Security forces, protesters clash again in Cairo (Reuters)

CAIRO (Reuters) ? Protesters and security forces fought in Cairo on Sunday, the third day of clashes that have killed 10 people and exposed rifts over the army's role as it manages Egypt's promised transition from military to civilian rule.

Soldiers and police manned barriers on some streets around Tahrir Square, the hub of the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak and again convulsed by violence as protesters demand the generals who took charge in February quit power.

Police in riot gear made brief forays beyond their barriers and were met by a surge of protesters pelting them with rocks. Police appeared to have taken over the frontline from soldiers.

Troops in riot gear were filmed on Saturday beating protesters with long sticks even after they had fallen to the ground. A Reuters picture showed two soldiers dragging a woman lying on the ground by her shirt, exposing her underwear.

The violence has overshadowed a staggered parliamentary election, the first free vote most Egyptians can remember, that is set to give Islamists the biggest bloc.

Some Egyptians are enraged by the army's behaviour. Others want to focus on voting, not street protests.

The ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces will retain power even after the lower house vote is completed in January, but has pledged to hand over to an elected president by July.

"Down with Tantawi," about 1,000 protesters chanted late on Sunday, referring to Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi who heads the army council and who was Mubarak's defence minister.

Some youths had earlier hulred rocks and petrol bombs at lines of security forces. Riot police appeared to have moved to the frontline instead of soldiers.

An army source said 164 people had been detained.

Hundreds of protesters were in Tahrir on Sunday, although traffic was flowing through the square coming from streets not blocked and away from the violence. Most of the clashes have been in streets leading off the square.

BOUTS OF VIOLENCE

One group of activists approached those hurling stones to urge them to stop, but they refused, citing the deaths of 10 people as a reason not to "negotiate." Other activists handed over to the army people they said were making petrol bombs.

A hardcore of activists have camped in Tahrir since a protest against army rule on November 18 that was sparked by the army-backed cabinet's proposals to permanently shield the military from civilian oversight in the new constitution.

Bouts of violence since then, including a flare-up last month that killed 42, have deepened frustrations of many other Egyptians, who want an end to protests. They see the military as the only force capable of restoring stability.

"There are people who wait for any problem and seek to amplify it ... The clashes won't stop. There are street children who found shelter in Tahrir," said Ali el-Nubi, a postal worker, adding the army should have managed the transition better.

Reuters television footage showed one soldier in a line of charging troops firing a shot at fleeing protesters on Saturday, though it was not clear whether he was using live rounds.

The army said it does not use live ammunition. It has also said troops had tackled only "thugs," not protesters.

A building near Tahrir with historic archives was gutted on Saturday by a fire. Some people tried to gather up any remaining, partially charred documents to save them.

The Health Ministry said 10 people had been killed in the violence since Friday and 505 were wounded, of which 384 had been taken to hospital. Most of the deaths happened on Friday or early Saturday. No deaths were reported on Sunday.

CONCRETE BARRIER

The latest bloodshed began after the second round of voting last week for parliament's lower house. The staggered election began on November 28 and will end with a run-off vote on January 11.

The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties repressed in the 30-year Mubarak era have emerged as strong front-runners.

The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party said it had received about 40 percent of votes cast for party lists in the second round of voting last week. The strict Salafi al-Nour Party said its list received about 35 percent.

Despite their commanding position built, it is unclear whether the two rival Islamist groups will form an alliance in parliament, as they have each spoken warily of the other.

The leadership of the Brotherhood is cautious of a wholly Islamist ruling coalition, which Egyptians from other political trends might view as divisive and polarising in a period when they think broader national unity is needed. Nour politicians accuse the Brotherhood of compromising Islamic values.

(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad, Alexander Dziadosz and Shaimaa Fayed; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Sophie Hares)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111218/wl_nm/us_egypt

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Which way will gold swing?

Despite recent downswings, gold is projected to reach $3400 in the next few years. And outside economic factors should help it climb even higher

Have yourself a merry little depression.

Skip to next paragraph Bill Bonner

Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind The Daily Reckoning (dailyreckoning.com).

