Egyptians hold rival rallies in Cairo

Demonstrators gather in Cairo to lend support for President Morsi, as his opponents protest in capital's Tahrir Square. Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi are holding rival demonstrations on the streets of the capital Cairo amid reports of clashes in the second city of Alexandria. Supporters of President Morsi gathered on Friday in a Cairo neighbourhood for a rally, in response to opposition plans for a major anti-government demonstration over the weekend. Morsi supporters gathered at the Rabia el-Adawiya mosque in Nasr City to assert that "[the government's] legitimacy was a red line". Thousands of Morsi backers filled the street outside, chanting religious slogans. "It is for God, not for position or power", they shouted. "I'm here to defend my voice. If you want Morsi to leave, that's fine, but after four years," said Taher Mohamed, manning a stall and selling pro-Morsi gear at the rally. Naeem Ghanem, another Morsi supporter accused the opposition of working with the US and Israel. "Don't believe that everyone is against the president, 90 percent of the people are with Morsi," he said. Violence broke out on Friday between supporters and opponents of President Morsi in Alexandria, leaving at least one killed and 70 injured, according to the state news agency MENA. Some anti-government protesters set on fire the local headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party in the Sidi Gaber area. The extent of the damage has yet to be ascertained. According to reports, protesters have stormed and set fire to Brotherhood offices in several governorates around country including Gharbiya, Daqahliyah and Kafr el-Sheikh. Earlier, several thousand protesters marched along the city's seafront complaining mainly about economic stagnation. "There are no services, we can't find diesel or gasoline. We elected Morsi, but this is enough," said 42-year-old accountant Mohamed Abdel Latif. Hundreds of opposition protesters have gathered in Tahrir Square, demanding the president's resignation, ahead of a separate major planned demonstration on Sunday - a year after President Morsi took office. Violent clashes The opposition activists have been holding a sit-in in the Tahrir Square, the iconic epicentre of the protest movement that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, since Tuesday. Deepening divisions among ruling Islamist and the largely secular opposition have heightened tensions in Egypt. For the past several days, Morsi's opponents and members of his Muslim Brotherhood have been battling it out in the streets of several cities in the Nile Delta in violence that has left at least four dead and more than 400 injured. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group said all the four people who died in Mansura city were its members. Some people "think they can topple a democratically elected President by killing his support groups," Gehad el-Haddad, a Brotherhood spokesman, wrote on his Twitter account. Many fear the clashes are a prelude to more widespread and bloodier battles on Sunday. 'Civil war' In a sign of the charged atmosphere, a senior cleric, Sheik Hassan al-Shafie, from Al-Azhar, the country's most eminent Muslim religious institution, warned of the possibility of "civil war" after the street clashes in the Delta. The opposition accuses Morsi, who is Egypt's first democratically elected president, of failing to fulfill the objectives of the revolution that forced Hosni Mubarak from power in 2011. They accuse the ruling Islamists of focusing on consolidating power and failing to address Egypt's economic and social problems. The army, which heeded mass protests in early 2011 to push aside Hosni Mubarak, has warned it will intervene again if there is violence and to defend the "will of the people". Morsi's supporters have vowed that he will complete his four-year term, which ends in 2016. On Wednesday, Morsi defended his performance in his first year in office. He admitted that mistakes had been made, but offered no concessions for his opponents.

Qatari emir to transfer power to his son

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani tells members of the ruling family that he will step down in favour of heir apparent. The Qatari emir has confirmed to members of the ruling family that he will step down and transfer power to his heir apparent. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani met royals and prominent members of Qatari society on Monday, and announced plans for a transition to his son, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Sheikh Hamad has been in power since 1995, during which Qatar has evolved into an important player on the regional and international political scenes. Abdullah al-Athbah, the managing editor of Al Arab newspaper, earlier told Al Jazeera that he did not expect to see a change in policy after the succession. "The heir apparent has been very close to his father and Sheikh Jassim," he said, referring to the prime minister. "I don't think there will be a big change in policy, foreign or domestic." Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, 33, is the second son of the emir and Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser. Sheikh Hamad is due to address the nation on Tuesday.

Julian Assange supporters stand by their man

WikiLeaks chief in limbo a year since taking refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy.

London, United Kingdom - Whenever the stand-off between Julian Assange and British authorities seeking to extradite him to Sweden to answer sex assault allegations finally ends, it seems unlikely to involve a car chase. The narrow streets around the Ecuadorian embassy, from which the fugitive WikiLeaks founder has not emerged since claiming asylum there one year ago, are a permanent traffic jam of oversized limousines favoured by the local diplomatic community, and chauffeur-driven saloons queued up outside the neighbouring Harrods department store.

