Protests after "pharaoh" Mursi assumes powers in Egypt

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi's decision to assume sweeping powers caused fury amongst his opponents and prompted violent clashes in central Cairo and other cities on Friday.

Police fired tear gas near Cairo's Tahrir Square, heart of the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, where thousands demanded Mursi quit and accused him of launching a "coup". There were violent protests in Alexandria, Port Said and Suez.

Opponents accused Mursi, who has issued a decree that puts his decisions above legal challenge until a new parliament is elected, of being the new Mubarak and hijacking the revolution.

"The people want to bring down the regime," shouted protesters in Tahrir, echoing a chant used in the uprising that forced Mubarak to step down. "Get out, Mursi," they chanted, along with "Mubarak tell Mursi, jail comes after the throne."

Mursi's aides said the presidential decree was intended to speed up a protracted transition that has been hindered by legal obstacles but Mursi's rivals condemned him as an autocratic pharaoh who wanted to impose his Islamist vision on Egypt.

"I am for all Egyptians. I will not be biased against any son of Egypt," Mursi said on a stage outside the presidential palace, adding that he was working for social and economic stability and the rotation of power.

"Opposition in Egypt does not worry me, but it has to be real and strong," he said, seeking to placate his critics and telling Egyptians that he was committed to the revolution. "Go forward, always forward ... to a new Egypt."

Buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating a truce between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip, Mursi on Thursday ordered that an Islamist-dominated assembly writing the new constitution could not be dissolved by legal challenges.

"Mursi a 'temporary' dictator," was the headline in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.

Mursi, an Islamist whose roots are in the Muslim Brotherhood, also gave himself wide powers that allowed him to sack the unpopular general prosecutor and opened the door for a retrial for Mubarak and his aides.

The president's decree aimed to end the logjam and push Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, more quickly along its democratic path, the presidential spokesman said.

"President Mursi said we must go out of the bottleneck without breaking the bottle," Yasser Ali told Reuters.

TURBULENCE AND TURMOIL

The president's decree said any decrees he issued while no parliament sat could not be challenged, moves that consolidated his power but look set to polarize Egypt further, threatening more turbulence in a nation at the heart of the Arab Spring.

The turmoil has weighed heavily on Egypt's faltering economy that was thrown a lifeline this week when a preliminary deal was reached with the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8 billion loan. But it also means unpopular economic measures.

In Alexandria, north of Cairo, protesters ransacked an office of the Brotherhood's political party, burning books and chairs in the street. Supporters of Mursi and opponents clashed elsewhere in the city, leaving 12 injured.

A party building was also attacked by stone-throwing protesters in Port Said, and demonstrators in Suez threw petrol bombs that burned banners outside the party building.

Mursi's decree is bound to worry Western allies, particularly the United States, a generous benefactor to Egypt's army, which praised Egypt for its part in bringing Israelis and Palestinians to a ceasefire on Wednesday.

The West may become concerned about measures that, for example, undermine judicial independence. The European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process.

"We are very concerned about the possible huge ramifications of this declaration on human rights and the rule of law in Egypt," Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay, said at the United Nations in Geneva.

The United States has been concerned about the fate of what was once a close ally under Mubarak, who preserved Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel. The Gaza deal has reassured Washington but the deepening polarization of the nation will be a worry.

"ANOTHER DICTATOR"

"The decree is basically a coup on state institutions and the rule of law that is likely to undermine the revolution and the transition to democracy," said Mervat Ahmed, an independent activist in Tahrir protesting against the decree. "I worry Mursi will be another dictator like the one before him."

Leading liberal Mohamed ElBaradei, who joined other politicians on Thursday night to demand the decree was withdrawn, wrote on his Twitter account that Mursi had "usurped all state powers and appointed himself Egypt's new pharaoh".

Almost two years after Mubarak was toppled and about five months since Mursi took office, propelled to the post by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt has no permanent constitution, which must be in place before new parliamentary elections are held.

The last parliament, which sat for the first time earlier this year, was dissolved after a court declared it void. It was dominated by the Brotherhood's political party.

