VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation, Pope Benedict sent his first tweet on Wednesday.
“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”
The tweet was sent when the 85-year-old pope tapped on a touch screen at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican before thousands of people.
(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
By Julie Jordan
12/12/2012 at 08:00 AM EST
"I couldn't eat or sleep for two weeks, I was just so nervous!" she tells PEOPLE in this week's exclusive cover story.
Starting a family with art consultant Will Kopelman, whom Barrymore married last June, has meant everything to the actress.
"I really wanted a wonderful traditional home for my kid," she says. "Will comes from a strong family, he provides a strong family ... It just makes me so emotional because it's like a miracle."
Despite the overwhelming emotion of love, Barrymore, 37, says no one prepared her for the responsibility she'd feel after her daughter was born.
"You have the highest highs and yet you're facing the biggest fear of, 'How do I keep someone alive?' "
One of Barrymore and Kopelman's favorite things? Singing "Good Morning" from Singin' in the Rain to get little Olive to smile. Says the actress: "It's like the biggest crush I've ever had in my life!"
For exclusive photos of the whole family, plus more from Barrymore's emotional interview, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered agency.
No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit. But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company bypassed review.
That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of resignation.
"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.
Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.
His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."
Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs, whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.
Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last week for more assurances that no one personally profited.
Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.
"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.
Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators, but he made clear the probes would be separate.
Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency's rules.
Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.
The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr. Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the concerns and allegations.
"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.
Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.
Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.
Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step down was his own.
Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner, who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to finance a war on disease.
Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.
"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.
Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required under agency rules.
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Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock futures edged higher on Wednesday, setting Wall Street up for a sixth day of gains, as investors anticipated the U.S. Federal Reserve will announce a new round of bond buying to support the economy.
* The Fed is expected to unveil a fresh round of bond buying on Wednesday as part of efforts to support a fragile economic recovery threatened by political wrangling over the government's budget. The monetary policy committee's decision is expected around 12:30 p.m. ET.
* Negotiations intensified to avert the "fiscal cliff" - tax hikes and spending cuts that kick in early in 2013 - ahead of a year-end deadline as President Barack Obama and U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner spoke by phone on Tuesday after exchanging new proposals.
* On the macroeconomic front, import and export price data is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists in a Reuters survey expect import prices edged down by 0.5 percent last month, while export prices remained flat.
* S&P 500 futures rose 2 points and were slightly above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 14 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 6.75 points.
* India's government announced an inquiry into lobbying practices by Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
* Costco Wholesale Corp
* Sprint Nextel Corp
* U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday, led by technology companies. The S&P 500 closed at its highest since Election Day on November 6.
(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea successfully launched a rocket on Wednesday, boosting the credentials of its new leader and stepping up the threat the isolated and impoverished state poses to opponents.
The rocket, which North Korea says put a weather satellite into orbit, has been labeled by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a test of technology that could one day deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting targets as far away as the continental United States.
"The satellite has entered the planned orbit," a North Korean television news reader clad in traditional Korean garb announced, after which the station played patriotic songs with the lyrics "Chosun (Korea) does what it says".
The rocket was launched just before 10 a.m. (0100 GMT), according to defense officials in South Korea and Japan, and was more successful than a rocket launched in April that flew for less than two minutes.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said that it "deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit", the first time an independent body has verified North Korean claims.
North Korea followed what it said was a similar successful launch in 2009 with a nuclear test that prompted the U.N. Security Council to stiffen sanctions that it originally imposed in 2006 after the North's first nuclear test.
North Korea is banned from developing nuclear and missile-related technology under U.N. resolutions, although Kim Jong-un, the youthful head of state who took power a year ago, is believed to have continued the state's "military first" programs put in place by his late father, Kim Jong-Il.
North Korea hailed the launch as celebrating the prowess of all three members of the Kim family to rule since it was founded in 1948.
"At a time when great yearnings and reverence for Kim Jong-il pervade the whole country, its scientists and technicians brilliantly carried out his behests to launch a scientific and technological satellite in 2012, the year marking the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il Sung," its KCNA news agency said. Kim Il Sung, the current leader's grandfather, was North Korea's first leader.
