Egypt's Mursi faces judicial revolt over decree

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi faced a rebellion from judges who accused him on Saturday of expanding his powers at their expense, deepening a crisis that has triggered violence in the street and exposed the country's deep divisions.

The Judges' Club, a body representing judges across Egypt, called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding the "downfall of the regime" - the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year.

Mursi's political opponents and supporters, representing the divide between newly empowered Islamists and their critics, called for rival demonstrations on Tuesday over a decree that has triggered concern in the West.

Issued late on Thursday, it marks an effort by Mursi to consolidate his influence after he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. The decree defends from judicial review decisions taken by Mursi until a new parliament is elected in a vote expected early next year.

It also shields the Islamist-dominated assembly writing Egypt's new constitution from a raft of legal challenges that have threatened the body with dissolution, and offers the same protection to the Islamist-controlled upper house of parliament.

Egypt's highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council, said the decree was an "unprecedented attack" on the independence of the judiciary. The Judges' Club, meeting in Cairo, called on Mursi to rescind it.

That demand was echoed by prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. "There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says 'let us split the difference'," he said.

"I am waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity," he said in an interview with Reuters and the Associated Press.

More than 300 people were injured on Friday as protests against the decree turned violent. There were attacks on at least three offices belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mursi to power.

POLARISATION

Liberal, leftist and socialist parties called a big protest for Tuesday to force Mursi to row back on a move they say has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.

In a sign of the polarization in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood called its own protests that day to support the president's decree.

Mursi also assigned himself new authority to sack the prosecutor general, who was appointed during the Mubarak era, and appoint a new one. The dismissed prosecutor general, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, was given a hero's welcome at the Judges' Club.

In open defiance of Mursi, Ahmed al-Zind, head of the club, introduced Mahmoud by his old title.

The Mursi administration has defended the decree on the grounds that it aims to speed up a protracted transition from Mubarak's rule to a new system of democratic government.

Analysts say it reflects the Brotherhood's suspicion towards sections of a judiciary unreformed from Mubarak's days.

"It aims to sideline Mursi's enemies in the judiciary and ultimately to impose and head off any legal challenges to the constitution," said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations.

"We are in a situation now where both sides are escalating and its getting harder and harder to see how either side can gracefully climb down."

ADVISOR TO MURSI QUITS

Following a day of violence in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez, the smell of tear gas hung over the capital's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising that toppled Mubarak in 2011 and the stage for more protests on Friday.

Youths clashed sporadically with police near the square, where activists camped out for a second day on Saturday, setting up makeshift barricades to keep out traffic.

Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt's most widely read dailies, hailed Friday's protest as "The November 23 Intifada", invoking the Arabic word for uprising.

But the ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamist groups that have been pushing for tighter application of Islamic law in the new constitution have rallied behind Mursi's decree.

The Nour Party, one such group, stated its support for the Mursi decree. Al-Gama'a al-Islamiya, which carried arms against the state in the 1990s, said it would save the revolution from what it described as remnants of the Mubarak regime.

Samir Morkos, a Christian assistant to Mursi, had told the president he wanted to resign, said Yasser Ali, Mursi's spokesman. Speaking to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Morkos said: "I refuse to continue in the shadow of republican decisions that obstruct the democratic transition".

Mursi's decree has been criticized by Western states that earlier this week were full of praise for his role in mediating an end to the eight-day war between Israel and Palestinians.

"The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy, Marwa Awad, Edmund Blair and Shaimaa Fayed and Reuters TV; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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Frenzied US shoppers swarm stores on Black Friday

NEW YORK: Frenzied shoppers across the United States joined the Black Friday rush for bargains, the kick-off to the crucial holiday shopping season being closely watched amid a lackluster economy.

Television images showed berserk buyers charging through doors as stores opened up for Black Friday sales on the day after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Some stores opened at midnight, while others such as big-box retailers Walmart and Target jumped the gun, opening on Thanksgiving night and carving into the family-centered holiday.

At 11:00 pm Thursday, scores of people were lined up outside a Best Buy store electronics store waiting for its midnight opening.

Phyllis Loges, 52, and her daughter had already waited four hours. "I want to buy a home cinema with TV and sound system," she said, adding that the doorbuster sale price was $1,500, instead of normal prices around $3,500.

In New York City, the well-known Macy's flagship department store was a destination for many. Macy's chief executive Terry Lundgren was on the scene as it opened at midnight.

"I swear I was standing there for 18 to 20 minutes, and the lines of incoming traffic never stopped," he told NBC. "People are definitely shopping and kicking off the shopping on Black Friday."

Black Friday was a boon for tourists, too.

At 7:00 am Friday, Abdul Albudikhi, a 22-year-old from Saudi Arabia, left a Hollister clothing store on Fifth Avenue, his arms laden with shopping bags after shopping since midnight.