An assembly drawing up the constitution has yet to complete its work. Many liberals, Christians and others have walked out accusing the Islamists who dominate it of ignoring their voices over the extent that Islam should be enshrined in the new state.

Opponents call for the assembly to be scrapped and remade. Mursi's decree protects the existing one and extends the deadline for drafting a document by two months, pushing it back to February, further delaying a new parliamentary election.

Explaining the rationale behind the moves, the presidential spokesman said: "This means ending the period of constitutional instability to arrive at a state with a written constitution, an elected president and parliament."

"THIS IS NOT THE REMEDY"

Analyst Seif El Din Abdel Fatah said the decree targeted the judiciary which had reversed, for example, an earlier Mursi decision to remove the prosecutor.

Mursi, who is now protected by his new decree from judicial reversals, said the judiciary contained honorable men but said he would uncover corrupt elements. He also said he would ensure independence for the judicial, executive and legislative powers.

Although many of Mursi's opponents also opposed the sacked prosecutor, whom they blamed for shortcomings in prosecuting Mubarak and his aides, and also want judicial reform, they say a draconian presidential decree was not the way to do it.

"There was a disease but this is not the remedy," said Hassan Nafaa, a liberal-minded political science professor and activist at Cairo University.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva and Sebastian Moffett in Brussels; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Peter Millership and Giles Elgood)

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Football: Menezes sacked as Brazil coach

SAO PAULO: Mano Menezes was sensationally sacked as coach of five-time world champions Brazil on Friday, dealing a hammer blow to the misfiring hosts of the 2014 World Cup.

"I gave him the news myself," said Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) national squad director Andres Sanches.

"Nobody likes to receive news of these kind of things in any circumstances, but everyone in football knows that these things happen.

"A new coach will be announced in January."

Menezes, 50, took over from Dunga following the team's elimination in the quarter-finals of the 2010 World Cup finals.

But he had come under intense pressure after the team's failure at the 2011 Copa America, where they lost in the last-eight to Paraguay, and at the Olympic Games in London this summer where they finished runners-up.

Menezes, who was axed after a meeting with the CBF president Jose Maria Marin, oversaw 20 wins in his time at the helm, six draws and five defeats.

His job had been on the line since Brazil's latest attempt to win Olympic gold ended in humiliation after a lacklustre 2-1 loss to underdogs Mexico at Wembley in August.

Media speculation has already linked former Selecao boss Luis Felipe Scolari with a return to the hot-seat after he guided Brazil to World Cup glory in 2002.

After the setback at the Olympics, Menezes appealed to Brazil's football federation chiefs not to be panicked into sacking him.

"Any coach must be ready to suffer the consequences of their results," Menezes said.

"Even when teams win tournaments people (in Brazil) don't always praise the coach so imagine what it is like when you lose.

"But defeat in one match should not have a decisive influence. Had we won that would not have solved all of our problems either. Lessons must be learned from every match."

Menezes said he believed that the Olympic loss could have been used to inspire Brazil to a sixth World Cup on home soil in 2014.

"The important thing is the right corrections are made so the next time we can win," he said in London.

"You learn from defeats as well as victories."

Menezes had previously coached Brazilian club side Gremio from 2005 until 2007, leading the team to the final of the Copa Libertadores where they were defeated by Boca Juniors.

He then took charge of Corinthians with whom he won the 2009 Brazilian Cup.

While Scolari remains the favourite to take over, some reports have linked Corinthians coach Tite and Santos boss Muricy Ramalho with the job.

-AFP/ac

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Ponty Chadha's 'task force' worked as parallel excise department

LUCKNOW: Ponty Chadha controlled his Rs 12,000-crore liquor empire in Uttar Pradesh through his 1,500-strong private 'task force' that ran parallel to the government's excise department and maintained its own network of intelligence gathering.

The main job of the 'task force' was to protect the business interests of the group, plug holes and crack down on liquor smuggling, said sources. The force, spread across the state with headquarters in Noida, was provided with the entire paraphernalia for conducting raids and had its own intelligence network. The team members were given cash rewards for seizing liquor smuggled into UP.

