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Anti-Mohamed Morsi protesters have clashed with police outside the presidential palace in Cairo, after a week of violence in which more than 60 people were killed.

Riot police used tear gas and water cannon to try to drive back the crowds throwing rocks and petrol bombs.

Thousands also rallied in Port Said – one year after football riots in the city, which killed 74 people.

The protesters accuse Islamist President Mohamed Morsi of betraying the 2011 uprising – a claim he denies.

In a statement on his Facebook page, Mohamed Morsi warned that security forces would “act with utmost decisiveness” to protect state institutions and those groups behind the violence would be held “politically accountable”.

Mohamed Morsi’s supporters say the demonstrators are trying to used the power of the street to bring down the country’s first democratically elected president.

On Friday, thousands of people chanted “Leave, leave, Morsi!” as they gathered outside the presidential palace – in the north of the capital.

Some of the demonstrators then began throwing Molotov cocktails over the palace walls and lighting fires in the streets.

Anti-Mohamed Morsi protesters have clashed with police outside the presidential palace in Cairo, after a week of violence in which more than 60 people were killed

Anti-Mohamed Morsi protesters have clashed with police outside the presidential palace in Cairo, after a week of violence in which more than 60 people were killed

Skirmishes were reported close to the capital’s Tahrir Square, where thousands more marched, urging Mohamed Morsi to leave.

A demonstration was also held in Port Said, at the northern end of the Suez Canal.

The city has seen the worst of the violence over the past week, in clashes sparked by death sentences imposed on 21 local people in connection with the football riots.

On Thursday, leaders of some of the main political factions condemned the violence. But youth groups later still called for more street protests.

In a separate development, human rights officials have expressed alarm over a rise in sexual violence against women in Cairo.

According to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 25 women have been sexually assaulted, mainly in Tahrir Square, since the protests erupted.

Michelle Bachelet, of the UN’s Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, said she was “deeply disturbed by the gravity of [the] recent attacks”.

Sexual assaults against women around Tahrir Square was widely reported during the uprising there which eventually unseated Hosni Mubarak.

The current unrest began on January 24 in Cairo on the eve of the second anniversary of the revolution and has spread to several cities.

Protesters accuse President Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, of imposing a new form of authoritarianism and betraying the values of their uprising two years ago.

On Tuesday, Egyptian army chief General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi warned that the political crisis could lead to the collapse of the state.

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The centre-right government in Portugal has agreed to look for alternatives to a social security tax rise a week after huge anti-austerity street protests.

Previously, it had planned to raise contributions next year from 11% to 18%, to meet the conditions of Portugal’s international bailout.

Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho announced his decision at a meeting with President Anibal Cavaco Silva.

Thousands of protesters chanted slogans outside the presidential palace.

The centre-right government in Portugal has agreed to look for alternatives to a social security tax rise a week after huge anti-austerity street protests

The centre-right government in Portugal has agreed to look for alternatives to a social security tax rise a week after huge anti-austerity street protests

Some firecrackers and bottles were thrown and five arrests made at the protest, as the presidential state council met late into the night in the capital Lisbon.

Portugal was recently given an extra year to reduce its deficit, following the latest quarterly review by international lenders overseeing its 78 billion-euro ($101 billion) bailout.

Last Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Lisbon and other Portuguese cities.

President Anibal Cavaco Silva called the meeting of his state council amid concern that Portugal’s main trump card in the eyes of foreign investors, its cross-party consensus on austerity, was in tatters.

A statement released afterwards said: “The council was informed of the government’s readiness to study, within the framework of the social bargaining process, alternatives to changes in the social security rate.”

It also said that differences between the two parties which make up the ruling coalition had been overcome, and they both remained committed to the bailout’s targets.

The weekly newspaper Expresso said the prime minister was preparing a new cut in holiday subsidies for workers, in place of the tax rise.

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