Thousands protest Mich. right-to-work law

LANSING, Michigan (Reuters) - More than 12,000 workers from throughout Michigan and the U.S. Midwest crowded into the state Capitol and marched outside in freezing temperatures on Tuesday as the legislature began debating a "right-to-work" law restricting unions in a stronghold of organized labor.

Michigan State Police Inspector Gene Adamczyk said the Capitol building was closed to visitors when it reached capacity of 2,200. An estimated 10,000 people demonstrated outside.

Protesters lined the railings of the inner rotunda of the Capitol in Lansing as the Republican-majority Michigan House of Representatives began debate on a law that would strike a heavy blow against unions by prohibiting them from compelling workers to be members and pay dues.

The pro-union forces earlier had chanted "Hey hey, ho ho, right-to-work has got to go," and "What's disgusting, union busting," inside the building where police had arrested eight protesters last Thursday as Republicans gave preliminary approval to the laws.

Supporters of the right-to-work legislation also were inside the Capitol and on the grounds nearby, although they were heavily outnumbered by opponents. Security was tight with police dressed in riot gear, carrying long batons and with spray canisters on their belts.

Outside, where a nearby bank sign showed the temperature at 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 Celsius) and light snow fell, four inflatable rats dubbed the "Rat Pack" depicted Republican Governor Rick Snyder and the party leaders who have led the right-to-work effort.

A man dressed as Santa Claus stood on the Capitol steps holding a sign saying that Republicans had stolen Christmas.

The show of force by unionized workers recalled huge rallies in Wisconsin two years ago when Republicans voted to curb public sector unions.

Several school districts in Michigan were closed as teachers went to Lansing to join the rallies.

Jen Penz, a union steward for teacher aides at Warren Consolidated Schools, said 260 teachers called in sick there, forcing schools to close in the district near Detroit.

"We're not abandoning our students. We're here to protect their future," Penz said. "We're setting a good example for them.

Ann Patnaude, deputy state director for Americans for Prosperity and a supporter of right-to-work, said many people are confused about the issue.

"The unions are still going to be around," she said. "There's still going to be collective bargaining. This is about freedom, the right to choose."

The bills under consideration by the Republican-controlled Michigan House of Representatives on Tuesday would cover private, and public sector unions, except for fire and police. Snyder has pledged to sign the bills quickly.

The right-to-work movement has been growing in the United States in recent years. Indiana earlier this year became the first state in the industrial Midwest to approve right-to-work and several other states are watching the Michigan action closely.

Michigan would become the 24th state to enact right-to-work provisions. Passage of the legislation would be a stunning blow to the power of organized labor in the United States, which has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years.

Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 passed laws severely restricting the power of public sector unions. While Wisconsin did not even attempt to pass right-to-work, the success of Republicans there in curbing powerful unions such as teachers and state workers emboldened politicians in other states to follow suit.

UNION HOTBED

Michigan is home of the heavily unionized U.S. auto industry, with some 700 manufacturing plants in the state. It is also the birthplace of the United Auto Workers, the richest U.S. labor union. Michigan has the fifth highest percentage of unionized workers in the United States at 17.5 percent.

While new Michigan laws would not be expected to have much immediate impact because existing union contracts would be preserved, they could eventually weaken the UAW, which has already seen its influence wane in negotiating with the major automakers.

Right-to-work laws typically allow workers to hold a job without being forced to join a union or pay union dues.

President Barack Obama waded into the debate during a visit to the Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in Redford, Michigan, on Monday, criticizing the Republican right-to-work effort.

"What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money," Obama said.

Labor leaders such as UAW President Bob King say they were blindsided by Snyder, who last Thursday announced he was supporting right-to-work after nearly two years of saying the issue was too divisive.

King was unsuccessful in more than a week of talks with Snyder and his staff in staving off the right-to-work push by the Republicans, who will lose several seats when newly elected members take their seats in the Michigan House and Senate in January.

Detroit area is headquarters for General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler, which is majority owned by Fiat SpA.

(Additional reporting by Robert Carr; Editing by Greg McCune and Bill Trott)

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McAfee wants to return to US, ‘normal life’

BACALAR, Mexico (AP) — Software company founder John McAfee said Sunday he wants to return to the United States and “settle down to whatever normal life” he can.

In a live-stream Internet broadcast from the Guatemalan detention center where he is fighting a government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old said “I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years.”

Police in neighboring Belize want to question McAfee in the fatal shooting of a U.S. expatriate who lived near his home on a Belizean island in November.

