Continue reading HTC One Android 4.2 update available in UK, makes great phone even better at MobileBurn
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Wednesday, July 10, 2013
HTC One Android 4.2 update available in UK, makes great phone even better
MobileBurn writes, Even though the HTC One has yet to prove it can carry HTC through a difficult time, the Android 4.1 phone is highly rated because it is a great device. Now it's become even better thanks to an Android 4.2 upgrade. Read the full story here.
Snowden affair blunts U.S. push for China to curb cyber theft
By Paul Eckert
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Revelations by former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden will make it harder for the United States to confront China at talks this week over the alleged cyber theft of trade secrets worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Snowden's disclosures of American electronic surveillance around the world give China an argument to counter U.S. complaints that it steals private intellectual property (IP) from U.S. companies and research centers.
Cyber security is at the center of high-level talks between the two countries in Washington that will show whether a positive tone struck by President Barack Obama and new Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit last month can translate into cooperation on difficult issues.
Top U.S. officials, from Obama down, have long tried to convince China to recognize a clear line between the kind of cyber espionage by spy agencies revealed by Snowden and the theft of technology.
"This Snowden thing has muddied the waters in a terrible way," said James McGregor, author of a book on China's authoritarian capitalism and industrial policy.
"China would rather have the waters muddy, because they can say 'You do it. We do it. What's the big deal?' and the cyber theft from companies will go on and on," he said by telephone from China, where he is senior counselor for APCO Worldwide, a U.S. business consultancy.
At the talks, U.S. officials will press China on cyber theft, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said last week, describing the problem as "just different from other kinds of issues in the cyber area.
Many countries spy on each other, but U.S. officials say China is unique in the amount of state-sponsored IP theft it carries out as it tries to catch up with the United States in economic power and technological prowess.
Last week the U.S. Department of Justice charged Chinese wind turbine maker Sinovel Wind Group Co and two of its employees with stealing software source code from U.S.-based AMSC worth $800 million.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hopes "to see a clear indication that China recognizes thefts of trade secrets, whether by cyber or other means, is stealing property and will bring the full force of its laws to curb this," said Jeremie Waterman, the group's senior director for Greater China.
Beijing parries complaints about Chinese hacking into the computers of U.S. businesses by saying China is itself a major victim of cyber espionage. Chinese officials have dismissed as unconvincing recent U.S. official and private-sector reports attributing large-scale hacking of American networks to China.
China's official Xinhua news agency said last month the Snowden case showed the United States was "the biggest villain in our age" and a hypocrite for complaining about Chinese cyber attacks.
On Tuesday, the Communist Party's People's Daily attacked the United States for a hypocritical internet policy of defending hacking in the name of national security when it suited Washington's purposes.
"Differentiating hacking attacks as 'good' and 'bad' is a double standard when it comes to internet security," the newspaper's overseas edition said in a front page comment.
China's stance seems to be stiffened by Snowden's revelations of widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency and his assertion that the agency hacked into critical network infrastructure at universities in China and Hong Kong.
Snowden fled to Hong Kong before his leaks to newspapers became public last month, and then went to Moscow, where he is believed to be holed up in the transit area of the Sheremetyevo airport, trying to find a country to give him sanctuary.
'OUT OF BOUNDS' SPYING
Now in their fifth year, the annual U.S.-Chinese talks, known as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, will cover topics from U.S. concerns about North Korea's nuclear weapons and expanding military ties to climate change and access to Chinese financial markets.
China's exchange-rate policy is on the agenda, although it has receded as an issue with the gradual strengthening of the yuan and a reduction of huge current account imbalances.
This year U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Lew host Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Vice Premier Wang Yang for the first such dialogue session since China's once-a-decade leadership change in March, when Xi took over.
The meetings follow Obama's summit last month with Xi in California, where the two men developed what aides called a productive relationship. Nevertheless, Obama demanded Chinese action to halt what he called "out of bounds" cyber spying.
Officials from the two countries discussed international law and practices in cyberspace at low-level talks on Monday. Cyber security will feature at other meetings during the week that are also likely to address U.S. accusations that Beijing gained access electronically to Pentagon weapons designs.
IP theft costs U.S. businesses $320 billion a year, a sum equivalent to annual U.S. exports to Asia, the authors of a recent report say.
