TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian stocks ended higher on Wednesday as optimism about Chinese economic growth boosted energy stocks and investors cheered a cost-cutting plan at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd .
The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> closed up 20.11 points, or 0.17 percent, at 12,157.29.</.gsptse>
(Reporting by Alastair Sharp)
Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News
TORONTO (Reuters) – WestJet Airlines Ltd will use technological innovation, including a new Internet ticket booking system, to help it transform from a no-frills carrier to a lower-cost full-service airline courting lucrative corporate travelers, its chief executive said on Monday.
Canada’s second-biggest airline plans to launch a series of technology systems, most notably the new online booking engine, which will sell three tiers of tickets, in the next two months.
“Companies evolve or they die,” Chief Executive Gregg Saretsky told Reuters in a phone interview from the company’s Calgary head office.
“We’re 16 and going on 17 years old and we can’t stay just as we were 17 years ago. The world has changed. And we are changing to be more relevant for a broader segment of guests.”
The new Internet booking system, which WestJet hopes to launch in late January, will sell economy, mid-tier and premium tickets. That is a major shift from its current system, which sells only the lowest-priced ticket available.
Economy tickets under the new system will continue to sell the lowest available fare, but the cancellation fee for them will jump to C$ 75 ($ 75.48) from C$ 50. Mid-tier tickets will have a C$ 50 cancellation fee.
Premium tickets, unavailable until late March when WestJet finishes reconfiguring its 100 Boeing 737 planes to allow more leg room, will include priority screening and boarding, free cancellations and flexibility on ticket changes.
Pricing for those tickets, which may include free meals and drinks and an extra baggage allowance, has not yet been determined. Fares will be well below half the price for business class at WestJet’s bigger competitor, Air Canada, Saretsky said.
“It’s time for us to be more serious with respect to going after business travelers because frankly, they’re the ones who are booking last-minute and are happy to pay for the conveniences,” Saretsky said.
WestJet will launch its premium economy service with 24 seats per plane, but will consider expansion if it proves “wildly successful,” he added.
POISED FOR CHANGE
WestJet, which has spent about C$ 40 million over the past two years on technology projects, is poised for major changes in 2013 as it readies to launch a new regional airline, Encore.
Saretsky hopes that WestJet’s switch in coming weeks to a new Internet phone system will allow ticket reservation agents to work from home and help make room for Encore staff.
Some 750 reservation agents work at WestJet’s Calgary offices, which house about 2,400 staff. Space will be needed for Encore employees over the next 18 months while their office, hangars and maintenance stores are constructed at the WestJet campus.
Encore will be launch in the second half of 2013, “probably closer to July than December,” Saretsky said, with seven Bombardier Q400 planes.
While WestJet won’t announce Encore’s schedule until Jan 21, the carrier will initially serve only “a handful” of new cities, with ticket prices up to 50 percent below Air Canada’s, he added.
Over the next two months, WestJet will also roll out a guest notification system that alerts travelers via email about their flights, allowing them to check in remotely.
Such self-service technology will be critical as WestJet faces increasing labor costs, Saretsky said.
Wage and benefit costs, which represent about a third of operating costs, have climbed 50 percent since WestJet was founded in 1996.
“You can see that creates a little bit of drag on earnings,” Saretsky said. “We’ve got to find ways of reducing our component costs.”
If WestJet can increase self service options for travelers, that could limit the need for new employees, Saretsky said. Management also wants to improve attendance management, so that fewer employees book off sick around long weekends, and more quickly clean and process planes between flights, he said.
(Reporting By Susan Taylor; Editing by Peter Galloway)
(This story was corrected to show that WestJet is replacing its Internet booking engine, not entire reservation system, in the first and second paragraphs)
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(Reuters) – Walt Disney Co agreed to give Netflix exclusive TV distribution rights to its movies, becoming the first major studio to stream its movies to TV viewers via Netflix instead of distributing them to HBO, Showtime or other premium TV channels.
The agreement begins in 2016, after Disney‘s current deal with Liberty Media’s pay-TV channel Starz expires.