The creator of the McAfee antivirus program again denied involvement in the killing during the Sunday Internet video hook-up, during which he answered what he said were reporters’ questions.

His comments were sometimes contradictory. McAfee is an acknowledged practical joker who has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and the production of herbal medications.

The British-born McAfee first said that returning to the United States “is my only hope now.” But he later added, “I would be happy to go to England, I have dual citizenship.”

He was emphatic that “I cannot ever return to Belize …. there is no hope for my life if I am ever returned to Belize.”

“If I am returned,” he said, “bad things will clearly happen to me.”

He descibed the health problems that had him briefly hospitalized earlier this week after Guatemalan authorities detained him for entering the country illegally. He apparently snuck in across a rural, unguarded spot along the border.

“I did not eat for two days, I drank very little liquids, and for the first time in many years I’ve been smoking almost non-stop,” he said. “I stood up, passed out hit my head on the wall, came to,” though he now said he was feeling better.

McAfee praised the role his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Vanegas, played in his escape from Belize, where he claims he is being persecuted by corrupt politicians. Authorities in Belize deny that they are persecuting him and have questioned his mental state.

“Sam saved the day many times” during their escape, he said, and suggested he would take her with him to the United States if he is allowed to go there.

He confirmed that journalists from Vice magazine who accompanied him on his escape after weeks of hiding in Belize had unwittingly posted photos with embedded data that revealed his exact location.

“It was an error anyone could make,” he said, noting they were under a lot of pressure at the time.

McAfee has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $ 4 million of his $ 100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as describing that claim as “not very accurate at all.”

McAfee’s Guatemalan attorney, Telesforo Guerra, says that he has filed three separate legal appeals in the hope that his client can stay in Guatemala, where his political asylum request was rejected.

Guerra said he filed an appeal for a judge to make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected, an appeal against the asylum denial and a petition with immigration officials to allow his client to stay in this Central American country indefinitely.

The appeals could take several days to resolve, Guerra said. He added that he could still use several other legal resources but wouldn’t give any other details.

Fredy Viana, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that before the agency looks into the request to allow McAfee to stay in Guatemala, a judge must first deal with the appeal asking that authorities make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected.

“We won’t look into (allowing him to stay) until the other appeal is resolved,” Viana said. “The law gives me 30 days to resolve the issue.”

McAfee went on the run last month after Belizean officials tried to question him about the killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull. Faull’s home was a couple of houses down from McAfee’s compound in Ambergris Caye, off Belize’s Caribbean coast.

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Hug It Out: Public Charter and District Schools Given $25 Million to Get Along

If you need a loan, ask Bill and Melinda Gates. Or better yet, ask one of the seven cities that are splitting a new $ 25 million grant courtesy of the couple’s philanthropic foundation.

The funds are going to promote cross collaboration between charter and district schools, which have previously operated in a strict and contentious independence from one another.

The foundation announced the award this week, and the cities benefiting are Boston, Denver, Hartford (CT), New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia and Spring Branch (TX).

How did they get so lucky? They’re among a group of 16 communities that signed the Gates-sponsored “District-Charter Collaboration Compacts” pledging for an open-source collaboration between public charter and district public schools.

Communication between these two models is unusual to say the least; they’ve had a long and illustrious history of battling each other over tax dollars, students and even building space.

But when charter schools first opened 20 years ago, their original purpose was to create an experimental educational space which would then share its best methods with public district schools. Instead, the two grew into rivals and critics of each are vehemently opposed to the other.

Among the complaints, charter schools are seen as selfishly siphoning off the most motivated students from the district while upholding a rich-poor educational divide and failing to live up to the promise of a better education. Others say its district schools that are the issue for their unionized teacher complacency and a consistent inability to keep a large margin of students from falling through the cracks.

In truth, neither system is a slam-dunk, and both are experiencing closures nationwide due to underperformance.

The goal of the District-Charter Collaboration Compacts is to restore the original relationship of the two camps, effectively establishing a regular protocol of sharing their best practices, innovations and resources.

Don Shalvey, the deputy director at teh Gates Foundation told The New York Times, “It took Microsoft and Apple 10 years to learn to talk. So it’s not surprising that it took a little bit longer for charters and other public schools. It’s pretty clear there is more common ground than battleground.”

But what will this grand collaboration yield? If all goes according to plan, students from both camps will benefit from new teacher effectiveness practices, college-ready tools and supports, and innovative instructional delivery systems.