China accounts for between 50 percent and 80 percent of IP theft suffered by U.S. firms, the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, a bipartisan group of former U.S. officials, said in a May report.
Cyber theft of industrial designs, business strategies and trade secrets is just a part of IP pilfering.
IP theft also involves "planted employees, bribed employees, employees who were appealed to on the basis of nationalism and all the traditional means of espionage, often accompanied by cyber," said Richard Ellings, president of the National Bureau of Asian Research think tank, who co-wrote the report.
The U.S. District Court in Manhattan charged three New York University researchers in May with conspiring to take bribes from Chinese medical and research outfits for details about NYU research into magnetic resonance imaging technology.
Arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Homeland Security Department for IP infringements rose 159 percent and indictments increased 264 percent from 2009 to 2013, a June report by the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator showed.
The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property called for tough penalties including banking sanctions, bans on imports and blacklisting in U.S. financial markets.
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Alistair Bell, Xavier Briand and Clarence Fernandez)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/snowden-affair-blunts-u-push-china-curb-cyber-015332522.html
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
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Pakistan's opportunity: a free-trade deal with rival India
Trade is not a cure-all for grinding poverty, but a free-trade deal between Pakistan and India would help foster economic growth and regional peace. And the political timing has never been better. Pakistan's new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, should seize the moment.
Pakistan laborers unload sacks of onion imported from neighboring India May 14 at the Pakistani border crossing of Wagah. Op-ed contributor Jesse Kaplan writes: 'The Pakistan-India border is 1,800 miles long, but trade flows only through one official crossing.'
K.M. Chaudary/AP/file
EnlargePakistan's new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, confronts no shortage of challenges: an economy at risk of collapse, a woefully inadequate electrical supply that causes rolling blackouts across the country, rising ethnic and sectarian tensions, and the threat of internal terrorism.
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Yet Mr. Sharif also has a significant economic and political opportunity, and he should seize it. Pakistan is due to normalize trade relations with India this year by granting its neighbor and strategic rival most-favored-nation trade status. Sharif should go further and pursue a full-blown India-Pakistan free-trade agreement, much like the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The longstanding animosity in India-Pakistan relations has left South Asia as one of the world's least-integrated regions. Since the two countries were created in the 1947 partition of British India, they have fought four wars.
As a result, intraregional trade in South Asia accounts for only 5 percent of the region's total trade, a proportion dwarfed even by Africa's 10 percent of intraregional trade (not to mention East Asia's 53 percent). Existing organizations such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation have been unable to promote anything more than cosmetic integration.
The Pakistan-India border is 1,800 miles long, but trade flows only through one official crossing. Elaborate customs procedures, difficult visa regimes, and restrictions on foreign investment make trade between the neighbors difficult at best. Clearing away these obstacles could boost trade to $40 billion a year, analysts estimate, compared with less than $3 billion last year.
Trade is not a cure-all for stunted development and grinding poverty, but it would help foster growth in two countries whose lack of openness to each other hinders their economic advancement. A free-trade agreement would lead to increased investment and tourism for both countries, reduced prices for consumers, greater revenues for businesses, and a newly diverse and more innovative group of suppliers for both countries' people.
And, as the US National Intelligence Council has warned, improved trade may be the only way to keep South Asia peaceful ? no small concern considering the countries' nuclear arsenals.
For Pakistan and India, moreover, the timing may never be better. Sharif has nearly unprecedented support for a Pakistani civilian leader. He has no viable rivals. As a result of his party's strong election performance in May, he does not even require a coalition to govern.
Sharif also draws the bulk of his support from the Punjab Province, the most economically prosperous and industrialized region, and thus the one best-positioned to benefit from a deal.
Sharif's Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, has seen his long premiership weakened by scandals and unruly coalition partners. His Congress Party desperately needs a win to increase voter enthusiasm ahead of next year's general election. The Indian public is disenchanted with internal security problems, anemic economic growth, and the bland performance of Mr. Singh's heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi.
For Singh, like Sharif, a trade deal could provide an economic and political boost. The influential Indian business community would reap major benefits from a trade deal with the 180 million consumers next door. And Singh, who was born in what is now Pakistan, originally made his name as an economic reformer, launching India's economic liberalization as finance minister in 1991.
