Sequestration could mean across-the-board pain

(CBS News) WASHINGTON - The entire economy is headed for trouble in just eight days -- when massive across-the-board cuts in the federal budget are scheduled to kick in automatically. The cuts were designed to be so deep and harmful, that they would force the president and Congress to find a better way. But they haven't. Just for example, there would be $46 billion cut from the Defense Department and benefit cuts for 4.7 million long-term unemployed.

The FBI says the budget cuts would require all employees, including special agents, to be furloughed for up to 14 days.

Referring to the FBI's top managers, Jan Fedarcyk, the former head of the New York field office of the agency, said: "I'm sure they are most worried about, 'What does this mean in the national security arena?' That's probably at the top of the list, a discussion about maintaining our counter-terrorism operations."

Watch CBS News correspondent David Martin's report on the impact the sequester cuts could have on those who work for the Department of Defense:

Most of the cuts would not take effect immediately on March 1 -- they would be phased in slowly over several months. And they could be avoided if Congress and the president could agree to a deal. But if they can't, the cuts will be painful.

Thousands of security screeners at the nation's airports would also be furloughed. Wait times at the busiest airports could increase by up to an hour.

Boehner, WH trade blame for sequester

Dickerson: Obama has stronger hand in sequester fight
Will sequestration really be that bad?

About 70,000 children would be dropped from Head Start.

About 600,000 women and young children would be cut from a major nutrition program.

Millions of the nation's long-term unemployed would lose an average of more than $400 in benefits.

On the health front, the FDA says furloughs would result in 2,100 fewer inspections of food plants, increasing the risk of food-borne illness. And medical research could be cut by $1.6 billion, slowing progress in the fight against disease, including cancer and Alzheimer's.

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would largely be spared. But critics of the whole process say that is a fundamental flaw because entitlement programs are a major driver of the national debt.

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Arias Leaves Stand After Describing Killing, Her Lies

Jodi Arias stepped down from the witness stand today after mounting an emotional effort to save herself from death row, insisting to the Arizona jury that an explosive fight with ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander led to his death, and that her lies about killing him masked deep regret and plans to commit suicide.

Arias, 32, will now face what is expected to be a withering cross-examination beginning Thursday from prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has been aggressive to many witnesses throughout the trial and who is expected to go after Arias' claim that she was forced to kill Alexander or be killed herself.

She is charged with murder for her ex-boyfriend's death and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

The day's dramatic testimony started with Arias describing the beginning of the fight on June 4, 2008 when she and Alexander were taking nude photos in his shower and she claims she accidentally dropped his new camera, causing Alexander to lose his temper. Enraged, he picked her up and body slammed her onto the tile floor, screaming at her, she told the jury.

Arias said she ran to his closet to get away from him, but could hear Alexander's footsteps coming after her down the hall. She grabbed a gun from his shelf and tried to keep running, but Alexander came after her, she said.

"I pointed it at him with both of my hands. I thought that would stop him, but he just kept running. He got like a linebacker. He got low and grabbed my waist, and as he was lunging at me the gun went off. I didn't mean to shoot. I didn't even think I was holding the trigger," she said.

"But he lunged at me and we fell really hard toward the tile wall, so at this point I didn't even know if he had been shot. I didn't see anything different. We were struggling, wrestling, he's a wrestler.

"So he's grabbing at my clothes and I got up, and he's screaming angry, and after I broke away from him. He said 'f***ing kill you bitch,'" she testified.

Asked by her lawyer whether she was convinced Alexander intended to kill her, Arias answered, "For sure. He'd almost killed me once before and now he's saying he was going to." Arias had earlier testified that Alexander had once choked her.

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Jodi Arias Describes Violent Sex Before Shooting Watch Video

Jodi Arias Testifies Ex Assaulted Her, Broke Her Fingers Watch Video

Jodi Arias Gives Explicit Details About Doomed Relationship Watch Video

But Arias' story of the death struggle ended there as she told the court that she has no memory of stabbing or slashing Alexander whose body was later found with 27 stab wounds, a slit throat and two bullets in his head. She said she only remembered standing in the bathroom, dropping the knife on the tile floor, realizing the "horror" of what had happened, and screaming.

"I have no memory of stabbing him," she said. "There's a huge gap. I don't know if I blacked out or what, but there's a huge gap. The most clear memory I have after that point is driving in the desert."