According to the Gates Foundation, only one-third of students meet the criteria of college ready by the time they graduate. And most of the kids who don’t are often minority students from lower income areas. By creating collaborative aims with charter and district, kids from all over can have access to a wider swath of teaching frameworks and curriculums. 

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Public Dollars for Private Schools? Voices from the Voucher Debate

• School Vouchers: The Debate Heats Up Across the U.S.

• Howard Fuller: One of the Most Powerful Educators in America

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

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Springsteen, Lady Gaga join Stones concert in NJ

NEW YORK (AP) — Bruce Springsteen, Lady Gaga and The Black Keys will join the Rolling Stones on Saturday for the final concert marking the band’s 50th anniversary.

The concert will be held at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.

The band said Monday the concert will be telecast live on pay-per-view.

The Stones have played in London and New York on their “50 and Counting” tour. They will also play in Newark on Thursday.

The Stones will perform Wednesday at the “12-12-12″ concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City to raise money for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

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Online:

http://www.rollingstones.com/

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UK chooses doctor as new head of NICE

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s health ministry named a former practising doctor, David Haslam, as the preferred candidate to chair the country’s healthcare cost-effectiveness watchdog NICE on Monday.

Haslam will take over as chairman of the renamed National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) from Michael Rawlins, assuming he passes scrutiny by a committee of MPs.

Rawlins, who has chaired NICE since its creation in 1999, is due to step down in March 2013.

During his time at the helm of the agency, Rawlins has made NICE a powerful force in the pharmaceutical industry with its hard-nosed approach to deciding whether or not pricey new drugs should be used on the state health service.

Haslam, who already leads the NICE Evidence Accreditation Advisory Board, is the immediate past president of the British Medical Association.

NICE will change its official title from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence next year.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Kate Kelland)

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SEAL Team Six member dies in rescue of American doctor

One of the Special Operations troops involved in the raid to free an
American doctor from the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan died of his
wounds today.

A U.S. official confirmed the service member killed in the raid was a member of SEAL Team Six, the same unit that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

"I was deeply saddened to learn that a U.S. service member was killed in the operation, and I also want to extend my condolences to his family, teammates and friends," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a statement released today. "The special operators who conducted this raid knew they were putting their lives on the line to free a fellow American from the enemy's grip. They put the safety of another American ahead of their own, as so many of our brave warriors do every day and every night. In this fallen hero, and all of our special operators, Americans see the highest ideals of citizenship, sacrifice and service upheld. The torch of freedom burns brighter because of them."

President Obama also praised the Special Operations force for their bravery.

"Yesterday, our special operators in Afghanistan rescued an American citizen in a mission that was characteristic of the extraordinary courage, skill and patriotism that our troops show every day," he said today.

"Tragically, we lost one of our special operators in this effort," he said. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, just as we must always honor our troops and military families. He gave his life for his fellow Americans, and he and his teammates remind us once more of the selfless service that allows our nation to stay strong, safe and free."

Dr. Dilip Joseph and two colleagues were kidnapped Dec. 5 by a group of armed men while returning from a visit to a rural medical clinic in eastern Kabul Province, according to a statement from their employer, Colorado Springs-based Morning Star Development. The statement said the three were eventually taken to a mountainous area about 50 miles from the border with Pakistan.

Morning Star's crisis management team in Colorado Springs was in contact with the hostages and their captors almost immediately, the statement said.

On Saturday evening in Afghanistan, two of the three hostages were released. Morning Star did not release their names in order to protect their identities. Dr. Joseph remained in captivity.

Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, ordered the mission to rescue Joseph when "intelligence showed that Joseph was in imminent danger of injury or death", according to a military press release.

Morning Star said Joseph was in good condition and will probably return home to Colorado Springs in the next few days.

A Defense Department official told ABC that Joseph can walk, but was beaten up by his captors.

Joseph has worked for Morning Star Development for three years, the organization said, and travels frequently to Afghanistan.

"Morning Star Development does state categorically that we paid no ransom, money or other consideration to the captors or anyone else to secure the release of these hostages," the organization said.

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Peru’s capital highly vulnerable to major quake

LIMA, Peru (AP) — The earthquake all but flattened colonial Lima, the shaking so violent that people tossed to the ground couldn’t get back up. Minutes later, a 50-foot (15-meter) wall of Pacific Ocean crashed into the adjacent port of Callao, killing all but 200 of its 5,000 inhabitants. Bodies washed ashore for weeks.

