Cairo gripped by anti-Mursi protests

Cairo gripped by anti-Mursi protests | euronews, world news

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Violence has erupted in Egyptian capital Cairo as those opposed to President Mursi’s sweeping new powers marched on the presidential palace.
The demonstration is being called a “last warning.”
Sources within the official residence said Mursi had left the building.
The Islamist leader unleashed a storm of protest with his November 22 decree, which placed the office of president above the law.
One man taking part in the demo said: “The Muslim Brotherhood is now corrupt. They want to impose their laws on the Egyptian people.”
As the crowds voiced their anger, independent and opposition newspapers stopped their presses in protest against the lack of journalistic freedom in the country’s draft constitution.
Divisions in Egypt have only widened since a mass uprising ousted Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011.
More about: Clashes and riots, Egypt, Mohamed Mursi, Protests in Egypt

Copyright © 2012 euronews

Egyptian security forces clash with anti-Mohamed Morsi protesters

President seen leaving Cairo palace in convoy as opponents gather to condemn assumption of new powers

 

Abdel-Rahman Hussein in Cairo

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 December 2012 19.08 GMT
 

A Egyptian woman prays in front of members of the security forces as they lay out barbed wire along streets leading to the presidential palace. Photograph: AFP/Getty

Egyptian security forces have clashed with opponents of Mohamed Morsi outside the presidential palace in Cairo to protest against his assumption of new powers.
The march came amid rising anger over decrees Morsi has passed that give him sweeping powers. Opponents say the drafting of a new constitution has been rushed and is a move towards dictatorial rule. Morsi has called for a referendum on the draft constitution on 15 December.
Marchers chanted that "the people want the downfall of the regime", and held placards bearing slogans of "no to the constitution".
One witness said he had seen Morsi's convoy leave the palace from a side gate during the clashes. He said: "I was part of the Abbasiya march. When the fighting started, a lot of teargas was fired and we were pushed back. The babrbed wire barricade was opened, a convoy of cars left the palace, and then we were allowed to come closer. After that, we entered the street."
The near-daily protests represent Egypt's worst political crisis since Hosni Mubarak, was ousted, nearly two years ago. Since then, the country has been divided into two, with Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood alongside ultraconservative Salafi Islamists on one side, and youth groups and more liberal organisations on the other.
Security forces cordoned the palace off with barbed wire, at which most protesters stopped to chant slogans against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
On a cordoned-off side street, security forces clashed with a section of the protesters and fired teargas to disperse them.
The security forces then abruptly withdrew, leaving an empty police truck that protesters climbed up on to as people filled the street. Members of the forces that were left behind were escorted away before they could be set upon.
Other protesters milled about in the gardens surrounding the gates of the presidential palace.
A few hundred protesters also gathered near Morsi's house, in a suburb east of Cairo, chanting slogans against his decree and against the Muslim Brotherhood, from which he emerged to win the presidential election in June.
As the crisis from Morsi's decree and the subsequent furore over the referendum continues, further schisms were apparent within the judiciary when the judges of the state council refused to supervise the referendum. Their announcement came a day after the judiciary's highest body, the state judicial council, announced that Egypt's judges would do so.

In pictures: Prince William and Kate expecting baby

3 December 2012 Last updated at 21:06 GMT

Media from across the world have gathered outside King Edward VII Hospital in central London where the Duchess of Cambridge has been admitted following the announcement that she is expecting a baby. Kate is being treated for a severe form of morning sickness.

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In pictures: Cairo roadblocks in Egypt protests

3 December 2012 Last updated at 15:03 GMT

The wall in Sheikh Reihan Street, off Qasr al-Aini, blocks direct entry to the Egyptian cabinet. It was erected during clashes in November 2011 in Mohamed Mahmoud Street, just around the corner. Young men and children climb on the wall that blocks Qasr al-Aini street from the cabinet building.

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Viewpoint: How happiness changes with age

4 December 2012 Last updated at 12:52 GMT

In today's Magazine

• Cancer: Not only a rich-world disease
• Will the Pope's tweets be infallible?
• Skyscrapers - past, present and future
• How tall can a Lego tower get?

When it comes to happiness, it seems that the young and the old have the secret. And it turns out what's true for humans is also true for our primate cousins, explains neuroscientist Tali Sharot.

How does happiness change with age?
Most people assume that as children we live a carefree existence, then we go through the miserable confusion of teenage years ("Who am I?") but regain happiness once we figure it all out and settle down, only to then grow grumpy and lonely with every additional wrinkle and grey hair.
Well, this is utterly wrong.
It turns out that happiness is indeed high in youth, but declines steadily hitting rock bottom in our mid-40s - midlife crisis, anyone? Then, miraculously, our sense of happiness takes a turn for the better, increasing as we grow older.