Recent posts

Dow up 45 points. Gold down $9.

We?re still waiting for a major correction in the gold market. Each time one begins, it seems to run out of steam before doing any real damage. At yesterday?s closing price, $1,577, gold is still solidly ahead for the year.

So, where?s the soft spot? Where?s the test? Where will it come from? When?

Don?t worry, dear reader, Mr. Market will test us. He?ll throw his curve ball. We have to be ready.

What if?

?instead of testing us on the downside, he tests us on the upside? This is not a prediction. Just a thought. What if gold suddenly shot up?and looked like it was going to the moon. What would we do?

Citigroup?s metals expert puts a $3,400 price on gold ?in the next year or two.?

Jim Rogers makes a similar forecast.

What if they?re right? We only mention it because The Trickster has more than one trick up his sleeve. And he?s perfectly capable of running the price up to $3,500 BEFORE testing us.

We could get giddy, watching the price of gold hit record after record. And then, just when we think it is ready to scale its final peak, gold could turn tail and run for the valley. We wouldn?t believe it. We would hold on. We would wait for it to go back up.

And then?wouldn?t we feel stupid, if we?d taken that ride all the way to over $3,000?and then rode it all the way back to today?s level? Wouldn?t we be put out with ourselves, if we sold out then?thinking gold had put in its final top and we missed it?

According to the 50% principle?it could hit $3,000?collapse to barely $1,500?and then soar again?possibly going to $5,000?or even $10,000. That?s what we?ll get in the final ?crack up? boom that is coming.

Who knows?

But what we see is more upside than downside for gold. Because the motor pulling gold up still has a lot of gas in the tank.

In the US the feds spend $1.60 for every dollar they raise in taxes. In Europe, the euro-feds prepare to bail out their banks and sovereign debtors.

And guess how much the feds have already spent? They were so desperate to avoid a debt crisis?or a depression?that they threw the throttle wide open on the biggest rescue effort the world has ever seen. Bloomberg calculated that $7.7 trillion were put to work. Our estimate was higher ? about $10 trillion, we guessed.

Well?we were both way off. Here?s the news report:

As part of the Ford Foundation project ?A Research and Policy Dialogue Project on Improving Governance of the Government Safety Net in Financial Crisis,? Nicola Matthews and James Felkerson have undertaken an examination of the data on the Fed?s bailout of the financial system ? the most comprehensive investigation of the raw data to date.

The extraordinary scope and magnitude of the recent financial crisis of 2007-09 required an extraordinary response by the Fed in the fulfillment of its lender-of-last-resort function.

The bottom line: a Federal Reserve bailout commitment in excess of $29 trillion.

Whoa! The feds put at risk an amount equal to 200% of US GDP. And for what? So that a depression wouldn?t knock 5% off GDP? Even the Great Depression of the ?30s only set the US back by 30% of GDP. A similar setback today would cost the economy less than $5 trillion.

Do you see what we see? Even if it worked ? which it didn?t ? the feds? efforts would have been a disaster. Who would spend $29 trillion to save $5 trillion?

But wait. There?s more. This assumes that a depression is unnecessary?or that it doesn?t do any good. We know that?s not true. A depression does a lot of good. It wipes out bad investments and eliminates bad speculators. It forces capital into more productive, more profitable uses. It kills off zombie industries. It retires worn-out industries?and reduces costs so that new industries can arise. It?s the ?destruction? that Schumpeter?s ?creative destruction? needs.

The more we think about it, the more we?re beginning to like depressions. After scammy bailouts and bogus recoveries, a depression would be something to look forward to.

Bill Bonner
?for The Daily Reckoning

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on dailyreckoning.com.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/cf1u4-3lqFY/Which-way-will-gold-swing

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Justice Dept.: Seattle police used excessive force

SEATTLE?? Inadequate supervision and training has led Seattle police officers to too quickly resort to the use of weapons like batons and flashlights, and to escalate confrontations even when arresting people for minor offenses, the U.S. Justice Department said Friday.

