Tahrir Square

CAIRO - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton waded into crowds Wednesday at the symbolic heart of the uprising that toppled Egypt's longtime autocratic leader, urging the country's temporary leaders not to allow the revolution to fizzle or be compromised by extremists. As the Obama administration sharpened its criticism of Bahrain's crackdown on protesters, Clinton heaped praise on Egypt's antigovernment demonstrators whose peaceful protests in central Tahrir Square ousted President Hosni Mubarak last month.

CAIRO - The United States increased pressure Friday on Egypt's military rulers to hand over power to civilian leaders, and the generals turned to a Mubarak-era politician to head a new government in a move that failed to satisfy the more than 100,000 protesters who jammed Tahrir Square in the biggest rally yet this week. The demonstrators rejected the appointment of Kamal el-Ganzouri as prime minister, breaking into chants of "Illegitimate! Illegitimate!" and setting up a showdown between the two sides only three days before key parliamentary elections.

Most people use social media to connect with friends, share cat pictures, or perhaps play Farmville. But the young protesters who took to Tahrir Square on Jan. 25, 2011, found an essential use for these sites: Egyptians used Twitter and Facebook to orchestrate demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak's autocracy. Dissidents used the Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Said" as a pivotal tool in the downfall of Mubarak. Protesters shared the plight of Khaled Said, a young activist who was arbitrarily arrested and killed by police.

When she first traveled to Cairo for fieldwork in 1993, Farha Ghannam recalled, Tahrir Square was mostly used as a bus depot. Today, it's the battleground on which the future of Egypt is being fought - a space rich with symbolism and meaning, held and defended by protesters at the cost of some lives. "There's this feeling [among demonstrators] that 'if we lose at Tahrir Square, we're going to lose the fight,' " said Ghannam, an anthropology professor at Swarthmore College who studies the use of public space in Egypt.

CAIRO - A member of Egypt's ruling military council on Saturday briefly visited a protest camp in a central Cairo square, but left after protesters, some holding up shoes in anger, booed him off a stage. Maj. Gen. Tarek el-Mahdi had come to Tahrir Square to persuade a dozen demonstrators to end a hunger strike they began several days ago, but was forced to cut short his visit because of the heckling. Mahdi told state TV he was disappointed that a small crowd of protesters managed to drive him out of the square before he could reach the tent housing the hunger strikers.

The Drexel University student who was arrested by Egyptian police after he allegedly threw Molotov cocktails during a pro-democracy protest has been released from the police station where he had been in custody, his attorney said Friday. Theodore Simon, a Philadelphia lawyer representing the family of Gregory Porter, said that "certain necessary administrative steps" that precluded Porter's release from police custody had been resolved and that he expected his client to be on his way home "very soon.

CAIRO - Egypt's protesters stepped up their challenge to the country's ruling military yesterday, as tens of thousands massed to demand that it prosecute ousted President Hosni Mubarak and his family for alleged corruption. Meanwhile, a smaller group tested out the army's tolerance with a march on Israel's embassy. The mass rally in Cairo's central Tahrir Square was the biggest by protesters in weeks, and hundreds remaining there shortly before midnight said they were planning to camp out overnight.

CAIRO - Security forces sprayed protesters with water hoses and tear gas outside the presidential palace Monday as Egyptians marked the second anniversary of the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak with angry demonstrations against his elected successor. The forces were trying to disperse a small crowd of protesters after some of them attempted to cross a barbed-wire barrier meant to block them from the palace gate. Some protesters chanted: "The people want to bring down the regime. " Others threw stones.

The U.S. consul general in Cairo met Wednesday with the three American students accused of throwing firebombs from a rooftop during pro-democracy protests in Tahrir Square. The three, including Drexel University student Gregory Porter, 19, of Glenside, were arrested Monday by Egypt's military. "They are safe and being treated well," Drexel president John A. Fry said in a statement after being briefed about the Cairo meeting. The students were questioned by Egyptian authorities, said Fry, "but no charges have been filed.

What started as a winter getaway to visit family in Cairo ended up as a brush with history for Shereen Abou-Gharbia and her mother - eyewitnesses to events that could help reshape the Middle East. Abou-Gharbia and her mother, Lamaat Shalaby, both of Chester County, arrived in Cairo on Jan. 26, the day after the first demonstrations in the city's Tahrir Square. They were intending to meet Shereen's father, Magid Abou-Gharbia, a professor at the Temple University School of Pharmacy, who had been scheduled to arrive later and speak in Luxor, about 450 miles south of Cairo, but wound up canceling.