To be sure, securing a trade agreement would not be easy. The Pakistani military is reflexively suspicious of India and scuttled an attempted opening of relations in 1999 during Sharif's prior premiership. Singh's coalition partners remain troublesome. Both groups would have to be appeased to allow a trade deal to go forward. And both countries will need to keep their territorial dispute over Kashmir as a separate issue.
Still, nothing is ever easy in South Asia, and this opportunity is better than most. Nawaz Sharif should take it.
Jesse Kaplan, a former Babar Ali fellow at Lahore University of Management Sciences, is a student at Yale Law School.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Routes Africa 2013: Live Twitter Updates
Posted 07 July 2013 09:43
Keep up to date on all the latest news and event activity from the The 8th Routes Africa hosted by Kampala, Uganda!
Today will see the start of our face-to-face meetings and the annual Strategy Summit. One of the highlights of the Summit will be a keynote address from Hon. Amama MBABAZI, the HON Right Prime Minister of Uganda who has recently confirmed that he will participate in the event.? This year the seniority of delegates registered to attend Routes Africa has been very high and the event has seen high level registrations from all sectors of the industry including airline and airport CEOs and Ministers of Tourism.
Attendees of the summit will hear a welcome address from Hon. James Abraham Byandaala, Minister for Works and Transport for Uganda along with opening remarks from Dr W Rama Makuza, MD, Uganda CAAbefore keynote addresses from Hon. Amama MBABAZI, Hon. Maria Mutagamba, The Minister of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities for Uganda and Dr Titus Naikuni, CEO, Kenya Airways.
Source: http://www.routesonline.com/news/29/breaking-news/207803/routes-africa-2013-live-twitter-updates/
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Twins rock Dickey, shut out Blue Jays
By IAN HARRISON
Associated Press
Associated Press Sports
updated 4:53 p.m. ET July 6, 2013
TORONTO (AP) - R.A. Dickey has been hurt by the longball a lot this season, and Saturday was no different.
Brian Dozier hit a three-run home run, Mike Pelfrey and three relievers combined for a four-hitter and the Minnesota Twins beat Dickey and the Toronto Blue Jays 6-0.
Dozier's homer was the 19th allowed by Dickey in 19 starts this season.
"I gave up another three-run home run, which has kind of been my bane this year," Dickey said. "That's not ordinary for me."
Dickey (8-9) had won three of his previous four starts, including a two-hit shutout of Tampa Bay on June 26 and seven solid innings in an 8-3 win over Detroit on Monday. But he wasn't as effective in this one, giving up six runs and seven hits in seven innings. He walked two and struck out three.
"He pretty much held them in check until that big three-run home run late," Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said.
Dickey has allowed six runs or more in seven of his 19 starts.
"I felt pretty good, gave up a couple of hits with runners in scoring position," Dickey said. "For the most part I was right in my lane and threw a whole lot of strikes."
Toronto starters have allowed six runs or more in four of the past five games, but Gibbons isn't concerned.
"This is our rotation, we like it," Gibbons said. "You ride it out. We think they're going to pitch good the rest of the way out."
Maicer Izturis had three of Toronto's four hits as the Blue Jays lost for the seventh time in 10 games. Slugger Jose Bautista, who hit his 20th homer Friday, flied out to the warning track twice.
The Blue Jays used a trio of two-out walks to load the bases in the first against Twins starter Mike Pelfrey but Rajai Davis grounded out to end the threat.
"We couldn't get anything going, that's the bottom line," Gibbons said. "We had that opportunity, it was really our only opportunity, in the first, and came up empty."
Dozier had two hits and four RBIs, connecting off Dickey for his eighth homer as the Twins snapped a six-game skid and won for just the fourth time in 14 games.
Minnesota came in having lost 17 of 23 to Toronto, including eight of nine at Rogers Centre.
Pitching for the first time since June 18 after landing on the disabled list with a strained back, Pelfrey (4-6) snapped an eight-start winless streak to earn his first victory since May 5 at Cleveland. He allowed three hits in six innings, walked three and struck out two.
Caleb Thielbar worked the seventh, Jared Burton pitched the eighth and Glen Perkins finished.
"It was a great pitching effort," Twins catcher Joe Mauer said. "To shut that team out is pretty good."