The deal gives Netflix streaming rights to movies from Disney‘s live action and animation studios, including those from Pixar, Marvel, and the recently acquired Lucasfilms. Disney bought the famed studio founded by George Lucas and responsible for the “Star Wars” franchise for $ 4 billion on October 30.
Movies from Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks studios are not included in the deal, as that studio distributes its movies through CBS’s Showtime on TV. Disney recently signed a deal to distribute DreamWorks’ films theatrically after the studio’s deal with Viacom’s Paramount Pictures expired.
Under the deal’s terms, Netflix can stream Disney movies beginning seven to nine months after they appear in theaters, as Starz had done in Disney’s prior agreement. The deal does not cover DVD rentals of Disney movies.
The agreement follows similar deals Netflix has inked with smaller studios, including Relativity Media, The Weinstein company and DreamWorks Animation.
Netflix shares were up 12.9 percent to $ 85.83 in afternoon trading following news of the agreement.
(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Editing by Peter Lauria and Tim Dobbyn)
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(Reuters) – Baxter International Inc said on Tuesday that it would buy privately held Swedish kidney dialysis product company Gambro AB for about $ 4 billion, a tie up that would put it in the No. 2 position in the dialysis market.
Baxter, whose shares were down more than 1 percent in afternoon trading, will finance the acquisition with debt and cash. The deal, which is expected to close in the first half of next year, marks Baxter’s biggest acquisition since Chief Executive Robert Parkinson took the helm in 2004.
Baxter manufactures kidney dialysis equipment, drug infusion pumps and blood therapy products. The Gambro acquisition will round out Baxter’s renal business, which accounted for almost one-fifth of the company’s 2011 revenue of $ 13.89 billion.
Gambro is one of the largest makers of equipment for hemodialysis, which is generally performed in a hospital or clinic. The dialysis from Baxter’s machines is called peritoneal and can be performed at home.
Gambro’s sales have been flat to weaker in recent years, undermined partly by capacity constraints, but Baxter executives voiced confidence during a conference call with analysts that the business can be turned around.
“It is a big market and it is going to continue to grow for a long time. There are only so many kidney transplants available in the world,” Parkinson told analysts.
Hemodialysis is a method that is used to remove waste products from the blood when the kidneys fail. Another method is peritoneal dialysis, a treatment for severe chronic kidney disease that uses the patient’s own membrane inside the body as a filter to clear waste. The third treatment option is a kidney transplant.
“At the end of the day, this is an acquisition that is not dependent on any one pathway for value creation. It is not dependent on a major new product launch or technological advancement, and is not dependent on commercial assumptions that our overly optimistic. This is an acquisition that is dependent on execution,” he said. “This is something we know we can do and do well.”
He said the planned acquisition did not represent a change in the direction for the company, which has invested in stem cell research and a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
Shares of Baxter were down 1 percent at $ 65.14 on Tuesday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange.
TOO PRICEY?
Some analysts said they were concerned by the price tag and that the company will scale back its share buyback program in order to acquire Gambro.
“I think the deal makes sense. I think it does fit well with their existing renal business and I think there probably are synergies, but at the same time it is a lot of cash they are paying for this thing. They are taking on a significant amount of debt,” said Michael Matson, an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA.
Moody’s, the credit rating agency, said it put Baxter’s A3 rating on review for downgrade following Gambro announcement.
Derrick Sung, an analyst with Bernstein Research, noted that Baxter will be paying 2.5 times sales, which is not “unreasonable” but appears to be on the high end of comparable deals.
The Gambro deal marks further consolidation in the kidney dialysis market, where Gambro and Baxter compete against companies including U.S.-based DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc and Germany’s Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co KGaA, the biggest player in the hemodialysis market.
“I think in the longer term, the ambition is to try to challenge Fresenius,” currently the market leader, analyst Kristofer Liljeberg of Sweden’s Carnegie investment bank said.
However, he said, Gambro, which is owned by Swedish investment holding company Investor AB and its partly owned private equity company, EQT, had been struggling in recent years with slow growth and price competition.
Liljeberg said the deal was a good one for family-owned Investor, which controls several of Sweden’s top companies. Since they bought Gambro, Investor and EQT have sold off its clinics and a blood component business.