The United States condemned the launch as "provocative" and a breach of U.N. rules, while Japan's U.N. envoy called for a Security Council meeting. However, diplomats say further tough sanctions are unlikely from the Security Council as China, the North's only major ally, will oppose them.
"The international community must work in a concerted fashion to send North Korea a clear message that its violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions have consequences," the White House said in a statement.
U.S. intelligence has linked North Korea with missile shipments to Iran. Newspapers in Japan and South Korea have reported that Iranian observers were in the North for the launch, something Iran has denied.
Japan's likely next prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who is leading in opinion polls ahead of an election on Sunday and who is known as a hawk on North Korea, called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution "strongly criticizing" Pyongyang.
A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman reiterated that the rocket was a "peaceful project".
"The attempt to see our satellite launch as a long-range missile launch for military purposes comes from hostile perception that tries to designate us a cause for security tension," KCNA cited the spokesman as saying.
"STUMBLING BLOCK"
China had expressed "deep concern" prior to the launch which was announced a day after a top politburo member, representing new Chinese leader Xi Jinping, met Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang.
On Wednesday, its tone was measured, regretting the launch but calling for restraint on any counter-measures, in line with a policy of effectively vetoing tougher sanctions.
"China believes the Security Council's response should be cautious and moderate, protect the overall peaceful and stable situation on the Korean peninsula, and avoid an escalation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told journalists.
Bruce Klingner, a Korea expert at the Heritage Foundation, said: "China has been the stumbling block to firmer U.N. action and we'll have to see if the new leadership is any different than its predecessors."
A senior adviser to South Korea's president said last week it was unlikely there would be action from the United Nations and Seoul would expect its allies to tighten sanctions unilaterally.
Kim Jong-un, believed to be 29 years old, took power when his father died on December 17 last year and experts believe the launch was intended to commemorate the first anniversary of his death. The April launch was timed for the centennial of the birth of Kim Il Sung.
Wednesday's success puts the North ahead of the South which has not managed to get a rocket off the ground.
"This is a considerable boost in establishing the rule of Kim Jong-un," said Cho Min, an expert at the Korea Institute of National Unification.
There have been few indications the secretive and impoverished state, where the United Nations estimates a third of people are malnourished, has made any advances in opening up economically over the past year.
North Korea remains reliant on minerals exports to China and remittances from tens of thousands of its workers overseas.
Many of its 22 million people need handouts from defectors, who have escaped to South Korea, for basic medicines.
Given the puny size of its economy - per capita income is less than $2,000 a year - one of the few ways the North can attract world attention is by emphasizing its military threat.
It wants the United States to resume aid and to recognize it diplomatically, although the April launch scuppered a planned food deal.
The North is believed to be some years away from developing a functioning nuclear warhead although it may have enough plutonium for about half a dozen nuclear bombs, according to nuclear experts.
It has also been enriching uranium, which would give it a second path to nuclear weapons as it sits on big natural uranium reserves.
"A successful launch puts North Korea closer to the capability to deploy a weaponized missile," said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii.
"But this would still require fitting a weapon to the missile and ensuring a reasonable degree of accuracy. The North Koreans probably do not yet have a nuclear weapon small enough for a missile to carry."
The North says its work is part of a civil nuclear program although it has also boasted of it being a "nuclear weapons power".
(Additional reporting by Jumin Park and Yoo Choonsik in SEOUL; David Alexander, Matt Spetalnick and Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON; Linda Sieg in TOKYO, Sui-Lee Wee and Michael Martina in BEIJING,; Rosmarie Francisco in MANILA; Writing by David Chance; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Robert Birsel)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A recently announced hacking of the U.N. nuclear agency’s computer servers was not the first time an attempt had been made to break into the organization’s computer system, the head of the agency said on Thursday.
Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that a few months ago a group broke into the agency’s computer system and stole personal information of scientists working on peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
In response to questions at a Council on Foreign Relations event in Washington, Amano repeated what he said last week after the hacking was revealed: no sensitive information about the IAEA‘s nuclear inspections had been stolen.
The IAEA has shut down the server that had been hacked and is continuing an investigation, Amano said. But he also said it wasn’t the first attempt to break into the system.
“If you ask if this is the only case? I would say there have been some other tries but we are doing our best to protect our system,” Amano said.
