Egypt opposition opens to former autocrat's party

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's largest opposition bloc on Saturday reached out to former members of the deposed president's party, ahead of mass protests on June 30 demanding the ouster of his successor.

The opposition's move came a day after some 100,000 supporters of current President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist and the country's first elected leader, packed a main square in Cairo to support him and challenge the largely liberal opposition that demands he step down.

Morsi won a four-year term as president with some 52 percent of the vote in a run-off last June against Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister of now-ousted Hosni Mubarak. Shafiq is now contesting the election results.

"I can't isolate millions of Egyptian people because they were part of the National Democratic Party," said Mohamed ElBaradei, a top leader of the opposition National Salvation Front, referring to Mubarak's now-dissolved party. He said the invitation to Mubarak supporters did not extend to those who had been convicted of crimes under the old regime.

"The masses of Egyptian people are calling for change," he said, adding that the plan now was to discuss national reconciliation. He made his remarks during a two-day conference entitled "After Departure," which aims to draw up a road map in case Morsi resigns as the opposition demands.

Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the leftist Popular Current opposition group, said a six-month transitional period would start the day Morsi steps down, during which a new constitution would be drafted and a new president elected. Others proposed that the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court should become the country's transitional leader until new elections.

Since the 2011 uprising that forced Mubarak from power, members of his NDP have been labeled "feloul," or "remnants," by both liberals and Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group.

Joining ranks with the "feloul" is seen as a major shift and painful choice by the opposition, the vast majority of whom voted for Morsi last year in order to block Shafiq from taking office because they did not want a Mubarak-man ruling after the uprising.

But the move is not too far-fetched, given that the Salvation Front was originally founded as an umbrella group for Brotherhood opponents, including figures like Amr Moussa who served as Mubarak's foreign minister for 10 years before joining the uprising. The position could cause friction with other revolutionary groups however.

After Mubarak's fall, the NDP was dissolved and scores of top party officials were detained while on trial over various charges of corruption, along with former regime officials. The country's Supreme Administrative Court in 2011 ruled that party members can participate in elections.

The party has an estimated three million members. After it was disbanded, some joined newly established parties. A yet-untested "political isolation" clause in the new constitution may ban senior officials in the now-defunct party from top posts.

The June 30 call is rooted in a months-long petition drive called "Tamarod," or "Rebel," in Arabic, which helped galvanize an opposition that has been demoralized and in disarray. Organizers announced on Thursday that they have collected 15 million signatures supporting Morsi's ouster and early presidential elections.

The opposition accuses Morsi of monopolizing power and of failing to deliver on promises to create an inclusive system where the opposition is represented. Morsi and the Brotherhood accuse the opposition of being used by Mubarak-men aiming to topple Egypt's first democracy and bring back the old regime.

Egypt's Prime minister Hesham Kandil said that if the opposition had the support of millions of Egyptians, it should contest parliamentary elections instead of calling for the president's overthrow.

Speaking on a talk show Friday night, Kandil warned that "if some people take an undemocratic path to force change, others will come later and follow undemocratic path."

He also expressed worries of violence, saying, "Egyptian blood is very dear and what worries me most is that the revolution deviates from its peaceful path," he said.

Meanwhile, the country's powerful military, widely suspected to be at odds with the president, said it will not intervene in political infighting.

"The men of the armed forces don't gamble with the present or the future of the nation," Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was quoted by official news agency MENA as saying during a graduation ceremony on Saturday. The military, he said, "are not biased to a certain faction against the other but their only bias is to the Egyptian people with all its sects and factions."

Ruling for nearly 18 months after Mubarak's ouster, the military came under sharp criticism by liberals and rights groups for what they called mismanagement of the country's transition, human rights violations and enabling an Islamists takeover.

In the year since Morsi took office, the military top brass have expressed unwillingness to return to power. Police, who have engaged in deadly clashes with street protesters over the past two years, have signaled they want to stay out of any violence it is feared may erupt on June 30.

Also on Saturday, MENA reported that the Presidential Election Commission sat Tuesday to look into Shafiq's complaints alleging irregularities and forgery in last year's vote. Shafiq is in self-exile in United Arab Emirates as he is being tried in absentia on corruption-related charges, which he says are politicized.

