Egypt's army has plans to push Mohamed Mursi aside and suspend the constitution after an all but impossible ultimatum it has given the Islamist president expires in less than 24 hours, military sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

CAIRO - President Mohamed Mursi clings to office after rebuffing an army ultimatum to force a resolution to Egypt's political crisis, and the ruling Muslim Brotherhood seeks to mass its supporters to defend him. 

Egyptian military gives government 48 hour ultimatum

The Egyptian armed forces have given the government two days to reach an agreement with protesters, who want President Mohammed Morsi to resign. The news came shortly after several cabinet members stepped down.

Vatican bank directors step down

The director and the deputy director of the Vatican Bank have resigned. This comes three days after a Vatican official was arrested in a financial scandal as the pope seeks to clean up the bank.

Portugal finance chief resigns

Vitor Gaspar has resigned his post as Portugal's widely reviled finance minister. Critics have singled him out as one of the key driving forces behind the country's harsh austerity policies.

Thousands of protesters opposing Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi have gathered on Cairo’s Tahrir Square ahead of mass rallies. Many fear the protests could turn deadly.

Waving Egyptian flags as patriotic songs blasted from speakers, protesters chanted "the people want the ouster of the regime" - a catchphrase used during the 2011 revolt that toppled former dictator Hosni Mubarak and brough Morsi to power.

Some protesters wore black bandanas with "Leave, Morsi" written on them, while others held up red cards.

"This is the second revolution and Tahrir is the symbol of the revolution," the protester Ibrahim Hammouda said.

Sunday marks the first anniversary of Morsi's presidency as Egypt's first democratically elected leader.

The group Tamarod, which has led the protest movement against Morsi, announced Saturday it has collected 22 million signatures demanding that the president step down and new elections be held.

Tamarod, which means "rebellion" in Arabic, says Morsi has mismanaged the country.

In a show of solidarity with the Tamarod activists, at least eight members of Egypt's upper house of parliament, the Shura Council, have resigned from their positions.

"We resigned in support of 22 million Egyptians who withdrew their confidence from Morsi," Ihab al-Kharatt, an outgoing deputy, told the AFP news agency.

Obama calls for calm

As tensions between Morsi's opponents and supporters rose on Saturday, a day ahead of the planned protests, US President Barack Obama called on both sides to engage in dialogue rather than violence.

"Every party has to denounce violence," said Obama from Pretoria, where he was meeting with South African officials and a group of youths. "We'd like to see the opposition and President Morsi engage in a more constructive conversation about how they move their country forward because nobody is benefiting from the current stalemate."

Obama also expressed his concern that violent unrest in Egypt could spill over to other nations in the region.

jlw/mkg (dpa, AP, Reuters, AFP)

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters marched to Istanbul's Taksim Square on Saturday chanting slogans against the government and police after security forces killed a Kurdish demonstrator in southeastern Turkey.

The protest had been planned as part of larger unrelated anti-government demonstrations that have swept through the country since the end of May, but became a voice of solidarity with the Kurds after Friday's killing.

"Murderer police, get out of Kurdistan!" some protesters chanted. "This is only the beginning, the struggle continues. The murderer state will pay!"

Turkish forces killed the man and wounded 10 others when they fired on a group protesting against the construction of a gendarmerie outpost in the Kurdish-dominated region.

The incident, in the Lice district of Diyarbakir province, appeared to be the most violent in the region since a ceasefire declaration in March by jailed Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan in a decades-old conflict between his fighters and the Turkish state, and it risks derailing the nascent peace process.

Around 10,000 protesters descended on Taksim, which has been the center of weeks of anti-government demonstrations, but were prevented from entering the square by riot police.

Many in the crowd sat in the roads leading to the square after being denied entry. "Long live the brotherhood of the people!" people shouted in both Turkish and Kurdish.

Most of the protesters dispersed after a couple of hours, with a group of around 1,000 remaining near the square. Riot police pushed them away from the square with shields and slow moving water cannon trucks although no water was fired. Announcements were made for protesters to return to their homes.

The Kurdish tensions come at a time of increased vigilance among Turkish security forces after the anti-government protests in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities in which four people have died and thousands have been injured.

The protests, which had largely died down over the past week, have emerged as the biggest public challenge to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's 10-year rule. He has dismissed the protesters as pawns of Turkey's enemies and has called supporters to back his party in municipal elections next year.

PROTEST AT FUNERAL

Earlier, hundreds of Kurds chanted anti-government slogans at the funeral of 18-year-old Medeni Yildirim, raising fears of violence at protest marches around the country on Sunday called by Turkey's main pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).

The mourners in the city of Diyarbakir warned Erdogan to respect the peace process.

