Egyptians rally to demand faster reforms (Reuters)

CAIRO (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Egyptians packed city centers across the country on Friday to demand faster reforms and voice frustration at what they regard as foot-dragging by military rulers and government officials.

Anger has been building among ordinary Egyptians and activists over the time taken to prosecute Hosni Mubarak and former officials charged with corruption and killing demonstrators during the uprising that toppled the president.

Most political organisations including the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most organised grouping, backed calls for the protest, called "The Revolution First," which took aim at Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who heads the ruling army council.

Cairo's Tahrir Square, center of the uprising in February, was decked with red, white and black Egyptian colors in one of the biggest rallies since Mubarak's downfall.

"We want to change the government and those in charge," said Ehab Mohamed Mahmoud, 36, who checked those entering the square.

"The Field Marshal as well. He is an integral part of the old regime," he added, referring to Tantawi who was Mubarak's defense minister for two decades.

Muslim Brotherhood members voiced more cautious demands.

"The enemies of the revolution are many. But the army and the people are one hand. We ask the army to speed up the legal procedures to try the corrupt," said Mohamed Ali, a Brotherhood member in Tahrir.

Analysts say the political group, harassed and repressed under Mubarak, is best positioned to benefit from the timetable for transition outlined by the army, with a parliamentary election in September.

Presidential hopeful Mohamed ElBaradei, a former U.N. diplomat, told CNN there were some "unrealistic expectations" as Egyptians shook off decades of repression and he said it would take time to deliver wholesale change.

"But definitely there is no going back. At least people now are still poor, but they are free," he said. "They can go by the millions in the streets to demonstrate, and demonstrate peacefully ... It's a feeling that they are being empowered."

Former Arab League Secretary General, Amr Moussa, another presidential hopeful, joined the protesters in Tahrir.

Activists handed out surveys and one question read: "How do you assess the performance of the military council?" Some protesters showed off their forms where they had ticked a box saying: "Performance getting worse."

As with previous protests since Mubarak was ousted, activism combined with a festive mood. Children with faces painted in the Egyptian flag's colors joined their parents. As evening fell, numbers dwindled but some in Tahrir vowed to stay overnight.

There was no visible police or army presence.

PUNISHMENT

Many Egyptians believe the health problems reportedly afflicting Mubarak are a ploy by army generals to avoid bringing the former air force commander to trial.

Public frustration has also been fueled by court rulings this week clearing three former ministers of graft charges and another court decision to free on bail 10 policemen charged with killing demonstrators.

"Punishment for the killers of the martyrs," read one banner in Tahrir Square, referring to the killing during the 18-day uprising of more than 840 people, now known as "martyrs."

"Down with the Field Marshal," the crowd repeated as they were spurred on by one speaker.

Thousands of Egyptians gathered in other cities, including the Suez Canal cities of Suez and Ismailia, Alexandria on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh where Mubarak has been detained in a hospital since suffering heart problems during questioning in April.

"We oppose the military council and we demand Field Marshal Tantawi steps down immediately. The army is doing Mubarak's bidding and the revolution is faltering," said Mohamed Fahmy, leader from the Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution.

Gun shots rang out near Tahrir square and in Suez, witnesses said. A witness in Tahrir said it was not clear where the shots came from. In Suez, one of the most violent spots during the uprising, one protester was shot by a person who was caught shortly afterwards by protesters, a Reuters eyewitness said.

(Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi, Marwa Awad, Patrick Werr and Ashraf Fahim in Cairo, Abdel Rahman Youssef in Alexandria and Yusri Mohamed in Suez; editing by Edmund Blair, Sami Aboudi and Jon Hemming)

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Medicare, Social Security running out of money faster

Medicare's trust fund will run dry in 2024, five years earlier than forecast just last year, and Social Security's will be exhaused by 2036, adding fuel to the debate over cutting one or both programs to reduce annual budget deficits.

The government programs' trustees issued their gloomy findings today amid a rancorous debate in Washington over the future of the New Deal and Great Society programs, which eat up huge and growing shares of the federal budget.