----------------------------------

AP Reporter Mariam Rizk contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-opposition-opens-former-autocrats-party-161917220.html

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Supreme Court 2013: The Year in Review

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts smiles before speaking at Northwestern University Law School in Chicago on Feb. 1, 2007.

Photo by John Gress/Reuters

Walter notes how far to the right the court has moved in recent years, and plenty of evidence backs him up. If you look at a standard ranking of justices by how conservative their votes are (and I am looking at the third column on Page 111 of The Behavior of Federal Judges, a recent book by by Lee Epstein, Bill Landes, and our Breakfast Table interlocutor Richard Posner), you will see that Thomas, Alito, Scalia, and Roberts are the second-, fourth-, fifth-, and 11^th-most conservative justices since 1937. With Walter, I suspect that Alito will rise to the top when the data set is extended beyond 2009. O?Connor is No. 14, so it wouldn?t be surprising if Walter were right that her replacement with Alito moved the court further to the right.

This rightward movement has been a significant source of unhappiness among liberals, and many of them accuse the conservative justices of being ideologically motivated. Now of course they are; everyone knows that Supreme Court justices are at least in part ideologically motivated. Statistical analysis by Epstein and many other political scientists and law professors have established beyond doubt that you can predict the votes of a Supreme Court justice in large part (but not completely) based on the party of the appointing president and other signals of the ideology of the justice at the time that he or she was appointed. But that, of course, means that liberal justices are ideologically motivated as well.

This makes it a lot harder to criticize the current court for being out of line. The standard liberal criticism is that it (as well as its predecessor, the Rehnquist Court) has eroded precedents from the Warren Court era of the 1950s and 1960s. The Warren Court established many of the constitutional norms that we take for granted today?in areas of civil rights, privacy, voting rights, First Amendment rights, and the rights of criminal defendants, among others. But the Warren Court was even more ideologically extreme than the current court?just in the opposite direction. The table I am looking at ranks Marshall, Goldberg, Douglas, Brennan, and Fortas?Warren Court stalwarts from the 1960s?as the five most liberal justices since 1937. Warren himself was the eighth. Once we understand the Warren Court?s position in the historical record, it becomes harder to say that the current court is ideologically out of line. At a minimum, it is not sufficient criticism to say that it refuses to uphold precedents of the Warren Court, which of course ignored the precedents of its predecessors. We need some nonhistorical baseline for evaluating justices, and when we search for one, we, as much as the justices we criticize, seem to fall back on ideological priors.

The upshot of all this is that we always accuse opposite-ideology justices of pursuing ideological ends while congratulating justices who share our ideological preferences for upholding the rule of law. Maybe, as Walter says, law matters, but Walter himself points out that an apparently liberal vote by Alito may mask a more sophisticated long-term ideological goal. Roberts famously voted counterideologically to uphold the Affordable Care Act, but Emily is not the only person to believe that he sought to shore up the court?s legitimacy so that he could pursue ideological ends over the long term. There are plenty of unanimous opinions and also, as the senior Posner notes, easy cases that the court does not bother to review, but then again no one thinks that people who are ideological opposites must disagree about absolutely everything, or that it would be a worthwhile use of time and resources to battle over minor issues. ?When a justice like Souter drifts left over the course of his career on the bench, we say that his ideology has changed, not that he has submitted to laws that he might not like. And when a justice like Kennedy or O?Connor occupies the middle, we accuse them of waffling or seeking to maximize their power over the court rather than declare them ideologically neutral. So if the law really matters for Supreme Court justices, we seem to be incapable of recognizing when it does.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_breakfast_table/features/2013/supreme_court_2013/what_does_it_really_mean_if_the_supreme_court_is_shifting_rightward.html

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Georgia GOP eyes nominating conventions. Here's why it matters. (Washington Post)

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Head of revived watchdog pledges open look at U.S. surveillance

By Alina Selyukh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of a newly revived federal privacy oversight board pledged on Wednesday to be "as transparent and public as possible" as the board reviews recently exposed U.S. government secret surveillance programs.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which has been largely dormant since 2008, held its first full-fledged meeting on Wednesday after the Senate confirmed David Medine as its chairman last month.