The hackers – a group using an Iranian-sounding name – have posted scores of email addresses of experts who have been working with the U.N. agency on a website, and have urged the IAEA to investigate Israel’s nuclear activity.
Israel, which has an undeclared nuclear arsenal, and the United States accuse Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran denies such ambitions.
Amano would not say if he believed Iran was behind the attacks on the IAEA, whose missions include preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and which is investigating Iran’s disputed nuclear activities.
“The group … they have what looks like an Iranian name. But that does not mean that the origin is Iran,” he said.
There has been an increase in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year, coinciding with a deepening standoff with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program.
(Reporting by Deborah Charles. Editing by Warren Strobel and Doina Chiacu)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
By Maggie Coughlan
12/11/2012 at 08:00 AM EST
"Channing [Tatum] was amazing. He's a superstar," the actress, 27, tells the January issue of InStyle about PEOPLE's 2012 Sexiest Man Alive.
Seyfried, who starred opposite Tatum in 2010's Dear John, is well-aware of her former costar's appeal.
"Everybody wants to have sex with him. And the only person he wants to have sex with is his wife, Jenna [Dewan-Tatum]. He's the most loyal husband," she says.
But while Tatum and Dewan-Tatum have managed to find marital bliss in spite of being in the spotlight, Seyfried admits she's not as lucky.
"The thing is, I can't date anybody without it being portrayed as a serious relationship in the tabloids. It sucks! Like Josh Hartnett and I were friends; we hung out, we dated. I don't actually have sex with every male I come into contact with," she says.
Another of Seyfried's costars getting a lot of attention is Anne Hathaway, who chopped off her locks and went on a drastic diet for her role in the upcoming Les Misérables, opening Dec. 25 (Seyfried plays Cosette, and Hathaway is Fantine).
"I would have done that for sure," Seyfried says of the haircut, but she draws the line there. "I probably wouldn't lose or gain weight for a role, though. I'm too health-conscious. And I don't think I could actually lose weight because I couldn't be on that kind of a diet. I would lose my mind."
"It's not about my body. It's not about me," she says of doing nude scenes. "You're playing somebody else. You're not going to believe a love scene if the people are dressed. You're not going to believe a stripper who has on a bra and underwear the whole time. At the same time, it has to do with how comfortable you are with letting people see your skin. For me, I'm okay with it."
Seyfried also says that being diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder – which she manages with Lexapro – has positively contributed to her acting.
"I don't feel like I'm struggling with it. I think OCD is a part of me that protects me. It's also the part of me that I use in my job, in a positive way," she tells the magazine. "The only thing I'd like to get beyond is my fear of driving over bridges and through tunnels. I can't overcome it."
• See Amanda Seyfried's best red carpet looks at Instyle.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's about to get faster and easier to diagnose food poisoning, but that progress for individual patients comes with a downside: It could hurt the nation's ability to spot and solve dangerous outbreaks.
Next-generation tests that promise to shave a few days off the time needed to tell whether E. coli, salmonella or other foodborne bacteria caused a patient's illness could reach medical laboratories as early as next year. That could allow doctors to treat sometimes deadly diseases much more quickly — an exciting development.
The problem: These new tests can't detect crucial differences between different subtypes of bacteria, as current tests can. And that fingerprint is what states and the federal government use to match sick people to a contaminated food. The older tests might be replaced by the new, more efficient ones.
"It's like a forensics lab. If somebody says a shot was fired, without the bullet you don't know where it came from," explained E. coli expert Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that losing the ability to literally take a germ's fingerprint could hamper efforts to keep food safe, and the agency is searching for solutions. According to CDC estimates, 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and 3,000 die.
"These improved tests for diagnosing patients could have the unintended consequence of reducing our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks, ultimately causing more people to become sick," said Dr. John Besser of the CDC.
That means outbreaks like the salmonella illnesses linked this fall to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter might not be identified that quickly — or at all.
It all comes down to what's called a bacterial culture — whether labs grow a sample of a patient's bacteria in an old-fashioned petri dish, or skip that step because the new tests don't require it.