Arias said that she decided in the desert not to admit to killing Alexander, a decision that would last for two years as Arias lied to friends, family, investigators and reporters about what really happened in Alexander's bathroom.

During that time she initially claimed she got lost that night while driving to a friend's house and never went to Alexander's home in Mesa,Ariz. She later changed her story and said two masked people, a man and a woman, burst into the home and killed Alexander and threatened to kill her family if she told anyone what happened.

She eventually confessed to killing her ex-boyfriend, but insisted it was self defense.

"The main reason (for lying) is because I was very ashamed of what happened. It's not something I ever imagined doing. It's not the kind of person I was. It was just shameful," she said. "I was also very scared of what might happen. I didn't want my family to know that I had done that, and I just couldn't bring myself to say that I did that."

"From day one there was a part of me that always wanted to (tell the truth) but didn't dare do that. I would rather have gone to my grave than admit I had done something like that," she said.

Arias said that she continued to lie because she figured she would never get caught; she was planning to kill herself before trial.

"I was concerned with how it would affect my family. I wanted to die. I was going to definitely kill myself," she said. "That was my plan. You can purchase different things in jail and I bought a bunch of Advil... and took it all in the next few days so it was in my system. They have razors for shaving, so I got one and took it apart one night with intentions to slit my wrists."

Arias said she balked at slitting her wrists after accidentally cutting herself, but that she still planned to commit suicide sometime in the future. When she told news reporters that "no jury would convict her," she claims she said it believing that she would be dead before they'd have a chance to put her on trial, Arias testified.

Arias said support from the public and her family eventually led her to change her mind.

"My family remained very supportive, and told me 'it doesn't matter what happens, we love you anyway.' I realized even if I told the truth they would still be there and wouldn't walk away," she testified.

"By the time spring, 2010, rolled around, I confessed. I basically told everyone what I could remember of the day and that the intruder story was all BS pretty much."

She said that her testimony today, a third version of events, was the truth.

Arias was arrested a month after Alexander's death, and prosecutors have argued that her behavior during those weeks showed a lack of remorse for the killing and an attempt to get away with murder.

Arias said today that after she killed Alexander and drove away from his Mesa, Ariz., home in a panic, it dawned on her that police would soon be looking for Alexander's killer, and she decided that she would pretend the bloody confrontation had never happened.

"I knew that it was really bad, that my life was probably done now. I wished it was just a nightmare I could wake up from, but I knew I had messed up pretty badly and the inevitable was going to be something I could not really run from," she testified.

"I didn't want anyone to know that that had happened or that I did it, so I started taking steps in the aftermath to cover it up. I did a whole bunch of things to try to make it seem like I was never there," she said.

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French general urges EU to equip "impoverished" Mali army

BAMAKO, Mali (Reuters) - The European Union should complement a mission to train Mali's army, routed by rebels last year, by providing equipment from uniforms to vehicles and communications technology, a French general said on Wednesday.

General Francois Lecointre, appointed to head the EU training mission to Mali (EUTM) that was formally launched this week, said in Bamako equipping the "very impoverished" and disorganized Malian army was as important as training it.

Europe, along with the United States, has backed the French-led military intervention in Mali which since January 11 has driven al Qaeda-allied Islamist insurgents out of the main northern towns into remote mountains near Algeria's border.

European governments have ruled out sending combat troops to join French and African soldiers pursuing the Islamist rebels.

But the EU is providing a 500-strong multinational training force that will give military instruction to Malian soldiers for an initial period of 15 months at an estimated cost of 12.3 million euros ($16.45 million).

While hailing what he called the EU's "courageous, novel, historic" decision to support Mali, Lecointre told a news conference the Malian army's lack of equipment was a problem.

"I know the Malian state is poor, but the Malian army is more than poor," the French general told a news conference, adding that it urgently needed everything from uniforms and weapons to vehicles and communications equipment.

Last year, when Tuareg separatist forces swelled by weapons and fighters from the Libyan conflict swept out of the northern deserts, a demoralized and poorly-led Malian army collapsed and fled before them, abandoning arms and vehicles.

Mali's military was further shaken by a March 22 coup by junior officers who toppled President Amadou Toumani Toure, sowing division among rival army factions. Islamist radicals allied to al Qaeda later hijacked the victorious Tuareg rebellion to occupy the northern half of the country.

