‘Dr. Phil”s stolen classic Chevy recovered

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — Los Angeles police say they’ve recovered a stolen 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible that belongs to talk-show host Phil McGraw.

Detective Jess Corral said Tuesday that investigators recovered McGraw’s classic car, along with 13 others, after law enforcement began targeting auto theft rings.

McGraw is known as television’s “Dr. Phil. His car was stolen from the RODZ shop in Burbank in August, and was found with minor damage.

The car is worth at least $ 80,000.

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U.S. court voids drug rep’s conviction, cites free speech

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A divided federal appeals court on Monday threw out the conviction of a sales representative for promoting off-label use of a prescription drug, a ruling that could make it harder for the government to police how drugs are marketed and sold.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York found that the sales representative’s free speech rights under the First Amendment had been violated.

“In the fields of medicine and public health, where information can save lives, it only furthers the public interest to ensure that decisions about the use of prescription drugs, including off-label usage, are intelligent and well-informed,” Circuit Judge Denny Chin wrote for a 2-1 majority.

The decision overturned the October 2008 conviction of Alfred Caronia, a sales representative for Orphan Medical Inc, now part of Jazz Pharmaceuticals Plc.

Using drugs “off-label” means that they are taken for conditions other than those for which they received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.

Many large healthcare settlements with the U.S. government have involved off-label promotions, including GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s $ 3 billion accord in July over several medicines, and Pfizer Inc’s $ 2.3 billion accord in 2009 over treatments such as the anti-inflammatory drug Bextra.

Matthew Bennett, vice-president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry lobby, in a statement said the group was “pleased that the Second Circuit has recognized that the FDA‘s ability to regulate communication about medicines is circumscribed by the rights protected by the First Amendment.”

An FDA spokeswoman declined to comment. The U.S. Justice Department, which prosecuted Caronia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CONSPIRACY CONVICTION

Caronia had appealed his conviction by a Brooklyn, New York, jury on one count of conspiracy for introducing a misbranded drug into interstate commerce, violating the federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act.

He was sentenced to one year of probation plus 100 hours of community service for the misdemeanor.

The drug was Xyrem, which won FDA approval in July 2002 to treat patients with narcolepsy, a condition associated with weak muscles, and in November 2005 to treat patients with excessive daytime sleepiness linked to narcolepsy.

Prosecutors said that in October 2005, prior to the second FDA approval, Caronia had improperly promoted Xyrem for “off-label” uses including excessive daytime sleepiness, muscle disorders, chronic pain and fatigue.

But Caronia said it should not be a crime for drug companies and sales representatives to truthfully promote FDA-approved drugs for legal, off-label uses when others, like doctors, may engage in such speech without penalty.

The 2nd Circuit agreed, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court had in 2011 found that speech that aided in drug marketing was a form of constitutionally protected expression.

Chin rejected the government’s contentions that restrictions were needed to stop the non-approved usage of drugs, and preserve the efficacy of the FDA drug approval process.

“The First Amendment directs us to be especially skeptical of regulations that seek to keep people in the dark for what the government perceives to be their own good,” Chin wrote.

Chin made clear in a footnote that off-label promotion that is false or misleading does not get First Amendment protection.

NO MORE GUESSWORK

Thomas Liotti, a lawyer for Caronia, welcomed the decision.

“If physicians can talk about alternative uses of drugs among themselves, it doesn’t seem to make any sense that others cannot,” he said in a phone interview.

He said the decision “increases the marketability of drugs, and means consumers can be fully informed by sales representatives, manufacturers and their own physicians.”

Chin was joined in the majority by Circuit Judge Reena Raggi.

Circuit Judge Debra Ann Livingston dissented. She called the case indistinguishable from a 2004 case in which a unanimous panel of the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., including then-judge and current U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, found no First Amendment protection.

“The majority calls into question the very foundations of our century-old system of drug regulation,” Livingston wrote. “I do not believe that the Supreme Court’s precedents compel such a result.”

The case is U.S. v. Caronia, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 09-cr-5006.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel; Additional reporting by David Ingram in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Vicki Allen)

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Wall Street sours on weak domestic factory data

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks struggled to extend the previous week’s gains, dropping on Monday as disappointing U.S. factory numbers dampened optimism about China‘s economic growth.

The declines broke a three-day streak of gains for the S&P 500, keeping it shy of its 50-day moving average of about 1,420, a level that the index has been below since October 22, and now serving as a key resistance point for investors.

Manufacturing activity in the United States surprisingly contracted in November, the Institute for Supply Management said, dropping to its lowest level in more than three years. Economic data has been mixed in recent months, fanning worries about the pace of growth at a time when investors are already concerned about the “fiscal cliff” issue in Washington.

