NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said Tuesday he and members of his network crew escaped unharmed after five days of captivity in Syria, where more than a dozen pro-regime gunmen dragged them from their car, killed one of their rebel escorts and subjected them to mock executions.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, an unshaven Engel said he and his team escaped during a firefight Monday night between their captors and rebels at a checkpoint. They crossed into Turkey on Tuesday.

NBC did not say how many people were kidnapped with Engel, although two other men, producer Ghazi Balkiz and photographer John Kooistra, appeared with him on the “Today” show. It was not confirmed whether everyone was accounted for.

Engel said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which has lost control over swaths of the country’s north and is increasingly on the defensive in a civil war that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.

“They kept us blindfolded, bound,” said the 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. “We weren’t physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings,” he added.

“They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government,” Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, but he did not elaborate.

There was no mention of the kidnapping by Syria’s state-run news agency.

Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, who used military force to crush mostly peaceful protests against his regime. The crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has become a civil war.

Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.

“They captured us in order to carry out this exchange,” he said.

Engel and his crew entered Syria on Thursday and were driving through what they thought was rebel-controlled territory when “a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road.”

“There were probably 15 gunmen. They were wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed. They dragged us out of the car,” he said.

He said the gunmen shot and killed at least one of their rebel escorts on the spot and took the hostages into a waiting truck nearby.

Around 11 p.m. Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.

“And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn’t expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan,” he said. “The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them.”

Engel and his crew crossed back into neighboring Turkey on Tuesday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

NBC sought to keep the disappearance of Engel and the crew secret for several days while it investigated what happened to them. Major media organizations, including The Associated Press, adhered to a request from the network to refrain from reporting on the issue out of concern it could make the dangers to the captives worse. News of the disappearance did begin to leak out in Turkish media and on some websites on Monday.

Syria has become a danger zone for reporters since the conflict began.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is by far the deadliest country for the press in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces.

Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain’s Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers and travel with rebel escorts or drivers.

Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996.

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Leak reveals Polaroid’s Android-powered camera with interchangeable lenses

Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy Camera and Nikon’s (NINOY) Coolpix S800c are just the beginning of a swath of Android-powered cameras. Newly leaked images and specs point to Polaroid reviving its camera business with what could be the world’s first Android camera with interchangeable lenses. With no official name yet, the tentatively named IM1836 camera will reportedly feature a 18.1-megapixel sensor, 3.5-inch touchscreen, pop-up flash, Wi-Fi, HDMI and Android 4.0.

[More from BGR: A guide to all the insane predictions made by Google’s new engineering director]

The Galaxy Camera and Coolpix S800c do a fine job taking pictures that are considerably better than what you get from a smartphone, but they still can’t match a mirrorless camera with a good lens. At first glance, Polaroid’s camera looks to be a rebadged Nikon 1 J2, but the resemblance only runs skin deep, as PhotoRumors reports the camera only takes MicroSD cards.

[More from BGR: How not to fix Apple Maps]

Polaroid might not be a major player, but as more companies start incorporating Android into their cameras, there’s going to be a shift in the features consumers expect from them. In the next few years, novelty features such as Wi-Fi, cellular data and photo editing apps will be the norm and we’ll laugh at how we ever lived without them.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Cassadee Pope wins Season 3 of ‘The Voice’

NEW YORK (AP) — Cassadee Pope, who was country singer Blake Shelton‘s protege on the third season of NBC‘s “The Voice,” has won the show’s competition.

The 23-year-old singer is stepping out into a solo career after performing with a band called Hey Monday. Her victory over Scottish native Terry McDermott and long-bearded Nicholas David was announced at the end of a two-hour show Tuesday.

“The Voice” has grown into a hit for NBC and was the key factor in the network’s surprising success this fall.

The show’s status was affirmed by the stream of hitmakers who performed on the finale. They included Rihanna, Bruno Mars, the Killers, Smokey Robinson and Peter Frampton.