And just like any government office, the department also had a well-defined hierarchy, a policy of transfer and posting, as well as punishment for non-performance.

"We too have come to know about this team but we are not sure if it is still operating," said a top state excise department official.

Sources privy to the functioning of the Chadha Group's 'excise department' said that at the district level, the force comprised a district in-charge (DIC) who was answerable for fall in sales or returns from any district. The officer was provided with an SUV and gunners from private security agencies and was responsible for the output of his team of 16 subordinates, including a CIC (city in-charge), RIC (raid in-charge), GIC (group in-charge), OIC (office in-charge) and TIC (tehsil in-charge for smaller towns). This hierarchy was followed in all the 75 districts of the state.

"The team members would conduct surprise inspections at liquor stores and distribution centres to check if only the group's products were being supplied. Team members would pose as customers at outlets to verify the price being charged at outlets," said a member of the team in Moradabad, where it operated from a rented house in Budh Vihar of Awas Vikas Colony.

The team had a well-oiled intelligence network that maintained its focus on illicit liquor being smuggled into the state and sold to outlets in border districts, said sources. The team was given a cash reward of Rs 50,000 for each truckload of smuggled liquor seized. The force was responsible for gathering intelligence, contacting the local excise and police department officials and escorting them to the seizure. While Chadha's men would get cash rewards, the excise and police department would get accolades for 'good work' without much sweat.

Sources said often these members of the task force would strike a deal with moles in the local excise department who would inform them about movement of smuggled liquor.

"The force initially had a strength of two to five persons per district which was augmented as the business expanded. There was a time when the salary for this department was secured by selling the Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) at Rs 5-15 higher than the MRP," said a member of the team.

He and other members of the force are now staring into uncertainty after Ponty's death, as their appointments were never formalized nor were they given any appointment letter.

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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Black Friday Frenzy Brings Fights, Injuries

Black Friday, one of the most ballyhooed shopping days of the year, has also proven to be hazardous, with incidents including fights between frenzied shoppers and parking-lot robberies.

Two people were run down Thanksgiving night in the parking lot of a Covington, Wash., Walmart by a man police suspected of being intoxicated.

Shoppers Descend on Black Friday Deals

The 71-year-old driver was arrested on a vehicular assault charge after the Thanksgiving incident, spokeswoman Sgt. Cindi West of the Kings County Sheriff's Office said.

The female victim, whose identity has yet to be released, was pinned beneath the driver's Mercury SUV until being rescued by the fire department. She was flown to Harborview Medical Center, where she was listed in serious condition, West said.

The male victim was also taken to Harborview Medical Center, where, West said, he was listed in good condition.

High tension was at the entrances as people lined up outside stores, waiting for the doors to open.

Black Friday Holiday Shopping Bargains and Pitfalls Watch Video

Black Friday Shoppers Brave Long Lines, Short Tempers Watch Video

At a San Antonio, Texas, Sears, one man argued with customers and even punched one in order to get to the front of the line, prompting a man with a concealed carry permit to pull a gun, said Matthew Porter, public information officer of the San Antonio Police Department.

"It was a little chaotic. People were exiting the store," Porter said. "Fortunately for us, officers responded quickly and were able to ease the commotion."

The man who allegedly caused the altercation fled the scene and remains at large, Porter said. The shopper who pulled the gun will not face charges, he said, because of his concealed carry permit.

One man was treated at the scene for injuries sustained when people rushed out of the store, Porter said.

PHOTOS: Black Friday Shoppers Hit Stores

In Maryland, there has been at least one report of a parking lot robbery.

A 14-year-old boy told police he was robbed of his Thanksgiving night purchases by five men in the parking lot of a Bed Bath and Beyond store early this morning, the Baltimore Sun reported.

And in Massachusetts, Kmart employees tried to locate a shopper over the intercom after a 2-year-old was reported to be alone in a car, ABC News affiliate WCVB-TV reported.

Police arrived to break into the car and remove the child. The boy's caretaker, his mother's boyfriend, denied the incident took place, according to the station, and was not arrested.