The pessimistic outlook was hastened since the last report in August 2010 by the continued impact of the recession, which has sapped revenue and increased spending.

Both programs are running in the red and will continue to do so, the trustees said. Medicare is paying out more in benefits each year than it takes in in taxes. Last year, its trust fund wasn't expected to run dry until 2029.

Another factor: longevity. The report projects that men who turned age 65 in 2010 can expect to live another 18.6 years, an extra half-year compared to last year's report. Life expectancy for women at age 65 is projected at 20.7 years, up from 20.4 years in 2010.

"Americans are living longer, and health care costs are continuing to rise," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said. "And if we do not do more to contain health care costs, our commitments will become unsustainable."

Social Security has longer before its trust fund runs dry in 2036, but it ran a deficit last year for the first time since 1983. Now it's projected to run deficits every year; last August, the trustees had projected a few more years of surpluses from 2012-14.

If the trust funds run out, the programs no longer would be able to pay full benefits. Social Security would be able to pay only about 75% of promised benefits through 2085. Medicare could pay 90% starting in 2024, dropping to 75% in 2045.

The Social Security Disability Insurance program is in the worst shape. Its trust fund will run out before 2018, the trustees reported, forcing it to borrow funds from the retirement insurance program.

The Medicare figures are suspect, because they rely on billions of dollars in savings projected under the health care law signed by President Obama last year. Without passage of that law, the Medicare trust fund would be projected to run out in 2016, just five years from now.

The savings in the law depend on many factors, such as cuts in payments to doctors that Congress habitually sidesteps, as well as improvements in doctors' and hospitals' productivity. There is no guarantee those will happen; in fact, the physician payment cuts surely will not.

Richard Foster, Medicare's chief actuary, mentioned these and other factors in a separate opinion at the end of the lengthy report which, in essence, calls its conclusions into question:

The financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range, as a result of the unsustainable reductions in physician payment rates, or the long range....

The economic outlook remains more uncertain than usual. Due to the sensitivity of hospital insurance trust fund operations to wage increases and unemployment, the current slow recovery from the recent recession adds a significant further element of uncertainty to the trust fund projections.

Unlike past years, the annual report could have an immediate impact on the most important domestic policy issue pending before President Obama and Congress -- how to reduce annual budget deficits and get a handle on the nation's $14.3 trillion debt.

Geithner has said that debt ceiling must be raised by Aug. 2, or the country would face an unprecedented default on its obligations. Republican leaders in Congress have said they won't vote to raise the debt ceiling without substantial spending cuts. House Speaker John Boehner wants $2 trillion.

"For decades, politicians in Washington, D.C., have looked up at the size and scale of the fiscal challenges facing our country, particularly in Medicare, and chosen to kick the can down the road," Boehner said. "Today's trustees report is another reminder that we've run out of road. With tens of millions of Baby Boomers beginning to retire, this is the moment to act. The time is now."

The GOP leaders have ruled out tax increases, but the White House insists they remain on the table. That could include raising the Social Security payroll tax cap or increasing the Medicare tax that pays for hospital insurance.

See photos of: Barack Obama, Timothy F. Geithner

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France to mull faster exit from Afghanistan

PARIS (AP) — France and the U.S. are considering speeding up their withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, the French foreign minister said Wednesday.

French soldiers from the 7th Mountain Infantry Battalion have target practice on Jan. 28 at Forward Operating Base Tagab-Kutschbach in Kapisa, Afghanistan.

France has about 4,000 troops in in the U.S.- and NATO-led missions in Afghanistan, and minister Alain Juppe said France and its allies would be examining how to proceed.

Speaking on France 24 TV, Juppe said NATO's goal in Afghanistan was not kill bin Laden but to help its government establish authority and bring peace and democracy for its people.

Now that bin Laden is dead, Juppe said accelerating the planned withdrawal by 2014 is "one of the options we're going to consider. The Americans are also thinking about it."

Britain's foreign minister, William Hague, struck a different note, saying that the death would prompt Britain to fight terrorism "with renewed determination."

He said that bin Laden's death should encourage the Taliban to make "a decisive break" from al-Qaeda, but he made no mention of an accelerated timetable for withdrawal.