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Vanda’s drug for rare disorder meets main trial goal

(Reuters) – Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc said a late-stage trial of its drug to treat a rare disorder affecting blind people met the main goal of showing improvement over a placebo, sending its shares up as much as 37 percent.

The drug tasimelteon is being tested for non-24-hour disorder, a rare and chronic circadian rhythm disorder for which there is no approved treatment, Vanda said in a statement.

The disorder, in which a person’s body clock does not automatically set to the 24-hour day thereby affecting sleep cycles, affects a majority of blind people.

The main goal of the trial was to reset the rhythm of the hormone melatonin, which controls sleep and wake cycles, to a 24 hour day-night cycle.

The goal also included measuring patients’ clinical response to the drug compared with a placebo.

The study, which enrolled 84 patients, was the first of four studies that form Vanda’s late-stage program for the drug. The drug was well tolerated in the study.

Vanda said it expects results from the second study in the first quarter of 2013, and plans to submit a marketing approval application to the U.S. health regulator in mid 2013.

Shares of the company were up 28 percent at $ 4.12 in heavy volume trade on Tuesday morning on the Nasdaq. Around 2.2 million shares had changed hands by 1007 ET – more than eight times the stock’s average moving volumes.

Tasimelteon received orphan drug status from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2010 and from the European Commission in 2011.

The FDA grants orphan drug status to drugs or biologics that treat a condition affecting less than 200,000 Americans, giving the drugmaker marketing exclusivity for seven years in the United States.

In Europe, the status is granted to drugs treating a condition affecting no more than 5 in 10,000 people in the European Union, and carries a 10-year marketing exclusivity.

Tasimelteon is also being developed as a treatment for Major Depressive Disorder.

Vanda’s schizophrenia drug Fanapt, which is marketed and sold in the United States by Novartis AG, received a negative opinion earlier this month from the European Medicines Agency.

(Reporting by Esha Dey and Vrinda Manocha in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)

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Rush to boost safety sparks flurry of ideas

(Reuters) - They began calling on Friday morning, even before confirmation of the death toll at Sandy Hook Elementary. Principals, district administrators, school police chiefs all asked the same pleading questions: What can we do? How do we stop this? How can we keep our children safe?

Michael Dorn, phone to his ear until 2 a.m., gave them all the same advice: Slow down.

Every horrific school shooting sets off a rush to bolster security, and Dorn, a widely respected school safety consultant, says he has seen hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in the frenzy to upgrade.

Principals spend lavishly on emergency response software, not realizing how impractical it is to fumble with a log-in during a crisis. Districts buy pricey metal detectors, only to switch them off because they cannot afford to deploy staff to do pat-downs and search book bags.

"People are frightened. They're trying so hard," said Dorn, a former schools police chief who runs the nonprofit consulting network Safe Havens International in Macon, Georgia. "But you want to build something that will last decades. Focus on making quality improvements rather than doing it quickly."

The horrific toll in Newtown has prompted administrators across the U.S. to reassess their safety protocols. Some have found obvious deficiencies that will take money to fix, such as classroom doors that don't lock. Bu t in many cases, security experts say districts can strengthen safety on campus without big spending.

In a survey conducted by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009 -- the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings -- fully a third of educators admitted they sometimes propped open doors to their schools, potentially giving intruders easy access. And almost 40 percent acknowledged they weren't training staff adequately in emergency response.

School safety consultants said such lapses remained common until the Newtown tragedy snapped administrators out of their complacency. "We tend to let our guard down as memories fade," said Paul Timm, president of RETA Security Inc, a consulting firm in Lemont, Illinois.

He and others said schools could greatly improve safety with a series of inexpensive measures: Keep all exterior doors shut and locked. Equip recess monitors with walkie-talkies to report signs of trouble. Regularly review emergency plans and practice for a variety of scenarios, not just an active shooter. Train all adults on campus to recognize behavior patterns that could indicate that a student is planning mischief or malice.

Hundreds of school districts and colleges across the U.S. have also adopted a more controversial approach to safety: teaching staff -- and students -- to fight back in the face of danger.