Plenty of earthquakes have shaken Peru‘s capital in the 266 years since that fateful night of Oct. 28, 1746, though none with anything near the violence.

The relatively long “seismic silence” means that Lima, set astride one of the most volatile ruptures in the Earth’s crust, is increasingly at risk of being hammered by a one-two, quake-tsunami punch as calamitous as what devastated Japan last year and traumatized Santiago, Chile, and its nearby coast a year earlier, seismologists say.

Yet this city of 9 million people is sorely unprepared. Its acute vulnerability, from densely clustered, unstable housing to a dearth of first-responders, is unmatched regionally. Peru’s National Civil Defense Institute forecasts up to 50,000 dead, 686,000 injured and 200,000 homes destroyed if Lima is hit by a magnitude-8.0 quake.

“In South America, it is the most at risk,” said architect Jose Sato, director of the Center for Disaster Study and Prevention, or PREDES, a non-governmental group financed by the charity Oxfam that is working on reducing Lima’s quake vulnerability.

Lima is home to a third of Peru’s population, 70 percent of its industry, 85 percent of its financial sector, its entire central government and the bulk of international commerce.

“A quake similar to what happened in Santiago would break the country economically,” said Gabriel Prado, Lima’s top official for quake preparedness. That quake had a magnitude of 8.8.

Quakes are frequent in Peru, with about 170 felt by people annually, said Hernando Tavera, director of seismology at the country’s Geophysical Institute. A big one is due, and the chances of it striking increase daily, he said. The same collision of tectonic plates responsible for the most powerful quake ever recorded, a magnitude-9.5 quake that hit Chile in 1960, occurs just off Lima’s coast, where about 3 inches of oceanic crust slides annually beneath the continent.

A 7.5-magnitude quake in 1974 a day’s drive from Lima in the Cordillera Blanca range killed about 70,000 people as landslides buried villages. Seventy-eight people died in the capital. In 2007, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck even closer, killing 596 people in the south-central coastal city of Pisco.

A shallow, direct hit is the big danger.

More than two in five Lima residents live either in rickety structures on unstable, sandy soil and wetlands that amplify a quake’s destructive power or in hillside settlements that sprang up over a generation as people fled conflict and poverty in Peru’s interior. Thousands are built of colonial-era adobe.

Most quake-prone countries have rigorous building codes to resist seismic events. In Chile, if engineers and builders don’t adhere to them they can face prison. Not so in Peru.

“People are building with adobe just as they did in the 17th century,” said Carlos Zavala, director of Lima’s Japanese-Peruvian Center for Seismic Investigation and Disaster Mitigation.

Environmental and human-made perils compound the danger.

Situated in a coastal desert, Lima gets its water from a single river, the Rimac, which a landslide could easily block. That risk is compounded by a containment pond full of toxic heavy metals from an old mine that could rupture and contaminate the Rimac, said Agustin Gonzalez, a PREDES official advising Lima’s government.

Most of Lima’s food supply arrives via a two-lane highway that parallels the river, another potential chokepoint.

Lima’s airport and seaport, the key entry points for international aid, are also vulnerable. Both are in Callao, which seismologists expect to be scoured by a 20-foot (6-meter) tsunami if a big quake is centered offshore, the most likely scenario.

Mayor Susana Villaran’s administration is Lima’s first to organize a quake-response and disaster mitigation plan. A February 2011 law obliged Peru’s municipalities to do so. Yet Lima’s remains incipient.

“How are the injured going to be attended to? What is the ability of hospitals to respond? Of basic services? Water, energy, food reserves? I don’t think this is being addressed with enough responsibility,” said Tavera of the Geophysical Institute.

By necessity, most injured will be treated where they fall, but Peru’s police have no comprehensive first-aid training. Only Lima’s 4,000 firefighters, all volunteers, have such training, as does a 1,000-officer police emergency squadron.

But because the firefighters are volunteers, a quake’s timing could influence rescue efforts.

“If you go to a fire station at 10 in the morning there’s hardly anyone there,” said Gonzalez, who advocates a full-time professional force.

In the next two months, Lima will spend nearly $ 2 million on the three fire companies that cover downtown Lima, its first direct investment in firefighters in 25 years, Prado said. The national government is spending $ 18 million citywide for 50 new fire trucks and ambulances.

But where would the ambulances go?

A 1997 study by the Pan American Health Organization found that three of Lima’s principal public hospitals would likely collapse in a major quake, but nothing has been done to reinforce them.

And there are no free beds. One public hospital, Maria Auxiliadora, serves more than 1.2 million people in Lima’s south but has just 400 beds, and they are always full.

