Egypt bracing for massive protests

Egypt's Tahrir Square continues to be the center of violent protests more than two years after the Arab Spring ousted long-time ruler Hosni Mubarak. Now, supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi are clashing, with efforts afoot to remove the democratically elected leader, NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

Tens of thousands of opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi flooded the streets of Cairo as competing protests turned lethal on Sunday.

Violent clashes left three dead, the country's minister of health said.

Suspected pro-Morsi Islamists on a motorbike opened fire on anti-government demonstrators in the southern city of Assiut, killing one and wounding seven, security officials told The Associated Press.

Protesters infuriated by that killing then marched to the office of the Freedom and Justice party, the political wing of Morsi?s Muslim Brotherhood, where they were met with a hail of bullets, leaving two people dead, according to the AP. An anti-Morsi protester was murdered earlier in the town of Beni Suef, the AP reported.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against him and brotherhood members during a protest at Tahrir square in Cairo June 30, 2013.

Hours after the prearranged protests began, swarms of anti-government demonstrators were still massed in Tahrir Square, crucible of the 2011 so-called ?Arab Spring? uprisings that overthrew autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak.

?The people want the fall of the regime!? they chanted. Many waved national flags ? only this time not in defiance of an aging dictator but as a form of dissent against their first-ever elected leader, who only assumed office a year ago to the day.

Meanwhile, legions of Morsi?s allies remained outside the Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque near the Ittihadiya presidential palace. Some wore military-style regalia and carried shields and clubs, purportedly as a defense against potential attacks from the opposition, according to the AP.

Not including the casualties from Sunday, at least seven people, including an American college student in Maryland, had already been killed in clashes between opposition protesters and Morsi-allied groups in the last week.

Sunday?s protests represent the peak of a year of turbulence and turmoil in which Egypt has been rocked by scores of political crises, dozens of bloody clashes and a declining economy that has set off a spate of power outages, fuel shortages, skyrocketing prices and routine lawlessness and crime.

The opposing sides of the conflict are representative of the bitter political, social, and religious divisions in contemporary Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other hard-line groups form the backbone of the pro-Morsi camp. Many of Morsi's proponents have characterized the protests as a conspiracy by Mubarak's political allies to return the former leader to power.

The anti-government movement brings together secular and liberal Egyptians, moderate Muslims and Christians, and wide swaths of the general public the opposition says has rejected the Islamists and their regime.

Liberal leaders say nearly half all Egyptian voters ? some 22 million people ? have signed a petition calling for new elections.

"We all feel we're walking on a dead-end road and that the country will collapse," said Mohamed El-Baradei, a former U.N. nuclear watchdog chief, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and now liberal party leader in his homeland.

Despite mounting pressure, Morsi did not buckle in advance of the preplanned protests, dismissing the widespread dissent as an undemocratic assault on his electoral legitimacy, Reuters reported.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

Protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against him and members of the Muslim Brotherhood during a demonstration in Tahrir square in Cairo June 30, 2013.

But he also proposed to make changes to the new, Islamist-inflected constitution, saying he was not personally responsible for controversial clauses on religious authority, which stirred up liberal animosity and triggered the popular revolt, according to Reuters.

For many Egyptians, though, all the turmoil that has followed the Arab Spring has just made life harder. Standing by his lonely barrow at an eerily quiet downtown Cairo street market, 23-year-old Zeeka was afraid more violence was coming.

"We're not for one side or the other," he told Reuters. "What's happening now in Egypt is shameful. There is no work, thugs are everywhere ... I won't go out to any protest.

"It's nothing to do with me. I'm a tomato guy."

Visiting sub-Saharan Africa, President Barack Obama has cautioned that rancor in the largest Arab country could rattle the region.

"Every party has to denounce violence," Obama said in Pretoria, South Africa, on Saturday. "We'd like to see the opposition and President Morsi engage in a more constructive conversation about how they move their country forward because nobody is benefiting from the current stalemate."

?Washington has evacuated non-essential personnel and redoubled security at its diplomatic missions in Egypt.