The ISM number “was below expectations that were already conservative, and that puts an exclamation point on the concern many of us have about the cliff’s impact on the economy,” said Leo Grohowski, chief investment officer at BNY Mellon Wealth Management in New York.

Markets had opened higher as output by China’s factories grew in November for the first time in more than a year, data showed. Investors look to strength from China, the world’s second-largest economy, to offset weak growth in the United States and Europe.

Still, the fiscal cliff remains investors’ primary focus, with political haggling continuing over how to deal with large automatic spending cuts and tax hikes scheduled to kick in next year. The worry is that the combination of reduced spending and higher taxes could tip the U.S. economy back into recession.

While off its highs for the year, the S&P 500 is still up 12.1 percent for 2012.

“This could be the last opportunity for investors to take profits” after an unexpectedly strong year, said Grohowski, who helps oversee about $ 170 billion in assets.

Materials were the weakest sector on Monday, led lower by Newmont Mining after the company said its CEO resigned. Newmont’s stock fell 3 percent to $ 45.69. Dow component DuPont dropped 1.7 percent to $ 42.39. An S&P materials index <.GSPM> lost 1.8 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> fell 59.98 points, or 0.46 percent, to 12,965.60 at the close. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.SPX> declined 6.72 points, or 0.47 percent, to 1,409.46. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> dropped 8.04 points, or 0.27 percent, to end at 3,002.20.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pushed Republicans on Sunday to offer specific ideas to cut the deficit. He predicted that they would agree to raise tax rates on the rich to obtain a year-end deal to avoid the fiscal cliff.

Among other factors serving to offset the ISM report on U.S. factories were two developments in the euro zone: Spain formally requested the disbursement of more than $ 50 billion of European funds to recapitalize its crippled banking sector, while Greece said it would spend 10 billion euros ($ 13 billion) to buy back bonds in a bid to reduce its ballooning debt.

The PHLX Europe sector index <.XEX> added 0.1 percent.

Dell shares gained 4.4 percent to $ 10.06. The stock was one of the biggest percentage gainers in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.NDX> after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to “buy” from “sell.

Advanced Micro Devices was the S&P’s top gainer, rising 7.3 percent to $ 2.36. Options traders appeared to be betting on further gains ahead. Early options order flow was focused on upside April calls, including a sweep of 3,594 April $ 3.50 strike calls for 16 cents per contract when the market was 14 cents to 16 cents, said WhatsTrading.com options strategist Frederic Ruffy.

Retail stocks were among the weakest of the day, with J.C. Penney Co off 3.2 percent at $ 17.36 and Staples Inc off 2.3 percent at $ 11.43. Consumer discretionary names tend to underperform during periods of economic uncertainty as consumers focus on core purchases.

Volume was light, with about 5.58 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, well below last year’s daily average of 7.84 billion.

Decliners outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a ratio of 3 to 2, while on the Nasdaq, about 14 stocks fell for every 11 that rose.

(Additional reporting by Doris Frankel; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Official: Syria moving chemical weapons components

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.

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‘The Daily’ doomed by dull content and isolation

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It was too expensive. It lacked editorial focus. And for a digital publication, it was strangely cut off from the Internet. That’s the obituary being written in real time through posts, tweets and online chats about The Daily, the first-of-its-kind iPad newspaper that is being shut down this month.

Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp. said Monday that The Daily will publish its final issue on Dec. 15, less than two years after its January 2011 launch. The app has already been removed from Apple’s iTunes, where it once received lukewarm ratings.

The Daily had roughly 100,000 subscribers who paid either 99 cents a week or $ 40 a year for its daily download of journalism tailored for touch screens. But that wasn’t enough to sustain some 100 employees and millions of dollars in losses since its launch. At the time of its debut, News Corp. said The Daily’s operating costs would amount to about half a million dollars a week, or around $ 26 million a year.

When News Corp. launched The Daily, it was touted as a bold experiment in new media. The company hired top-name journalists from other publications, such as the New York Post’s former Page Six editor, Richard Johnson, and said it poured $ 30 million into the newspaper’s launch. Now, the company is acknowledging that The Daily no longer has a place at News Corp., which is being split in two to separate its publishing enterprises from its TV and movie businesses.

Murdoch said in a statement that News Corp. “could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term.” Some employees are being hired in other parts of the company.

Critics say The Daily’s day-to-day mix of news, opinion and info-graphics wasn’t that different from content available for free on the Internet. And despite a high-profile launch that drew lots of media attention, the publication failed to build a distinctive brand. There was no ad campaign touting its coverage and stories weren’t accessible to non-subscribers, so it didn’t benefit from buzz that comes from social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

Trevor Butterworth, who wrote a weekly column for The Daily called “The Information Society,” says the disconnect between the app and the broader Internet curtailed its reach. He was laid off in July when the publication shrank from 170 workers to about 120. As part of the purge, The Daily cut its dedicated opinion section and dropped sports coverage in favor of using a feed from its News Corp. sister outfit, Fox Sports.

