RIM offers biggest clients incentives to adopt BB10

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd on Thursday outlined a program of incentives to encourage its biggest customers to run its soon-to-launch line of BlackBerry 10 devices, seeking to persuade corporations and government users to stick with its secure smartphones.

RIM is betting that the devices, to be launched on January 30, will revive its fortunes. That will depend to a large extent on the response from RIM’s enterprise customers — the business users who value BlackBerry’s strong security features.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, once a smartphone pioneer, has bled market share to Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s market-leading Android operating system, even among the business customers who once used BlackBerry exclusively.

RIM says its new devices will be faster and smoother than previous BlackBerry phones and will have a large catalog of apps, which are crucial to the success of any new line of smartphones.

It now plans to phase in a BlackBerry 10 Ready Program for enterprise customers, initially offering online training and webcasts, and then providing free trade-ups of licenses and services.

“We will be aggressively reaching out to our customers to make sure they are aware of this program,” said Bryan Lee, senior director of enterprise at RIM. “We see this as really the linchpin for helping our customers to transition to BB10.”

Early adoption of BlackBerry 10 by government and corporate clients will go a long way in easing the concerns of both RIM’s clients and investors. Many fear that a lackluster market reception to BB10 could seal RIM’s fate.

RIM, which does not say what percentage of its business comes from the enterprise customers, said its online training and webcast series are already in place. Trade-ups, including free upgrades on the licenses for BB10 operating system, will be available ahead of the January 30 launch.

Evercore Partners analyst Mark McKechnie said RIM’s step-by-step program to woo enterprise customers was a positive move, though it highlights the challenges RIM faces.

“We are encouraged with an ‘all out’ marketing campaign with the right incentives to motivate enterprises to upgrade,” he said in a note to clients. “Our take is that this will remove a roadblock for those already planning to upgrade, but likely won’t push too many who prefer to wait.”

McKechnie, who has an “equal-weight” rating on RIM’s stock, said the move is unlikely to tempt back customers who have already abandoned the BlackBerry in favor of iPhones and Android devices. RIM offers support for the rival devices, but needs corporates to update to Blackberry Enterprise Service 10 so they can power and run BB10 devices on their networks.

BB10 READY

RIM’s Lee said he sees tremendous excitement from enterprise customers who want to use the new platform, but he would not speculate on how many would be ready to transition to the new platform come launch day.

RIM said last month that its BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10, which runs the devices on corporate networks, is in beta testing with around 20 key government agencies and corporates.

Feedback on the BB10 devices and platform has been largely positive from both carriers and developers. Financial analysts remain divided.

Some have upgraded their ratings and targets on RIM’s share price in anticipation of a successful launch of BB10, while others believe the new platform has little chance of succeeding.

TD Securities analyst Scott Penner on Wednesday raised his price target on RIM to $ 12 from $ 9.50, but said RIM still faces significant hurdles.

RIM’s stock has surged over the last two months from multi-year lows around $ 6 as the launch date for the new devices nears. The stock is still more than 90 percent below the 2008 all-time high around $ 148.

The latest TSX data indicates that short positions in RIM shares have fallen dramatically in the last two weeks. The total short positions in RIM, a bet that the stock price will fall, on the TSX fell to 15.2 million as of November 30, down from 20.6 million in the prior two weeks.

RIM shares slipped 0.4 percent to $ 11.89 on the Nasdaq on Thursday. The Toronto-listed shares ended down 0.3 percent at C$ 11.81.

(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Jeremy Laurence, Janet Guttsman and Leslie Adler)

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U.S.-Mexican singer Jenni Rivera dies in plane crash

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera died in a plane crash after the small jet she was travelling in went down in northern Mexico, her father said on Sunday.

A spokesman for the state government of Nuevo Leon said investigators had found the remains of Rivera’s Learjet, which disappeared from the radar 62 miles from the northern city of Monterrey at about 3:30 a.m. local time/4.30 a.m. EST.