“This is a good long-term home for Gambro,” Borje Ekholm, CEO of Investor, said. “These two companies have a lot of things in common. They share similar values to improve the lives of patients. They have a very complementary geographic fit.”
A GROWING MARKET
More than 2 million patients globally are on some form of dialysis, and that has been increasing more than 5 percent annually, in part because of the rising rates of diabetes and hypertension.
Excluding special items, Baxter expects the Gambro transaction to reduce earnings per diluted share by 10 to 15 cents in 2013 and be neutral or add modestly to them in 2014. The deal is expected to close in the first half of next year.
Excluding the impact of special items and estimated amortization of intangible assets, the company said the deal should not affect earnings in 2013 and add 20 to 25 cents a diluted share in 2014.
Baxter said it expected the deal to add to earnings per diluted share, excluding special items, after 2014.
The suburban Chicago company said it expected over five years to increase sales by 7 to 8 percent, excluding the impact of currency fluctuations, on a compound annual basis, with earnings per diluted share, excluding special items, rising by 8 to 10 percent.
“Companies like Baxter can unlock a fair amount of value when they find strategic use for their overseas cash,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Matt Miksic.
Indeed, Baxter said it planned to finance the deal with cash overseas. Multinational companies that have large international sales often have difficulties moving that cash back to the United States where they can put it to use.
J.P. Morgan was Baxter’s financial adviser for the deal.
(This story has been corrected to remove ticker EQT.N that is not associated with EQT, the private equity firm, in paragraph 17. Also corrects paragraph two to add dropped word “down”)
(Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore, Debra Sherman in Chicago, Caroline Humer in New York, and Patrick Lannin and Mia Shanley in Stockholm; editing by Joyjeet Das, Lisa Von Ahn, Matthew Lewis and Marguerita Choy)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
(Reuters) – American Airlines passenger service agents, the only major employee group at the carrier not unionized, began voting Tuesday on whether to be represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union.
About 9,700 airport agents and reservations representatives are eligible to cast ballots in a vote being conducted by the National Mediation Board (NMB), said Chuck Porcari, a CWA spokesman. Voting ends January 15.
“All of the other work groups at American are unionized, and we’re not,” said Bridget Powell, a passenger service agent with American and union activist. “When it comes to negotiating with the company, we don’t have that option.”
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the vote last week when it denied American’s request for a stay of an earlier ruling that upheld the election.
“We’re encouraging all our eligible employees to vote,” American Airlines spokesman Bruce Hicks said. “It’s a very important election for them.”
American says it sought to block the union vote because at least half of the eligible workers didn’t show interest in joining a union, as required by a law that took effect this year.
The NMB said that the older, 35 percent standard should apply because the union had filed for an election before the law changed earlier this year, according to the CWA.
The CWA says a union is needed to protect American’s agents, who perform tasks such as checking in passengers and taking customer service calls, as the company has been outsourcing agent jobs and cutting pay and benefits.
American parent AMR , which has about 80,000 non-management employees, is reorganizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an effort to cut costs. Earlier this year it reached agreements with its unionized flight attendants and ground workers on contracts that it said cut costs by 17 percent.
American’s pilots are due to wrap up voting on a tentative agreement on Friday that offers an initial 4 percent pay raise and a 13.5 percent equity stake in AMR after it exits bankruptcy.
American offered equity stakes of 4.8 percent and 3 percent, respectively, in contracts it reached this year with unionized ground workers and flight attendants.
(Reporting by Karen Jacobs; Editing by Alwyn Scott and Leslie Gevirtz)
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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. and allied intelligence have detected Syrian movement of chemical weapons components in recent days, a senior U.S. defense official said Monday, as the Obama administration strongly warned the Assad regime against using them.
A senior defense official said intelligence officials have detected activity around more than one of Syria‘s chemical weapons sites in the last week. The defense official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, reiterated President Barack Obama‘s declaration that Syrian action on chemical weapons was a “red line” for the United States that would prompt action.
“We have made our views very clear: This is a red line for the United States,” Clinton told reporters. “I’m not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”
Syria said Monday it would not use chemical weapons against its own people. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Syria “would not use chemical weapons — if there are any — against its own people under any circumstances.”