Across the road from the embassy in the west London district of Knightsbridge, a small cluster of dedicated Assange supporters have maintained a daily vigil for each of the 365 days that the Australian has been inside. Most days they number just a handful, standing on the pavement with small banners reading "Free Assange", "Safe Passage" and "Don't Shoot the Messenger", handing out leaflets to curious passers-by for a couple of hours or so each afternoon. "This is just symbolic, but I think it is important to remind people that Julian is still here inside the embassy," Clara Torres, a nurse originally from Chile, told Al Jazeera. For Torres, Assange's claim to asylum has a deeply personal resonance. She fled to the UK in 1978 after her ex-husband had been held as a political prisoner for two years under Augusto Pinochet's military rule. "Asylum is very strong for me. This is the last thing a human being runs to. It is the only way to escape persecution. It was the last resort for him to run into exile," she said. Assange faces extradition over sex assault allegations [EPA]

Assange sought asylum a year ago after exhausting legal options within the UK to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of sexual assault made by two women. He denies the allegations and says he believes he would face subsequent extradition to the United States where Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking confidential diplomatic and military cables to WikiLeaks, is currently facing a court martial that could see him jailed for life. Torres said the UK should allow Assange to go to Ecuador, just as China last year allowed Chen Guangchen to travel to the US after the dissident had taken refuge in the US embassy in Beijing. "China let one of its residents go to America and it's supposed to be the worst country in the world for human rights. And even Pinochet let thousands of Chileans go through the embassies to other countries." Vilifying whistleblowers Standing alongside Torres, Jim Curran, an Irish civil liberties activist, said he had been campaigning against extradition proceedings for nearly 40 years since the height of the Irish Republican Army's (IRA) campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, when the UK used its extradition treaty with Ireland to have suspected fighters rendered into its custody. He said he saw parallels between Assange's case and that of Colin Wallace, a former British soldier who exposed details about covert operations and a secret black propaganda unit in Northern Ireland, and alleged links between British intelligence agents and loyalist paramilitary groups. Wallace was wrongly jailed in 1980 for allegedly beating a man to death, but the conviction was eventually overturned. "We had whistleblowers in Ireland in relation to atrocities that the British government carried out against Irish Republicans. Some of them were British people like Colin Wallace and they were vilified by the establishment. I suppose people who expose malpractice by any government in any country, they get vilified." Curran said he was concerned Assange would be shifted on to the US from Sweden as soon as the country's legal system had dealt with the sexual assault allegations against him, pointing to the country's past involvement in the US prisoner rendition programme. "Until it signs up at the International Criminal Court, I do not believe that anybody should be extradited to the United States of America. " - Jim Curran, Irish civil liberties activist Sweden was censured by the United Nations' Committee Against Torture in 2006 over the rendition of two Egyptian men, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed Alzery, to Egypt in 2001. But it subsequently halted cooperation with rendition flights and paid substantial damages to the pair. But he said: "While Sweden is an admirable country and has given great help to people campaigning against war and refuseniks and asylum seekers and refugees, that seems to have been deteriorating under the current government." ‘State terrorism’ Curran said his support for Assange was primarily motivated by concerns over the UK's current extradition arrangements. He said he opposed both the European arrest warrant system, which requires all European Union member states to detain and transfer suspects wanted elsewhere in the EU, and all extraditions to the US. "Until it signs up at the International Criminal Court, I do not believe that anybody should be extradited to the United States of America," he said. But he added: "Assange has focused international attention on what I call state terrorism and that is very important. I believe in freedom of speech and a free press. I believe all governments should be transparent in what they do because they are responsible to voters and taxpayers, and they shouldn't be engaging in clandestine operations." Assange has been accused by some critics of inspiring the sort of devotion among his acolytes usually associated with cult leaders. "The problem is that WikiLeaks … has been guilty of the same obfuscation and misinformation as those it sought to expose, while its supporters are expected to follow, unquestioningly, in blinkered, cultish devotion," Jemima Khan, one of many former supporters to have fallen out with Assange, wrote in the New Statesman magazine earlier this year. But Torres rejected Khan's criticism: "I don't agree with her. They're trying to deface his character, and saying horrible things. I don't think he is the Messiah or anything like that. He is just a very brave and intelligent man." Long haul Speaking to Al Jazeera's Listening Post this week, Assange said he would be "reasonably surprised" if his situation at the embassy had not been resolved within two more years. But Ricardo Patino, Ecuador's foreign minister, said after talks on Sunday that Assange had told him he was prepared to remain inside for another five years if necessary. Assange prepared to stay five years if necessary [Getty Images] Lance Rolls, a researcher originally from New Zealand and a regular attendee at the vigil, said the situation was a "poor reflection on UK society". "I was here the day after I heard he'd gone into the embassy, and I wanted to be there to be a witness. And these guys have been here for him now all through the winter and the snow." Like others at the vigil, Rolls stated that Assange should answer the allegations he faces, although he said he should be given the opportunity to do so in a third country where he would not be at risk of extradition to the US.