The meeting was behind closed doors to review classified information about the vast and controversial Internet and phone monitoring programs. But Medine told Reuters that the board is aiming to hold a public event around July 9 to get legal insight from experts, academics and advocates.

"Based on what we've learned so far, the board believes further questions are warranted," said Medine, who previously was a partner at the law firm WilmerHale and served as an associate director at the Federal Trade Commission.

Still without formal email, a website or permanent staff, the five board members have in recent weeks acquired security clearances and last week, received a classified briefing with federal authorities including the National Security Agency, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence, Medine said.

The top-secret surveillance programs were revealed earlier this month after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents to media outlets showing how the U.S. government uses vast amounts of phone and internet records to guard against potential attacks.

The Obama administration and high-profile lawmakers have defended the programs as vital national security tools that are vigorously overseen by the administration, Congress and a special court.

Privacy advocates have argued they infringe on Americans' civil liberties and say the oversight is insufficient.

Obama said earlier this week that he plans to meet with the privacy board to discuss ways to balance the need for U.S. surveillance with privacy concerns.

The board, established at the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission in 2004, is an independent watchdog that resides within the executive branch and is tasked with ensuring that U.S. anti-terrorism activity respects Americans' privacy.

A civil liberties advocate said the board will largely be charting new territory with its review.

"The board has been defunct for so long, so I don't think that we have any precedent for how something like this plays out," said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The president nominates members to the bipartisan board, who must then be confirmed by the Senate. President Barack Obama did not nominate his first two choices until December 2010, then a year later put forward three more names.

Beside Medine, the other current members are: Rachel Brand, former lawyer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and at the Justice Department; Elisebeth Collins Cook, a lawyer and former assistant attorney general at the Justice Department; James Dempsey, former public policy vice president at the Center for Democracy and Technology; and Patricia Wald, a former federal appeals court judge.

FIGHT FOR ACCESS

Medine withheld judgment on Wednesday about the surveillance programs, saying the board will continue to study them and eventually issue a report and recommendations.

He did not speculate on the timing but pledged to be "as transparent and public about these issues as possible."

Both he and civil liberties advocates acknowledge the board's transparency is limited by the classified status of much of the data about the programs. But Medine said Obama has asked the government to declassify as much as possible.

A 2007 law restructured the board to be independent of the White House and gave it power to request subpoenas for the private sector. It also required all executive branch agencies to comply with the board's requests for reports, records and various other documents.

"We have been doing and plan to do it," Medine said, when asked whether the oversight board was exercising that power over federal agencies. "The executive branch has been very responsive to our requests," he added.

Civil liberties advocates are cautiously optimistic the board will shed more light on the surveillance programs.

"I think the key will be how fast can they staff up, how hard will they be willing to fight for the access to information and what type of leverage they'll be able to exercise to make more information public," said ACLU's Richardson.

The ACLU, in coalition with 33 other advocacy groups, on Tuesday wrote to Medine and his colleagues, seeking more transparency of the legal standards involved in the issue.

The letter, reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday, urged the board to ask Obama for public disclosure of sufficient information for Americans "to understand the existing legal authorities for national security surveillance of Americans and the administration's interpretation of their scope."

(Reporting by Alina Selyukh; Additional reporting by Matthew Haldane; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/head-revived-watchdog-pledges-open-look-u-surveillance-002817517.html

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Long-term study reports deep brain stimulation effective for most common hereditary dystonia

Public release date: 19-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Sandy Van
sandy@prpacific.com
808-526-1708
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

LOS ANGELES (June 19, 2013) In what is believed to be the largest follow-up record of patients with the most common form of hereditary dystonia a movement disorder that can cause crippling muscle contractions experts in deep brain stimulation report good success rates and lasting benefits.

Michele Tagliati, MD, neurologist, director of the Movement Disorders Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Department of Neurology, and Ron L. Alterman, MD, chief of the Division of Neurosurgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, published the study in the July issue of the journal Neurosurgery. The doctors worked together at two New York City hospitals for a decade, until Tagliati joined Cedars-Sinai in 2010.