Pelfrey said he tweaked his left groin in the shaky first, but was able to keep pitching.
"He said he just made an adjustment in his windup and everything went good from there," Gardenhire said. "It's fine, he pitched through it no problems and he'll be fine for his next start."
Chris Parmalee doubled to begin the second and moved to third on Aaron Hicks' single but was caught in a rundown after Dickey snared Eduardo Escobar's comebacker, leaving men at first and second. After the runners moved up on a passed ball, Dozier hit an RBI grounder, Jamey Carroll hit an RBI double and Mauer followed with a run-scoring single.
Parmalee doubled off Dickey again to open the seventh and Hicks walked but Parmalee was forced at third on Escobar's bunt. Dozier followed with his first home run since June 21.
"A three-run home run is tough to overcome when you've already given up three," Dickey said.
Twins outfielder Oswaldo Garcia suffered a bruised right hand when he was hit by a pitch from Dickey in the sixth. He stayed in the game but was replaced by Clete Thomas in the bottom of the seventh. X-rays were negative and Arcia is day-to-day.
NOTES: After two rehab games with Class-A Lansing, Toronto 3B Brett Lawrie (left ankle) has moved up to Double-A New Hampshire, where he'll play Saturday night. Lawrie has been out since May 28. ... The Blue Jays activated RHP Kyle Drabek (shoulder surgery) off the disabled list and assigned him to Class-A Dunedin to continue his rehab. Drabek takes the 40-man roster spot of RHP Chien-Ming Wang, who is at Triple-A Buffalo. ... The Blue Jays signed RHP Clinton Hollon, their second round pick in last month's draft.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Sunday, July 7, 2013
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Thursday, July 4, 2013
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The ultimate video game: Teams compete in DARPA Robotics Challenge
Teams from eight countries competed in the first round of the challenge to develop a disaster-response robot.
DARPA Virtual Robotic Challenge tasks included guiding the robot over different terrain, including uneven ground.
DARPA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory
EnlargeThis is the ultimate video game.
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Except in this game, turning on a garden hose is an enormously difficult task, requiring huge teams of scientists and?decades of acquired technology.
About 26 teams from eight countries competed June 17-21 in the Virtual Robotics Challenge, the first round of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, using complex software to direct virtual robots in a cloud-based simulator that looks like a 3-D video game.
The overall challenge for the teams is to develop software that can operate a humanoid robot supplied by DARPA?(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) across a low-bandwidth network, which is expected to be the only type of network available to first responders in a disaster scenario.
This first round was a software competition in which teams used software of their own design to have a simulated ATLAS robot navigate a simulated disaster zone that looked something like suburbia gone wrong. For three days, competitors stared into computer screens in their respective far-flung labs and offices, instructing their virtual robots to complete a series of challenges, including driving a vehicle and walking over uneven ground. Robots also had to pick up a hose, connect it to a spigot, and turn it on.
?The disaster-response scenario is technically very challenging,? said Russ Tedrake, a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?(MIT). ?It requires the robot and human operator to simultaneously perceive and gain an understanding for a complex, new environment, and then use that information to perform difficult manipulation tasks and traverse complex terrains.?
That means that the virtual robot must feed its raw sensor data back to its operating team, which then, with the help of the robot, must interpret its surroundings and enter instructions about where to move or how to manipulate objects. The team members then continuously asks the robot to share its plan, adjusting their requests and their suggestions until the robot provides a correct answer, at which point the robot is allowed to go on autonomously.
The top nine teams?received?funding and an ATLAS robot to compete in the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials in December 2013. The trials are the second of three DARPA challenge events and will be the first time that the physical robots will compete.?
The overall winner of the first round was the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a team of some 22 researchers.?
?Getting in the car and driving was our biggest challenge,? said research scientist Jerry Pratt, the Florida Institute?s team leader. ?Walking ? we had that nailed.??
Other winners included Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MIT, and TRACLabs. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was also among the winning teams, donated its awarded funds to three runner-up teams that DARPA had not originally selected ? it had chosen six teams ? putting the total to nine teams that will compete in the second round.
