IPT IO N SC R SU B
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2012
15
9
No: 15637
45
Tensions between rich and poor EU states rise
2 dead in Texas highway pileup of 140 vehicles
150 Fils
MOHARRAM 10, 1433 AH
QPR manager sacked after winless start
‘New pharaoh’ draws fire with new decree Violent protests in Alexandria, Port Said, Suez
Max 25º Min 18º
ALEXANDRIA: Egyptians beat a young boy during clashes between supporters and opponents of President Mohamed Morsi, in the northern coastal city of Alexandria yesterday. (Right) Protesters storm an office of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood Freedom and Justice party yesterday. — AP CAIRO: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s decree that put his decisions above legal challenge until a new parliament was elected caused fury amongst his opponents yesterday who accused him of being the new Hosni Mubarak and hijacking the revolution. Police fired tear gas in a street leading to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, heart of the 2011 anti-Mubarak uprising, where thousands demanded Morsi quit and accused him of launching a “coup”. There were violent protests in Alexandria, Port Said and Suez. “The people want to bring down the regime,” shouted protesters in Tahrir, echoing
a chant used in the uprising that forced Mubarak to step down. “Get out, Morsi,” they chanted. Morsi’s aides said the presidential decree was to speed up a protracted transition that has been hindered by legal obstacles but Morsi’s rivals were quick to condemn him as a new autocratic pharaoh who wanted to impose his Islamist vision on Egypt. “I am for all Egyptians. I will not be biased against any son of Egypt,” Morsi said on a stage outside the presidential palace, adding that he was working for social and economic stability and the rotation of power. “Opposition in Egypt does not worry me,
but it has to be real and strong,” he said, seeking to placate his critics and telling Egyptians not to worry and that he was committed to the revolution. “Go forward, always forward ... to a new Egypt.” Buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating a truce between Hamas and Israel, Morsi on Thursday ordered that an Islamist-dominated assembly writing the new constitution could not be dissolved by legal challenges. “Morsi a ‘temporary’ dictator,” was the headline in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm. Morsi, an Islamist whose roots are in the Muslim Brotherhood, also gave himself
sweeping powers that allowed him to sack the unpopular general prosecutor and opened the door for a retrial for Mubarak and his aides. The president’s decree aimed to end the logjam and push Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous nation, more quickly on its democratic path, the presidential spokesman said. “President Morsi said we must go out of the bottleneck without breaking the bottle,” Yasser Ali said. The president’s decree said any decrees he issued while no parliament sat could not be challenged, moves that consolidated his Continued on Page 9
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New cases of SARS-like virus in Saudi and Qatar
Singaporeans react to ‘emotionless’ tag
Indian girl shot dead by a ‘urinating man’
LONDON: A new virus from the same family as SARS which was discovered and sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the total number of cases has risen to six, the World Health Organization said yesterday. The UN health agency issued a global alert in late September saying a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a 49year-old Qatari who had recently travelled to Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died. Yesterday, it said in a disease outbreak update that it had registered four more cases and that one of the new patients had died.
SINGAPORE: Singaporeans have reacted to a survey depicting them as the world’s most emotionless people with many saying the city state’s competitive culture leaves them no room for feelings. “Singaporeans are the least likely in the world to report experiencing emotions of any kind on a daily basis,” US-based pollster Gallup said in a report on a threeyear study conducted in more than 150 countries. The Philippines came out as the most emotional society in the world, with Latin American countries dominating the top of the list. Media in Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest and most stable societies, gave prominent coverage to the report, setting off some strong reactions.
NEW DELHI: An Indian man shot and killed his teenaged neighbor in a rage after she objected to him urinating near the gate of their home in the heart of New Delhi, police said yesterday. Officers named the victim as Yusra, aged 17, saying she was shot twice by the man who broke into her home and also wounded her mother late on Wednesday in the Nizamuddin residential and commercial district. “During the day, Yusra objected to him urinating at the gate of the building in which both lived,” additional police commissioner Ajay Chaudhry said. Chaudhry said the 21-year-old man then returned with a handgun the same evening and shot at Yusra and her mother in a bedroom of their working-class home in Nizamuddin, a Muslim-majority enclave.