Reuters and The Associated Press?contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663309/s/2dffb664/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A60C30A0C1921750A80Eegypt0Ebracing0Efor0Emassive0Eprotests0Dlite/story01.htm

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'Unimaginable that this even happened'

By Tim Gaynor

PRESCOTT, Arizona (Reuters) - Fire investigators in central Arizona launched a probe on Monday into how wind-driven flames closed in on and killed 19 specially trained firemen in a tragedy that marked the greatest loss of life among firefighters in a U.S. wildland blaze in 80 years.

The precise circumstances surrounding Sunday's deaths of all but one of a 20-member elite "hotshots" firefighting team remained unclear a day after they perished while battling a blaze that has destroyed scores of homes and forced the evacuation of two towns.

But fire officials said the young men fell victim to a volatile mix of erratic winds gusting to gale-force intensity, low humidity, a sweltering heat wave, and thick, drought-parched brush that had not burned in some 40 years.

The doomed firefighters had managed to deploy their personal fire shelters, tent-like safety devices designed to deflect heat and trap breathable air, in a last-ditch effort to survive that ultimately proved futile, officials said.

Peter Andersen, a former local Fire District chief who assisted in the early firefighting efforts, told Reuters some of the men on the ground made it into their shelters and some did not, according to an account relayed by a ranger helicopter crew flying over the area.

"There was nothing they (helicopter crew) could do to get to them," he said.

Still, conditions faced by the "hotshots," a ground crew that fights flames at close range with hand tools and serves as the shock troops in a firefighting force, were typical for the wildfires they are trained to battle, fire officials said.

Standard safety protocols followed by such crews appeared to be in place, and investigators are trying to determine exactly what went wrong in this instance, they said.

"It had to be a perfect storm in order for this to happen. Their situational awareness and their training was at such a high level that it's unimaginable that this has even happened," Prescott Fire Department spokesman Wade Ward told ABC's "Today" program.

STARTED BY LIGHTNING

The blaze was ignited on Friday by lightning near the town of Yarnell, about 80 miles (128 km) northwest of Phoenix, and by Monday was still raging unchecked after scorching some 8,400 acres (3,400 hectares) of tinder-dry chaparral and grasslands.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of Yarnell and the adjoining town of Peeples Valley. The two towns are southwest of Prescott and home to roughly 1,000 people.

A Yavapai County Sheriff's Office spokesman said on Sunday at least 200 structures had been destroyed, most of them in Yarnell, a community consisting largely of retirees. And fire officials said most of the building lost were homes.

Authorities on Monday said that figure was a rough estimate and that a more accurate assessment of property losses was expected later.

The so-called Yarnell Hills blaze was one of dozens of wildfires in several western U.S. states in recent weeks. Experts have said the current fire season could be one of the worst on record.

Sunday's disaster in Arizona marks the highest death toll among firefighters from a U.S. wildland blaze since 29 men died battling the Griffith Park fire of 1933 in Los Angeles, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

The association lists seven incidents in the United States during the past century that killed as many or more firefighters than on Sunday in Arizona. The costliest saw the deaths of 340 firefighters in the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

Arizona Forestry Commission spokesman Mike Reichling said one member of the 20-man crew had been driving in a separate location and survived unhurt. Eighteen of the dead were members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots team, assigned to the Prescott Fire Department, and the 19th victim belonged to another crew who was working with the fallen team, Reichling said.

WARNING FROM A BOW HUNTER

Evacuee Rick McKenzie, 53, a bow hunter and ranch caretaker, said the fire had "exploded" on Sunday, with flames 30 to 40 feet high (9 to 13 meters) racing across an area of oak and brush and that he had warned the Hotshots about the dense oak woods where they would be working.

"I said, 'If this fire sweeps down the mountain to the lower hills where all this thick brush is, it's going to blow up, guys, you need to watch it,'" said McKenzie, who had taken refuge at a Red Cross shelter at Yavapai College.

The Hotshots were highly trained firefighters with rigorous fitness standards. All were required to take an 80-hour critical training course and refresher yearly, according to the group's website.

"Our common bond is our love of hard work and arduous adventure," the website said.

Scorching heat is expected to last for the first part of the week, meteorologists said.

The deaths brought an outpouring of tributes on Sunday from political leaders, including from President Obama, who is on an official trip to Africa.