About the author

Tali Sharot is a neuroscientist at University College, London
• Dara O Briain's Science Club is broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesday 4 December at 21:00 GMT
• Follow @BBCScienceClub

This U-shape pattern of happiness over the life span (high during youth and old age, low during midlife) has been observed across the globe, from Switzerland to Ecuador, Romania to China. All in all, it has been documented in more than 70 countries, in surveys of more than 500,000 people in both developing and developed countries.

How can we explain these counter-intuitive findings?
Does it have something to do with juggling kids and careers in our 30s and 40s? Apparently not. Even after accounting for the presence of kids in the household the U-shape pattern of happiness remains.
Perhaps the pattern is due to generational differences? But the studies did not follow the same individuals throughout life, but rather different individuals of different ages.
Could it be that teenagers and the elderly are happier than the middle-aged because they were born during better times? No, again - this does not seem to affect the U-shape pattern. It also persists when other demographic factors are accounted for, including marital status, education, employment status, and income.
Then, just last month, a group led by Prof Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick, reported that happiness of our evolutionary cousins - the great apes - also follows a U-shape pattern throughout life.
Of course we cannot ask apes to rate their life satisfaction on a scale from one to 10. But the well-being of 508 apes was estimated by asking their human care-givers to assess it. Apes, like humans, were less happy during midlife than when younger or older.
The existence of a midlife crisis in the great ape strengthens the notion that the pattern of happiness throughout life is not due to socioeconomic factors. This leaves two likely explanations.
Firstly, "the survival of the happiest" - happiness is known to be related to longevity. Put simply, the happier live longer, while the pessimistic die prematurely, possibly because the latter experience more stress, which impacts on health negatively.

Happy now?

Therefore, the elderly individuals who remain for scientists to test should be happier than the average 30- or 40-year-olds. But this only explains the latter half of the U-shape.
Secondly, the U-shape could arise in both humans and apes because of similar age-related changes in brain structures that influence happiness. One part of our brain which changes considerably both throughout the first two decades of our life, and as we move into old age, is the frontal lobe.
Our frontal lobes mature well into our mid-20s and then start deteriorating as early as 45. This means that as we develop, we slowly increase some frontal-lobe function, which we then lose later in life.
One such function is our ability to learn from bad news.
My colleagues and I have found that people tend to discount the relevance of undesirable information to themselves (such as news that alcohol is bad for your liver) but readily adopt good news (being told that red wine is good for the heart). So when smokers see warning signs on cigarette packets they think: "Yes, smoking kills - but mostly it kills the other guy."
At the same when we hear the housing market is going up we think: "The value of my house is going to double!"
Using brain imaging techniques we discovered that the tendency to discount bad news is related to how well regions of the frontal lobe are coding unexpected negative information.
Now, you may think that discounting bad news can get people into trouble - for example, causing us to smoke more and save less. There is some truth to this, but it is also good for our mental health.
Our research shows that the successful incorporation of bad news is related to depression. Discounting bad news, as most of us do, presumably allows us to keep a rosy view of the future, and while this view is not necessarily realistic it does keep us happy.

Happiness around the world

• U-shape pattern is global, but age at which happiness is lowest differs between countries
• Happiness hits rock bottom at 35.8 years in UK; low point in US only emerges a decade later; in Italy, happiness hits low at 64.2 years
• US citizens are less happy with each passing decade since 1900; in Europe, happiness declined until 1950 and has been increasing steadily ever since
• Women are at their least happy at 38.6 years on average; males hit low point at 52.9 years

But the tendency to discount bad news also follows a U-shape pattern over our lifespan. Kids, teenagers and the elderly discount unwanted information more than middle age individuals.

The developmental change in the frontal lobes appears to be mirrored by our ability to learn from bad news, which in turn could drive age-related differences in happiness.
So happiness may come at a price - a reduced ability to take into account unwanted information.
In essence, this means that we may need to re-frame health and safety campaigns, especially those targeted at the young and the elderly. Instead of, or in addition to, labelling a packet of cigarettes with the words "SMOKING KILLS", we may want to print "80% of people who try to quit smoking succeed".
And instead of highlighting the risks of skin cancer on a bottle of sun lotion, how about highlighting the sun cream's benefits (fewer wrinkles, healthier-looking skin)?
Will fewer people reach for another cigarette when we focus on social norms? Will more people protect their skin from UV rays when we emphasise the positive? Each case needs to be tested.
But given that we now know that people tend to respond to warnings with "It's unlikely to happen to me" and to the possibility of a glorious future with "Why not me?" there is reason to believe this may be so.
Tali Sharot is the author of The Optimism Bias and The Science of Optimism, of which this is an adapted extract

Mali crisis: Tuareg rebels in talks with government

4 December 2012 Last updated at 23:50 GMT

Ansar Dine pledged to reject all forms of extremism - but have still to prove they have cut al-Qaeda ties

Mali: Divided nation

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• Waiting for the troops
• On patrol with the Mali army

Government officials in Mali have held the first direct talks with rebel groups that seized the north of the country after a coup earlier this year.