Here's the way it works now: Someone with serious diarrhea visits the doctor, who gets a stool sample and sends it to a private testing laboratory. The lab cultures the sample, growing larger batches of any lurking bacteria to identify what's there. If disease-causing germs such as E. coli O157 or salmonella are found, they may be sent on to a public health laboratory for more sophisticated analysis to uncover their unique DNA patterns — their fingerprints.
Those fingerprints are posted to a national database, called PulseNet, that the CDC and state health officials use to look for food poisoning trends.
There are lots of garden-variety cases of salmonella every year, from runny eggs to a picnic lunch that sat out too long. But if a few people in, say, Baltimore have salmonella with the same molecular signature as some sick people in Cleveland, it's time to investigate, because scientists might be able narrow the outbreak to a particular food or company.
But culture-based testing takes time — as long as two to four days after the sample reaches the lab, which makes for a long wait if you're a sick patient.
What's in the pipeline? Tests that could detect many kinds of germs simultaneously instead of hunting one at a time — and within hours of reaching the lab — without first having to grow a culture. Those tests are expected to be approved as early as next year.
This isn't just a science debate, said Shari Shea, food safety director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
If you were the patient, "you'd want to know how you got sick," she said.
PulseNet has greatly improved the ability of regulators and the food industry to solve those mysteries since it was launched in the mid-1990s, helping to spot major outbreaks in ground beef, spinach, eggs and cantaloupe in recent years. Just this fall, PulseNet matched 42 different salmonella illnesses in 20 different states that were eventually traced to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter.
Food and Drug Administration officials who visited the plant where the peanut butter was made found salmonella contamination all over the facility, with several of the plant samples matching the fingerprint of the salmonella that made people sick. A New Mexico-based company, Sunland Inc., recalled hundreds of products that were shipped to large retailers all over the country, including Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.
The source of those illnesses probably would have remained a mystery without the national database, since there weren't very many illnesses in any individual state.
To ensure that kind of crucial detective work isn't lost, the CDC is asking the medical community to send samples to labs to be cultured even when they perform a new, non-culture test.
But it's not clear who would pay for that extra step. Private labs only can perform the tests that a doctor orders, noted Dr. Jay M. Lieberman of Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's largest testing labs.
A few first-generation non-culture tests are already available. When private labs in Wisconsin use them, they frequently ship leftover samples to the state lab, which grows the bacteria itself. But as more private labs switch over after the next-generation rapid tests arrive, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be hard-pressed to keep up with that extra work before it can do its main job — fingerprinting the bugs, said deputy director Dr. Dave Warshauer.
Stay tuned: Research is beginning to look for solutions that one day might allow rapid and in-depth looks at food poisoning causes in the same test.
"As molecular techniques evolve, you may be able to get the information you want from non-culture techniques," Lieberman said.
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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock futures were higher on Tuesday after unexpectedly cheery data out of Europe and as the Federal Reserve was set to kick off its two-day policy meeting.
Though the pace of talks in Washington to avert impending U.S. tax hikes and spending cuts quickened, senior politicians on both sides cautioned that an agreement on all the outstanding issues remained uncertain.
The lack of progress in negotiations about the "fiscal cliff" has kept investors from making aggressive bests in recent weeks, though most expect a deal will eventually be reached.
In Germany, analyst and investor sentiment rose sharply in December, entering positive territory for the first time since May, a leading survey showed. The data helped drive European shares higher.
"We've been getting a lot of the beginning of our day from seeing what Europe has been doing and I think that's going to hold true today," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.
The Fed will begin its policy-setting meeting on Tuesday. The central bank is expected to announce a new round of Treasury securities purchases when the meeting ends on Wednesday, according to a Reuters poll. The program would replace its "Operation Twist" stimulus which expires at the end of the year.
S&P 500 futures rose 3.2 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 34 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 7 points.
The U.S. Treasury is selling its remaining stake in insurer American International Group Inc , bringing an end to government ownership of the company about four years after a $182 billion bailout. AIG's shares were up 1.2 percent at $33.75 in premarket trade.
Texas Instruments Inc
Also in the tech sector, Intel Corp
Morgan Stanley
On the macro front, U.S. international trade data for October is due at 8:30 am ET (1330 GMT) and wholesale inventories is due at 10:00 am ET (1500 GMT).