In a fast-charging military campaign led by Paris, French and African troops have driven the jihadists out of principal northern towns like Gao and Timbuktu, and are fighting the rebels in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.

HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUCTION

Flanked by Mali's armed forces chief, General Ibrahima Dembele, Lecointre said he was disappointed that a meeting of international donors last month pledged funds for an African military force, known as AFISMA, being deployed in Mali, but included "very few" contributions for the Malian army itself.

"The European Union needs to invest today in the equipping of the Malian army and not just in its training," the general said, adding he would make this point strongly in a report to EU member state representatives early next month.

Asked how much re-equipping the army would cost, he said it would be "much more" than the 12 million euros of EU financing for the training mission, but could not give a precise estimate.

Starting early in April, the EU mission will start instructing Malian soldiers with a plan to train four new battalions of 600-700 members each, formed from existing enlisted men and new recruits.

Lecointre said the EU training would include instruction in human rights. Demands for this increased after allegations by Malian civilians and international human rights groups that Malian soldiers were executing Tuaregs and Arabs accused of collaborating with Islamist rebels.

The European training contingent is drawn from a range of European countries, but the main contributors would be France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain, EUTM officers said.

Mali's army has received foreign training before - several battalions that fled before the rebels last year were trained by the U.S. military and the leader of the March 22 coup, Captain Amadou Sanogo, attended training courses in the United States.

Dembele said U.S. training failed to forge cohesion among Malian units and he hoped the EU training would achieve this.

The United States, which halted direct support for the Malian military after last year's coup, could eventually resume aid if planned national elections in July fully restore democracy to the West African country.

Washington is providing airlift, refuelling and intelligence support to the French-led military intervention in Mali. ($1 = 0.7479 euros)

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Jason Webb)

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Oscar hopeful Haneke fears failure with Mozart

MADRID: Although he is nursing hopes of an Oscar, Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke says he feels doomed to failure with his latest project -- a staging of a Mozart opera in Spain.

"Amour", Haneke's film about an ageing couple that won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, is up for five Oscars on Sunday, including for best film and best director.

First, however, the 69-year-old faces another big night -- Saturday's premier of "Cosi Fan Tutte", by his fellow Austrian at Madrid's Teatro Real.

"With Mozart you are condemned to fail. The question is on what level," Haneke, considered one of the greatest and most uncompromising living film-makers, told reporters in Madrid on Wednesday.

"I don't much like talking about opera. I prefer to talk about my films. I see myself more as a film director."

The Madrid show is his second opera project after "Don Giovanni" in Paris in 2007, and "probably my last" before returning to film-making, he added.

"After 'Don Giovanni' I received about 15 offers to direct operas but I rejected them all because I didn't think I was the right person to do them," he said.

Haneke's films such as "The White Ribbon" -- a macabre tale of pre-war Germany for which he won the first of his two Palmes D'Or -- have earned him a reputation for painful subjects.

"Cosi Fan Tutte" is ostensibly a romantic comedy -- the tale of two women who are tricked and tested by their suitors -- but the theatre says its meditation on love and loyalty has its hard side too.

Written by a depressed Mozart when he was having love pains of his own, "Cosi Fan Tutte" is one of the composer's most challenging operas to stage, said the theatre's Belgian director Gerard Mortier.

"It is the most profound and difficult Mozart, with some extraordinarily difficult arias," he said.

Haneke has stage-directed the opera in Madrid under the musical baton of French conductor Sylvain Cambreling.

"Amour" meanwhile examines the intimate life of an elderly man and his dying wife.

"It touches people because it could happen to any family," Haneke said.

"If you are young it could happen to your grandparents. If you're less young, to your parents. And if you're even less young, it could happen to you."

The film is nominated for Oscars in the best film, director, actress, script and foreign film categories.

"I would like to win them all. I would hope to win at least one -- any of them," he said. "I am crossing my fingers."

- AFP/sf

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Making sense of the PS4 game lineup

NEW YORK--So the world didn't exactly get what it wanted out of Sony's PlayStation 4 debut tonight. There was no sight of the actual console itself and details about its specific release date and price were also nowhere to be seen.

Sony's team-up with Gaikai is sure to net some interesting ideas and implementations with cloud streaming, the sharing of game screens, remote play and other concoctions, but it was the games themselves that made the biggest impact.