Speaking after the wreckage was discovered, the singer’s father, Pedro Rivera, told Telemundo television all seven of the people on board the plane, including two pilots, had died.

“Everyone was lost,” Rivera said, flanked by two sons.

Investigators are still searching the crash site in the municipality of Iturbide, south of Monterrey. The transportation and communications ministry said the wreckage was strewn so far and wide that it was hard to recognize anything.

It was not clear what caused the crash.

Rivera, 43, was heading for the city of Toluca in central Mexico after a concert in Monterrey on Saturday night.

Born in Long Beach, California, to Mexican immigrants, Rivera sold some 15 million records in her career, won several awards and received Grammy nominations, her website said.

A mother of five, Rivera was a renowned performer of the Nortena and Banda musical styles.

(Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Philip Barbara and Stacey Joyce)

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Obama met with Boehner on Sunday over fiscal cliff: aides

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama met with Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner on Sunday at the White House to negotiate ways to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” according to White House officials and a congressional aide.

The two sides declined to provide further details about the unannounced meeting. Obama and Boehner aides used the same language to describe it.

“This afternoon, the president and Speaker Boehner met at the White House to discuss efforts to resolve the fiscal cliff,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

“We’re not reading out details of the conversation, but the lines of communication remain open,” he said.

An aide to Boehner emailed an identical quote.

The two sides are trying to reach an agreement that would stop automatic spending cuts and tax increases from going into effect at the beginning of the year. Analysts say if that so-called “fiscal cliff” occurs, the U.S. economy could swing back into a recession.

Obama has made clear he will not accept a deal unless tax rates for the wealthiest Americans rise. Boehner and many of his fellow Republicans say any tax increases would hurt a still fragile economy.

Last week Boehner and Obama spoke by phone, a conversation that the Republican leader described as pleasant but unproductive.

The common language used by both men’s aides suggests an agreement to keep details about their discussions private, which could help both of them sell less politically palatable aspects of an eventual deal to lawmakers in their respective parties.

(additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; editing by Stacey Joyce)

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India’s Strange Obsession With Hitler

All that remains of the sign above the Hitler clothing store in Ahmedabad, India, is the swastika that used to dot its “i.” Citing cultural insensitivity, the municipality tore it down on Oct. 30 after the store’s owners refused to change it. Rajesh Shah, a co-owner of the shop, which opened in August, is flummoxed. “We are popular because of the name,” he says. “Our customers were not upset about the name. They said, ‘Don’t change it.’ Ahmedabadis like the name because they know Hitler [has not done] anything harmful to India.”

Lacking the sting of anti-Semitism but troubling nonetheless, the Hitler brand is gaining strength in India. Mein Kampf is a bestseller, and bossy people are often nicknamed Hitler on television and in movies.

In 2006 a cafe called Hitler’s Cross opened in Mumbai; in 2011 a pool hall named Hitler’s Den opened nearby in Nagpur. Owners of both say Hitler was a draw; the names were changed in the face of criticism from Jewish groups. (In Ahmedabad, store owner Shah says that only foreigners complained.)

Hero Hitler in Love, a Punjabi comedy about a man with an explosive temper, and the Hindi film Gandhi to Hitler, a sympathetic portrait of the dictator’s last days (Gandhi once wrote to the Führer), came out last year. A soap opera, Hitler Didi—or “big sister Hitler”—is a hit. Bal Thackeray, the leader of a far-right Hindu party who recently died, professed admiration for Hitler.

Unlike in some parts of Europe such as Russia and Austria, where Mein Kampf has been embraced by the extreme right, Hitler’s popularity in India is not the result of anti-Semitism, says Navras Jaat Aafreedi, a professor of social sciences at Gautam Buddha University in New Delhi. He says it stems from a dearth of European history classes in schools. To the extent that German history is taught, he says, it’s in the context of “the view that had Hitler not weakened the British Empire by the Second World War, the British would have never voluntarily left India.” The country’s Jewish community—some 5,300 people—is one of a few in the world to have never been persecuted by their countrymen, he says.

