NEW YORK – The dollar was practically unchanged against the euro Thursday after the U.S. government said the number of people applying for unemployment benefits dropped last week.
The Labor Department said applications for unemployment benefits fell 4,000 to 364,000, the fewest since April 2008. The report suggests that layoffs are starting to slow.
The euro slipped to $1.3043 in late trading Thursday from $1.3044 late Wednesday.
In other trading Thursday, the British pound rose to $1.5678 from $1.5671 from late Wednesday. The dollar rose to 78.17 yen from 78.09 yen and to 0.9364 Swiss franc from 0.9362 Swiss franc.
The dollar fell to 1.0212 Canadian dollar from 1.0280.

PRAGUE (Reuters) – International leaders bade farewell on Friday to former Czech President Vaclav Havel, the anti-communist dissident who led the peaceful "Velvet Revolution" and inspired human rights campaigners around the world.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill, the former president, joined leaders from France, Britain and many ex-communist countries for the funeral mass in the gothic St. Vitus cathedral at Prague Castle, the seat of Czech kings and presidents.

Havel, a dissident playwright who died on Sunday at 75 after a long respiratory illness, served five years in jail for his criticism of oppressive communist rule before rising to the presidency of what was then Czechoslovakia in late 1989.

He stepped down as Czech president in 2003 but remained a symbol of struggle for freedom and human rights, although his proclamation that "truth and love must win over lies and hatred" turned bitter to some Czechs amid economic hardship and corruption in the years after the end of totalitarian rule.

A thousand guests filled the monumental cathedral for the mass, while thousands more followed the service on large screens outside. "He fought against the communists, stuck to his opinion, made big sacrifices," said 14-year old Anezka Chroustova, who brought a bunch of yellow roses.

Sirens and church bells rang around the central European country at noon in Havel's memory. On Wednesday, over 10,000 mourners had marched through Prague's cobblestoned medieval streets, led by Havel's actress wife Dagmar, to pay their respects.

POPE'S TRIBUTE

"Remembering how courageously Mr Havel defended human rights at a time when these were systematically denied to the people of your country, and paying tribute to his visionary leadership...I give thanks to God for the freedom that the people of the Czech Republic now enjoy," Pope Benedict said in a letter read out at Friday's mass.

Havel's dissident friend Lech Walesa, the first post-communist democratic president of Poland, was among the guests. Russia, which Havel criticized for human rights abuses and democratic shortfalls as recently as this month, was represented by rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin.

Bill Clinton's presence was testimony to his close relationship with Havel, who took him to drink beer in a Prague pub and play saxophone in a club when he visited in 1994.

Havel, whose dramas of the absurd were popular in the 1960s before he was banned from public life after the Soviet invasion in 1968, had felt most at home among artists, including the Rolling Stones who played in Prague in 1990 just a few months after the revolution.

A rock concert and a festival of his plays was due to take place later on Friday at the Lucerna Palace that the Havel family built in the early 20th century. Four thousand tickets to the event were snapped up in minutes.

(Writing by Jan Lopatka, Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Volkswagen has agreed to grant workers in Germany a rest from e-mails relentlessly filling the inboxes of their Blackberry devices out of hours.

Europe's biggest carmaker and the body that represents its workers have agreed to have the e-mail function deactivated at night, a spokesman for the company said, confirming an earlier report in a German newspaper.

Workers will only receive e-mails from half an hour before the start of flex-time working hours until half an hour after they end, but will still be able to receive and make phone calls.

Daily Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung this week cited works council member Heinz-Joachim Thust as saying that 1,154 pay-scale employees at Volkswagen's six plants in Germany have a smartphone device furnished by the company.

The works council sought to counter any expectation that employees should be reachable all the times, thanks to their indispensable "CrackBerry" gadgets, which could heighten the risk of burnout, a psychological syndrome that some studies have said causes almost 10 million sick days a year in Germany.

So far, the response to the decision to deactivate e-mails at night has been very positive, VW's Thust told Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung.

The move comes two months after millions of customers of the Blackberry -- made by Research in Motion -- were frustrated by a three-day global service disruption, showing how much many rely on continuous, reliable e-mail and instant messenger service.