The study is focused on early-onset generalized dystonia, which in 1997 was found to be caused by a mutation of the DYT1 gene. Less than 1 percent of the overall population carries this mutation, but the frequency is believed to be three to five times higher among people of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. Thirty percent of people who carry the defect develop dystonia.

"Long-term follow-up of DYT1 patients who have undergone DBS treatment is scarce, with current medical literature including only about 50 patients followed for three or more years," Tagliati said. This study reviewed medical records of 47 consecutive patients treated with DBS for at least one year over a span of 10 years, 2001 to 2011.

"We found that, on average, symptom severity dropped to less than 20 percent of baseline within two years of device implantation. Sixty-one percent of patients were able to discontinue all their dystonia-related medications, and 91 percent were able to discontinue at least one class of drugs," Tagliati said. "Although a few earlier studies found that stimulation's effectiveness might wane after five years, our observations confirmed what other important DBS studies in dystonia are finding. Patients had statistically and clinically significant improvement that was maintained up to eight years."

Alterman, the article's senior author and the neurosurgeon who performed the implant surgeries, said the study also confirmed the procedure's safety. Complications, such as infection and device malfunction, were rare and manageable.

Patient follow-up ranged from one year to eight years after surgery; 41 patients were seen for at least two years, and four completed eight years. The youngest patient at time of surgery was 8 and the oldest was 71, with a median age of 16.

Dystonia's muscle contractions cause the affected area of the body to twist involuntarily, with symptoms that range from mild to crippling. If drugs which often have undesirable side effects, especially at higher doses fail to give relief, neurosurgeons and neurologists may work together to supplement medications with deep brain stimulation, aimed at modulating abnormal nerve signals. Electrical leads are implanted in the brain one on each side and an electrical pulse generator is placed near the collarbone. The device is programmed with a remote, hand-held controller. Tagliati is an expert in device programming, which fine-tunes stimulation for individual patients.

###

Tagliati has received speaker honoraria and consultation fees from pharmaceutical companies and DBS device manufacturers, but none related directly to this records review. Authors from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City; the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury, N.Y.; and Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City, contributed to the article.

Citation: Neurosurgery, "Deep Brain Stimulation in DYT1 Dystonia: a 10-year Experience," July 2013.

VIDEOLINK ENABLED - Thanks to a new, state-of-the-art in-house studio, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center can now instantly broadcast high-definition video directly to newsrooms around the world.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 19-Jun-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Sandy Van
sandy@prpacific.com
808-526-1708
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

LOS ANGELES (June 19, 2013) In what is believed to be the largest follow-up record of patients with the most common form of hereditary dystonia a movement disorder that can cause crippling muscle contractions experts in deep brain stimulation report good success rates and lasting benefits.

Michele Tagliati, MD, neurologist, director of the Movement Disorders Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Department of Neurology, and Ron L. Alterman, MD, chief of the Division of Neurosurgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, published the study in the July issue of the journal Neurosurgery. The doctors worked together at two New York City hospitals for a decade, until Tagliati joined Cedars-Sinai in 2010.

The study is focused on early-onset generalized dystonia, which in 1997 was found to be caused by a mutation of the DYT1 gene. Less than 1 percent of the overall population carries this mutation, but the frequency is believed to be three to five times higher among people of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. Thirty percent of people who carry the defect develop dystonia.

"Long-term follow-up of DYT1 patients who have undergone DBS treatment is scarce, with current medical literature including only about 50 patients followed for three or more years," Tagliati said. This study reviewed medical records of 47 consecutive patients treated with DBS for at least one year over a span of 10 years, 2001 to 2011.

"We found that, on average, symptom severity dropped to less than 20 percent of baseline within two years of device implantation. Sixty-one percent of patients were able to discontinue all their dystonia-related medications, and 91 percent were able to discontinue at least one class of drugs," Tagliati said. "Although a few earlier studies found that stimulation's effectiveness might wane after five years, our observations confirmed what other important DBS studies in dystonia are finding. Patients had statistically and clinically significant improvement that was maintained up to eight years."

Alterman, the article's senior author and the neurosurgeon who performed the implant surgeries, said the study also confirmed the procedure's safety. Complications, such as infection and device malfunction, were rare and manageable.