Solomon Sopher, president of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Mumbai, agrees: “We have never been persecuted by any caste or creed. Not even by the Muslims.” He adds that Indians are prone to “hero worship” of strong military leaders. “Lack of examples of strong leadership in India leads the Indian youth to admire Hitler,” explains Aafreedi.

That may explain why Mein Kampf, the dictator’s memoir, sells briskly in Mumbai and is printed by at least 13 publishers in India, according to Economic & Political Weekly. Mein Kampf is also becoming a must-read for some business schools applicants. “Each year, when I sit for admission interviews, there [are] books that are mentioned as favorite reads” by applicants, says Uma Narain, a professor at S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research. “This year, many referred to Mein Kampf.” While Narain says she wouldn’t dream of teaching Mein Kampf, she can understand the lure of “the autobiographical account and political ideology of a charismatic man who supposedly got things done.”

Although Shah says the Hitler clothing store’s name was apolitical, he says the controversy has been good for business. He is petitioning the courts to reverse the decision to take the name down. “We’re going to fight for the name ‘Hitler,’ ” he says.

The bottom line: The popularity of Hitler is rising in India, reflecting the national attraction to strong leaders.

Shaftel is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Anger at Australian radio station over royal hoax

LONDON (AP) — It started out as a joke, but ended in tragedy.

The sudden death of a nurse who unwittingly accepted a prank call to a London hospital about Prince William‘s pregnant wife Kate has shocked Britain and Australia, and sparked an angry backlash Saturday from some who argue the DJs who carried out the hoax should be held responsible.

At first, the call by two irreverent Australian DJs posing as royals was picked up by news outlets around the world as an amusing anecdote about the royal pregnancy. Some complained about the invasion of privacy, the hospital was embarrassed, and the radio presenters sheepishly apologized.

But the prank took a dark twist Friday with the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, a 46-year-old mother of two, three days after she took the hoax call. Police have not yet determined Saldanha‘s cause of death, but people from London to Sydney have been making the assumption that she died because of stress from the call.

King Edward VII’s Hospital, where the former Kate Middleton was being treated for acute morning sickness this week, wrote a strongly-worded letter to the 2DayFM radio station’s parent company Southern Cross Austereo, condemning the “truly appalling” hoax and urging it to take steps to ensure such an incident would never happen again.

“The immediate consequence of these premeditated and ill-considered actions was the humiliation of two dedicated and caring nurses who were simply doing their job tending to their patients,” the letter read. “The longer term consequence has been reported around the world and is, frankly, tragic beyond words.”

The hospital did not comment when asked whether it believed the prank call had directly caused Saldanha’s death, only saying that the protest letter spoke for itself.

DJs Mel Grieg and Michael Christian, who apologized for the prank on Tuesday, took down their Twitter accounts after they were bombarded by thousands of abusive comments. Rhys Holleran, CEO of Southern Cross Austereo, said the pair have been offered counseling and were taken off the air indefinitely.

No one could have foreseen the tragic consequences of the prank, he stressed.

“I spoke to both presenters early this morning and it’s fair to say they’re completely shattered,” Holleran told reporters on Saturday.

“These people aren’t machines, they’re human beings,” he said. “We’re all affected by this.”

Details about Saldanha have been trickling out since the duty nurse’s body was found at apartments provided by the private hospital, which has treated a line of royals before, including Prince Philip, who was hospitalized there for a bladder infection in June.

The nurse, who was originally from India, had lived with her partner Benedict Barboza and a teenage son and daughter in Bristol, in southwestern England, for the past nine years. The hospital praised her as a “first-class nurse” who was well-respected and popular among colleagues during her four years working there.

Just before dawn on Tuesday, Saldanha was looking after her patients when the phone rang. A woman pretending to be Queen Elizabeth II asked to speak to the duchess, and, believing the caller, Saldanha transferred the call to a fellow nurse caring for the duchess, who spoke to the two DJs about Kate’s condition live on air.