Volkswagen, which has about 400,000 employees worldwide, aims to overtake Japan's Toyota as the world's biggest carmaker by 2018 by selling 10 million vehicles per year.

The group logged 7.51 million deliveries for the first 11 months of this year, after a 15 percent gain in November.

(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Mike Nesbit)

CAIRO (Reuters) – Thousands of Egyptians rallied in Cairo and other cities on Friday to demand the military give up power and vent their anger after 17 people were killed in protests where troops beat and clubbed women and men even as they lay on the ground.

One image in particular from the five days of clashes that ended this week has stoked their fury: that of soldiers dragging a woman lying on the street so that her bra and torso were exposed, while clubbing and stamping on her.

"Anyone who saw her and saw her pain would come to Tahrir,"

Omar Adel, 27, said in Cairo's Tahrir Square. "Those who did this should be tried. We can't bear this humiliation and abuse."

Some protesters have been demanding the army bring forward a presidential vote to as early as January 25, the first anniversary of the start of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak, or at least much earlier than the mid-2012 handover now scheduled.

But other Egyptians fret that 10 months after Mubarak's downfall Egypt remains in disarray. They want protests to stop so order can be restored and the economy revitalized, voicing such views in a smaller protest in another part of Cairo.

The Muslim Brotherhood's party, leading in a staggered parliamentary election that runs to January and is Egypt's first free vote in six decades, said it would not join Friday's rally.

It also supports the army's schedule and says the process must be decided by balloting, not street pressure.

Demonstrators in Tahrir chanted, "Down with military rule." Nearby, new concrete walls bar access from Tahrir to the cabinet, parliament and Interior Ministry, areas where clashes flared in November and December. The November death toll was 42.

By early afternoon, the Tahrir protest was still relatively modest compared to some of the huge rallies since Mubarak's ouster.

In the northern city of Alexandria, thousands marched towards an army base chanting: "Women of Egypt raise your heads, you are more noble than those who stamp on you." Other small rallies to protest the treatment of women were staged in other cities around Egypt, according to witnesses.

"FOOT-DRAGGING"

The army has said it regretted the violence in Tahrir and offered an apology over the woman who was beaten, saying the case was isolated and under investigation. But the military was drawing fierce criticism from many political parties and groups.

"The current predicament we have reached is a result of the army council's reluctance to play its role, its intentional foot-dragging, breaking its obligations and failing over the economy and security, putting the whole country on the edge of a huge crisis," two dozen parties and groups said in a statement.

It said members of the military council, which is led by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, should be held to account out of respect for those killed and women who were mistreated.

"Tantawi undressed our daughters, he should be executed," said Samah Ibrahim, 40, a woman protesting in Tahrir.

Students also appealed to Egyptians to join Friday's protest after two students from Cairo's Ain Shams university were among those killed. The deaths prompted sit-ins on Ain Shams campus, in front of the Defense Ministry, and at other universities.

While the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) said it would stay out of Friday's rally, the ultraconservative Salafist al-Nour Party, a surprise runner-up in the election so far, said on its Facebook page that it would take part.


Many activists accuse the Brotherhood and other Islamists of betraying the protest movement in order to secure their own positions in the emerging new power structure.


The FJP said on its Facebook page it would not participate although it said it was "the right of the Egyptian people to protest and demonstrate peacefully."


"The party emphasizes the need for the handover of power to civilians according to the will of the Egyptian people through free and fair elections ... in a stable environment," said Mohamed al-Katatni, a senior member of the FJP.


His remarks indicated the group was sticking to the army's timetable to hold a presidential vote in June. The Brotherhood has said bringing the vote forward could "create chaos."


MILITARY DOMINANCE


Those views were echoed a short distance from Tahrir where hundreds of Egyptians backed the army, chanting: "We support the military council staying until the presidential election."


The Brotherhood' stance reflected a wish to shape the new constitution before a presidential vote, seeking more influence for parliament where it is doing well thanks to a well-organized grassroots network, and reining in powers of the president.


An earlier presidential vote would not necessarily eliminate the military's dominance in a new civilian-governed state.


The military has survived Egypt's political upheaval intact and has vast economic and other interests, so any new president would likely need its support to maintain order.


The United States, which provides the military with $1.3 billion a year in aid, a deal in place since Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, has rebuked the ruling generals for their rough handling of protests and women.