Patient follow-up ranged from one year to eight years after surgery; 41 patients were seen for at least two years, and four completed eight years. The youngest patient at time of surgery was 8 and the oldest was 71, with a median age of 16.

Dystonia's muscle contractions cause the affected area of the body to twist involuntarily, with symptoms that range from mild to crippling. If drugs which often have undesirable side effects, especially at higher doses fail to give relief, neurosurgeons and neurologists may work together to supplement medications with deep brain stimulation, aimed at modulating abnormal nerve signals. Electrical leads are implanted in the brain one on each side and an electrical pulse generator is placed near the collarbone. The device is programmed with a remote, hand-held controller. Tagliati is an expert in device programming, which fine-tunes stimulation for individual patients.

###

Tagliati has received speaker honoraria and consultation fees from pharmaceutical companies and DBS device manufacturers, but none related directly to this records review. Authors from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City; the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury, N.Y.; and Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City, contributed to the article.

Citation: Neurosurgery, "Deep Brain Stimulation in DYT1 Dystonia: a 10-year Experience," July 2013.

VIDEOLINK ENABLED - Thanks to a new, state-of-the-art in-house studio, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center can now instantly broadcast high-definition video directly to newsrooms around the world.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-06/cmc-lsr061913.php

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Iceland received informal approach over Snowden seeking asylum (reuters)

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'Voice' finalist disagrees with coach's pick

TV

Brittany Frederick TODAY contributor

11 hours ago

In their final performance show on Monday night, ?Voice? finalists Danielle Bradbery, Michelle Chamuel and The Swon Brothers were asked to reprise songs that their coaches chose as their ?defining moment.?

After their repeat renditions, the artists told TODAY.com if they agreed with their coaches? picks, and why those tracks might have stood out from all the others they?ve performed over the six weeks of live playoffs.

For teenage fan favorite Danielle, Blake Shelton chose the Pam Tillis song ?Maybe It Was Memphis,? and Danielle told us that ?I agreed with that choice. That was the song that went up so high on iTunes and everyone was freaking out. It's such a fun performance. It's so powerful. I love that song.?

She added that she?s been watching her earlier ?Voice? clips to see how far she?s come since starting on the show. ?I've watched my blind auditions, knockouts, battles, those performances that were way at the beginning,? she said.

?Just the clips that they showed for the (top 16 group) performance -- it's crazy how much my voice has changed and how little I look!? Danielle laughed, before clarifying, ?I'm still little, but I feel like I grew up a lot.?

Michelle wasn?t sure why Usher picked Taylor Swift?s ?I Knew You Were Trouble,? which she first performed only two weeks ago.

?I don't fully know,? she admitted. ?I think it's just the energy. That was one of the most unique (performances) for me as far as what I'm able to show. This is like the top of the energy chain for me. It's like, 'Let's turn it back up to 11.??

She revealed that it wasn?t the track she would?ve chosen as her defining moment. ?I very much respect his choice,? she continued, ?(but) I would've picked ?Grenade,? because that was the first time I felt all these interlocking pieces come together -- the score, the movement. That is what I would've picked.?

Of the decision to go back to their version of Loggins and Messina?s ?Danny?s Song,? Colton Swon of The Swon Brothers told TODAY, ?That was all (Blake). That?s our coach and we have faith in him.?

?Danny?s Song? wasn?t the first time America really took notice of the Swon Brothers. They also received universal praise when they performed George Jones? ?Who?s Gonna Fill Their Shoes? in tribute to the late country legend. So why didn?t they go with Jones instead?

?I think ('Danny?s Song') reached a bigger audience than the George Jones song did,? Zach Swon explained. ?It went No. 2 overall on the iTunes charts. I think it connected with a lot more people that may not be hardcore country fans. If you'd told me that was going to be our defining moment at the beginning of the season, I'd have called you crazy. But looking back on it now and all the feedback we got, I really think it bumped us up there.?

One of these three acts is about to have another defining moment. ?The Voice? will name its season four winner with a special two-hour Tuesday show beginning at 9 PM on NBC.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/one-voice-finalist-disagrees-coachs-defining-pick-6C10361924

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