"Behave, Erdogan, don't push us to the mountains!" they chanted - a reference to the camps of Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the mountains of northern Iraq from where they used to attack targets within Turkey.

Erdogan tried on Friday to reassure Turkey's Kurds that the anti-government would not harm the peace process.

"The peace process was not affected ... and our brotherhood grew stronger thanks to our people's common sense," he said.

Turkey's Interior Ministry said inspectors would investigate Friday's incident, which it said had involved up to 250 people attacking the construction site. It said the death resulted from warning shots fired to disperse the crowd.

Hours before the killing, the BDP called for marches in three major cities on Sunday to launch a summer of protests to raise pressure on Ankara for reforms under the peace process with the PKK. Leaders said the rallies would be peaceful.

PKK militants began withdrawing from Turkish territory to bases in northern Iraq last month as part of the deal between the state and Ocalan, imprisoned on an island south of Istanbul since 1999, to end a conflict that has killed 40,000 people.

There has been little evidence of progress with attention focused on the countrywide protests.

But the BDP has said the withdrawal was continuing successfully and the process had entered a second stage during which Ankara needed to broaden the rights of Kurds, who make up some 20 percent of the 76 million population.

The BDP protests will call for a halt to the construction of military outposts, the release of political prisoners, education in Kurdish, lowering of the threshold of 10 percent electoral support required to enter parliament, and the release of Ocalan.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state, but subsequently moderated its goal to autonomy.

(Writing by Jonathon Burch and Ece Toksabay; Editing by Alison Williams)

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has proposed a referendum on political reforms in an effort to tackle protests that have swept the country.

She also promised to boost spending on public transport and focus on health and education as part of what she called "five pacts" with the people.

She later met regional mayors and governors, who agreed to her plans.

But some activists promised to carry on with the largest protests Brazil has seen for at least two decades.

Ms Rousseff said the reforms would be broad and focus on five areas:

• Fiscal responsibility: guaranteeing economic stability and curbing inflation
• Education: investing 100% of Brazil's oil royalties in education
• Health: hiring foreign doctors to provide medical services in remote and under-developed areas
• Constituent Assembly: establishing an assembly to eventually amend Brazil's constitution to ensure reforms make it "from paper to practice"
• Public transport: investing more than 50 billion reias ($25bn, £16bn) for new investments in urban mobility projects and to improve public transport

Mayara Longo Vivian, a leader of the Free Fare Movement, said there had been "concrete measures" among the president's proposals and that the "fight would continue".

On Monday evening, there were fresh demonstrations in several cities, although they appeared to be smaller than those that led to clashes with police last week.

The BBC's Julia Carneiro in Rio de Janeiro says exactly a week ago 100,000 people marched down the city's Rio Branco Avenue, but on Monday just a few dozen were chanting in front of the Candelaria church.

More people joined in as they marched, and soon a few thousand demonstrators had popped up and were occupying the city centre's main avenue.

Street vendors were selling Brazilian flags and Anonymous masks for those who came unprepared, she says.

In other protests, hundreds of people blocked the main road to Brazil's busiest port, Santos, and hundreds more came out to protest against corruption in the capital, Brasilia.

Two women were killed at a protest in the central state of Goias, not far from Brasilia. Police said they were killed by a driver who sped through a roadblock they had set up with other protesters.

The deaths bring to four the total number of lives lost in the unrest.
'Signals'
The president met leaders of one protest faction before meeting with state governors and mayors.
"My government is listening to democratic voices," she told a televised news conference.
"We must learn to hear the voices of the street. We all must, without exception, understand these signals with humility and accuracy.
"Brazil is ready to move forward and has made it clear it does not want to stand where it is."
She also suggested tougher penalties for corruption, and warned against any repeat of the violence that was seen last Thursday.
'No plan B'
Ms Rousseff faces re-election next year, when Brazil is also due to host the football World Cup. Rio de Janeiro will also host the Olympics in 2016.
Many of those demonstrating are unhappy at the cost of building stadiums in a country where many live in poverty and ticket prices for such prestigious international competitions are out of reach.

Unrest has dogged many of the fixtures currently taking place in Brazil as part of Fifa's Confederations Cup, seen as a dress rehearsal for the World Cup and using many of the same facilities.

Fifa's Secretary General Jerome Valcke has said the organisation has "no plan B" for next year's World Cup.
The wave of rallies in more than 100 cities began in Sao Paulo, where residents were unhappy at planned rises in public-transport fares.
Those increases have since been shelved, but the protests rapidly became more widespread and the protesters' demands more wide-ranging.
Brazilians have been demanding better health and education, saying they are fed up with paying relatively high taxes and feel that they do not get enough back from the state.
Protesters are also angry about corruption and are scornful of politicians.