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Gaza ceasefire holds but mistrust runs deep

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held firm on Thursday with scenes of joy among the ruins in Gaza over what Palestinians hailed as a victory, and both sides saying their fingers were still on the trigger.

In the sudden calm, Palestinians who had been under Israeli bombs for eight days poured into Gaza streets for a celebratory rally, walking past wrecked houses and government buildings.

But as a precaution, schools stayed closed in southern Israel, where nerves were jangled by warning sirens - a false alarm, the army said - after a constant rain of rockets during the most serious Israeli-Palestinian fighting in four years.

Israel had launched its strikes last week with a declared aim of ending rocket attacks on its territory from Gaza, ruled by the Islamist militant group Hamas, which denies Israel's right to exist. Hamas had responded with more rockets.

The truce brokered by Egypt's new Islamist leaders, working with the United States, headed off an Israeli invasion of Gaza.

It was the fruit of intensive diplomacy spurred by U.S. President Barack Obama, who sent his secretary of state to Cairo and backed her up with phone calls to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi.

Mursi's role in cajoling his Islamist soulmates in Gaza into the U.S.-backed deal with Israel suggested that Washington can find ways to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood leader whom Egyptians elected after toppling former U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, a bulwark of American policy in the Middle East for 30 years.

Mursi, preoccupied with Egypt's economic crisis, cannot afford to tamper with a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, despite its unpopularity with Egyptians, and needs U.S. financial aid.

MORE DEATHS

Despite the quiet on the battlefield, the death toll from the Gaza conflict crept up on both sides.

The body of Mohammed al-Dalu, 25, was recovered from the rubble of a house where nine of his relatives - four children and five women - were killed by an Israeli bomb this week.

That raised to 163 the number of Palestinians killed, more than half of them civilians, including 37 children, during the Israeli onslaught, according to Gaza medical officials.

Nearly 1,400 rockets struck Israel, killing four civilians and two soldiers, including an officer who died on Thursday of wounds sustained the day before, the Israeli army said.

Israel dropped 1,000 times as much explosive on the Gaza Strip as landed on its soil, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.

Municipal workers in Gaza began cleaning streets and removing the rubble of bombed buildings. Stores opened and people flocked to markets to buy food.

Jubilant crowds celebrated, with most people waving green Hamas flags but some carrying the yellow emblems of the rival Fatah group, led by Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas.

That marked a rare show of unity five years after Hamas, which won a Palestinian poll in 2006, forcibly wrested Gaza from Fatah, still dominant in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel began ferrying tanks northwards, away from the border, on transporters. It plans to discharge gradually tens of thousands of reservists called up for a possible Gaza invasion.

But trust between Israel and Hamas remains in short supply and both said they might well have to fight again.

"The battle with the enemy has not ended yet," Abu Ubaida, spokesman of Hamas's armed wing Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam Brigades, said at an event to mourn its acting military chief Ahmed al-Jaabari, whose killing by Israel on November 14 set off this round.

"HANDS ON TRIGGER"

The exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, said in Cairo his Islamist movement would respect the truce, but warned that if Israel violated it "our hands are on the trigger".

Netanyahu said he had agreed to "exhaust this opportunity for an extended truce", but told Israelis a tougher approach might be required in the future.

Facing a national election in two months, he swiftly came under fire from opposition politicians who had rallied to his side during the fighting but now contend he emerged from the conflict with no real gains for Israel.

"You don't settle with terrorism, you defeat it. And unfortunately, a decisive victory has not been achieved and we did not recharge our deterrence," Shaul Mofaz, leader of the main opposition Kadima party, wrote on his Facebook page.

In a speech, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's prime minister in Gaza, urged all Palestinian factions to respect the ceasefire and said his government and security services would monitor compliance.

According to a text of the agreement seen by Reuters, both sides should halt all hostilities, with Israel desisting from incursions and targeting of individuals, while all Palestinian factions should cease rocket fire and cross-border attacks.

The deal also provides for easing Israeli curbs on Gaza's residents, but the two sides disagreed on what this meant.

