ANTIQUES SHOPS

Millions lined up quietly on Saturday to cast ballots for either Ahmed Shafik, the last prime minister of Hosni Mubarak, or Mohamed Morsy, a U.S.-educated engineer who spent time in Mubarak's jails and offers Egypt a new start as an Islamic democracy.

There was little trouble and, despite mutual accusations of fraud, observers reported only minor and scattered breaches.

"We've got our country back," said Yasser Ali, 45, a day laborer in the industrial city of Mansoura, on the Nile Delta between Cairo and the Mediterranean port of Alexandria.

"We want stability after a year and a half of troubles."

Yet it was impossible to forecast who will emerge the winner by Monday - and whoever it is may face anger and accusations of foul play. Both men have widespread support, but many voters may stay away, disillusioned by a choice of extremes after centrist candidates were knocked in the first round last month.

The military rulers who pushed out their brother officer Mubarak 16 months ago to appease the street protests of the Arab Spring have already enraged their veteran adversaries in the Brotherhood by late last week dissolving the new parliament, elected only five months ago with a sweeping Islamist majority.

A win for Shafik, 70, who says he has learned the lessons of the revolt and offers security, prosperity and religious tolerance, may prompt Islamist claims of Mubarak-style vote-rigging and street protests by the disillusioned urban youths who made Cairo's Tahrir Square their battleground last year.

"The Egyptian people have chosen freedom and are practicing democracy," Morsy said as he cast his vote. "The Egyptian people will not back down and I will lead them, God willing, towards stability and retribution. Today is for the martyrs."

Shafik, a former fighter pilot and air force chief whose second finish to Morsy in the first round capped a rapid ascent from rank outsider status, made little comment as he voted.

UNEVEN OUTCOMES

Should Morsy prevail, benefiting from a movement forged by decades of clandestine struggle and from support among those who put aside qualms about Islamic rule to block a return of the old regime, he may be frustrated by an uncooperative military elite, for all the generals' pledges to cede power by July 1.

The Brotherhood on Saturday again denounced the dissolution, based on a ruling by the Mubarak-era constitutional court, as "a coup against the whole democratic process" and insisted only a popular referendum could reverse the parliamentary election.

But though overturning that vote drew comparison with events that triggered the bloody Algerian civil war 20 years ago, the Brotherhood, which hung back in the early days of the 2011 revolution, has shown little appetite for a violent showdown with Egypt's U.S.-equipped army, the biggest in the Arab world.

That stalemate, coupled with a failure this year of legislators to form a consensus body to draft a new constitution and a consequent lack of clarity over the powers the new head of state will have, leaves Egyptians, Western allies and investors perplexed by the prospect of yet more of the uncertainty that has ravaged the economy and seen sporadic flare-ups in violence.

Should Shafik win, his supporters reckon, he and the ruling military council which took sovereign powers when Mubarak quit would work in harmony to restore confidence, notably for the vital and ravaged tourist trade - but questions would remain over how far the Islamists and other opponents would resist.

Casting his vote on Saturday in the New Cairo district of the capital, businessman Ashraf Rashwan, 45, said hostility to the Brotherhood among the generals, who retain power and vast business interests, meant Morsy simply could not govern.

"They'll get no cooperation from the establishment. If Morsy wins, there will be a struggle that Egyptians - me at any rate - aren't ready for," he said. "Shafik will mean smooth transition. He's learned from Mubarak's failure to listen to the people."

One mid-ranking army officer, speaking privately, said he agreed with assessments that the military council would offer far more power to a President Shafik than a President Morsy:

"There will be different treatment depending on who wins. With Shafik, a firm crackdown is sure to happen," he said, noting a decree passed last week which restored powers to the military police to arrest civilians - a measure which replaced a hated emergency law that had lapsed the previous month.

"With Morsy, the establishment itself will not back him and there will be chaos and lax security, all of which will pose challenges to him and could destroy his presidency," he added.

"DEEP STATE"

In 60 years since army officers toppled the colonial-era monarchy, Egypt's armed forces have built up massive wealth and commercial interests across the industries, helped since the 1970s by a close U.S. alliance which followed the decision of the most populous Arab state to make peace with Israel.

Commonly referred to as the "deep state", it is these shadowy structures, currently overseen in public by the ad hoc Supreme Council of the Armed Forces under Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, which many Egyptians see maintaining influence long after the promised handover to an elected civilian by July 1.

"There is no doubt that the state in all its institutions - judicial, military, interior, foreign and financial - back Shafik for president and are working to that end," said Hassan Nafaa, a politics professor who campaigned against Mubarak.

"It is very difficult to eradicate this spirit of Mubarak."

Only if liberals swallowed their qualms and voted for Morsy to prevent Shafik winning, Nafaa said, "only then may the 'deep state' back down - but I doubt this will happen."