Syria has been careful never to confirm that it has any chemical weapons.
The use of chemical weapons would be a major escalation in Assad’s crackdown on his foes and would draw international condemnation. In addition to causing mass deaths and horrific injuries to survivors, the regime’s willingness to use them would alarm much of the region, particularly neighboring states, including Israel.
At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said, “We are concerned that in an increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be considering the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. And as the president has said, any use or proliferation of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would cross a red line for the United States. “
Administration officials would not detail what that response might be.
Although Syria is one of only seven nations that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, it is a party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol that bans the use of chemical weapons in war. That treaty was signed in the aftermath of World War I, when the effects of the use of mustard gas and other chemical agents outraged much of the world.
Clinton didn’t address the issue of the fresh activity at Syrian chemical weapons depots, but insisted that Washington would address any threat that arises.
An administration official said the trigger for U.S. action of some kind is the use of chemical weapons or movement with the intent to use or provide them to a terrorist group like Hezbollah. The U.S. is trying to determine whether the recent movement detected in Syria falls into any of those categories, the official said. The administration official was speaking on condition of anonymity this person was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.
The senior defense official said the U.S. does not believe that any Syrian action beyond the movement of components is imminent.
An Israeli official said if there is real movement on chemical weapons, it would require a response. He didn’t say what that might be and spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal government response to the reports of the latest activities.
Israeli officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that Syrian chemical weapons could slip into the hands of Hezbollah or other anti-Israel groups, or even be fired toward Israel in an act of desperation by Syria.
Syria is believed to have several hundred ballistic surface-to-surface missiles capable of carrying chemical warheads.
Its arsenal is a particular threat to the American allies, Turkey and Israel, and Obama singled out the threat posed by the unconventional weapons earlier this year as a potential cause for deeper U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war. Up to now, the United States has opposed military intervention or providing arms support to Syria’s rebels for fear of further militarizing a conflict that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.
Clinton said that while the actions of President Bashar Assad‘s government have been deplorable, chemical weapons would bring them to a new level.
“We once again issue a very strong warning to the Assad regime that their behavior is reprehensible, their actions against their own people have been tragic,” she said. “But there is no doubt that there’s a line between even the horrors that they’ve already inflicted on the Syrian people and moving to what would be an internationally condemned step of utilizing their chemical weapons.”
Activity has been detected before at Syrian weapons sites, believed to number several dozen.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in late September the intelligence suggested the Syrian government had moved some of its chemical weapons in order to protect them. He said the U.S. believed that the main sites remained secure.
Asked Monday if they were still considered secure, Pentagon press secretary George Little declined to comment about any intelligence related to the weapons.
Senior lawmakers were notified last week that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected activity related to Syria’s chemical and biological weapons, said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meetings. All congressional committees with an interest in Syria, from the intelligence to the armed services committees, are now being kept informed.
“I can’t comment on these reports but I have been very concerned for some time now about Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and its stocks of advanced conventional weapons like shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles,” said House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. “We are not doing enough to prepare for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous vacuum it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be an extremely serious escalation that would demand decisive action from the rest of the world,” he added.
Syria is believed to have one of the world’s largest chemical weapons programs, and the Assad regime has said it might use the weapons against external threats, though not against Syrians. The U.S. and Jordan share the same concern about Syria’s chemical and biological weapons — that they could fall into the wrong hands should the regime in Syria collapse and lose control of them.
___
Klapper reported from Prague. Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Albert Aji in Damascus and Matthew Lee, Kimberly Dozier, and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.
Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey‘s broadcasting regulator is fining a television channel for insulting religious values after it aired an episode of “The Simpsons” which shows God taking orders from the devil.
Radio and television watchdog RTUK said it was fining private broadcaster CNBC-e 52,951 lira ($ 30,000) over the episode of the hit U.S. animated TV series, whose scenes include the devil asking God to make him a coffee.
“The board has decided to fine the channel over these matters,” an RTUK spokeswoman said but declined further comment, saying full details would probably be announced next week.
CNBC-e said it would comment once the fine was officially announced.