The ALICE protocol, developed a decade ago by a former police officer in response to a series of school shootings, rejects as inadequate the traditional response to an armed intruder, which prompts teachers and students to lock themselves in their classroom, turn out the lights and hide as best they can.

Greg Crane, the retired police officer who developed ALICE, says rather than fall back on that response, students and teachers must develop the confidence that allows them to think on their feet.

If they can escape the building quickly, through a window perhaps, why huddle in a darkened classroom? And if an intruder enters the classroom, why remain passive; why not run around, scream, throw books and desks at the gunman, even try to tackle him, Crane asks.

"If a predator tried to snatch a child off the street, what part of our advice is for him to remain quiet, static, passive?" Crane asked. "We want you throwing things, yelling, trying to get out of there," he said. The same should hold in a classroom, he said, arguing that even 5- and 6-year-olds can cause enough distraction to confuse a gunman and perhaps buy a few minutes for escape.

"Chaos is not a bad thing," Crane said. "We want to see chaos. That makes it very difficult for the shooter to operate."

The ALICE program -- it stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate -- has sparked concern in some communities, with parents protesting that terrified children can't be asked to confront crazed gunmen or make snap decisions about escape routes.

But Crane said his company, Response Options, which is based in Burleson, Texas, has been flooded with calls since Friday from officials eager to sign up for his $400 training workshop, which prepares participants to teach ALICE to students and teachers in their communities.

While the tragedy at Sandy Hook focused attention on the danger of armed intruders, safety consultants cautioned that schools must also remain vigilant about internal threats from students who may feel alienated or may be struggling with mental illness.

"The ultimate in safety is caring about one another and kids trusting you with information," said Bill Bond, a security consultant with the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Bond was the principal at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997, when a student opened fire on a morning prayer circle, killing three girls. He advocates programs that connect children with adult mentors.

Such connections are harder to maintain in an era of tight budgets, however. There is just one school counselor for every 471 students in the U.S.; a few years ago, the ratio was 1 to 457, according to the American School Counselor Association. Faced with tight budgets, some districts have asked every adult connected with the school, including bus drivers, custodians and cafeteria workers, to pitch in with mentoring and monitoring kids.

"People want to be able to say, if we just do X, Y and Z in every school in America, we'll stop these," said Dorn, the security consultant in Georgia. There is no such solution, he said. Each school, and each threat, is too different.

But Dorn said he understands why the school officials who call him up are so eager to do something, anything, at once. "I have a 4-year-old. I took him to school this morning," Dorn said. "I understand the fear." (Reporting By Stephanie Simon. Editing by Douglas Royalty)

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Judge rejects Apple injunction bid vs. Samsung

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday denied Apple Inc‘s request for a permanent injunction against Samsung Electronics‘ smartphones, depriving the iPhone maker of key leverage in the mobile patent wars.

Apple had been awarded $ 1.05 billion in damages in August after a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the iPhone and iPad. The Samsung products run on the Android operating system, developed by Google.

Apple and Samsung are going toe-to-toe in a patents dispute that mirrors the struggle for industry supremacy between the two companies, which control more than half of worldwide smartphone sales.

For most of the year, Apple had been successful in its U.S. litigation campaign against Samsung. Apple convinced U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California to impose two pretrial sales bans against Samsung — one against the Galaxy Tab 10.1, and the other against the Galaxy Nexus phone.

Apple then sought to keep up the pressure after its sweeping jury win. It asked Koh to impose a permanent sales ban against 26 mostly older Samsung phones, though any injunction could potentially have been extended to Samsung’s newer Galaxy products.

Yet the jury exonerated Samsung on the patent used to ban Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales, and Koh rescinded that injunction. Then, in October, a federal appeals court reversed Koh’s ban against the Nexus phone.

In her order late on Monday, Koh cited that appellate ruling as binding legal precedent, ruling that Apple had not presented enough evidence that its patented features drove consumer demand for the entire iPhone.

“The phones at issue in this case contain a broad range of features, only a small fraction of which are covered by Apple’s patents,” Koh wrote.