Those pondering the PS4's gaming prowesses were served an interesting dish. 10 or so major developers were represented in some capacity and on hand to discuss their progress with the new hardware, which consisted of all sorts of fresh media. Some announced new exclusive titles, while others merely showcased proof of concept videos.

So how do these new tidbits of information playout in the grand scheme of things? How does this impact the current PS3 ecosystem and what we (up until now) thought was a concrete list of upcoming software?

Let's take a closer look at each presentation and dig a little deeper. Here are the exclusives:

The first game to debut was Knack, a title being directed by Mark Cerny, who's also the lead on the PS4's hardware. Knack looks like a platform-action title in the vein of Ratchet & Clank or Jak & Daxter and will be an exclusive PS4 title.

Knack

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive)

Guerilla Games' next chapter in the Killzone series will be called Shadow Fall. The audience in New York was treated to visually brilliant flythrough that eventually morphed into an actual demo of the game being played live. It was loud, violent and ultimately not much of a departure from previous titles in the franchise. However, the big takeaway here is that Shadow Fall's massive scope and size could only be achieved on next-gen hardware.

Killzone: Shadow Fall

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive)

From the studio that brought us MotorStorm, the next exclusive to debut was DriveClub, a game that looks to create a never-before-seen racing experience by painstakingly recreating every last possible detail of racing machines. There's also a focus here on multiplayer, specifically 3-on-3 racing.

Next up was inFamous: Second Son, the next-gen effort from Sucker Punch, the studio behind the PS3's duo of inFamous games. Second Son looks to build upon the inFamous universe where normal human beings evolve to harness supernatural powers. Some heavy-duty themes of the cost of freedom and privacy issues came to play in this debut.

Media Molecule, the makers of LittleBigPlanet, showed off some interesting technology as well. Citing the mantra of "the tyranny of the polygon," the team teased what their next project would be by demonstrating the use of a Move controller to sculpt 3D objects and characters in a virtual world.

Media Molecule's sculpting demo

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive)

Wrapping up the short list of announced exclusives was a quick presentation from David Cage, the founder of developer Quantic Dream. His new game, Beyond: Two Souls was announced at last year's E3, but Cage certainly made it seem that the title would see a PS4 release. It's here where we're starting to see a blurring of the PS3/PS4 release calendar and the first of what could be many PS3 titles that actually become PS4 bound.

Indie games had a great night too. Jonathan Blow, the creator of the hit, Braid, was on hand to talk about his next title, The Witness. This wasn't necessarily an announcement, but rather a chance for the world to see much more of a game that doesn't necessarily follow the same formula as most mainstream titles. The Witness will launch along with the PS4, but only with a timed exclusivity.

The Witness

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive)

What followed after Blow's segment was a parade of third party developers chatting up what their studio's were cooking up for PlayStation 4. It's safe to assume these titles will most likely not be totally exclusive to Sony's system.

Capcom unveiled its next-gen engine, codenamed Panta Rhei, and the first title to be released built upon it. Tentatively titled Deep Down, the game looks like it will be some sort of dungeon-raiding adventure title complete with fire-breathing dragons, in-game slo-mo sequences and gorgeous texture renderings.

Deep Down (working title)

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive)

Next up was publisher Square Enix showing off the Luminous Studio engine which was used to provide the attending audience with more of a "what's possible" using PS4 hardware. There was no specific game being announced here, just an over-the-top sequence of magic, gunfighting and brilliant visuals.

Square Enix shows off a proof of concept video

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive)

Ubisoft's time on stage was spent providing a real-time demo of Watch Dogs, the current-gen turned next-gen title that will officially be a PS4 game. Arguably the best demo of the evening, Watch Dogs presents a world where players can hack almost anything in the world around them, using circuit breakers as booby traps and stalling trains to their advantage.

Watch Dogs

(Credit:
Sarah Tew/CBS Interactive)

Blizzard Entertainment made a brief presentation announcing that Diablo III would appear on both the PS3 and PS4.

Finally, Activision spent a few minutes discussing developer Bungie's first foray outside of Microsoft's console, announcing that Destiny will also be a PS3 and PS4 title.