During the call — which was put online and later broadcast on news channels worldwide — Grieg mimicked the Britain’s monarch’s voice and asked about the duchess’ health. She was told Kate “hasn’t had any retching with me and she’s been sleeping on and off.” Grieg and Christian, who pretended to be Prince Charles, also discussed with the nurse when they could travel to the hospital to check in on Kate.

Three days later, officers responding to reports that a woman was found unconscious discovered Saldanha, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Police didn’t release a cause of death, but said they didn’t find anything suspicious. A coroner will make a determination on the cause.

In the aftermath of Saldanha’s death, some speculated about whether the nurse was subject to pressure to resign or about to be punished for the mistake. Royal officials said Prince William and Kate were “deeply saddened,” but insisted that the palace had not complained about the hoax. King Edward VII’s Hospital also maintained that it did not reprimand Saldanha.

“We did not discipline the nurse in question. There were no plans to discipline her,” a hospital spokesman said. He declined to provide further details, and did not respond to questions about the second nurse’s condition.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority, which regulates radio broadcasting, said it has received complaints about the prank and is discussing the matter with the Sydney-based station, which yanked its Facebook page after it received thousands of angry comments.

Holleran, the radio executive, would not say who came up with the idea for the call. He only said that “these things are often done collaboratively.” He said 2DayFM would work with authorities, but was confident the station hadn’t broken any laws, noting that prank calls in radio have been happening “for decades.”

The station has a history of controversy, including a series of “Heartless Hotline” shows in which disadvantage people were offered a prize that could be taken away from them by listeners.

Saldanha’s family asked for privacy in a brief statement issued through London police.

Flowers were left outside the hospital’s nurse’s apartments, with one note reading: “Dear Jacintha, our thoughts are with you and your family. From all your fellow nurses, we bless your soul. God bless.”

Officials from St. James’s Palace have said the duchess is not yet 12 weeks pregnant. The child would be the first for her and William.

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7 Apps You Don’t Want To Miss

Twitterific

Twitter client Twitterific released version 5 of its iOS app this week. Overhauled and redesigned, the updated app has a new customizable user interface, gesture support, and the ability to sync timeline positions between several different devices.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Google Now Updated With Boarding Passes, Improved Voice Search]

It can be tough to keep up with all the new apps released every week. But you’re in luck — we take care of that for you, creating a roundup each weekend of our favorite new and updated apps.

This week a popular mobile photo editing app for iOS finally made its way to Android, and a hot email app for iOS saw a huge update.

[More from Mashable: Chihuly App Brings Glassblowing To The iPhone]

We found an app that lets you create virtual glass art projects with your iPhone, and an app for Android that lets you find and purchase art projects that others have created.

Check out the gallery above for a look at this week’s app highlights.

If you’re still looking for more, check out last week’s Apps You Don’t Want To Miss.

Think we left a great new app off the list? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo courtesy iStockphoto, scanrail

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Orlando Bloom’s Legolas returns to Middle Earth in 2014′s “There and Back Again”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Legolas was a fan favorite in Peter Jackson‘s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, but J.R.R. Tolkien enthusiasts won’t see the warrior Elf return to Middle Earth until 2014 when “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” hits theaters.

Entertainment Weekly published the first image of Orlando Bloom reprising his role and he looks pretty much the same, with the exception of his very blue eyes (weren’t they brown before?).

It’s true that the character is not featured in the book this trilogy is being adapted from, but luckily for Bloom’s bank account, his father is.

“He’s Thranduil’s son, and Thranduil is one of the characters in ‘The Hobbit,’” Jackson explained. “And because elves are immortal it makes sense Legolas would be part of the sequence in the Woodland Realm.”