The Burkina Faso meeting paves the way for more talks with Tuareg and Islamist rebels, as both have pledged to respect national unity and reject terrorism.
The West African regional group Ecowas had said it was ready to deploy 3,300 troops to reclaim rebel-held territory.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon backed a one-year deployment last week.
But he did not offer any financial support, and said African nations needed to answer basic questions about how the force - which would have the acronym Afisma - would be run.
Mr Ban said funding for any military operations should come from "voluntary or bilateral contributions".
Public unconvinced Tuesday's talks in Ouagadougou resulted in the much-weakened separatist Tuareg rebels confirming they were renouncing hopes for an independent state in the country's north.

Meanwhile the Islamist Ansar Dine group pledged to reject all forms of extremism, although the group has yet to prove this on the ground by cutting links with al-Qaeda-linked groups, says the BBC's West Africa correspondent Thomas Fessy.
The Malian authorities now face a potentially bigger issue, adds our correspondent: Convincing all political parties and the population that it is indeed possible to sit down with both groups.
Shocked by a series of atrocities attributed to Islamists or Tuareg rebels, most Malians believe the time for negotiations is up and that a military intervention only will solve this crisis, he adds.
Islamists and Tuareg rebels captured large swathes of northern Mali after a coup in Bamako in March.
Their alliance then collapsed, with the Islamists taking the region's main urban centres.
The Islamists have destroyed ancient shrines in Timbuktu and have imposed a strict version of Islamic law, sparking international outrage.

Clashes outside Egypt presidential palace in Cairo

4 December 2012 Last updated at 21:25 GMT

The BBC's Jon Leyne says that a number of injuries among the protesters have been reported

Egypt changing

• Divisions likely to deepen
• Q&A: President v judiciary
• Old and draft charters compared
• Who holds the power?

Police in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, have clashed with protesters angry at what they say is the rushed drafting of a new constitution and by President Morsi's recent extension of his powers.

Tens of thousands of people had gathered outside the presidential palace.
The police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd, some of whom managed to cut through barbed wire around the palace.
Mr Morsi was in the palace but left as the crowds grew, sources there said.
Many of those gathered outside the palace, in the suburb of Heliopolis, chanted slogans similar to those directed against the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak during the uprising in February 2011.
Tear gas was fired after protesters managed to breach a barbed wire cordon surrounding the palace, correspondents say.

Analysis

Jon Leyne BBC News, Cairo

It was an unprecedented moment. The presidential palace in Cairo under siege, the police close to losing control. President Morsi had to be hustled away for his own safety.
Nothing similar happened, even in the protests against former President Hosni Mubarak last year.
It was yet another sign of how deeply divided this country is as a referendum on a new constitution approaches in less than two weeks' time.

But the police quickly retreated, allowing protesters to get closer to the palace walls.

Eighteen people were injured in the brief burst of violence but none seriously, the official Mena news agency reported.
Large crowds remained outside as night fell, while thousands of demonstrators also gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
"We won't be able to speak - there won't be a court that we can go talk to," one protester, Israa Wafid, told Reuters.
"He has made himself a fort and he says it is a temporary fort - this is something we cannot believe.
"We've spent 30 years being betrayed - we won't believe Morsi, he will remain seated in the chair and not leave it."
In a statement read out on television, Egyptian security forces called for calm among the protesters.
A sizeable crowd has also turned out in Egypt's second city Alexandria.
Press action Mohammed Morsi adopted sweeping new powers in a decree on 22 November, and stripped the judiciary of any power to challenge his decisions.

Tahrir Square has again become the scene of large-scale protest

He has also called a nationwide referendum for 15 December on a new constitution, which opponents say has been rushed through and fails to protect the rights of minorities, particularly women.
Mr Morsi, who narrowly won Egypt's first free presidential election in June, says he will give up his new powers once a new constitution is ratified.
But his actions have brought out thousands, both his supporters and his opponents, in recent days.
Several newspapers refused to go to press on Tuesday, or printed blank front pages, in protest at what they say is the lack of press freedom in the constitution.