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Thousands of people flooded Istanbul's main square Saturday after a crackdown on antigovernment protests turned city streets into a battlefield clouded by tear gas. Though he offered some concessions to demonstrators, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan remained largely defiant in the face of the biggest popular challenge to his power in a decade in office, insisting the protests are undemocratic and illegitimate. Public anger has flared among urban and secular Turks after police violently broke up an antidevelopment sit-in in the landmark Taksim Square, with protests spreading to dozens of other cities as demonstrators denounced what they see as Erdogan's increasingly authoritarian style.

CAIRO - An assailant stabbed an American man on Thursday while they were standing outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, security officials said. The area around the U.S. Embassy has been the site of anti-American incidents and violence in the past, but stabbings are uncommon despite political unrest that has roiled Egypt since the 2011 uprising. Embassy spokesman David Ranz confirmed that a U.S. citizen was stabbed, and said he was immediately rushed to the hospital. His condition was not known.

CAIRO - Supporters and opponents of Egypt's Islamist president battled in the streets near Tahrir Square on Friday as an Islamist rally demanding a purge of the judiciary devolved into violence. The rally centered on a contentious aspect of the country's deep political polarization - the courts. Islamist backers of President Mohammed Morsi say the judiciary is infused with former regime loyalists who are blocking his policies, while opponents fear Islamists want to take over the courts and get rid of secular-minded judges to consolidate the Muslim Brotherhood's power.

Most people use social media to connect with friends, share cat pictures, or perhaps play Farmville. But the young protesters who took to Tahrir Square on Jan. 25, 2011, found an essential use for these sites: Egyptians used Twitter and Facebook to orchestrate demonstrations against President Hosni Mubarak's autocracy. Dissidents used the Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Said" as a pivotal tool in the downfall of Mubarak. Protesters shared the plight of Khaled Said, a young activist who was arbitrarily arrested and killed by police.

CAIRO - Egyptian women are growing increasingly angry and militant as they deal with one of the unintended consequences of the Arab Spring: an epidemic of sexual assault that law enforcement has failed to contain. The backlash, which includes self-defense courses for women and even threats of violent retaliation, is fueled by ultraconservative Islamists who suggest that women invite assault by attending antigovernment protests where they mix with men. At marches against sexual harassment in Cairo, women have brandished kitchen knives in the air. Stenciled drawings on building walls depict girls fighting off men with swords.

CAIRO - Security forces sprayed protesters with water hoses and tear gas outside the presidential palace Monday as Egyptians marked the second anniversary of the fall of autocrat Hosni Mubarak with angry demonstrations against his elected successor. The forces were trying to disperse a small crowd of protesters after some of them attempted to cross a barbed-wire barrier meant to block them from the palace gate. Some protesters chanted: "The people want to bring down the regime. " Others threw stones.

CAIRO - With near impunity and the backing of the Islamist president, Egyptian police have been accused of firing wildly at protesters, beating them, and lashing out with deadly force in clashes across much of the country in the last week, regaining their Hosni Mubarak-era notoriety as a tool of repression. In the process, nearly 60 people have been killed and hundreds injured, and the security forces have reemerged as a significant political player after spending the two years since Mubarak's ouster on the sidelines, sulking or unwilling to fully take back the streets.

CAIRO - An unpredictable new element has entered Egypt's wave of political unrest: a mysterious group of masked young men called the Black Bloc who present themselves as the defenders of protesters opposed to the Islamist president's rule. They boast that they're willing to use force to fight back against Islamists who have attacked protesters in the past - or against police who crack down on demonstrations. The youths with faces hidden under black wrestlers' masks have appeared among stone-throwing protesters in clashes with police around Egypt the past five days in the wave of political violence that has shaken the country.

CAIRO - Tens of thousands of protesters massed outside the presidential palace and in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Tuesday, as Egyptians voiced their opposition to President Mohammed Morsi for a 12th straight day. The deepening political crisis has pitted Morsi, the country's first democratically elected president, and his Islamist backers against a broad alliance of young liberals, judges, human-rights groups, and loyalists of the former government....

CAIRO - The crowd of Salafis in Tahrir Square, several thousand strong, was angry that a draft of a new Egyptian constitution wasn't based entirely on sharia law. The bearded men, many dressed in long, traditional galabiyas - with wives garbed in black, from their gloves to the veils that revealed only their eyes - were a far cry from the young liberals who filled the square in January 2011. Many of the men were members of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, a group that killed hundreds of policemen and civilians, and dozens of tourists, in the 1990s.