If you don’t recognize the man standing next to Legolas, it’s because he’s a new face in the franchise. Bard the Bowman – played by Luke Evans – is a heroic human Laketown warrior who (if you couldn’t tell by his name) is also quite the marksman. He’ll come into the picture when “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” lands in theaters on December 13, 2013.

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On the edge of the “cliff,” U.S. cities like Charleston

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – For 37 years straight, Joseph P. Riley Jr. has sat behind the mayor’s desk here, shaping this city and its budget.

On a recent afternoon, Riley, 69, reached for a draft copy of next year’s spending plan and wondered aloud about what might get cut should politicians in Washington fail to find an agreement this month, unleashing $ 600 billion worth of spending reductions and tax hikes next year.

Hiring new police officers for the city of 123,000 could be put on hold, Riley said. A new piece of equipment for the fire department would have to wait. Sanitation workers might be in trouble, too.

“The thought that they would allow the economic harm that would ensue if we went over the fiscal cliff is mind-boggling,” said Riley, a Democrat who was elected to his 10th term last year.

Charleston, a beautiful city steeped in history and awash in tourist dollars, would seem at first glance a world apart from the harm that could be caused by the combination of spending cuts and higher taxes. Economists predict its arrival could send the United States hurtling back into a recession.

At its edges, however, Charleston harbors the people who are most vulnerable to Washington’s intransigence, making the city an emblem of a country’s worry and of the powerlessness people feel in the face of Washington’s indecision.

The sting of automatic cuts would be felt acutely by those who work in the defense sector and the poor. They form two prominent groups in Charleston County who may share little but the knowledge that federal belt-tightening is less a nuisance than an existential threat.

In South Carolina, defense spending accounts for $ 15.7 billion in annual economic activity – more than one in 10 dollars spent in the state – and nearly 140,000 jobs.

The Charleston area alone, which includes a large Air Force base and a Navy facility, holds more than 66,000 defense jobs and nearly half of the state’s military economic activity, according to a report released last month by the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

While Charleston, like the rest of the state, has seen a boom in military spending over the last decade, the area has the state’s second-highest concentration of people living in poverty, according to 2010 U.S. census data. More than one in four children live in poverty in the surrounding county.

From the anticipated cuts to the military to the shrinking of the safety net, Charleston shows what’s at stake should the United States fall off the fiscal cliff.

‘DEVASTATION’

A fast-talking engineer originally from Detroit, Michigan, Rebecca Ufkes founded UEC Electronics with her husband in neighboring Hanahan 17 years ago. Walking past employees in blue lab coats assembling components for military vehicles and commercial products last week, Ufkes described the chilling effect the possibility of cuts have had on Charleston’s defense industry.

In September, Ufkes traveled to Washington as a part of a lobbying effort organized by the Aerospace Industry Association, hoping to impress politicians with the dangers facing her 200-person company and its competitors should the anticipated $ 500 billion in defense cuts, over 10 years, come to pass.

She came away encouraged by her state’s largely Republican representation in Washington but frustrated by other lawmakers.

“South Carolina is a very pro-business state,” she said. “They are very keen on economics. It’s just that we are only one of 50 states.”

Ufkes, 48, said she worries not only about the uncertainty that has left defense contractors unsure where to invest but the impending tax increases, which she said will put her company, active in the commercial marketplace as well, at a disadvantage against foreign rivals.

“Probably the solution is not going to be perfect for UEC,” she said, “but I don’t want it to be devastating. Compromise and devastation are not the same thing.”

With a mug declaring, “Failure is not an option,” sitting on her desk, Ufkes predicted that her company would make it, no matter how devastating the cuts are.

“If we don’t survive,” she said. “I don’t know who will.”

NO ‘GIFTS’

Five miles (eight km) from Ufkes’ cutting-edge electronics manufacturer is the struggling North Charleston neighborhood of Chicora-Cherokee, where Bill Stanfield and his wife, Evelyn Oliveira, arrived fresh out of Princeton Theological Seminary 10 years ago.

They founded Metanoia, a development organization focusing on bettering the community by securing housing loans, planting a garden, and running after-school and summer programs.