It's tough to completely wrap our heads around the PS3 release calendar and how it will overlap with PS4's. Because the PS4 will not be backwards compatible with PS3 games directly, it's created what is going to be a strange transitional period where we have games available on both platforms. How Gaikai's streaming technology comes into play with PS3 backwards compatibility has still yet to be definitively outlined.

Hopefully this wrap-up provides a bit of clarity to what was certainly an evening of scattered information. It's not worth hoping for things to get much clearer from now until this summer's E3, which should shed much more light on these titles and more.

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What's next in the looming budget crisis?

(CBS News) WASHINGTON -- We are nine days from the next national self-inflicted budget crisis: big, across-the-board cuts in the federal budget will hit automatically on March 1. The cuts are designed to be so deep and damaging that they would force the president and Congress to compromise on a better way.

"These cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls," President Barack Obama said Tuesday. "This is not an abstraction. People will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again."

Watch: Obama warns of the dangers of the "sequester," below.

Obama wants more tax revenue, but Republicans say no. Both sides say it's up to the other to give in.

There will be a continued effort by the White House to apply public pressure on Republicans to relent. This will be done in public, in events such as Obama's speech Tuesday; it's already been done privately.

Top government officials are warning businesses they could be harmed by these looming spending cuts. For example, last Friday, top officials at the Agriculture Department warned meat and poultry producers that there might not be enough federal inspectors to keep their processing plants open and operating.

These are designed to motivate businesses to plead with Republicans to find another way. For now, Republicans appear prepared to take these spending cuts, because they say they will argue to the public they're more serious about deficit reduction than President Obama.

Obama to GOP: Put away the "meat cleaver"
GOP losing faith on sequester alternative?
With sequester looming, Congress takes a break

There are currently no behind-the-scenes negotiations between the White House and Republicans. Republicans say this is President Obama's problem and that he needs to solve it with new spending cuts, because they refuse to raise taxes again this year.

As for talks, the top aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor joked Tuesday that President Obama has spent more time playing golf with Tiger Woods than he has negotiating with congressional Republicans.

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Arias Says Violent Sex Preceded Killing

Jodi Arias and her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander,, had increasingly violent sex in which he tied her to his bed, twisted her arm, bent her over a desk for anal sex, and made sex videos with her in the hours leading up to the stabbing and shooting frenzy that left Alexander dead.

It was a day in which Arias, 32, inched closer to telling the court how the killing of Alexander took place, but after several hours of increasingly emotional testimony the court was adjourned until Wednesday.

In her sixth day on the stand, Arias tearfully described the sex-filled hours that led to Alexander's death on June 4, 2008. She is charged with murder for killing her former boyfriend, but claims she was forced to kill him self-defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted.

"He tied me up, (on) the bed. It's not my favorite but it's not unbearable," Arias told the court.

She said he used a kitchen knife in the bathroom to cut the rope to the proper length, but she didn't remember whether he left the knife in the bathroom or brought it back to the nightstand in the bedroom.

"There are a lot gaps that day... a lot of things I don't remember that day," she said.

Arias and Alexander then took graphic sexual photos of one another and made a sex video, both of which Arias said were Alexander's ideas. Arias has girlish braids in the pictures.

But the mood of the afternoon turned, she said, when Alexander became angry over a scratched computer disk of photos she gave him. He threw the CD and Arias said she became "apprehensive" of his rising temper.

"I know he's getting angry because Napoleon [Alexander's dog] got up and left the room and he always leaves the room when he gets mad." she testified.

"I don't know that I was consciously thinking (of violence) but I was more tense. I stood up, went to walk over to him, to rub his back and make sure he was okay," she said. "But he grabbed me on the upper arms, spun me around and grabbed my right arm and twisted it behind my back, and bent me over the desk, and pressed up against me."

Charlie Leight/Pool/The Arizona Republic/AP Photo

Jodi Arias Gives Explicit Details About Doomed Relationship Watch Video

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Why She Said She Did It Watch Video

Jodi Arias Tells How She Met Ex-Boyfriend on Stand Watch Video

"I was scared he was going to throw me or something, kick me," she continued. "He pressed his groin up against my butt, did a few thrusts and then started pulling my pants down."

The pair then had anal sex, which Arias said pacified Alexander.

"I was very relieved. I felt like we had avoided catastrophe. It could have led to another fight," she said.