Blast at mosque in Pakistan's Peshawar

At least 14 people killed as suicide bomber attacks a Shia Muslim mosque in northwestern city during Friday prayers. A suicide bomber has attacked a Shia Muslim mosque in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 14 people, police have said. Senior police officer Abdul Hamid Khan said the bombing in the city of Peshawar also wounded 30 people.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack which took place during Friday prayers. Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Peshawar, said the attack happened at an urban mosque in the city. He said that according to sources, a gunman also walked into the mosque's prayer room and opened fire. Local TV video showed blood splattered on the floor and walls of the mosque. Broken glass littered the floor, and there were holes in the walls and ceiling caused by ball bearings packed in with the bomber's explosives. Rescue workers were seen wheeling wounded victims into a local hospital. Shia community

The mosque and madrassa complex is located in Gulshan Colony, a Shia-dominated area on the edge of Peshawar, a city which abuts fighter strongholds in the northwestern tribal belt on the Afghan border. Khan said that the incident is being viewed as the latest sectarian attack on the Shia community. On Saturday, a bomb that appeared to be targeting Shia Muslims ripped through a bus carrying female university students in the southwest city of Quetta, killing 14 people. Fighters then attacked a hospital where wounded victims were taken, killing several more people.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has claimed responsibility for the attack in Quetta. The group has carried out many of the attacks against Shia Muslims in Pakistan in recent years, especially in Balochistan province, where Quetta is the capital.

S Africa migrants battle rising persecution

Murder of Somali draws ire of foreign African nationals over rising xenophobic violence. Johannesburg, South Africa - In a country with a history of violence like South Africa, there are few scenes of brutality that can still shock the nation. The video that emerged on YouTube last weekend of a Somali man lying flat in a Port Elizabeth street has shocked many South Africans out of a general complacence over the rising incidence of violence against foreigners in the country. The man, who was stripped naked, his genitals pelted with rocks, stones smashed over his head all the while receiving kicks to the face, became the latest victim of xenophobic violence in the country. The 25-year-old man, Abdi Nasir Mahmoud Good, died of his injuries. Good is just one of the victims of the xenophobic violence that flared through northern Port Elizabeth and up to four other towns and cities across the country last week. Five other Somalis were injured in the violence and almost every Somali-owned business in Port Elizabeth’s Booysen Park was burned or looted. Good's family said he had been trying to salvage his goods in the small store he owned in Booysens Park when he met the ire of a mob. National problem Before the wave of violence hit Port Elizabeth, the sprawling township of Diepsloot in Johannesburg was a scene of chaos after a Somali shopkeeper killed two Zimbabweans he suspected to be thieves on the evening of Sunday, May 26. Angered by the shootings, Diepsloot residents turned their attention on the Somalis, Pakistanis and other foreign nationals doing business in the township. Nineteen foreign-owned stores were attacked in a frenzy of xenophobic violence and looting over the next two days. Though calm has been restored to Diepsloot, the Somali store at the centre of the issue remains closed. A co-owner of the store, Amina Hassan Abdi, a Somali woman who fled the conflict in the Horn of Africa in 2007, said the violence essentially destroyed her livelihood. “You need money to open the shop again and I now have none,” she said. Abdi also previously worked as a street vendor in Diepsloot. She said the discrimination she faced every day forced her to give up her stall. "I don’t look like a South African and I wear this,” she said, pointing to her hijab. “Every day I was getting too much trouble, people were swearing me, they were shouting me, stealing my stuff ... they don't like us,” she said. Just days before the looting of Somali-owned stores in Diepsloot, some 60 km south of Johannesburg, in the township of Sebokeng, foreign-owned stores were also systematically looted after a protest against poor governance in the area catalysed into a campaign to root out foreigners and foreign-owned businesses from the township. By the time the police stepped in, all foreign-owned stores had been looted, the belongings of foreign nationals were burned and foreigners were driven out of the township.