Earlier this week, British Prime Minister David Cameron seemed to play down the notion that bin Laden's death would lead to an early exit for British troops ? who are due to end their combat role there by 2015.

Bin Laden died during an American special forces raid in Pakistan early Monday.

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Arctic melting faster, could raise sea 5 feet by 2100

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Arctic ice is melting faster than expected and could raise the average global sea level by as much as five feet this century, an authoritative new report suggests.

The study by the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, or AMAP, is one of the most comprehensive updates on climate change in the Arctic, and builds on a similar assessment in 2005.

The full report will be delivered to foreign ministers of the eight Arctic nations next week, but an executive summary including the key findings was obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

It says that Arctic temperatures in the past six years were the highest since measurements began in 1880, and that feedback mechanisms believed to accelerate warming in the climate system have now started kicking in.

One mechanism involves the ocean absorbing more heat when it's not covered by ice, which reflects the sun's energy. That effect has been anticipated by scientists "but clear evidence for it has only been observed in the Arctic in the past five years," AMAP said.

The report also shatters some of the forecasts made in 2007 by the U.N.'s expert panel on climate change.

The cover of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, for example, is shrinking faster than projected by the U.N. panel. The level of summer ice coverage has been at or near record lows every year since 2001, AMAP said, predicting that the Arctic Ocean will be nearly ice free in summer within 30-40 years.

Its assessment also said the U.N. panel was too conservative in estimating how much sea levels will rise ? one of the most closely watched aspects of global warming because of the potentially catastrophic impact on coastal cities and island nations.

The melting of Arctic glaciers and ice caps, including Greenland's massive ice sheet, are projected to help raise global sea levels by 35 to 63 inches (90-160 centimeters) by 2100, AMAP said, though it noted that the estimate was highly uncertain.

That's up from a 2007 projection of 7 to 23 inches (19-59 centimeters) by the U.N. panel, which didn't consider the dynamics of ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctica.

"The observed changes in sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, in the mass of the Greenland ice sheet and Arctic ice caps and glaciers over the past 10 years are dramatic and represent an obvious departure from the long-term patterns," AMAP said in the executive summary.

The organization's main function is to advise the nations surrounding the Arctic ? the U.S., Canada, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland ? on threats to the Arctic environment.

The findings of its report ? Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic ? will be discussed by some of the scientists who helped compile it at a conference starting Wednesday in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.

In the past few years, scientists have steadily improved ways of measuring the loss of ice into the oceans.

In research reported in March in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, U.S. and European scientists used two independent methods to corroborate their findings: the on-the-ground measurement of ice thickness and movements using GPS stations and other tools, and the measurement of ice mass through gravity readings from satellites.

That team, led by Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, projected that the accelerating melt of the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets would itself raise sea levels by about 6 inches (15 centimeters) by 2050. Adding in other factors ? expansion of the oceans from warming and runoff from other glaciers worldwide ? would raise sea levels a total of some 13 inches (32 centimeters) by 2050, they said.

They did not project sea levels to 2100 because of long-range uncertainties.

Currents, winds and other forces would make sea-level rise vary globally, but Bangladesh, Florida and other such low-lying areas and coastal cities worldwide would be hard hit.

The AMAP report said melting glaciers and ice sheets worldwide have become the biggest contributor to sea level rise. Greenland's ice sheet alone accounted for more than 40 percent of the 0.12 inches (3.1 millimeters) of sea-level rise observed annually between 2003 and 2008, AMAP said.

It said the yearly mass loss from Greenland's ice sheet, which covers an area the size of Mexico, increased from 50 gigatons in 1995-2000 to more than 200 gigatons in 2004-2008.

Scientists are still debating how much of the changes observed in the Arctic are due to natural variances and how much to warming caused by the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. AMAP projected that average fall and winter temperatures in the Arctic will climb by 5.4-10.8 F (3-6 C) by 2080, even if greenhouse gas emissions are lower than in the past decade.

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AP Special Correspondent Charles J. Hanley in New York contributed to this report.

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