Instead of a fight, Alexander, who was 27 and a devout Mormon, and Arias decide to go upstairs and take more nude photos of one another. Arias said she hoped the photos would satisfy Alexander over his frustration with the scratched CD.

Evidence introduced earlier in the trial show that Alexander was killed while Arias was photographing Alexander in the shower.

Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage

Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial

Earlier, Arias explained that she wasn't planning to visit Alexander during her roadtrip from her home in California, but was convinced by him to spontaneously take a detour to his house for sex and to hang out.

"The very last time I called Travis it was kind of like, I don't know how to describe it, he had been very sweet and was guilting me and making me feel bad that I was taking this big trip without going to see him," Arias said this afternoon.

"When I called him last time it was just like all right, I'm going," she said. "(Sex) was our thing at that time. I wasn't going to go there, stay the night and not do that."

Arias' attorney, Kirk Nurmi, asked her repeatedly on the stand if Arias brought a gun or knife with her on the roadtrip and to Alexander's house. She said that she did not.

She also denied a series of allegations made by the prosecution that she dyed her hair, rented an inconspicuous car, borrowed gas cans, turned off her cell phone, and switched money around her bank accounts as she left for Alexander's house because she was planning to murder him when she got there.

Arias said that her hair remained the same color, auburn-brown, throughout May and June, that she rented a car because her own car was not stable enough for highway travel, that she requested a white car instead of a red one because police pull red ones over more often, and that she transferred money to a business banking account for a tax write-off to classify it as a business trip.

The testimony about the road trip and Arias' planning could be key to the jury as they decide whether the killing was pre-meditated, as the prosecution claims. Arias could face the death penalty if convicted of murder with aggravating factors such as pre-meditation.

Arias said that she "didn't sleep at all last night" before testifying about the dramatic incident today. Her comment was stricken from the record.

Arias also described a barrage of threatening text messages sent by Alexander in which he told her he would exact "revenge" on her soon and called her a "sociopath."

She told the court that Alexander's temper would make her "cower."

The messages show a growing discord between the pair in April 2008, less than two months before Arias killed Alexander.

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Tunisian PM quits after failing to form new government

TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned on Tuesday after failing to replace a government pulled apart by acrimony between his Islamist allies and their secular opponents.

Jebali had threatened to quit if his plan for a non-partisan cabinet of technocrats to lead the north African country into early elections foundered.

In the end it was his own party, Ennahda, that rejected the proposal, prolonging the political stand-off that has cast a shadow over Tunisia's fledgling democracy and deepened an economic crisis.

"I vowed that if my initiative did not succeed, I would resign and ... I have already done so," Jebali told a news conference after meeting with President Moncef Marzouki.

Tunisia's deepest political crisis since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali began when leading secular opposition politician Chokri Belaid was gunned down outside his home in Tunis on February 6.

No one claimed responsibility for the killing, but it deepened the misgivings of secularists who believe Jebali's government has failed to deal firmly enough with religious extremists threatening the country's stability.

Protesters poured onto the streets in the following days and Marzouki's secularist party threatened to quit the coalition government.

Jebali said he would try to form a cabinet of apolitical technocrats to restore calm and take Tunisia to elections, but did not consult his Ennahda allies or their secular coalition partners before making the proposal.

Several secular politicians backed the plan but Ennahda, winner of most parliamentary seats in elections that followed Ben Ali's overthrow, opposed the idea, fearing it would be sidelined from power.

Jebali bet his own job on the outcome, saying he would quit if he was rebuffed, and lost.

He quits 15 months into the job, although political experts said Marzouki was likely to re-appoint him as caretaker premier before a new leader is appointed.

Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi has said he wants to see Jebali head a new coalition. President Marzouki was due to meet Ghannouchi on Wednesday to ask him to name a prime minister.

But Jebali, announcing his resignation late on Tuesday, said he would not lead another government without assurances on the timing of fresh elections and a new constitution.

No government would be viable without Ennahda's blessing given its strength in parliament.

Ghannouchi has said it is essential that Islamists and secular parties share power now and in the future, and that his party was willing to compromise over control of important ministries such as foreign affairs, justice and interior.

"Ennahda is in negotiations with political parties to form a national coalition government", said Fethi Ayadi, a senior Ennahda official.

Iyed Dahmani, a leader of the secular Republican Party, said some kind of agreement was vital.

"We are in real trouble, politically and economically," he said.