Despite the targeting, the South African government has been quick to caution against labelling this surge in violence as xenophobia because "preliminary evidence indicates that these acts may be driven primarily by criminality". Al Jazeera requested comment repeatedly from the office of South Africa's president of the department of home affairs and the South African police services, but recieved no response. Labelling the violence as just crime creates a false debate, said Biniam Misgun, lecturer in the School of Sociology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban. "When you see a group intentionally attacked and their shops looted because they are foreign, then you cannot just say it's criminality driving this," Misgun told Al Jazeera. Misgun's assertions that these are hate crimes are corroborated by statistics. In 2011, around 120 foreign nationals were killed, of whom five were burnt alive. In 2012, 140 foreigners were killed and 250 others injured in violent attacks across the country, reported the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) in Johannesburg. In 2013, the Centre estimates that at least three attacks on foreigners take place weekly. Complex issue

Understanding the context of xenophobic sentiment in the grand intersection of race and class in a South Africa mired by a complex social and economic history is difficult. As the largest economy on the continent, South Africa has attracted foreign Africans from as far afield as Nigeria, Ethiopia, the DR Congo and as close as neighbouring Botswana. They come as political refugees or economic migrants, with one goal: a better life. Following the end of apartheid in 1994, thousands of Chinese and South Asian foreign nationals have been living and conducting business across the country. Instead of South Africans thriving on its much-vaunted multicultural identity, foreigners have been painted in the popular imagination as criminals, job snatchers, and parasites arriving in throngs to eat at an economy battling to feed its own people. New research released last month from the Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP) found that more than 50 percent of South Africans believed foreigners constituted a majority of the country's population. In reality, foreign nationals amount to less than five percent, or 2.2 million people out of a population of around 50 million. The SAMP study, investigating the incidence of xenophobia in South Africa after the horrific attacks of 2008 which killed more than 60 people, also debunks the popular notion that xenophobia was a disease of the poor. That these attacks are taking place in already rough neighborhoods is worth remembering, Loren Landau, director of the African Centre of Migration and Society (ACMS) in Johannesburg, said. The study found that xenophobia is firmly embedded across all economic and social strata of South African society but with incidents of violence are more likely in impoverished areas where a riot can sometimes be the only way to the draw government attention. Government attitude Researchers suggest that the root of the problem lies with the government’s attitude to foreigners, especially foreign African nationals. Foreign nationals entering the country and trying to integrate into society narrate tales of daily strife with authorities. They report harassment at police stations, neglect at hospitals and abuse at immigration offices. Abuse is widespread, migrants said. Last Monday, in the midst of this upsurge in violence against foreign nationals, security staff at an office of the Department of Home Affairs turned a fire hose on hundreds of refugees queuing to renew their documents. The cold sting meted out to the hundreds of refugees, many of whom are forced to queue for weeks in order to renew their temporary asylum seeker’s documents, is just part of a daily digest of humiliation endured by foreign nationals. Abdi, the Somali businesswoman in Diepsloot, said that her son’s asylum seeker certificate was stolen when her store was looted. Police, however, refused to allow her to open a case of theft or compile an affidavit attesting to the theft of the documents in order for the Department of Home Affairs to issue her son new set of documents. “When I went to Diepsloot police on Friday they said it is too late [to open] the case,” she said. “Then I said, okay, I want to make affidavit but they said, ‘No, go to Home Affairs’". Home Affairs, she said will want to see proof from the South African Police Services that the documents were indeed stolen. This is how the trouble starts, researchers said. "The way the state treats foreign nationals essentially represents the way ordinary people treat foreign nationals," Misgun adds. Despite attracting the biggest number of asylum seekers in the world, The Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) found that South Africans receive foreigners with a jaundiced eye. It is a tenuous contradiction, activists said. "On one hand, South Africa wants to promote solidarity and unity on the African continent and yet there is move towards a more restrictive asylum regime," Sicel'mpilo Shange-Buthane, executive director of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants (CoRMSA), in Johannesburg, told Al Jazeera. Shange-Buthane said the government's move to shift reception centres for refugees from the city centre to the border regions sends a clear message: "We don't want refugees in the cities." This gives credence to the findings of the SAMP survey that 63 percent of South Africans wanted electrified fences on the country’s borders. With just one perpetuator brought to justice for the 2008 violence, the South African judiciary is allowing for a culture of impunity to settle, as the foreigner is institutionalised as a soft target, unlikely to enjoy state protection on any level, said Landau of the ACMS. Social integration On Sunday the Somali president urged South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma to investigate the killing of Abdi Nasir Mahmoud Good, the Somali trader. Experts and activists said little is likely to change, unless and until African leaders threaten economic consequences to South Africa's expanding operations across the continent; by their own admission a shot in the dark. As of now, there remains little incentive for local politicians to demand their communities to respect foreigners when they are unable to provide services or at least better reasons for their inability to deliver. Little wonder, then, that more than 60 percent surveyed in the SAMP report believe that violence against foreigners usually occurs because of the latter's penchant for crime or taking away jobs from South Africans. With national elections due in 2014, addressing the concerns of foreigners is unlikely to feature prominently on the electorate's wish list. The solution, Landau said, involves focusing on building "a more equitable society where economic rights are applied equally". Misgun, the lecturer in Sociology agrees that focusing on shifting attitudes without improving peoples' lives is counterproductive. He expressed the view of many researchers when he said: "If people were not fighting over a bag of corn or sugar, it [the situation] might be a little different."