Israeli sources said Israel would not lift a blockade of the enclave it enforced after Hamas won a Palestinian election in 2006, but Meshaal said the deal covered the opening of all of the territory's border crossings with Israel and Egypt.

Israel let dozens of trucks carry supplies into the Palestinian enclave during the fighting. Residents there have long complained that Israeli restrictions blight their economy.

Barak said Hamas, which declared November 22 a national holiday to mark its "victory", had suffered heavy military blows.

"A large part of the mid-range rockets were destroyed. Hamas managed to hit Israel's built-up areas with around a metric tone of explosives, and Gaza targets got around 1,000 metric tonnes," he said.

He dismissed a ceasefire text published by Hamas, saying: "The right to self-defense trumps any piece of paper."

He appeared to confirm, however, a Hamas claim that the Israelis would no longer enforce a no-go zone on the Gaza side of the frontier that the army says has prevented Hamas raids.

(Additional reporting by Noah Browning in Gaza, Ori Lewis, Crispian Balmer and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller and Alistair Lyon; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Egypt's Morsi assumes sweeping powers

CAIRO: Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi assumed sweeping powers on Thursday, putting him on a collision course with the judiciary and raising questions about the country's democratic future.

The move, just a day after Morsi took diplomatic centrestage in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers, earnt him the same derisive monicker of "new phararoh" levelled at veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak before his ouster in a popular uprising last year.

"The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution," according to a decree read out on television by presidential spokesman Yasser Ali.

"The constitutional declarations, decisions and laws issued by the president are final and not subject to appeal."

The move is a blow to the pro-democracy movement that toppled Mubarak last year, and raises concerns that Islamists will be further esconced in power.

Nobel laureate and former UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei lashed out at the declaration, which effectively puts the president above judicial oversight.

"Morsi today usurped all state powers and appointed himself Egypt's new pharaoh. A major blow to the revolution that could have dire consequences," ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account.

Morsi also sacked prosecutor general Abdel Meguid Mahmud, whom he failed to oust last month, appointing Talaat Ibrahim Abdallah to replace him, amid strong misgivings among the president's supporters about the failure to secure convictions of more members of the old regime.

Within minutes of the announcement, the new prosecutor was shown on television being sworn in.

The president in his pronouncements on Thursday ordered "new investigations and retrials" in the cases dealing with the deaths of protesters, a decision that could net senior military officials and see Mubarak reinvestigated.

He also said no judicial body can dissolve the upper house of parliament or the Islamist-dominated constituent assembly that is writing a new constitution and which has been criticised by the secular-minded opposition for failing to represent all segments of society.

He has also given the body -- which was due to issue a draft consitution in December -- two extra months to come up with a charter, that will then be put to a referendum.

The declaration is aimed at "cleansing state institutions" and "destroying the infrastructure of the old regime," the president's spokesman said.

Heba Morayef, Egypt Director at Human Rights Watch welcomed the retrials but criticised aspects of the declaration.

"What's fundementally problematic and threatens both the rule of law and overall democratic checks and balances is his decision to give his decrees immunity from the judiciary until the constitution is passed," Morayef told AFP.

And while the independence of the judiciary has been in question in the past, "these sledgehammer tactics only alienate the legal community," she said.

"As a judge, I feel paralysed," one judge at Egypt's State Council told AFP.

Even before the announcement was read out, Islamists had gathered outside the High Court in central Cairo demanding the "cleansing of the judiciary."

Morsi, who belongs to the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, is the first elected president since the popular uprising that toppled Mubarak last year.

Islamists scored a crushing victory in three-stage parliamentary elections held from November last year, with the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi's former organisation, dominating both houses of parliament.

The Brotherhood has long been the best organised political force in the Arab world's most populous state and secular activists had expressed fears that it would exploit the turmoil of Mubarak's overthrow to impose its will.