"I bought jeans, shoes, a present for my girlfriend, one for my father," he said.

Walmart, the world's biggest retailer, said it had its "best-ever" Black Friday, with larger crowds than last year.

Meanwhile, disgruntled Walmart workers mounted strikes and protests across the country seeking better pay and benefits.

"There is going to be an impact," employee William Fletcher told MSNBC. "The point isn't so much to hurt Walmart as much as it is to get them to listen to us and appreciate the work we do."

Some competitive shoppers lost their cool as they tussled over items or staked out their spots in line.

According to the San Antonio Express News website, one man pulled a gun on another who punched him in the face while the two were waiting in line outside a Sears store late Thursday.

Black Friday starts the year-end holiday shopping season that often tips retailers out of the red and into the black for the year.

But the day's impact on balance sheets is starting to wane, as more and more stores try to reel in customers on Thursday, even if it means that their employees have to forego the traditional Thanksgiving feast.

A decade ago, it would have been impossible to find a single store open on Thanksgiving along New York's big shopping arteries such as Broadway.

But on Thursday, as for the past several years, nearly all the stores were open where Broadway traverses the SoHo neighborhood of lower Manhattan.

Despite a still-struggling economy, Macy's Lundgren seemed upbeat about prospects for the rest of the year, although he acknowledged that November would likely be "a little bit softer" than retailers might like.

The growth of 24/7 online sales is another challenge to brick-and-mortar shopping.

While the National Retail Federation is expecting a 4.1 percent rise in holiday sales this year compared with 2011, data tracker comScore is projecting a jump of 15-18 percent in online purchases.

The NRF projects fewer shoppers in stores and online on Black Friday and the weekend: 147 million, down 3 percent from a year ago.

"Black Friday's on a crash course with irrelevance. Before long, all we're going to be talking about is Cyber Monday," said Louis Banese at Wall Street Daily.

Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, said that Black Friday remains important for retail sales, a big part of the consumer spending that powers about 70 percent of US economic growth.

But he warned that Americans remain cautious amid a fragile recovery.

"If the weekend numbers are not good, the holiday season won't be good."

-AFP/ac

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India tests missile shield, DRDO says it will be operational by 2014

NEW DELHI: There were some big fireworks over the Bay of Bengal on Friday afternoon when India tested its experimental ballistic missile defence (BMD) system to intercept two "incoming hostile" missiles with interceptor missiles.

Elated with the "bang-on accurate" test, the seventh time the BMD system has been tested successfully over the last six years, the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) promptly declared a missile shield could be deployed for New Delhi by 2014.

"We are now ready to convert the BMD system from an experimental to an operational one that can be deployed on demand. I am confident we can deploy the Phase-I of the BMD system by 2014," said DRDO chief V K Saraswat, speaking to TOI from the Wheeler Island test range off Odisha coast.

But the reality check is that even American missile defence systems like Patriot Advanced Capability-3, Aegis BMD-3 and THAAD (terminal high-altitude area defence), as also Russian and Israeli ones, are not fully foolproof as of now.

In Friday's test, only one of the incoming missiles was real: a modified Prithvi missile mimicking M-9/M-11 class of Chinese Dong Feng short-range ballistic missiles. The other was an electronically simulated missile of a longer range of 1,500km.

Both "enemy" missile launches were, however, conducted "in the same window" to test the BMD system's capability to handle "multiple threats" simultaneously. "This has been done only by the two superpowers (US and Russia) till now. The real missile was destroyed at an altitude of 14.7-km by the interceptor missile with a direct hit," said Saraswat.

The electronic missile was intercepted at an altitude of 120km. Both the missiles were picked up and tracked by long-range and multi-function radars, which in turn passed the data to guidance and launch computers of the interceptors to "kill" them. "The entire test was done practically in deployment configuration," he said.

While it remains to be seen whether DRDO can indeed deploy an effective missile shield by 2014, it has also begun work on adding a third tier to the BMD system. The existing two-tier system is designed to track and destroy ballistic missiles both inside (endo) and outside (exo) the earth's atmosphere.

The third layer is planned to tackle low-flying cruise missiles, artillery projectiles and rockets in the line with the overall aim to achieve "near 100% kill or interception probability".

"Look what is happening in the Middle-East (Hamas firing rockets at Israeli cities before the recent ceasefire)...hence, protection against low-cost, very close range threats is also needed. We have begun some initial work on the third-tier. We will try to integrate it with the BMD system once it fructifies," said Saraswat.

At present, Phase-I of the BMD system, with interceptors flying at 4.5 Mach high-supersonic speeds to intercept enemy missiles, is meant to tackle hostile missiles with a 2,000-km strike range.