Turkey is a secular republic but most of its 75 million people are Muslim. Religious conservatives and secular opponents vie for public influence and critics of the government say it is trying to impose Islamic values by stealth.
Elected a decade ago with the strongest majority seen in years, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AK Party have overseen a period of unprecedented prosperity in Turkey. But concerns are growing about authoritarianism.
Erdogan last week tore into a chart-topping soap opera about the Ottoman Empire’s longest-reigning Sultan and the broadcasting regulator has warned the show’s makers about insulting a historical figure.
“The Simpsons” first aired in 1989 and is the longest-running U.S. sitcom. It is broadcast in more than 100 countries and CNBC-e has been airing it in Turkey for almost a decade.
“I wonder what the script writers will do when they hear that the jokes on their show are taken seriously and trigger fines in a country called Turkey,” wrote Mehmet Yilmaz, a columnist for the Hurriyet newspaper.
“Maybe they will add an almond-moustached RTUK expert to the series,” he said, evoking a popular Turkish stereotype of a pious government supporter.
($ 1 = 1.7873 Turkish liras)
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Paul Casciato)
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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled the nation’s new initiative to eradicate HIV and AIDS on Thursday. Dubbed the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Blueprint: Creating an AIDS-free Generation,” the initiative is focused on improving both preventative measures and treatment options. Clinton presented PEPFAR during a special news conference in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department.
Clinton’s announcement was meant to coincide with World AIDS Day, which is Dec. 1. World AIDS Day was established in 1988 in order to shed light on the disease, its causes, and its prevention and treatment, as well as to push for comprehensive government intervention and research. The theme of this year’s World AIDS Day is a continuation of last year’s “Getting to Zero.”
Here is some of the key information that emerged from Clinton’s PEPFAR announcement.
* The State Department had announced Clinton’s intention to present the plan in a press release issued on Tuesday.
* The press conference, which was streamed live by the State Department, featured opening remarks by Florence Ngobeni-Allen, who is the ambassador for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, as well as remarks by Ambassador Eric P. Goosby, who is the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator.
* Clinton reportedly had requested that the PEPFAR blueprint be drawn up after her visit to South Africa this past summer.
* As noted by The Hill, The PEPFAR Blueprint establishes several priorities in the nation’s fight against AIDS, particularly mother-to-child transmission of HIV, increased access to condoms, and more HIV testing, among other factors.
* Clinton said in her remarks on Thursday that while “HIV may well be with us into the future,” AIDS itself “need not be.”
* She outlined what she referred to as two “broad goals” of the PEPFAR Blueprint and the nation’s fight against AIDS — to be able to fight new HIV infection rates to the point where globally more people are treated for an existing infection than are newly-diagnosed, and for the U.S. “to deliver” on its promises to continue to help lead the fight against the disease.
* Clinton also said that the nation’s fight against AIDS would place more of its global focus on women and girls, as they are at a higher risk of infection due to “gender inequity and violence.”
* According to the U.N. News Centre, the U.N. also has plans to mark World AIDS Day. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon reportedly plans to call for more focused initiatives and an ongoing global commitment “to get to zero.”
Vanessa Evans is a musician and freelance writer based in Michigan, with a lifelong interest in health and nutrition issues.
Sexual Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Today, Pope Benedict XVI signed up for an instant means to spread his holy message to followers worldwide—but is he really ready for them to talk back?
Within hours of launching the Twitter account @pontifex, the pope had more than 140,000 followers, thousands of mentions, and zero tweets. The pope will not begin tweeting until Dec. 12, the Vatican said in a written statement Monday. The account, which will tweet in eight languages, will respond to the hashtag #askpontifex to answer questions of faith (most likely not to include queries on pop culture, fashion, or what you should have for lunch).
This isn’t the 85-year-old’s first Twitter rodeo. He caused a stir—and drew in 50,000 new followers—when he sent his first tweet from the Vatican Twitter account last summer. His personal account offers a way to increase awareness of the church’s message and reach out to a more digital subset of the 1.2 billion Catholic followers worldwide.
Here are some of the top tweets about His Holiness’s Twitter debut:
Businessweek.com — Top News
CAIRO (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
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