-AFP/ac

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Akhilesh waives Rs 1,650 crore farm loans on dad Mulayam's birthday

LUCKNOW: A cash-strapped Uttar Pradesh government wrote off loans worth Rs 1,650 crore to farmers on Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's 74th birthday on Thursday, fulfilling an election promise that is bound to further deplete the state's already dwindling coffers. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said 7.2 lakh farmers, who've taken loans of up to Rs 50,000 from rural cooperative banks, will benefit from the waiver.

"Farmers who've taken loans of up to Rs 50,000, and have deposited at least 10% of the amount by March 31, will not have to pay any further," Akhilesh said. The farm loan waiver would cost the government Rs 1,650 crore and the CM said Rs 500 crore has already been earmarked from the budget towards this.

Underscoring his government's "pro-farmer policies", Akhilesh also said he will shortly announce state advisory price for sugarcane and ensure farmers' interests. However, he remained silent on loan waiver for farmers from other government-run banks, especially those in the backward Bundelkhand region, that do not issue loans against property.

In one sense, by applying conditions, Akhilesh has whittled down the largesse which otherwise would have cost his government a staggering Rs 14,000 crore. But, in the process, farmers in the state's endemically backwards regions like Bundelkhand will gain little from the waiver.

Reacting to the government's decision, Kisan Jagriti Manch (KJM), a farmer group in UP said, the waiver will benefit a sizeable population of small and marginal farmers who take loans from rural cooperative banks, but added that this wasn't enough.

"Rs 1,650 crore is insufficient for the loan waiver scheme considering the large numbers of indebted farmers in UP. The benefit of the loan waiver scheme should be extended also to those farmers who took loans from scheduled banks in the form of crop loans,'' said KJM chief Sudhir Panwar.

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Study finds mammograms lead to unneeded treatment

Mammograms have done surprisingly little to catch deadly breast cancers before they spread, a big U.S. study finds. At the same time, more than a million women have been treated for cancers that never would have threatened their lives, researchers estimate.

Up to one-third of breast cancers, or 50,000 to 70,000 cases a year, don't need treatment, the study suggests.

It's the most detailed look yet at overtreatment of breast cancer, and it adds fresh evidence that screening is not as helpful as many women believe. Mammograms are still worthwhile, because they do catch some deadly cancers and save lives, doctors stress. And some of them disagree with conclusions the new study reached.

But it spotlights a reality that is tough for many Americans to accept: Some abnormalities that doctors call "cancer" are not a health threat or truly malignant. There is no good way to tell which ones are, so many women wind up getting treatments like surgery and chemotherapy that they don't really need.

Men have heard a similar message about PSA tests to screen for slow-growing prostate cancer, but it's relatively new to the debate over breast cancer screening.

"We're coming to learn that some cancers — many cancers, depending on the organ — weren't destined to cause death," said Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Cancer Institute screening expert. However, "once a woman is diagnosed, it's hard to say treatment is not necessary."

He had no role in the study, which was led by Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Medical School and Dr. Archie Bleyer of St. Charles Health System and Oregon Health & Science University. Results are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer and cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Nearly 1.4 million new cases are diagnosed each year. Other countries screen less aggressively than the U.S. does. In Britain, for example, mammograms are usually offered only every three years and a recent review there found similar signs of overtreatment.

The dogma has been that screening finds cancer early, when it's most curable. But screening is only worthwhile if it finds cancers destined to cause death, and if treating them early improves survival versus treating when or if they cause symptoms.

Mammograms also are an imperfect screening tool — they often give false alarms, spurring biopsies and other tests that ultimately show no cancer was present. The new study looks at a different risk: Overdiagnosis, or finding cancer that is present but does not need treatment.

Researchers used federal surveys on mammography and cancer registry statistics from 1976 through 2008 to track how many cancers were found early, while still confined to the breast, versus later, when they had spread to lymph nodes or more widely.

The scientists assumed that the actual amount of disease — how many true cases exist — did not change or grew only a little during those three decades. Yet they found a big difference in the number and stage of cases discovered over time, as mammograms came into wide use.

Mammograms more than doubled the number of early-stage cancers detected — from 112 to 234 cases per 100,000 women. But late-stage cancers dropped just 8 percent, from 102 to 94 cases per 100,000 women.