As per DRDO's plans, Phase-II will be geared for taking on 5,000-km range missiles, virtually in the class of ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles), with interceptors at hypersonic speeds of 6-7 Mach.

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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

Two people were shot outside a Walmart in Florida today, one of a rash of fights, robberies and other incidents that have cropped up on one of the most ballyhooed shopping days of the year.

The shooting took place at Walmart in Tallahasse about 12:30 p.m., said Dave Northway, public information officer for the Tallahassee Police Department.

He said a scuffle outside the store escalated into gunplay leaving two people shot. The two victims, whose names and genders have not been released, suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Police do not have a suspect at this time.

At Walmart parking lot on Thanksgiving night in Covington, Wash., two people were run down by a driver police suspected of being intoxicated.

The 71-year-old driver was arrested on a vehicular assault charge after the 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.

Shoppers Descend on Black Friday Deals

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Tensions were high at the entrances as people lined up outside stores, waiting for the doors to open.

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

The crush of shoppers in the middle of the night were prey once again this year for thieves, who hid out in parking lots.

In Myrtle Beach, S.C., a woman said a man pulled a gun on her just as she exited her car to go inside a Best Buy store. The thief made off with $200, according to a police report.

In Maryland, 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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Violence in cities; Mubarak deja vu?

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". Angry youth hurled rocks at security forces and burned a police truck.

There were also violent protests in Alexandria, Port Said and Suez.

Opponents accused Mursi, who on Thursday 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."

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations expressed concern at Mursi's move.

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.

Although Washington praised Egypt for its part in bringing Israelis and Palestinians to a ceasefire on Wednesday, it expressed concern about Mursi's move.

"The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement.

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 European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process, while the United Nations expressed fears about human rights.

"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.

"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 and Marwa Awad; Editing by Peter Millership and Giles Elgood)

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Police storm Japanese bank, arrest hostage-taker

TOKYO: Japanese police said Friday they had stormed a bank and arrested a man who took five people hostage, with local media reporting he had demanded Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's cabinet resign.

In a televised news conference, a police spokesman said the hostage-taker, identified as Koji Nagakubo, was arrested on suspicion of taking the five captive.

The hostages, including one released earlier, were all in protective custody safely, the spokesman said, while local media said one of them was slightly injured.

The 32-year-old man began the siege Thursday afternoon at the Zoshi branch of the Toyokawa Shinkin Bank in central Aichi prefecture.

Wielding a survival knife, he took four employees and a female customer captive and was demanding the Noda cabinet step down, as well as asking to speak to journalists, local media said.

-AFP/ac

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Railways looks to run Delhi-Mumbai trains at 200 kmph

NEW DELHI: Much before bullet trains become a reality, travel time between Delhi and Mumbai is likely to reduce substantially with railways planning to launch semi-high speed trains with a top speed of 200 kmph. A railway official said a study to identify the need to strengthen the infrastructure for this service was nearing completion and work would start soon. The services could start by 2017.

"A study was on for the past one year to identify bridges that needed strengthening, better signaling and easing sharp curves for such service. The upgrade will take about four years from the launch of work. The existing lines can be used for fast moving trains at 200 kmph as freight trains will shift to the dedicated freight corridor (DFC)," said R Ramanathan, Railway Board additional member (civil engineering). He was speaking on the sidelines of a CII summit on urban transport on Thursday.

At present, Rajdhanis, the fastest running trains on this corridor, have a maximum speed of 120 kmph. DFC managing director R K Gupta said the dedicated lines for freight will decongest the existing tracks. He added that this will increase average speed of freight trains from the present 25 kmph to 75 kmph. He said transit time would come down by half (for example Mumbai-Delhi in 24 hours).

"Though the average speed of freight trains on the existing lines hovers around 25 km as we use the same track for passenger trains and the latter get priority over freight trains," Gupta said. He added that carrying capacity on the dedicated corridors would be much more than what is available now.

The first phase of Rewari-Vododara of Western DFC will be commissioned by December 2016 and the entire line - from Dadri (UP) to JN Port (Mumbai) - will be operational by March 2017.

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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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2 Dead, 50 to Hospital After 100-Car Pileup

At least two people died and nearly 50 were transported to the hospital after a 100-car pileup in Texas today, according to ABC affiliate KBMT-TV.

A man and a woman died from their injuries, KBMT reported. Their names were not immediately available.

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At least five people who were taken to the hospital are in critical condition.

The accident happened in Jefferson County shortly after 8 a.m. Thanksgiving morning on Interstate 10 between Taylor Bayou and Hampshire Road. There was reportedly dense fog in the area at the time of the initial crash.

An 18-wheeler tanker truck began leaking after the chain-reaction accident, KBMT reported.

The westbound lanes of I-10 are now open and eastbound lanes will be closed for at least another eight hours.

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