In a statement, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer called the deaths "one of our state's darkest, most devastating days."

She ordered state flags flown at half staff from Monday through Wednesday.

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said in a statement: "This devastating loss is a reminder of the grave risks our firefighters take every day on our behalf in Arizona and in communities across this nation. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten."

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Additional reporting by David Schwartz; Editing by Dina Kyriakidou and Sofina Mirza-Reid)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/investigators-launch-probe-death-19-arizona-firefighters-182939400.html

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El Nino unusually active in the late 20th century: Is it because of global warming?

June 30, 2013 ? Spawning droughts, floods, and other weather disturbances world-wide, the El Ni?o -- Southern Oscillation (ENSO) impacts the daily life of millions of people. During El Ni?o, Atlantic hurricane activity wanes and rainfall in Hawaii decreases while Pacific winter storms shift southward, elevating the risk of floods in California.

The ability to forecast how ENSO will respond to global warming thus matters greatly to society. Providing accurate predictions, though, is challenging because ENSO varies naturally over decades and centuries. Instrumental records are too short to determine whether any changes seen recently are simply natural or attributable to human-made greenhouse gases. Reconstructions of ENSO behavior are usually missing adequate records for the tropics where ENSO develops.

Help is now underway in the form of a tree-ring record reflecting ENSO activity over the past seven centuries. Tree-rings have been shown to be very good proxies for temperature and rainfall measurements. An international team of scientists spearheaded by Jinbao Li and Shang-Ping Xie, while working at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, has compiled 2,222 tree-ring chronologies of the past seven centuries from both the tropics and mid-latitudes in both hemispheres. Their work is published in the June 30, 2013 online issue of Nature Climate Change.

The inclusion of tropical tree-ring records enabled the team to generate an archive of ENSO activity of unprecedented accuracy, as attested by the close correspondence with records from equatorial Pacific corals and with an independent Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction that captures well-known teleconnection climate patterns.

These proxy records all indicate that ENSO was unusually active in the late 20th century compared to the past seven centuries, implying that this climate phenomenon is responding to ongoing global warming.

"In the year after a large tropical volcanic eruption, our record shows that the east-central tropical Pacific is unusually cool, followed by unusual warming one year later. Like greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols perturb the Earth's radiation balance. This supports the idea that the unusually high ENSO activity in the late 20th century is a footprint of global warming," explains lead author Jinbao Li.

"Many climate models do not reflect the strong ENSO response to global warming that we found," says co-author Shang-Ping Xie, meteorology professor at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa and Roger Revelle Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego. "This suggests that many models underestimate the sensitivity to radiative perturbations in greenhouse gases. Our results now provide a guide to improve the accuracy of climate models and their projections of future ENSO activity. If this trend of increasing ENSO activity continues, we expect to see more weather extremes such as floods and droughts."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/li4efH1FPxs/130630145025.htm

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Stocks soggy as Fed tapering worries linger, China eyed

By Ian Chua

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian stocks got off to an uninspired start on Monday, while the U.S. dollar held firm at one-month highs after an influential Federal Reserve official suggested September could be the beginning of the end of easy money from the central bank.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> fell 0.3 percent, having last week posted a 2.8 percent rally, its biggest weekly gain since September 2012. The index, though, ended the first half of the year down 7.3 percent.

Tokyo's Nikkei <.n225> also slipped 0.1 percent, having climbed 3.5 percent last week to end the first half up a handsome 31.5 percent.

"We had a big rebound in the Nikkei last Friday, so we may see some profit-taking. I think there was some window dressing last Friday as it was month-end and quarter-end," said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at Monex Inc.

Optimism that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's aggressive stimulus push will lift the economy has helped light a fire under the Nikkei.

Data on Monday suggested Abe's plans are on track with a survey showing the mood of Japanese manufacturers turning positive for the first time in nearly two years.

Monday's market moves followed a subdued finish on Wall Street after Fed Governor Jeremy Stein suggested that September could be an opportune time for the central bank to consider scaling back its massive asset-purchase program.

Stein's remarks, aechoed by President of the Richmond Fed, Jeffrey Lacker, undid some of the calm that spread through markets last week after several other officials sought to play down market fears of the Fed's plan to taper stimulus.