Brazil protests expand to over one million people

More than one million join Brazil protests Clashes with police mark biggest day of demonstrations yet against government corruption and poor public services.

Hundreds of thousands of people have rallied across Brazil as part of a protest movement over the quality of public services and the high cost of staging the World Cup.

The mounting pressure on the government of President Dilma Rousseff in the face of the biggest street protests the South American country has seen in 20 years has prompted her to cancel a trip to Japan planned for next week.

Local media reported that 1.2 million people took part in rallies across the country of 194 million people - an intensification of the movement which started two weeks following public anger about an increase in public transport fares. Police fired tear gas in Rio de Janeiro, scene of the biggest protest where 300,000 people demonstrated near City Hall, to disperse a small group of stone-throwing protesters. At least one person was injured in the clashes, which caused panic in the crowd.

"Don't run, don't run," some shouted as they ran through the clouds of tear gas. Demonstrators meanwhile set ablaze a vehicle owned by the SBT television station. Violence in Brasilia In the capital Brasilia, security forces blocked protesters trying to break into the foreign ministry and throwing burning objects.

The military police finally threw a security cordon around the building. In Sao Paulo, an estimated 110,000 people flooded the main avenida Paulista to celebrate the fare rollback and keep the pressure on Rousseff's leftist government to increase social spending. But clashes erupted between a group of ultra-leftists marching behind their red banners and a majority of demonstrators who objected to the presence of political parties.

US to hold direct peace talks with Taliban

United States will engage with Taliban in Qatar where Afghan-based armed group opened office, White House officials say.

The United States will engage in direct peace negotiations with the Taliban in Qatar next week, aimed at achieving peace in Afghanistan, senior White House officials have said.

Tuesday's announcement came as the Taliban opened a political office in the Qatari capital, Doha, to help start talks on ending the 12-year-old conflict, saying it wanted a political solution that would bring about a just government and end foreign occupation. Taliban representative Mohammed Naeem told a news conference at the office in Doha that the armed group wanted good relations with Afghanistan's neighbouring countries.

US President Barack Obama said the opening of the Taliban office was an important first step toward reconciliation between the Taliban and Afghanistan's government. He also praised Afghan President Hamid Karzai for taking a courageous step by sending representatives to Qatar to discuss peace with the Taliban. He warned, however, that the process would be lengthy and insisted that the Taliban break ties with al-Qaeda and end violence. Secret discussions A senior representative of the Afghan government confirmed that talks were scheduled with the Taliban and said the progress was made after secret discussions with the group. "Peace talks will certainly take place between the Taliban and the High Peace Council," said the senior official, referring to the body created by Karzai in 2010 to negotiate peace with the group. The Taliban has until now said it would not countenance peace talks with the Karzai government, which it calls a "stooge" of the United States and other Western nations. The peace talks, if they go ahead, could also lead to a reduction in fighting across Afghanistan, the official said.

"We hope that the attacks carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan will reduce while we talk peace; there is no point in talking if the bombs continue to kill civilians," he said. The announcement came on the same day that the Taliban opened their long-delayed office in the Qatari capital.

In a move that may anger the Afghan government, the white Taliban flag was at his side, and a large sign behind him proclaimed the office of the

"Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan", the name the Taliban used during their brief national rule in the 1990s. Both events may have been timed to coincide with a ceremony on Tuesday to mark the beginning of the final phase of security transition from the US-led coalition to the Afghan state. Concern in Kabul Al Jazeera's Jane Ferguson, reporting from Kabul, said that many poeple were saying they would resist what they percieved as the rise in power of the Taliban "The people here in Kabul are extremely concerned about the developments in Doha today," our correspondent said.

"The Taliban said they would reject any internaitonal terrorist presence here, so from one perspective the Americans will have acieved a huge objective.

"What people here are asking is what about the other objectives that were sold to Afghans in 2001? Women's rights, universal human rights, democracy. Are those objectives to be sacrificed for the skae of a quick american withdrawal? "If the Taliban were to have widespread political influence here, does that mean a lot of the things that they have worked for over the past 12 years could be lost?"