“Stories weren’t widely shared or widely known,” says Butterworth. “It felt like I was writing into the void.”

When it launched, The Daily was meant to take advantage of the explosion of tablet computer sales, and the notion that people generally read on them in the morning or evening, like a magazine.

But each issue came in a giant file — sometimes 1 gigabyte large — and took 10 or 15 minutes to download over a broadband connection, which is unheard of for news apps, says Matt Haughey, the founder of MetaFilter.com, one of the first community blogs on the Internet.

Because the stories weren’t linkable, The Daily didn’t benefit from new Internet traffic that would have come from content aggregators like Flipboard and Tumblr.

“They ignored the obvious, which was the Web,” Haughey says. Although many people are foregoing buying a laptop for the lightweight convenience of a tablet, the day hasn’t arrived yet when all online access will come through apps rather than the Web. “Maybe in five or 10 years, the Web will be less important,” he says. “For now it seems like they were missing out.”

It may also have been a problem that News Corp. launched The Daily from scratch into an environment where readers tend to gravitate toward trusted sources and established brands. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, 84 percent of mobile device users said a news app’s brand was a major factor in deciding whether to download it.

One of the intangible challenges The Daily had was standing out in a sea of online journalism, both paid and free. Some national newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, have carved out a niche with informed coverage of sometimes complex topics and have gained paying digital subscribers by limiting the number of free articles they offer online.

Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today and about 80 other newspapers, has succeeded in raising circulation revenue at local papers by putting up so-called online “pay walls,” taking advantage of the fact that there are few alternative sources of coverage for certain communities.

Without a unique coverage niche or a local monopoly, The Daily was caught between two worlds.

By being digital-only, the publication didn’t have a defined coverage area. It was “in competition with everybody and everything,” says Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. Yet it failed to carve out its own niche in that larger universe, he says.

“Its lack of editorial focus played a role,” Benton notes. “It was sort of a pleasant, middle-brow, slightly tabloidy mix of news and features. And there’s lots of that available for free online. I would imagine if ‘The Daily’ were starting again now, they would invest more in establishing their brand identity early on.”

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LeBron James wins Sports Illustrated annual award

(Reuters) – LeBron James of the Miami Heat was named as Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year for 2012, the U.S. magazine announced on Monday.

In an outstanding year, the 27-year-old James won his first NBA championship, his third league Most Valuable Player (MVP) award, was named MVP of the NBA finals and a won gold medal with the United States at the London Olympics.

He became just the sixth basketballer to win the award, which began in 1954. The most recent was his team-mate Dwyane Wade in 2006.

Two years ago, James became a hate figure for many American sports fans after he announced his decision to sign for Miami live on television after his contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers had expired.

He was booed at courts across the NBA and received intense criticism for his performance as Miami lost the 2011 NBA finals to the Dallas Mavericks.

“Did I think an award like this was possible two years ago? ‘No, I did not,” James said in an interview with the magazine.

“I thought I would be helping a lot of kids and raise $ 3 million by going on TV and saying, ‘Hey, I want to play for the Miami Heat.’ But it affected far more people than I imagined.

“I know it wasn’t on the level of an injury or an addiction, but it was something I had to recover from. I had to become a better person, a better player, a better father, a better friend, a better mentor and a better leader. I’ve changed, and I think people have started to understand who I really am.”

Previous winners of the award include swimmer Michael Phelps (2008), cyclist Lance Armstrong (2002) and golfer Tiger Woods (2000) while the first award was given to British athlete Roger Bannister in 1954 after he became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.

(Reporting By Simon Evans; Editing by Julian Linden)

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Clinton in Prague to lobby for Westinghouse nuclear bid

PRAGUE (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will seek to convince Czech leaders of the advantages of picking U.S. firm Westinghouse over a Russian rival as the contractor for a $ 10 billion nuclear reactor project in meetings in Prague on Monday.

U.S. officials traveling with Clinton to Prague said the Temelin nuclear power project could bring as many as 9,000 jobs to the United States and would help diversify the Czech Republic‘s energy supply away from Russia.

Majority state-owned Czech firm CEZ applied on Friday to build two new blocks at its 2,000 megawatt Temelin nuclear power plant, in what would be the European country’s biggest energy deal.

Westinghouse, a unit of Japanese firm Toshiba Corp, is competing with Russia’s Atomstroyexport, which is bidding in a consortium with a Russian-owned Czech group.

U.S. officials said formal negotiations between the two bidders and the Czech government are expected to start in December, with a decision on the contractor expected in the spring.