CAIRO (Reuters) - Nine people were hurt when gunmen fired at protesters camping in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Tuesday, according to witnesses and Egyptian media, as the opposition called for a major demonstration it hopes will force President Mohamed Mursi to postpone a referendum on a new constitution.
Supporters of the Islamist leader, who want the vote to go ahead as planned on Saturday, were also gathering in the capital, setting the stage for further street confrontations in a political crisis that has divided the Arab world's most populous nation.
Police cars surrounded Tahrir Square in central Cairo, the first time they had appeared in the area since November 23, shortly after a decree by Mursi awarding himself sweeping temporary powers that touched off widespread protests.
The upheaval following the fall of Hosni Mubarak last year is causing concern in the West, in particular the United States, which has given Cairo billions of dollars in military and other aid since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.
The Tahrir Square attackers, some masked, also threw petrol bombs which started a small fire, witnesses said.
"The masked men came suddenly and attacked the protesters in Tahrir. The attack was meant to deter us and prevent us from protesting today. We oppose these terror tactics and will stage the biggest protest possible today," said John Gerges, a Christian Egyptian who described himself as a socialist.
The latest bout of unrest has so far claimed seven lives in clashes between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and opponents who are also besieging Mursi's presidential palace.
POLICE POWERS
The elite Republican Guard which protects the palace has yet to use force to keep protesters away from the graffiti-daubed building, now ringed with tanks, barbed wire and concrete barricades.
The army has told all sides to resolve their differences through dialogue, saying it would not allow Egypt to enter a "dark tunnel". For the period of the referendum, the army has been granted police powers by Mursi, allowing it to arrest civilians.
The army has portrayed itself as the guarantor of the nation's security but so far it has shown no appetite for a return to the bruising front-line political role it played after the fall of Mubarak, which severely damaged its standing.
Leftists, liberals and other opposition groups have called for marches to the presidential palace later on Tuesday to protest against the hastily arranged constitutional referendum planned for Dec 15, which they say is polarising the country and could put it in a religious straightjacket.
Mohamed ElBaradei, a prominent opposition leader and Nobel prize winner, called for dialogue with Mursi and said the referendum should be postponed for a couple of months due to the chaotic situation.
"This revolution was not staged to replace one dictator with another," he said in an interview with CNN.
Outside the presidential palace, anti-Mursi protesters huddled together in front of their tents, warming themselves beside a bonfire in the winter air.
"The referendum must not take place. The constitution came after blood was spilt. This is not how a country should be run," said Ali Hassan, a man in his 20s.
Opposition leaders want the referendum to be delayed and hope they can get sufficiently large numbers of protesters on the streets to change Mursi's mind.
Islamists, who dominated the body that drew up the constitution, have urged their followers to turn out "in millions" in a show of support for the president and for a referendum they feel sure of winning.
OPPONENTS ANGERED
Leftist politician Hamdeen Sabahy, one of the most prominent members of the National Salvation Front opposition coalition, said Mursi was driving a wedge between Egyptians and destroying prospects for consensus.
As well as pushing the early referendum, Mursi has angered opponents by taking extra powers he said were necessary to secure the transition to stability after the uprising that overthrew Mubarak 22 months ago.
"The road Mohamed Mursi is taking now does not create the possibility for national consensus," said Sabahy. He forecast polarisation if constitution were passed.
The National Salvation Front also includes ElBaradei and former Arab League chief Amr Moussa.
The opposition says the draft constitution fails to embrace the diversity of 83 million Egyptians, a tenth of whom are Christians, and invites Muslim clerics to influence lawmaking.
But debate over the details has largely given way to street protests and megaphone politics, keeping Egypt off balance and ill equipped to deal with a looming economic crisis.
Mahmoud Ghozlan, the Muslim Brotherhood's spokesman, said the opposition could stage protests, but should keep the peace.
"They are free to boycott, participate or say no; they can do what they want. The important thing is that it remains in a peaceful context to preserve the country's safety and security."
The disruption is also casting doubts on the government's ability to push through economic reforms that form part of a proposed $4.8 billion IMF loan agreement.
(Writing by Edmund Blair and Giles Elgood; Editing by Peter Graff and Janet McBride)
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