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Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Psychology influences markets
July 1, 2013 ? Economists argue that markets usually reflect rational behavior -- that is, the dominant players in a market, such as the hedge-fund managers who make billions of dollars' worth of trades, almost always make well-informed and objective decisions. Psychologists, on the other hand, say that markets are not immune from human irrationality, whether that irrationality is due to optimism, fear, greed, or other forces.
Now, a new analysis published the week of July 1 in the online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) supports the latter case, showing that markets are indeed susceptible to psychological phenomena. "There's this tug-of-war between economics and psychology, and in this round, psychology wins," says Colin Camerer, the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the corresponding author of the paper.
Indeed, it is difficult to claim that markets are immune to apparent irrationality in human behavior. "The recent financial crisis really has shaken a lot of people's faith," Camerer says. Despite the faith of many that markets would organize allocations of capital in ways that are efficient, he notes, the government still had to bail out banks, and millions of people lost their homes.
In their analysis, the researchers studied an effect called partition dependence, in which breaking down -- or partitioning -- the possible outcomes of an event in great detail makes people think that those outcomes are more likely to happen. The reason, psychologists say, is that providing specific scenarios makes them more explicit in people's minds. "Whatever we're thinking about, seems more likely," Camerer explains.
For example, if you are asked to predict the next presidential election, you may say that a Democrat has a 50/50 chance of winning and a Republican has a 50/50 chance of winning. But if you are asked about the odds that a particular candidate from each party might win -- for example, Hillary Clinton versus Chris Christie -- you are likely to envision one of them in the White House, causing you to overestimate his or her odds.
The researchers looked for this bias in a variety of prediction markets, in which people bet on future events. In these markets, participants buy and sell claims on specific outcomes, and the prices of those claims -- as set by the market -- reflect people's beliefs about how likely it is that each of those outcomes will happen. Say, for example, that the price for a claim that the Miami Heat will win 16 games during the NBA playoffs is $6.50 for a $10 return. That means that, in the collective judgment of the traders, Miami has a 65 percent chance of winning 16 games.
The researchers created two prediction markets via laboratory experiments and studied two others in the real world. In one lab experiment, which took place in 2006, volunteers traded claims on how many games an NBA team would win during the 2006 playoffs and how many goals a team would score in the 2006 World Cup. The volunteers traded claims on 16 teams each for the NBA playoffs and the World Cup.
In the basketball case, one group of volunteers was asked to bet on whether the Miami Heat would win 4-7 playoff games, 8-11 games, or some other range. Another group was given a range of 4-11 games, which combined the two intervals offered to the first group. Then, the volunteers traded claims on each of the intervals within their respective groups. As with all prediction markets, the price of a traded claim reflected the traders' estimations of whether the total number of games won by the Heat would fall within a particular range.
Economic theory says that the first group's perceived probability of the Heat winning 4-7 games and its perceived probability of winning 8-11 games should add up to a total close to the second group's perceived probability of the team winning 4-11 games. But when they added the numbers up, the researchers found instead that the first group thought the likelihood of the team winning 4-7 or 8-11 games higher than did the second group, which was asked about the probability of them winning 4-11 games. All of this suggests that framing the possible outcomes in terms of more specific intervals caused people to think that those outcomes were more likely.
The researchers observed similar results in a second, similar lab experiment, and in two studies of natural markets -- one involving a series of 153 prediction markets run by Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, and another involving long-shot horses in horse races.
People tend to bet more money on a long-shot horse, because of its higher potential payoff, and they also tend to overestimate the chance that such a horse will win. Statistically, however, a horse's chance of winning a particular race is the same regardless of how many other horses it's racing against -- a horse who habitually wins just five percent of the time will continue to do so whether it is racing against fields of 5 or of 11. But when the researchers looked at horse-race data from 1992 through 2001 -- a total of 6.3 million starts -- they found that bettors were subject to the partition bias, believing that long-shot horses had higher odds of winning when they were racing against fewer horses.
While partition dependence has been looked at in the past in specific lab experiments, it hadn't been studied in prediction markets, Camerer says. What makes this particular analysis powerful is that the researchers observed evidence for this phenomenon in a wide range of studies -- short, well-controlled laboratory experiments; markets involving intelligent, well-informed traders at major financial institutions; and nine years of horse-racing data.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/IT2gL9HqTYg/130701151608.htm
Egyptians flood streets to demand Morsi quit
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.
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