Clinton is due to meet Prime Minister Petr Necas and Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg on Monday morning.

“There will be the opportunity for the Secretary to support … Westinghouse,” a senior State Department official told reporters.

“It could be great in lots of ways – for American jobs, American companies, for energy security and diversity in the Czech Republic, for jobs in the Czech Republic and for a scientific and innovation partnership with the United States.”

Clinton would stress Westinghouse’s safety record given concerns about nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster in Japan last year, he said.

The U.S. side will also stress the advantage of reducing the Czech Republic’s reliance on Russia for energy. According to U.S. officials, the country currently gets 60 percent of its oil, 70 percent of its gas, and 100 percent of its nuclear reactor fuel from Russia.

“We think there’s an awful lot to be said for this (choosing Westinghouse) in terms of energy security and diversifying sources.”

Clinton will also discuss energy security with EU officials in Brussels on Wednesday.

CEZ, central Europe’s biggest energy group, with a market capitalization of $ 18.2 billion, threw out a bid from French firm Areva in October, because it failed to meet “crucial requirements.”

Clinton’s visit to Prague follows one by U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Nicole Lamb-Hale last week. Lamb-Hale said the U.S. Export-Import Bank was interested in financing the deal if Westinghouse were picked.

The Czech Republic’s bid to expand its nuclear capacity has run into opposition from neighbors Austria and Germany. Clinton will share a conference table with the foreign ministers of these countries, as well as with Russia, when she attends a meeting of the NATO military alliance in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Many Czech officials fear an over reliance on Russian energy will put their country under too much influence from its former communist master. After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Prague became a close ally of the United States.

The Russian bidders have sought to allay Czech fears about Moscow and stressed that there would be a high participation rate by domestic firms if they won the tender.

(Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Egypt’s anti-Morsi rebellion of judges is complete

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.

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Nintendo president apologizes for bulky day-one Wii U firmware update

As we noted in our first impressions, Nintendo’s (NTDOY) Wii U is charting new ground with its wireless GamePad and touchscreen controls that engage gamers in the living room like never before. But before you can even set up the Wii U, a mandatory firmware update is required upon power up. Gamers everywhere were frustrated to learn that the firmware update, which is pegged anywhere between 1GB and 5GB, takes hours to download and could even ”brick” new consoles if the power was cut off. In an email conversation with IGN, Nintendo’s global president and CEO Satoru Iwata said was “very sorry” that Wii U owners were experiencing network issues and that other services such as Nintendo TVii weren’t available at launch. Iwata said he believes “users should be able to use all the functions of a console video game machine as soon as they open the box.” 

Gone are the days when electronics are sold as finished products with set features out of the box. It has become normal for today’s connected electronics to require frequent firmware updates and patches to fix compatibility with other gadgets and to add new features. At what point should consumers stop tolerating devices that don’t work immediately after unboxing? The way we see it, the answer might be “never,” as it’s hard to argue against the fact that new software updates breathe new life into aging consoles.

Iwata also explained that the Wii U’s “Miiverse” online service isn’t meant to replicate existing services such as Xbox LIVE.

“We have not thought that offering the same features that already exist within other online communities would be the best proposal for very experienced game players,” Iwata told IGN.

Nintendo fans can read more Nintendo nuggets over at IGN’s feature that includes mention of a new 3D Super Mario and Zelda game.

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Senators urge Obama to release more water into Mississippi River

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sixteen U.S. senators have appealed to President Barack Obama to divert more water to the Mississippi River to prevent barge traffic from shutting down due to low water on the country’s inland waterway, a crucial route for goods bound for export.

Low water is a looming disaster, said the senators in a letter to Obama that was released on Friday.

The senators, from states along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, asked for emergency action to release more water from Missouri River reservoirs to feed the drought-sapped Mississippi River.

Water levels are forecast to reach near-historic lows by mid-December, and shippers say low water will make it impossible to move cargo. Grain exporters have already slashed by up to 50 percent the weight of cargo shipped by barges on the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Substantial curtailment of navigation will effectively sever the country’s inland waterway superhighway, imperil the shipment of critical cargo for domestic consumption and for export, threaten manufacturing industries and power generation, and risk thousands of related jobs in the Midwest,” wrote the senators.

Signing the letter were senators Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin of Iowa; Roy Blunt and Claire McCaskill of Missouri; Mark Pryor and John Boozman of Arkansas; Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; Mary Landrieu and David Vitter of Louisiana; Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi; Mark Kirk of Illinois; Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; Joe Manchin of West Virginia; and Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been battling extreme low-water conditions on the Mississippi for months following the country’s worst drought in half a century.

(Reporting By Charles Abbott; editing by Jim Marshall)

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