Washington, which like other Western powers long looked to Mubarak to keep a lid on Islamists, has been cultivating contact with newly elected Islamist politicians.


Parliament's primary role will be in picking a 100-strong assembly that will write the new constitution.


Unrest in Tahrir that has gone on since November 18 was stirred by resentment over proposals by the army-backed cabinet for articles in the new constitution that would have permanently shielded the military from civilian oversight.


(Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

NEW YORK – CNN's Piers Morgan was in the position few television interviewers like to be this week: on the other side of the microphone.
He testified by video link about his past life as a London tabloid editor before a British panel looking into media ethics. It was big news back home, but his appearance made little splash in the country where he's known as a celebrity interviewer and former host of a prime-time talent show.
Experts suggested on Thursday that this week's testimony won't have much effect on his standing in the United States, while cautioning things could change if future evidence emerges to tie him directly to hacking by journalists into private cell phone accounts.
"I didn't see anything that would make them turn him or the television off," said Frank Sesno, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University and a former CNN Washington bureau chief.
Morgan was behind his desk at CNN shortly after his testimony. It has been nearly a year since he replaced veteran interviewer Larry King, and his guests Tuesday included former GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty and football analyst Tony Dungy. Rocker Lenny Kravitz was on Wednesday's show.
Television news networks in Britain carried Morgan's testimony live. Not so in the United States. CNN did a handful of reports summing up the appearance, with some video footage. Market leader Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith mentioned it during a newscast, with no video. MSNBC also did brief reports, and it was a topic on the "Morning Joe" political talk show the next day.
While Morgan didn't win raves for his performance — The Associated Press called him "tense and sometimes hostile" — the headlines were primarily about what he didn't say. The stories focused on Morgan's refusal to illuminate how he heard a phone message left by Paul McCartney for then-wife Heather Mills.
That failure to advance the incident, coupled with limited exposure at a time when many news consumers are preoccupied with the holidays, contributed to the sense that the event didn't mean much for Morgan in the United States.
"I don't think it's going to have any effect on his career," said Paul Levinson, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in New York, "but you shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that it's a good thing."
CNN has largely kept quiet about this week's events. "Piers' testimony speaks for itself and does not impact his CNN program," spokeswoman Meghan McPartland said.
There's a certain irony that, in the United States, CNN seems more directly tied to the British phone hacking scandal than competitor Fox News Channel — even though Fox's parent company also owned the News of the World tabloid that has been at the center of the story. That's because Morgan is a familiar face and none of the Fox News personalities that viewers know have been tied to the scandal.
Morgan's performance at CNN has given ammunition to both his supporters and detractors.
His average viewership of 735,000 viewers each night is up 9 percent over King's audience in 2010, Nielsen said. Viewership is up by 26 percent in the 25-to-54-year-old demographic, which advertisers consider more valuable.
That doesn't make it a hit, however.
"CNN hoped Morgan would be the sort of feisty and combative host who could attract a loyal following," said Sid Bedingfield, a former CNN executive and now a journalism professor at the University of South Carolina. "It hasn't really happened. The cable news audience doesn't seem that interested. Barring new revelations, I doubt his testimony will change that one way or another."
They're tougher on Morgan in England, where the Guardian's Richard Adams called Morgan's testimony "bumbling" and suggested CNN's outlook on Morgan will be less positive next month when it can no longer compare his ratings performance to King's poor final year. Steve Hewlett, a British media analyst and consultant, said Morgan's performance turned him "from the man who knows everything to the man who knows nothing."
Hewlett said Morgan would not survive if investigators find evidence that he lied during testimony or to his bosses at CNN.
"He's given everybody enough rope to hang him with," said Hewlett, presenter for BBC Radio's "The Media Show."

"If anything turns up to show that what he was saying wasn't true, then he's toast," Hewlett said.

George Washington's Sesno, however, said the hacking case was still amorphous as it concerned Morgan. Viewers in the U.S. also probably don't hold Morgan, as a celebrity interviewer, to the same standards as they do most journalists, he said.

"He's got half a foot in the entertainment world," he said. "Is anybody expecting him to perform by the traditional rules? I don't think so."

___

Associated Press writer Raphael G. Satter in London contributed to this report.