“Though Apple does have some interest in retaining certain features as exclusive to Apple,” she continued, “it does not follow that entire products must be forever banned from the market because they incorporate, among their myriad features, a few narrow protected functions.”

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on Koh’s ruling, and a Samsung representative could not immediately be reached.

In a separate order on Monday, Koh rejected a bid by Samsung for a new trial based on an allegation that the jury foreman was improperly biased in favor of Apple.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Apple Inc. vs. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in Oakland, California; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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Participant Media plans cable TV network targeting millenials

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Entertainment company Participant Media, one of the backers of the hit historical drama “Lincoln”, will launch a cable TV network next summer with programming that focuses on social issues of interest to the millenials generation of teens and young adults.

The channel’s original programming, films and documentaries will be aimed at viewers age 18 to 34 in the large demographic group known as millenials, Participant Media CEO Jim Berk said in an interview on Monday.

Millenials are particularly interested in the type of content that Participant produces about social issues, Berk said. The studio’s credits include the current release “Lincoln”, about President Abraham Lincoln‘s push to ban slavery, last year’s civil rights drama “The Help” and Al Gore climate change documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Participant Media is creating the new network by purchasing two existing cable channels, The Documentary Channel and Halogen TV. After those networks are combined and rebranded, the new channel will reach an estimated 40 million of the more than 100 million U.S. pay-TV subscribers.

The company, founded by billionaire and former eBay Inc President Jeff Skoll with the aim of producing entertaining content that inspires social change, interacts regularly with more than 2.5 million people through social media, local movie screenings and its Takepart.com website, Berk said.

The challenge for Participant will be to sign up additional pay-TV distributors and win viewership in a crowded media landscape. The company is privately held and is not part of a large media conglomerate.

“We have the funding necessary to take a very long-term view, and to spend what we need to spend in terms of programming,” Berk said.

The mainstay of the network’s lineup will be original programming from a variety of genres, said Evan Shapiro, a Participant executive who will run the new network.

The company is developing programming with established Hollywood names including former MTV President Brian Graden, “Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim and documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock.

Participant also hopes to work with pay-TV distributors to make the channel’s content available on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, to meet the viewing patterns of younger audiences, Shapiro said.

(Reporting By Lisa Richwine; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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Bird flu kills 4-year-old boy in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A 4-year-old Indonesian boy has died from bird flu, bringing the death toll to 160 in the world’s hardest-hit country.

Health Ministry official Rita Kusriastuti said Tuesday that the boy died Dec. 6 in Tangerang city, just west of Jakarta, the capital. He developed symptoms of a cold and fever on Nov. 30 and was treated at a public health center before being hospitalized the same day he died.

Kusriastuti said the boy, from the West Java district of Bogor, was believed to have been infected with the H5N1 virus after having direct contact with dead fowl around his house.

Bird flu has killed at least 360 people worldwide since 2003. It remains hard for people to catch, but experts fear it could mutate into a more deadly form.

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Fate of massacre site can help healing

AURORA, Colo. (AP) — As Newtown, Conn., grieves the deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, victims' families and residents will eventually have to decide what to do with the building and how to memorialize the fallen.

Will they decide to demolish the school where authorities say Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults before killing himself? Or just the parts where he opened fire? Will there be a memorial on school grounds, or in town? Or both?

Whatever they choose, it will give them a measure of control over a situation in which they have had very little, said Dr. Louis Kraus, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

"To be able to have some control and say in that process I think is going to be very important" to the healing process, he said.

Here's a look at what communities that have faced deadly mass shootings have done:

— After a white supremacist opened fire in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., in August, killing six people and injuring four, temple officials held a purifying ceremony and removed bloodstained carpeting, repaired shattered windows and painted over gunfire-scarred walls.

But they left one reminder of the violence — a dime-size bullet hole in the door jamb leading to the prayer room. The hole is now marked with a small gold plate engraved with "We Are One. 8-5-12."

"It frames the wound," Pardeep Kaleka, son of former temple president Satwant Singh Kaleka, who died in the massacre, said recently. "The wound of our community, the wound of our family, the wound of our society."