Contingency plans call for setting up mobile hospitals in tents in city parks. But Gonzalez said only about 10,000 injured could be treated.

Water is also a worry. The fire threat to Lima is severe — from refineries to densely-backed neighborhoods honeycombed with colonial-era wood and adobe. Lima’s firefighters often can’t get enough water pressure to douse a blaze.

“We should have places where we can store water not just to put out fires but also to distribute water to the population,” said Sato, former head of the disaster mitigation department at Peru’s National Engineering University.

The city’s lone water-and-sewer utility can barely provide water to one-tenth of Lima in the best of times.

Another big concern: Lima has no emergency operations center and the radio networks of the police, firefighters and the Health Ministry, which runs city hospitals, use different frequencies, hindering effective communication.

Nearly half of the city’s schools require a detailed evaluation to determine how to reinforce them against collapse, Sato said.

A recent media blitz, along with three nationwide quake-tsunami drills this year, helped raise consciousness. The city has spent more than $ 77 million for retention walls and concrete stairs to aid evacuation in hillside neighborhoods, Prado said, but much more is needed.

At the biggest risk, apart from tsunami-vulnerable Callao, are places like Nueva Rinconada.

A treeless moonscape in the southern hills, it is a haven for economic refugees who arrive daily from Peru’s countryside and cobble together precarious homes on lots they scored into steep hillsides with pickaxes.

Engineers who have surveyed Nueva Rinconada call its upper reaches a death trap. Most residents understand this but say they have nowhere else to go.

Water arrives in tanker trucks at $ 1 per 200 liters (52 gallons) but is unsafe to drink unless boiled. There is no sanitation; people dig their own latrines. There are no streetlamps, and visibility is erased at night as Lima’s bone-chilling fog settles into the hills.

Homes of wood, adobe and straw matting rest on piled-rock foundations that engineers say will crumble and rain down on people below in a major quake.

A recently built concrete retaining wall at the valley’s head lies a block beneath the thin-walled wood home of Hilarion Lopez, a 55-year-old janitor and community leader. It might keep his house from sliding downhill, but boulders resting on uphill slopes could shake loose and crush him and his neighbors.

“We’ve made holes and poured concrete around some of the more unstable boulders,” he says, squinting uphill in a strong late morning sun.

He’s not so worried if a quake strikes during daylight.

“But if I get caught at night? How do I see a rock?”

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Associated Press writer Franklin Briceno contributed to this report.

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Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak

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Comedian Katt Williams arrested near Sacramento

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Comedian Katt Williams has been arrested in northern California on a felony warrant related to a police chase.

The Sacramento Bee reports (http://bit.ly/UNq5QW ) that Williams was arrested Friday night in Dunnigan, about 25 miles north of Sacramento, by Yolo County deputies.

The paper says he was released from the county jail Saturday after posting bail.

The sheriff’s department confirmed Williams’ arrest late Saturday, but staffers on duty didn’t have details. A spokesman for the comedian didn’t immediately return a call and email.

The California Highway Patrol says Williams fled officers on a three-wheeled motorcycle on Nov. 25 after being spotted driving on a downtown Sacramento sidewalk.

The CHP said Williams was asked to stop and refused, leading to the pursuit.

The CHP says Williams nearly hit five people during the chase, which police ended for safety reasons.

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Factbox: Chavez’s chosen successor Nicolas Maduro

CARACAS (Reuters) – President Hugo Chavez has named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as the heir of his self-styled socialist revolution should cancer force him out of office. He urged Venezuelans to vote for Maduro in the event of a snap election.

Here are some facts about Maduro:

* A former bus driver and trade unionist with Caracas public transport, the mustachioed Maduro, 50, has been foreign minister since 2006 and also was named vice president in October.

* As foreign minister, he has been a faithful ambassador of Chavez’s views, including often radical critiques of global affairs from a hard left-wing stance.

* Maduro has won plaudits from foreign diplomats for his affable, easygoing manner. “He’s the smoothest and least prickly of all the top Chavistas to deal with,” one European envoy said.

* Maduro has been increasingly close to Chavez since his first cancer diagnosis in mid-2011, often at his side in Havana and giving brief updates to Venezuelans, although without giving away too many details of his boss’s condition.

* Maduro’s trade union background appeals to Chavez’s working-class supporters and he is highly respected among the president’s inner circle. Past polls have shown that opposition leader Henrique Capriles would beat him in an election but analysts say that could change in a new electoral scenario given that Maduro would have Chavez’s blessing.