The imbalance suggests a lot of overdiagnosis from mammograms, which now account for 60 percent of cases that are found, Bleyer said. If screening were working, there should be one less patient diagnosed with late-stage cancer for every additional patient whose cancer was found at an earlier stage, he explained.

"Instead, we're diagnosing a lot of something else — not cancer" in that early stage, Bleyer said. "And the worst cancer is still going on, just like it always was."

Researchers also looked at death rates for breast cancer, which declined 28 percent during that time in women 40 and older — the group targeted for screening. Mortality dropped even more — 41 percent — in women under 40, who presumably were not getting mammograms.

"We are left to conclude, as others have, that the good news in breast cancer — decreasing mortality — must largely be the result of improved treatment, not screening," the authors write.

The study was paid for by the study authors' universities.

"This study is important because what it really highlights is that the biology of the cancer is what we need to understand" in order to know which ones to treat and how, said Dr. Julia A. Smith, director of breast cancer screening at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. Doctors already are debating whether DCIS, a type of early tumor confined to a milk duct, should even be called cancer, she said.

Another expert, Dr. Linda Vahdat, director of the breast cancer research program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said the study's leaders made many assumptions to reach a conclusion about overdiagnosis that "may or may not be correct."

"I don't think it will change how we view screening mammography," she said.

A government-appointed task force that gives screening advice calls for mammograms every other year starting at age 50 and stopping at 75. The American Cancer Society recommends them every year starting at age 40.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the cancer society's deputy chief medical officer, said the study should not be taken as "a referendum on mammography," and noted that other high-quality studies have affirmed its value. Still, he said overdiagnosis is a problem, and it's not possible to tell an individual woman whether her cancer needs treated.

"Our technology has brought us to the place where we can find a lot of cancer. Our science has to bring us to the point where we can define what treatment people really need," he said.

___

Online:

Study: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1206809

Screening advice: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Black Friday Deals Kick Off on 'Gray Thursday'

Black Friday is the Super Bowl of retail, but some of the nation's largest big-box stores can't wait until the day after Thanksgiving to open their doors to shoppers eager to grab great deals the same day as their turkey dinners.

Traditional Black Friday door-busting deals now start tonight, on what's been dubbed Gray Thursday. Major retail stores such as Kmart, Toys R Us, Walmart and Sears will open their doors beginning at 8 p.m. Target will join the party an hour later.

"It's traditionally been the day after Thanksgiving when the stores go into the black, where they make all their money. But that's not true anymore," retail expert Michelle Madhock said.

With Black Friday sales starting Thursday, that means lines started forming Wednesday, or in some extreme cases a week before as bargain hunters tried to get a turkey leg up on their competition.

READ: The Best Black Friday Freebies 2012

Joy Lewis/Abilene Reporter-News/AP Photo

4 Steps to Get the Best Holiday Shopping Deals Watch Video

Top Tips for Thanksgiving Day Door-Buster Deals Watch Video

Luciana Pendleton pitched a tent outside a Deptford Township, N.J., Best Buy Monday fully equipped with all she needed to spend the next few days away from home so she could be first in line when the doors open.

"I am just happy I beat my competition. They pulled up here around 3 p.m., and we were already here so I was happy," she said Monday.

READ: How to Beat Black Friday Stress

Last year, some sale seekers became a little too excited and turned holiday shopping into a contact sport. In one ugly incident, a woman was accused of unleashing pepper spray on other shoppers in a dash for electronics at Walmart in Los Angeles.

This year, stores are beefing up security, and Best Buy even participated in training drills to handle the large crowds. More than 147 million people plan to shop this weekend, according to the National Retail Federation.

The hottest deals that are up for grabs this year include a 46-inch Samsung LED flat screen TV at Walmart with $200 off the original price. If that's not good enough, Sears has knocked $500 off the price of a 50-inch Toshiba flat screen. Target is offering the Nook Simple Touch at half price.

Black Friday officially kicks off at midnight for Best Buy, Sports Authority and Macy's.

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