The department launched an investigation last spring following the fatal shooting of a homeless Native American woodcarver and other reported uses of force against minority suspects. The probe was aimed at determining whether Seattle police have a "pattern or practice" of violating civil rights or discriminatory policing, and if so, what they should do to improve.

Federal investigators said they found Seattle police have engaged in excessive force that violated federal law and the Constitution.

"Our findings should serve as a foundation to reform the police department and to help restore the community's confidence in fair, just and effective law enforcement. The problems within SPD have been present for many years and will take time to fix," said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division.

The Department of Justice is currently conducting 20 investigations of police department across the country and the use of force is a prominent issue in most of them, Perez said.

He was optimistic about Seattle's chances of improving, based on his experience in other cities. He mentioned Los Angeles as an example of a city that had much worse policing problems than Seattle 12 years ago and has since been transformed.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and 34 other community groups called for the inquiry after a Seattle officer shot and killed the woodcarver, John T. Williams, in 2010.

Video from Officer Ian Birk's patrol car showed Williams crossing the street holding a piece of wood and a small knife, and Birk exiting the vehicle to pursue him. Off camera, Birk quickly shouted three times for Williams to drop the knife, then fired five shots. The knife was found folded at the scene, but Birk later maintained Williams had threatened him.

Birk resigned from the force but was not charged. A review board found the shooting unjustified.

A man holding a "Justice for John T. Williams" sign at Friday's news conference said he was mildly encouraged by the Justice Department's findings.

"There are certain things a lot of us have known for years, especially minorities," said Nicholas Polimenakos, who added he has been a concerned citizen of Seattle since 1983. He and another sign holder also identified themselves as members of the Occupy Seattle movement.

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Other incidents captured on surveillance or police-cruiser video include officers using an anti-Mexican epithet and stomping on a prone Latino man who was mistakenly thought to be a robbery suspect; an officer kicking a non-resisting black youth in a convenience store; and officers tackling and kicking a black man who showed up in a police evidence room to pick up belongings after he was mistakenly released from jail.

There was no finding that the Seattle Police Department engaged in discriminatory policing, but federal investigators believe this area needs more research.

"The solution to the problems identified within the Seattle Police Department will require strong and consistent leadership along the chain of command, effective training and policies, and vigilant oversight," said Jenny A. Durkan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, who joined Perez for Friday's announcement.

Durkan emphasized that the vast majority of Seattle police officers do their jobs well and honorably. Only a fraction of Seattle officers use force more than once a year, with 789 officers using no force at all during 2010 and 44 officers out of more than a thousand using force more than five times that year.

Durkan said the issue is not whether officers use force, but whether they use it correctly and only when needed. Supervision and training are the real problems, she said, adding that Seattle police have already taken measures to make improvements in these areas.

City Councilman Tim Burgess, head of the Public Safety Committee and a former police officer, said in a statement the findings "confirm what many, including myself, have believed for some time ? our police department can do better."

Burgess said the probe raises concerns about department management.

"Over the past 20 years or so, we have gone through repeated evaluations of police accountability," he said. "Yet, every few years, the same issues resurface."

He said he expected Chief John Diaz to work to fix the problem.

Sgt. Rich O'Neill, the police union president, said in a statement he hoped federal investigators would let the department study the data that led to the critical report.

"Officers are often put in very difficult and dangerous situations, and all they want are clear and specific ground rules to guide them when making use-of-force decisions," he said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45699843/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

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Nearly one in five U.S. women raped in lifetime: study (Reuters)

ATLANTA (Reuters) ? Nearly 20 percent of women in the United States have been raped at least once and one in four has been severely attacked by an intimate partner, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday.

Almost 80 percent of female victims were first raped before age 25 and more than half were raped by a current or former partner, according to the CDC's analysis of data from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey of 18,049 men and women in the United States in 2010.

The survey, which the CDC said was the first of its kind, found that one in eight female rape victims said the perpetrator was a family member.

Alaska, Oregon and Nevada had the highest percentage of women who had been raped, the study found.

One in seven men reported having experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner and one in 71 men said they had been raped at least once.