Washington, paymaster of the Egyptian military, and the European Union, a major aid donor, both expressed alarm at the move against parliament and urged the generals to honor their pledge to stand aside. But, like neighboring Israel, both are also uneasy at the rise of the Brotherhood and have looked on anxiously as Islamists have closed in on power in other new democracies of the Arab Spring, notably in Tunisia and Libya.

Voting is scheduled to end at 9 p.m. (03.00 p.m. EDT) but may well over-run. A preliminary result could emerge within hours.

(Reporting by Marwa Awad, Yasmine Saleh, Dina Zayed, Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry and Tamim Elyan; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Xavier Briand)

"What the Nobel Peace Prize did was to draw me once again into the world of other human beings outside the isolated area in which I lived, to restore a sense of reality to me," Suu Kyi said as the packed crowd, led by Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja, rose in a standing ovation at the ornate Oslo City Hall.

Suu Kyi, 66, the Oxford University-educated daughter of General Aung San, Myanmar's assassinated independence hero, said much remained to be resolved in her country.

"Hostilities have not ceased in the far north; to the west, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before I started out the journey that has brought me here today," said Suu Kyi, on her first visit to Europe in nearly a quarter of a century.

"There still remain (political) prisoners in Burma. It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten," she said, wearing a purple traditional Burmese dress and looking strong and healthy after falling ill on Thursday.

Still, Suu Kyi - elected to parliament in April - said she was confident President Thein Sein wanted to put the country on a new path.

"I don't think we should fear reversal," she told public broadcaster NRK. "(But) I don't think we should take it for granted there is no reversal."

Suspending rather than lifting sanctions was also the right move to keep pressure on the government, she said a day after arriving from Switzerland to a jubilant, dancing and chanting crowd, which showered her with flowers.

"If these reforms prove to be a façade, then the rewards will be taken away."

INSTRUMENTAL

Suu Kyi, who spent a total of 15 years under house arrest between 1989 and her release in late 2010, never left Myanmar even during brief periods of freedom after 1989, afraid the military would not let back in.

Her sons Kim and Alexander accepted the Nobel prize on her behalf in 1991, with her husband Michael Aris also attending the ceremony. A year later Suu Kyi said she would use the $1.3 million prize money to establish a health and education trust for Burmese people.

She was unable to be with Aris, an Oxford academic, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died in Britain in 1999.

On Saturday, Kim and Anthony Aris, her late husband's identical twin brother, attended the ceremony.

Suu Kyi thanked Norway, a nation of just 5 million people, for its support and the instrumental role it played in Myanmar's transformation.

In 1990, the Bergen-based Rafto Foundation awarded its annual prize to Suu Kyi, after a Norwegian aid worker in South-East Asia highlighted her work.

The award provided lasting publicity for her non-violent struggle against Myanmar's military junta, putting her in the international spotlight and setting the stage a year later for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Norway has also provided a home to the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition television and radio outlet, which broadcasts uncensored news into Myanmar.

Suu Kyi acknowledged that recent violence between Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Muslim Rohingyas in the northwestern Rakhine region was a test of Myanmar's transformation but she blamed lawlessness for the escalation.

The violence, which displaced 30,000 people and killed 50 by government accounts, flared last month with a rampage of rock-hurling, arson and machete attacks, after the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman that was blamed on Muslims.

"The very first time a crime was committed... they should have taken action in accordance with the rule of law," Suu Kyi told the BBC.

"If they had been able to do that, and to satisfy all parties involved that justice was done ... I do not think these disturbances would have grown to such proportions."

Tensions stem from an entrenched, long-standing distrust of around 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas, who are recognised by neither Myanmar nor neighbouring Bangladesh, and are largely considered illegal immigrants.

Suu Kyi is also due to visit Ireland, Britain and France.

(Editing by Sophie Hares and Ralph Gowling)

The former world number one, bidding to end a four-year title drought in major championships, started the day tied for the lead at one under par with fellow Americans Jim Furyk and David Toms.

But the pacesetting trio all bogeyed the 509-yard first hole to drop back to even.

That left them one stroke clear of a group of four players - Americans Michael Thompson and John Peterson, 2010 champion Graeme McDowell of Northern Ireland and Belgian Nicolas Colsaerts.

McDowell, Peterson and Colsaerts all safely parred the first two holes while Thompson, who led after the first round, made a birdie at the first to join the leaders but handed the shot back when he bogeyed the par-three third.

Conditions on the notoriously difficult course were slightly easier in the morning, allowing a handful of early starters to break par, but were expected to get harder in the afternoon once the winds picked up and the greens began to quicken.

American Casey Wittenberg, who teed off five hours before Woods, made an eagle at the seventh hole, then birdied the last two to sign for a three-under 67 to move to five over.

"By the time Tiger and those guys tee off, I think it's going to be a brick," Wittenberg told reporters of the firm and fast-running layout at the Olympic Club.

"There are a lot of front pin placements out there and it's hard to get to those front pin placements when it gets a little crusty in the afternoon.

"I'm sure with the sun being out and everybody walking on those greens it's going to be a challenge." (Editing by Mark Lamport-Stokes)