Critical for markets this week is the U.S. jobs data due on Friday, given it is a key measures the Fed will consider before deciding to start withdrawing stimulus.

In the meantime, markets will take their cue from a report on China's vast manufacturing sector due around 9 p.m ET.

Any disappointment will no doubt renew worries about the world's second biggest economy just as markets are getting over the impact of a recent credit crunch.

In currency markets, investors reacted to Stein's comments by bidding up the U.S. dollar, which hit a one-month high against a basket of major currencies. It remained near the peak early on Monday.

The euro traded at $1.3016, having slipped 0.2 percent on Friday, while the greenback reached fresh one-month highs of 94.55 yen.

Among the biggest losers was the Australian dollar, which hit a fresh 33-month low of $0.9110, following Friday's 1.5 percent drop.

Partly weighing on the Aussie was a recent dramatic selloff in gold, a major export earner for Australia. While bullion jumped more than 2 percent on Friday, it still suffered its biggest quarterly drop in 45 years.

Spot gold was up around 0.5 percent at $1,239 per ounce in early trade, still not far off a near three-year trough of $1.180.71 plumbed on Friday. Worries about the end of the Fed's stimulus had contributed to the panic selling of the precious metal.

Other commodities got off to a sleepy start with U.S. crude down 0.4 percent at $96.22 a barrel, while copper edged up 0.2 percent to $6,766 a tonne.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Lau in Tokyo; Editing by Eric Meijer)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stocks-soggy-fed-tapering-worries-linger-china-eyed-004415170.html

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London ?Tech City' Cluster Gets Double-Speed 4G Networks Courtesy of EE

Back in April we were told that London's highest concentration of tech companies in the East - dubbed Tech City by the UK government - would be getting high speed mobile connectivity. Well, it turns out Carrier EE (the only with with a 4G network right now) is delivering, partnering with the Tech City Investment Organisation, and is switching on a network of "double-speed" 4G hotspots. However, there is more. EE opening up its network APIs to application developers in the area and will be providing business and mentoring support for Tech City start-ups.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/o3u8lQ2DObE/

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Whoops 2013: CPAC?s Bigot Eruption (OliverWillisLikeKryptoniteToStupid)

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Europe eases the austerity whip _ a little

Students march under the snow while they protest against austerity measures on state schools, in Pamplona, northern Spain on Thursday, March 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

Students march under the snow while they protest against austerity measures on state schools, in Pamplona, northern Spain on Thursday, March 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos)

Greek army retirees holding banners with anti austerity slogans, take part in a protest against pension and health cuts in Thessaloniki, Greece on Wednesday, March 13, 2013. Hundreds of retired armed forces officers, many with their families, protested over cuts in their pensions. Greece has resorted to severe cuts in pensions and wages in order to pare down its debt. (AP Photo/Nikolas Giakoumidis)

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) ? Three and a half years into its government-debt crisis, there are signs that Europe is adopting a gentler approach toward austerity.

Political leaders aren't backing away aggressively from budget cuts and higher taxes, but they are increasingly trying to temper these policies, which have stifled growth and made it harder for many countries to bring their deficits under control.

The European Union is slowing its enforcement of deficit limits until the region's economy turns around; countries that were bailed out by their European neighbors are being given more time to repay loans, easing the pressure to cut budgets further; and financial leaders, including the head of the European Central Bank, say it's time to place more emphasis on reviving growth.

"There has clearly been a shift in thinking," says Christian Schulz, economist at Berenberg Bank in London.

After the crisis broke out in late 2009, governments dramatically slashed spending ? either to meet conditions for bailout loans, or to reassure jittery bond markets that they were trustworthy borrowers. This fiscal belt-tightening was introduced to help countries reduce their deficits and pave the way for critical financial aid.

Promises of austerity gave the ECB political breathing room to get more aggressive. The bank's pledge last summer to buy unlimited amounts of government bonds is largely responsible for taming Europe's financial crisis.

But austerity also inflicted severe economic pain in places like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Over time ? as the economy of the 17 European Union countries that use the euro descended into recession ? evidence grew that slashing spending and raising taxes were less effective at reducing deficits than initially thought, and perhaps counter-productive.