Through government services like AmeriCorps, the national volunteer group, and funds from sources like the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Stanfield said his group received nearly a fifth of its funding from the federal government last year.

With politicians facing immense pressure over limiting cuts to entitlements like the Medicare health insurance program for seniors and the Social Security retirement program, advocates for the poor say they expect painful reductions in spending on education and housing.

“I don’t know if our housing program would survive,” Stanfield, 39, said.

Cuts to education will hit South Carolina hard, where the schools have bled money over the last five years.

According to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, South Carolina’s cuts to education have been the fifth largest in the country, slicing 18 percent off of per-student spending during that period.

The Obama administration, which Republicans consider a profligate spender, has felt like lean times in neighborhoods like Chicora-Cherokee, Stanfield said.

“You know Mitt Romney said that people voted for Obama because of gifts?” Stanfield said. “There’s this misconception that President Obama has been a gravy train of funding. There was more funding under President Bush of these organizations than under Obama.”

‘GAME OF CHICKEN’

Last month, Riley, the Charleston mayor, went to Washington with a group of fellow city leaders, Democrats and Republicans, to lobby the White House and Congress to save cities from drastic cuts.

Vice President Joseph Biden and Democratic leaders from the House of Representatives and Senate met with the mayors. House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders in Congress declined their invitation, Riley said.

While Riley supports Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on income earned over $ 250,000, a sticking point in the negotiations, he and other mayors cautioned that ending the tax-free status of municipal bonds would strangle cities’ access to needed capital.

Riley returned to Charleston feeling like a deal, which could prevent the harshest blows from hitting his city, its residents and jobs, was in the offing. Now, he said, he is not so sure.

“It looks like it’s a game of chicken,” he said, “and there are signals that they are going to go through with it.”

(Reporting By Samuel P. Jacobs Editing by Fred Barbash and Eric Beech)

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Cities see ‘anti-cuts’ marches

8 December 2012 Last updated at 08:47 ET

Campaigners “protesting against the Autumn Statement” have taken part in marches in Manchester and Liverpool.

Demonstrations were held in both cities by protest groups, including UK Uncut and Boycott Workfare, and trade unions.

Manchester organiser Mark Krantz said the “poorest will be going without” as a result of the Chancellor’s statement on Wednesday.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said the Chancellor’s plans would be “hugely helpful for working people”.

Mr Krantz, of Manchester Coalition Against Cuts, said the plans meant working people “face further cuts to their household budgets as pay and benefits have been set at below inflation levels”.

“Claims that ‘we now really are all in it together’ are clearly not true – rich people will not go hungry this Christmas, but the poorest will be going without,” he said.

“Council budgets for cities like Manchester and Liverpool, which have already suffered with jobs slashed and vital services shut, are now facing further cuts due to Osborne’s announcements.”

Michelle Smith, of Liverpool Against the Cuts, said the plans would “hit the most vulnerable in our society”.

She added that the Liverpool protest would be “highlighting the effect of the cuts on women in particular” and that all the groups involved were “protesting against the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement”.

Chancellor George Osborne delivered the coalition government’s plans for taxing and spending in his annual Autumn Statement on Wednesday.

The statement laid out changes to welfare and tax and cuts to local government budgets amongst other measures.

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Protesters surge around Egypt’s presidential palace

CAIRO (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Egyptian protesters surged around the presidential palace on Friday and the opposition rejected President Mohamed Mursi‘s call for dialogue to end a crisis that has polarized the nation and sparked deadly clashes.

The Islamist leader’s deputy said he could delay a December 15 referendum on a constitution that liberals opposed, although the concession only partly meets a list of opposition demands that include scrapping a decree that expanded Mursi‘s powers.

“The people want the downfall of the regime” and “Leave, leave,” crowds chanted after bursting through barbed wire barricades and climbing on tanks guarding the palace of Egypt‘s first freely elected president.

