of holding up a potential deal.
Chris Moody and Olivier Knox contributed to this story.
Egypt’s anti-Morsi rebellion of judges is complete
Label: WorldCAIRO (AP) — Egypt‘s rebellion of the judges against President Mohammed Morsi became complete on Sunday with the country’s highest court declaring an open-ended strike on the day it was supposed to rule on the legitimacy of two key assemblies controlled by allies of the Islamist leader.
The strike by the Supreme Constitutional Court and opposition plans to march on the presidential palace on Tuesday take the country’s latest political crisis to a level not seen in the nearly two years of turmoil since Hosni Mubarak‘s ouster in a popular uprising.
Judges from the country’s highest appeals court and its sister lower court were already on an indefinite strike, joining colleagues from other tribunals who suspended work last week to protest what they saw as Morsi‘s assault on the judiciary.
The last time Egypt had an all-out strike by the judiciary was in 1919, when judges joined an uprising against British colonial rule.
The standoff began when Morsi issued decrees on Nov. 22 giving him near-absolute powers that granted himself and the Islamist-dominated assembly drafting the new constitution immunity from the courts.
The constitutional panel then raced in a marathon session last week to vote on the charter’s 236 clauses without the participation of liberal and Christian members. The fast-track hearing pre-empted a decision from the Supreme Constitutional Court that was widely expected to dissolve the constituent assembly.
The judges on Sunday postponed their ruling on that case just before they went on strike.
Without a functioning justice system, Egypt will be plunged even deeper into turmoil. It has already seen a dramatic surge in crime after the uprising, while state authority is being challenged in many aspects of life and the courts are burdened by a massive backlog of cases.
“The country cannot function for long like this, something has to give,” said Negad Borai, a private law firm director and a rights activist. ‘We are in a country without courts of law and a president with all the powers in his hands. This is a clear-cut dictatorial climate,” he said.
Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, a rights lawyer, said the strike by the judges will impact everything from divorce and theft to financial disputes that, in some cases, could involve foreign investors.
“Ordinary citizens affected by the strike will become curious about the details of the current political crisis and could possibly make a choice to join the protests,” he said.
The Judges Club, a union with 9,500 members, said late Sunday that judges would not, as customary, oversee the national referendum Morsi called for Dec. 15 on the draft constitution hammered out and hurriedly voted on last week.
The absence of their oversight would raise more questions about the validity of the vote. If the draft is passed in the referendum, parliamentary elections are to follow two months later and they too may not have judicial supervision.
The judges say they will remain on strike until Morsi rescinds his decrees, which the Egyptian leader said were temporary and needed to protect the nation’s path to democratic rule.
For now, however, Morsi has to contend with the fury of the judiciary.
The constitutional court called Sunday “the Egyptian judiciary’s blackest day on record.”
It described the scene outside the Nile-side court complex, where thousands of Islamist demonstrators gathered since the early morning hours carrying banners denouncing the tribunal and some of its judges.
A statement by the court, which swore Morsi into office on June 30, said its judges approached the complex but turned back when they saw the protesters blocking entrances and climbing over its fences. They feared for their safety, it added.
“The judges of the Supreme Constitutional Court were left with no choice but to announce to the glorious people of Egypt that they cannot carry out their sacred mission in this charged atmosphere,” said the statement, which was carried by state news agency MENA.
Supporters of Morsi, who hails from the Islamic fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, claim that the court’s judges remain loyal to Mubarak, who appointed them, and accuse them of trying to derail Egypt’s transition to democratic rule.
In addition to the high court’s expected ruling Sunday on the legitimacy of the constitution-drafting panel, it was also expected to rule on another body dominated by Morsi supporters, parliament’s upper chamber.
Though Morsi’s Nov. 22 decrees provide immunity to both bodies against the courts, a ruling that declares the two illegitimate would have vast symbolic significance, casting doubt on the standing of both.
The Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice party, sought to justify the action of its supporters outside the court as a peaceful protest. It reiterated its charge that some members of the judiciary were part and parcel of Mubarak’s autocratic policies.
“The wrong practices by a minority of judges and their preoccupation with politics … will not take away the respect people have for the judiciary,” it said.
Its explanation, however, failed to calm the anger felt by many activists and politicians.
“President Morsi must take responsibility before the entire world for terrorizing the judiciary,” veteran rights campaigner and opposition leader Abdel-Halim Kandil wrote in his Twitter account about the events outside the constitutional court.
Liberal activist and former lawmaker Amr Hamzawy warned what is ahead may be worse.
“The president and his group (the Muslim Brotherhood) are leading Egypt into a period of darkness par excellence,” he said. “He made a dictatorial decision to hold a referendum on an illegal constitution that divides society, then a siege of the judiciary to terrorize it.”
Egypt has been rocked by several bouts of unrest, some violent, since Mubarak was forced to step down in the face of a popular uprising. But the current one is probably the worst.
Morsi’s decrees gave him powers that none of his four predecessors since the ouster of the monarchy 60 years ago ever had. Opposition leaders countered that he turned himself into a new “pharaoh” and a dictator even worse than his immediate predecessor Mubarak.
Then, following his order, the constituent assembly rushed a vote on the draft constitution in an all-night session.
The draft has a new article that seeks to define what the “principles” of Islamic law are by pointing to theological doctrines and their rules. Another new article states that Egypt’s most respected Islamic institution, Al-Azhar, must be consulted on any matters related to Shariah law, a measure critics fear could lead to oversight of legislation by clerics.
Rights groups have pointed out that virtually the only references to women relate to the home and family, that the new charter uses overly broad language with respect to the state protecting “ethics and morals” and fails to outlaw gender discrimination.
At times the process appeared slap-dash, with fixes to missing phrasing and even several entirely new articles proposed, written and voted on in the hours just before sunrise.
The decrees and the vote on the constitution draft galvanized the fractured, mostly secular opposition, with senior leaders setting aside differences and egos to form a united front in the face of Morsi, whose offer on Saturday for a national dialogue is yet to find takers.
The opposition brought out at least 200,000 protesters to Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Tuesday and a comparable number Friday to press demands that the decrees be rescinded. The Islamists responded Saturday with massive rallies in Cairo and across much of Egypt.
The opposition is raising the stakes with plans to march on Morsi’ palace on Tuesday, a move last seen on Feb. 11, 2011 when tens of thousands of protesters marched from Tahrir Square to Mubarak’s palace in the Heliopolis district to force him out. Mubarak stepped down that day, but Morsi is highly unlikely to follow suit on Tuesday.
Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Here’s How to Turn Nicki Minaj into Jay-Z
Label: TechnologyWe realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:
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This is silly, but it’s Friday and a unicorn lair has been found in North Korea, rendering all other silliness moot. But the folks over at Reddit seem to dig the idea of slowing down Nicki Minaj’s songs so much that they sound like an over-enunciating Jay-Z. And well, it’s oddly relaxing:
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Another week has passed by and we still haven’t figured out the Fiscal Cliff situation. Let’s fix it—and not just because we want to avoid getting downgraded (again). Because honestly, we just don’t think CNBC’s Rick Santelli can make it another two weeks:
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James Lipton, let’s hang out:
Finally, it’s Friday. What are you still doing here? Go enjoy the weekend or something or … watch this video of a husky which sort of sounds like Dame Edna at time imitating a baby until 6 p.m. rolls around:
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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