CAIRO

Morsi trial expected to draw widespread protests Monday

Additional Photos

An Egyptian woman holds a portrait of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi during a protest Friday in Cairo. The trial of Morsi opens Monday, presenting serious challenges for the military-backed authorities. Days before the trial, the location of where he will be tried has not been announced for security reasons. His supporters threaten massive protests that may disrupt the proceedings. And in his anticipated first public appearance after four months in secret military detention, Morsi could turn his trial on charges of inciting murder into a platform for indicting the coup, giving more vigor to the opposition. The Associated Press

Egypt’s new military-backed government had hoped trying Mohammed Morsi would close the chapter on his presidency. Instead, the trial of the ousted Islamist president on charges of inciting murder, which begins Monday, is only compounding its troubles.

Morsi’s supporters plan widespread protests on the day of the trial, threatening to disrupt the proceedings. Security concerns are so high that the venue for the trial has still not been formally announced.

Then there is the political risk of Morsi’s anticipated first public appearance since the military deposed him on July 3 and locked him in secret detention, virtually incommunicado. Morsi will likely represent himself in the trial, the first time public figure to do so in the host of trials of politicians since autocrat Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in 2011, Brotherhood lawyers say. He will use the platform to insist he is still the true president, question the trial’s legitimacy and turn it into an indictment of the coup, further energizing his supporters in the street.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand

Nations fail to agree on plan for Antarctic marine reserve

The nations that make decisions about Antarctic fishing failed Friday for a third time to agree on a plan that would create the world’s largest marine sanctuary.

The U.S. and New Zealand had proposed creating a reserve in the pristine Ross Sea. At 517,000 square miles, the sanctuary would have been twice the size of Texas.

The proposal, a decade in the making, had been scaled back from earlier plans. Many countries hoped that would be enough to entice previous objectors Russia and Ukraine to agree. Those countries are among several that have fishing interests in the region.

But the 24 nations and the European Union failed to reach a required consensus as time ran out Friday on a 10-day gathering of national delegations in Hobart, Australia.

The countries also failed to agree on a second proposal to create smaller reserves in East Antarctica.

The Pew Charitable Trusts said Russia and Ukraine essentially ran down the clock filibuster-style after earlier expressing positive sentiments about the proposal.

“This is a bad day for Antarctica and for the world’s oceans that desperately need protection,” said Andrea Kavanagh, director of Pew’s Southern Ocean sanctuaries project.

The Ross Sea is home to the Antarctic toothfish, a lucrative species often marketed in North America as Chilean sea bass.

MONTREAL

Cocaine found in pumpkins in woman’s bags at airport

Canada’s border services agency says it has stumbled upon a different kind of Halloween surprise in some pumpkins this year.

Authorities believe three pumpkins found in a woman’s luggage at the Trudeau International Airport in Montreal airport on Thursday were stuffed with approximately 4.4 pounds of cocaine.

Scanning equipment had detected masses inside the pumpkins. Those masses turned out to be bags filled with the chalky substance.

The woman’s nationality was not given.

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