— After a gunman killed 12 people at a midnight showing of the Batman movie in Aurora, Colo., more than 70 percent of the 6,300 people who responded to an online survey wanted the theater reopened.

A memorial that sprang up near the theater is gone but a new sign offers sympathy to those suffering from the nation's latest mass shooting —"Newtown, CT We feel your pain."

— In Norway, extensive remodeling is planned on the small island of Utoya, where 69 people, more than half of them teenagers attending summer camp, were killed by a far-right gunman in 2011.

Utoya's main building, a cafeteria where 13 of the victims were shot to death, will be torn down and replaced by a cluster of new buildings surrounding a square, creating the feel of a "small village," project manager Joergen Frydnes said.

The idea is to bring back the positive atmosphere that characterized Utoya before the tragedy, he said. There was no summer camp this year and it's unclear when the left-wing youth group will be back at Utoya for what used to be its annual highlight.

Frydnes said it will happen, eventually.

— At Virginia Tech, the scene of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a classroom building where a student gunman killed 30 people in April 2007 is now home to the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.

A dormitory where the two other students were killed has been turned into a residential college. The gunman killed himself.

As at many other scenes of mass shootings, a memorial was created on the campus' main lawn recreating the 32 stones — one for each person killed — placed there in the hours after tragedy.

— In Pennsylvania, an Amish community quickly decided that removing a schoolhouse where five girls were killed and five others were wounded in October 2006 by a gunman would be the best way to help bring resolution, mainly out of sensitivity to their children.

Ten days after the shooting, heavy machinery moved in before dawn to demolish the West Nickel Mines Amish School, making the site indistinguishable from the surrounding pasture.

New Hope Amish School, its replacement with added security features, was built a few hundred yards away and opened April 2, 2007 — six months to the day after the massacre.

— After a man killed 16 children and a teacher at a primary school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland, before turning the gun on himself, authorities demolished the gym.

The site of the gym is now a small garden that includes a plaque with the names of all the victims, most of whom were aged 5. A new gym was built on the school grounds.

Two miles from the school, on the outskirts of the town, is a community center built after a vote on how to spend the money donated from well-wishers around the world.

On the night of the Newtown shooting, some people came to the center and lit candles, said Stewart Prodger, a trustee of the charity that runs the center.

— After two students went on a deadly rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in April 1999, students finished the year at another school. Columbine reopened in time for the following school year after extensive repairs.

"The intent of the school district is to put this back as a high school," Jack Swanzy, lead architect on the refurbishing project, said at the time. "We don't want to make it a shrine to the tragedy."

School district officials originally considered remodeling and reopening the second-floor library, where most of the students were killed, but parents objected and asked that it be demolished and replaced.

The district eventually agreed and the old library, which sat above the school cafeteria, was removed and the space converted into an atrium.

A memorial to those killed — 12 students and a teacher — opened years later on a hill above the school. The broad oval sunken into the rolling terrain still attracts people.

On Friday, after the Newtown shooting, Amber Essman, 24, made her first visit. She was in grade school at the time of the shooting and had been hesitant to visit before because of the emotions it would bring up.

She wanted to pay belated respects to those killed at Columbine and provide some comfort to their families. "They need comfort and peace today in addition to the families in Connecticut that have been affected," she said.

___

Associated Press writers Karl Ritter in Stockholm, Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee, Michael Felberbaum in Richmond, Va., Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pa., and Ben McConville in Edinburgh, Scotland, contributed to this report.

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Egyptians hand Islamists narrow win in constitution vote

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptians voted in favor of a constitution shaped by Islamists but opposed by other groups who fear it will divide the Arab world’s biggest nation, officials in rival camps said on Sunday after the first round of a two-stage referendum.

Next week’s second round is likely to give another “yes” vote as it includes districts seen as more sympathetic towards Islamists, analysts say, meaning the constitution would be approved.