The crisis has disrupted efforts to revitalize an economy hit hard by the disorder that followed the overthrow of veteran strongman Ben Ali.

Tunisia has been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund for a $1.78 billion loan and politicians said Jebali's inability to re-establish a functioning government had slowed efforts to restore normality.

Credit rating service Standard and Poor's said on Tuesday it had lowered its long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit rating on Tunisia, citing "a risk that the political situation could deteriorate further amid a worsening fiscal, external and economic outlook".

(Reporting By Tarek Amara; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

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Scuffles at Dutch MP Wilders' Australia event

MELBOURNE: Mounted police restored order as scuffles broke out outside an Australian venue where Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders was speaking, but authorities said on Wednesday that no arrests were made.

Populist Wilders spoke on Tuesday night in Melbourne, receiving a standing ovation from several hundred people who had heard him warn that mass migration from Islamic nations could change Australia.

Police horses were brought to the Melbourne venue as protesters attempted to block the entrance, but there were no major incidents.

"We didn't have any arrests made," a Victoria police spokeswoman told AFP.

Wilders is also due to speak in Sydney on Friday, but an event in the western city of Perth has been cancelled after a venue could not be found to host the controversial politician.

The right-wing MP said at a press conference ahead of his Melbourne engagement that while he wanted a ban on Islamic immigration, he was not trying to incite violence.

"If you think that what has happened in Europe will not happen to Australia, then you are totally wrong," he said.

While he admitted most Muslims were not extremists, he added: "Islam and freedom are incompatible."

"It's bad if you have the crazy idea that all cultures are equal," he added. "Islam really is not part of our culture."

Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu has urged people to ignore the Dutchman while the Islamic Council of Victoria said it trusted the community would "see through his hateful speech and dismiss it for the empty rhetoric that it is".

- AFP/gn

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HTC One takes display pixel density crown

The HTC One has one eye-popping display.

(Credit:
HTC)

The HTC One has taken the pixel density crown, leaving phones like Retina iPhone 5 in the dust.

First, to get a sense of the HTC One screen's density, a quick comparison to Microsoft's Surface Pro, which has also been praised for its display chops, puts this into perspective.

The Surface Pro packs a resolution of 1,920x1,080 into a 10.6-inch panel. One of the highest pixel densities (208 pixels per inch, to be exact) for a
Windows 8 PC to date.

The HTC One packs that same resolution (1,920x1,080) into a 4.7-inch screen. That's more than 2 million pixels, yielding 468 pixels per inch (ppi).

"That makes it the current record holder for announced/shipping consumer products," Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate, told CNET.

Some products get close, though. Last summer, Sharp and LG announced a new class of very high-ppi displays with 440ppi, which is 1,920x1,080 in a 5-inch (phablet) size, Soneira added.

The first shipping product in the U.S. with this display is the
HTC Droid DNA, which began shipping in December and it has a Sharp display, according to Soneira.

And other manufacturers including Samsung are working on this new format. And LG is now also shipping a 440 ppi display, which, though a slightly lower pixel density, is "visually indistinguishable" from HTC One's display, he said.

Close up of HTC One's icons.

(Credit:
HTC)

Sharp is making its 440+ ppi screens using a technology called Continuous Grain Silicon. "It has higher electron mobility than either IGZO or amorphous silicon, which allows for maximum aperture ratio/light transmission," according to Soneira.

Translation: More light can get through the closely packed pixels than conventional technology, leading to brighter very-high-resolution screens.

And what about the inevitable comparison to Apple's Retina display tech?

"Now 468 ppi is substantially higher than the
iPhone 5's 326 ppi. What does that mean visually? In terms of what Apple calls a Retina Display (equivalent to 20/20 Vision), for 20/20 Vision, 10.5 inches is the viewing distance where the eye can just resolve the individual iPhone 326 ppi pixels for people with standard 20/20 Vision."

Soneira continues. "For 468 ppi, the 20/20 Vision pixel resolution distance is 7.4 inches -- much closer than a typical viewing distance for a 4.7 inch display. Watching further away from the minimum viewing distance means the eye can't resolve the pixels and so the high ppi is often wasted."

But not always. "The only place where [this]...level of sharpness is important is for computer generated text and graphics. Where 440 ppi [and above] will make a difference is when people are intently visually studying the display image for fine image details," he said.

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