* Maduro was elected in 2000 as a deputy to the National Assembly, where his combative defense of Chavez’s policies made him one of the president’s favored protégés.

* He rose to become president of the legislature, and upon becoming foreign minister passed his previous post to his wife, Cilia Flores, a lawyer who became the first woman to serve as National Assembly president, between 2006 and 2011.

* When Chavez was sent to prison following his failed coup attempt in 1992, it was Flores who led the legal team that won his freedom two years later. She now serves as the country’s attorney general. She and Maduro are seen as a “power couple” in government circles.

* Chavez’ endorsement of Maduro has sidelined ambitions of other powerful Socialist Party figures such as Diosdado Cabello, who was widely considered a candidate for the top job in the future. Cabello, a military man with close ties to the armed forces and business, is not as well liked as Maduro among Venezuelans. He immediately pledged loyalty to both Chavez and the vice president after Chavez made his announcement.

(This story removed extraneous word from the first paragraph)

(Editing by Bill Trott)

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More Egypt protests called after Morsi concession

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's liberal opposition called for more protests Sunday, seeking to keep up the momentum of its street campaign after the president made a partial concession overnight but refused its main demand he rescind a draft constitution going to a referendum on Dec. 15.

President Mohammed Morsi met one of the opposition's demands, annulling his Nov. 22 decrees that gave him near unrestricted powers. But he insisted on going ahead with the referendum on a constitution hurriedly adopted by his Islamist allies during an all-night session late last month.

The opposition National Salvation Front called on supporters to rally against the referendum. The size of Sunday's turnout, especially at Cairo's central Tahrir square and outside the presidential palace in the capital's Heliopolis district, will determine whether Morsi's concession chipped away some of the popular support for the opposition's cause.

The opposition said Morsi's rescinding of his decrees was an empty gesture since the decrees had already achieved their main aim of ensuring the adoption of the draft constitution. The edicts had barred the courts from dissolving the Constituent Assembly that passed the charter and further neutered the judiciary by making Morsi immune from its oversight.

Still, the lifting of the decrees could persuade many judges to drop their two-week strike to protest what their leaders called Morsi's assault on the judiciary. An end to their strike means they would oversee the Dec. 15 vote as is customary in Egypt.

If the referendum goes ahead, the opposition faces a new challenge — either to campaign for a "no" vote or to boycott the process altogether. A low turnout or the charter passing by a small margin of victory would cast doubts on the constitution's legitimacy.

It was the decrees that initially sparked the wave of protests against Morsi that has brought tens of thousands into the streets in past weeks. But the rushed passage of the constitution further inflamed those who feel Morsi and his Islamist allies, including the Muslim Brotherhood, are monopolizing power in Egypt and trying to force their agenda.

The draft charter was adopted amid a boycott by liberal and Christian members of the Constituent Assembly. The document would open the door to Egypt's most extensive implementation of Islamic law, enshrining a say for Muslim clerics in legislation, making civil rights subordinate to Shariah and broadly allowing the state to protect "ethics and morals." It fails to outlaw gender discrimination and mainly refers to women in relation to home and family.

Sunday's rallies would be the latest of a series by opponents and supporters of Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Both sides have drawn tens of thousands of people into the streets, sparking bouts of street battles that have left at least six people dead and hundreds wounded. Several offices of the Muslim Brotherhood also have been ransacked or torched in the unrest.

Morsi, who took office in June as Egypt's first freely elected president, rescinded the Nov. 22 decrees at the recommendation Saturday of a panel of 54 politicians and clerics who took part in a "national dialogue" the president called for to resolve the crisis. Most of the 54 were Islamists who support the president, since the opposition boycotted the dialogue.

In his overnight announcement, Morsi also declared that if the draft constitution is rejected by voters in the referendum, a nationwide election would be held to select the next Constituent Assembly.

The assembly that adopted the draft was created by parliament, which was dominated by the Brotherhood and other Islamists, and had an Islamist majority from the start. The lawmaking lower house of parliament was later disbanded by court order before Morsi's inauguration.

If the draft is approved in the referendum, elections would be held for a new lower house of parliament would be held within two months, Morsi decided.

The president has maintained all along that his Nov. 22 decrees were motivated by his desire to protect the country's state institutions and transition to democratic rule against a "conspiracy" hatched by figures of the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak.

Morsi, whose claims have been repeated by leaders of his Brotherhood, has yet to divulge details of the alleged conspiracy.

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