But the narrow win so far gives Islamist President Mohamed Mursi only limited grounds for celebration by showing the wide rifts in a country where he needs to build a consensus for tough economic reforms.

The Muslim Brotherhood‘s party, which propelled Mursi to office in a June election, said 56.5 percent backed the text. Official results are not expected until after the next round.

While an opposition official conceded the “yes” camp appeared to have won the first round, the opposition National Salvation Front said in a statement that voting abuses meant a rerun was needed – although it did not explicitly challenge the Brotherhood‘s vote tally.

Rights groups reported abuses such as polling stations opening late, officials telling people how to vote and bribery. They also criticized widespread religious campaigning which portrayed “no” voters as heretics.

A joint statement by seven human rights groups urged the referendum’s organizers “to avoid these mistakes in the second stage of the referendum and to restage the first phase again”.

Mursi and his backers say the constitution is vital to move Egypt’s democratic transition forward. Opponents say the basic law is too Islamist and tramples on minority rights, including those of Christians who make up 10 percent of the population.

The build-up to Saturday’s vote was marred by deadly protests. Demonstrations erupted when Mursi awarded himself extra powers on November 22 and then fast-tracked the constitution through an assembly dominated by his Islamist allies.

However, the vote passed off calmly with long queues in Cairo and several other places, though unofficial tallies indicated turnout was around a third of the 26 million people eligible to vote this time. The vote was staggered because many judges needed to oversee polling staged a boycott in protest.

The opposition had said the vote should not have been held given the violent protests. Foreign governments are watching closely how the Islamists, long viewed warily in the West, handle themselves in power.

“It’s wrong to have a vote or referendum with the country in the state it is – blood and killings, and no security,” said Emad Sobhy, a voter who lives in Cairo. “Holding a referendum with the country as it is cannot give you a proper result.”

INCREASINGLY DIVIDED

As polls closed, Islamists attacked the offices of the newspaper of the liberal Wafd party, part of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition that pushed for a “no” vote.

“The referendum was 56.5 percent for the ‘yes’ vote,” a senior official in the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party operations room set up to monitor voting told Reuters.

The Brotherhood and its party had representatives at polling stations across the 10 areas, including Cairo, in this round. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the tally was based on counts from more than 99 percent of polling stations.

“The nation is increasingly divided and the pillars of state are swaying,” opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei wrote on Twitter. “Poverty and illiteracy are fertile grounds for trading with religion. The level of awareness is rising fast.”

One opposition official also told Reuters the vote appeared to have gone in favor of Islamists who backed the constitution.

The opposition initially said its exit polls indicated the “no” camp would win comfortably, but officials changed tack during the night. One opposition official said in the early hours of Sunday that it would be “very close”.

A narrow loss could still hearten leftists, socialists, Christians and more liberal-minded Muslims who make up the disparate opposition, which has been beaten in two elections since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown last year.

They were drawn together to oppose what they saw as a power grab by Mursi as he pushed through the constitution. The National Salvation Front includes prominent figures such as ElBaradei, former Arab League chief Amr Moussa and firebrand leftist Hamdeen Sabahy.

If the constitution is approved, a parliamentary election will follow early next year.

DEADLY VIOLENCE

Analysts question whether the opposition group will keep together until the parliamentary election. The Islamist-dominated lower house of parliament elected earlier this year was dissolved based on a court order in June.

Violence in Cairo and other cities has plagued the run-up to the referendum. At least eight people were killed when rival camps clashed during demonstrations outside the presidential palace earlier this month.

In order to pass, the constitution must be approved by more than 50 percent of those casting ballots. There are 51 million eligible voters in the nation of 83 million.

Islamists have been counting on their disciplined ranks of supporters and on Egyptians desperate for an end to turmoil that has hammered the economy and sent Egypt’s pound to eight-year lows against the dollar.

The army deployed about 120,000 troops and 6,000 tanks and armored vehicles to protect polling stations and other government buildings. While the military backed Mubarak and his predecessors, it has not intervened in the present crisis.

(Additional reporting Yasmin Saleh and Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair and Giles Elgood; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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