Their slogans echoed those used in a popular revolt that toppled Mursi’s predecessor Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Vice President Mahmoud Mekky said in a statement sent to local media that the president was prepared to postpone the referendum if that could be done without legal challenge.

The dialogue meeting was expected to go ahead on Saturday in the absence of most opposition factions. “Tomorrow everything will be on the table,” a presidential source said of the talks.

The opposition has demanded that Mursi rescind a November 22 decree giving himself wide powers and delay the vote set for December 15 on a constitution drafted by an Islamist-led assembly which they say fails to meet the aspirations of all Egyptians.

The state news agency reported that the election committee had postponed the start of voting for Egyptians abroad until Wednesday, instead of Saturday as planned. It did not say whether this would affect the timing of voting in Egypt.

Ahmed Said, leader of the liberal Free Egyptians Party, told Reuters that delaying expatriate voting was made to seem like a concession but would not change the opposition’s stance.

He said the core opposition demand was to freeze Mursi’s decree and “to reconsider the formation and structure of the constituent assembly”, not simply to postpone the referendum.

The opposition organized marches converging on the palace which elite Republican Guard units had ringed with tanks and barbed wire on Thursday after violence between supporters and opponents of Mursi killed seven people and wounded 350.

Islamists, who had obeyed a military order for demonstrators to leave the palace environs, held funerals on Friday at Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque for six Mursi partisans who were among the dead. “With our blood and souls, we sacrifice to Islam,” they chanted.

“ARM-TWISTING”

In a speech late on Thursday, Mursi had refused to retract his November 22 decree or cancel the referendum on the constitution, but offered talks on the way forward after the referendum.

The National Salvation Front, the main opposition coalition, said it would not join the dialogue. The Front’s coordinator, Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace laureate, dismissed the offer as “arm-twisting and imposition of a fait accompli”.

Murad Ali, spokesman of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said opposition reactions were sad: “What exit to this crisis do they have other than dialogue?” he asked.

Mursi’s decree giving himself extra powers sparked the worst political crisis since he took office in June and set off renewed unrest that is dimming Egypt’s hopes of stability and economic recovery after nearly two years of turmoil following the overthrow of Mubarak, a military-backed strongman.

The turmoil has exposed contrasting visions for Egypt, one held by Islamists, who were suppressed for decades by the army, and another by their rivals, who fear religious conservatives want to squeeze out other voices and restrict social freedoms.

Caught in the middle are many of Egypt’s 83 million people who are desperate for an end to political turbulence threatening their precarious livelihoods in an economy under severe strain.

“We are so tired, by God,” said Mohamed Ali, a laborer. “I did not vote for Mursi nor anyone else. I only care about bringing food to my family, but I haven’t had work for a week.”

ECONOMIC PAIN

A long political standoff will make it harder for Mursi’s government to tackle the crushing budget deficit and stave off a balance of payments crisis. Austerity measures, especially cuts in costly fuel subsidies, seem inevitable to meet the terms of a $ 4.8-billion IMF loan that Egypt hopes to clinch this month.

U.S. President Barack Obama told Mursi on Thursday of his “deep concern” about casualties in this week’s clashes and said “dialogue should occur without preconditions”.

The upheaval in the most populous Arab nation worries the United States, which has given billions of dollars in military and other aid since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.

The conflict between Islamists and opponents who each believe the other is twisting the democratic rules to thwart them has poisoned the political atmosphere in Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s spokesman, Mahmoud Ghozlan, told Reuters that if the opposition shunned the dialogue “it shows that their intention is to remove Mursi from the presidency and not to cancel the decree or the constitution as they claim”.

Ayman Mohamed, 29, a protester at the palace, said Mursi should scrap the draft constitution and heed popular demands.

“He is the president of the republic. He can’t just work for the Muslim Brotherhood,” Mohamed said of the eight-decade-old Islamist movement that propelled Mursi from obscurity to power.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy; Writing by Edmund Blair and Alistair Lyon; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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