The report highlights numerous long-term health problems associated with sexual violence, including headaches, chronic pain and difficulty sleeping.

"This landmark report paints a clear picture of the devastating impact these violent acts have on the lives of millions of Americans," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement.

The CDC numbers show rape "is still a crime that impacts almost every family in America," said Scott Berkowitz, president of the nonprofit group Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

More victims need to report rape and more rapists need to go to prison, Berkowitz told Reuters.

"The more we can get off the street, the more crime we can prevent," he said.

(Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Jerry Norton)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/us_nm/us_study_violence_domestic

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Polemical journalist and atheist Christopher Hitchens dead at 62 (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? British-born journalist and atheist intellectual Christopher Hitchens, who made the United States his home and backed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, died on Thursday at the age of 62.

Hitchens died in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of cancer of the esophagus, Vanity Fair magazine said.

"Christopher Hitchens - the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant - died today at the age of 62," Vanity Fair said.

A heavy smoker and drinker, Hitchens cut short a book tour for his memoir "Hitch 22" last year to undergo chemotherapy after being diagnosed with cancer.

As a journalist, war correspondent and literary critic, Hitchens carved out a reputation for barbed repartee, scathing critiques of public figures and a fierce intelligence.

In his 2007 book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," Hitchens took on major religions with his trenchant atheism. He argued that religion was the source of all tyranny and that many of the world's evils have been done in the name of religion.

The son of a British naval officer, Hitchens studied at Oxford University and worked as literary critic for the New Statesman magazine in London before moving to New York to work as a journalist in 1981. He settled in Washington the following year, initially as correspondent for the left-wing magazine The Nation. He retained his British citizenship when he became an American citizen in 2007.

Hitchens was not one to mince words. In his book on Bill Clinton "No one left to lie to", he called the former U.S. president a "rapist" and a "con man." He once referred to Mother Teresa of Calcutta as a "fanatical Albanian dwarf."

The author of 25 books - including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and George Orwell - and countless articles and columns, Hitchens never lost his biting humor.

"I'm a member of a cancer elite. I rather look down on people with lesser cancers," Hitchens said in an interview with CBS "60 Minutes" aired on March 6, 2011.

In a 2010 interview with Reuters, Hitchens dismissed criticism that he moved from left to right and helped former U.S. President George W. Bush sell the 2003 war with Iraq to the American public with what turned out to be bad intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.

"Saddam was an enemy of the civilized world and he should have been taken out a long time before," Hitchens said of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "I have no regrets about that at all."

The 2001 attacks on the United States by Islamic fundamentalists in hijacked passenger planes made Hitchens ever more critical of the role of religion in the world, and led him to appreciate the merits of American democracy.

"I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion, and organized religion," he wrote.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111216/us_nm/us_christopherhitchens

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"Boardwalk Empire" finale draws season high ratings (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? "Boardwalk Empire" went out with a bang Sunday night -- and not just with the shocking demise of Jimmy Darmody.

The season two finale of HBO's Steve Buscemi-led, Prohibition-era drama posted a season high for the series, drawing 3 million viewers with its initial airing at 9 p.m. and picking up an additional 834,000 viewers with its 11 p.m. encore for a total of 3.8 million.

That marked a season high for the series, which averaged 2.7 million viewers this season for its 9 p.m. airings, and premiered in September with 2.9 million viewers (again, excluding encores).

The finale dipped slightly from last season's, which drew 3.3 million viewers for its 9 p.m. airing.

Sunday's "Boardwalk Empire" finale was followed at 10 by a preview of HBO's upcoming horse-racing drama "Luck," which averaged 1.1 million viewers. The series, which stars Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte, will receive its proper premiere January 29.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111213/tv_nm/us_boardwalkempire

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Cancer's next stage - Scope Blog - Stanford University

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The new issue of Stanford Medicine magazine, a special report on cancer, explains that while data and insights pour in as never before, the efforts to prevent, treat and cure cancer are faltering. The big threats? A dysfunctional ...

Source: http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2011/12/cancers-next-stage-a-report-from-stanford-medicine-magazine/

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