While John McCain is leading a growing chorus of voices in the US Congress calling for Mubarak’s immediate departure, Adm. Mike Mullen cautioned against cutting military aid to Egypt.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay praised the efforts of Egyptian protesters to win democratic reforms—while repeating concerns over mounting casualties.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika pledged to lift the country’s 19-year state of emergency—but protesters pledged to go ahead with their planned march on the capital.
Tens of thousands of protesters massed on Yemen’s Sana’a University for a “day of rage” against Ali Abdullah Saleh’s rule—while Saleh loyalists occupied the city’s central square.
Hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip rallied in solidarity with the uprising in Egypt. Marchers carried banners reading “People want the regime out” and “Down with Hosni Mubarak.”
Fighting between protesters and government loyalists raged into a second day in Egypt, with the opposition pledging to go ahead with a massive “departure day” march tomorrow.
Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh, facing growing demands that he step down, said that he will drop constitutional changes that would allow him to be president for life.
A Chinese court ruled that the death of a village chief crushed by a truck was an accident—sparking outrage from supporters, who insist he was murdered for his protests over land seizures.
Russian authorities say the deadly Moscow airport blast was masterminded from Dagestan—as terror continues within Dagestan itself, winning few international headlines.
The Afghanistan Rights Monitor finds that 2010 was the deadliest year for civilians in the country since the US-led invasion of 2001, with more than 2,400 non-combatants killed.
An Italian court convicted former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mohamed Ben Riadh Nasri on terror charges and sentenced the Tunisian man to six years in prison.
Government supporters—some on horses and camels and armed with whips—charged into the ranks of opposition protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, sparking hours of street battles.