Why? Because as economies shrink, so do tax revenues, making it harder to close budget gaps.

The latest eurozone recession, which began last year, is forecast to end in the second half of this year and was the main focus of Thursday's summit of European Union leaders in Brussels.

"We are all fully conscious of the debate, the mounting frustrations and even despair of people," said Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, after the meeting ended.

"We also know there are no easy answers."

With unemployment at a record 11.9 percent and Europeans expressing their discontent at the polls and in the streets, many of the region's political and financial leaders are willing to postpone budget-cutting and deficit targets.

A few recent examples:

? EU officials have hinted Spain, France, Portugal and Greece might be allowed more time to reduce their deficits to within the limits specified by European Union rules.

? European finance ministers last week agreed in principle to grant Ireland and Portugal more time to repay bailout loans to other eurozone countries. While the countries cannot abandon deficit-reduction plans they agreed to in return for loans, it does allow them to cut budgets more slowly.

? ECB President Mario Draghi last week urged indebted governments to move beyond spending cuts and tax hikes and introduce labor reforms and other measures that would boost growth and reduce the "tragedy" of unemployment.

The rethinking of austerity gained momentum late last year after economists at the International Monetary Fund produced research that showed Europe's austerity policies had been far more damaging than policymakers thought.

It's hardly news to Ines Mendes of Lisbon, a 26-year-old flight attendant and mother of a 4-year-old. She said income tax hikes this year will cost her and her partner the equivalent of more than a month's pay each over the year, further squeezing her family budget.

"We could really use a break," Mendes said. "I don't know why they're doing this to us. It doesn't make sense, it's just killing our economy," she said of the EU's austerity demands imposed as part of the country's 2010 bailout.

Advocates of austerity haven't disappeared from the scene. Key leaders such as Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel still espouse the virtues of balanced budgets.

"Budget consolidation, structural reforms and growth are not contradictions but require each other," Merkel told reporters after the summit of 27 EU countries on Thursday. "It is necessary to trim the deficits to promote growth and investment."

But there is a difference between the rhetoric and the actions these leaders endorse. Merkel's government agreed last year to the EU commission's recommendation to extend deficit-reduction deadlines for Portugal, Greece and Spain. And the EU commission is now judging countries based on their so-called structural deficit ? or what the deficit would be excluding the effects of the recession. That gives countries more time to get their finances under control.

The new EU stance "doesn't mean countries don't need to do austerity. It means they only need to do the austerity that is needed to bring a country a balanced budget in structural terms. If a country is in a recession, this approach allows some deficit," says Berenberg analyst Schulz.

Across the eurozone, deficits as a proportion of economic output averaged 3.5 percent at the end of last year. That's down from 4.2 percent in 2011, and only slightly above the European Union target of 3 percent. However, among individual eurozone members, the picture is far less rosy ? countries such as Spain and Greece are running deficits more than double the official limit.

A growing number of European countries appear headed in the direction of less austerity no matter what the euro region's leaders decide.

In last month's election in Italy, most voters supported parties that opposed the austerity policies of departing Prime Minister Mario Monti.

And last week, the finance minister of France, the eurozone's second-largest economy, said his country had ruled out more budget cuts despite a deficit of 4.6 percent of GDP.

"We refuse to add austerity to the recession," the minister, Pierre Moscovici, said.

The austerity rethink may come as cold comfort to millions of Europeans, especially those living in countries that received bailouts, such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal. These countries remain under pressure to keep spending levels down and continue unpopular tax hikes ? even as they battle recession.

The Greek economy is in its sixth year of recession and the unemployment rate there has reached 27 percent. Portugal's economy contracted 3.2 percent last year ? its severest annual downturn since 1975 ? and its unemployment rate is at a record 17.2 percent.

In Portugal, hundreds of thousands of people recently turned out at to protest austerity measures being implemented to meet the conditions of its bailout. The opposition Socialist Party leader said: "Are we emerging from the crisis? No, we're worse off than we were before."

___

AP writers Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, Juergen Baetz in Brussels, Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, and Sarah Di Lorenzo in Paris contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-03-15-Europe-Austerity%20Rethink/id-15f039e586214bef90b8aa4dbb32ef77

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