Tahrir Square

GREG PORTER was known at La Salle College High School for his debating prowess, finishing seventh in a national contest one year. Perhaps today, the Glenside native, now 19, might use his skills to talk himself out of charges brought against him and two other U.S. collegians by the Egyptian authorities. Porter, a Drexel University sophomore studying at the American University in Cairo, was arrested Monday night during the chaos of the Tahrir Square protests, Drexel announced in a news release.

CAIRO - International criticism of Egypt's military rulers mounted Wednesday as police clashed for a fifth day with protesters demanding the generals relinquish power immediately. A rights group raised the death toll for the wave of violence to at least 38. The United Nations condemned authorities for what it deemed an excessive use of force. Germany, one of Egypt's top trading partners, called for a quick transfer of power to a civilian government. The United States and the U.N. secretary-general have already expressed their concern over the use of violence against mostly peaceful protesters.

CAIRO - The Obama administration ordered the evacuation of all but emergency U.S. government personnel, and all family members, from diplomatic missions in Tunisia and Sudan on Saturday and warned Americans not to travel to those countries. The action came as leaders across the Muslim world took stock of their relationship with the United States, a major provider of aid and investment, and struggled to balance it with the simmering anger of their populations. In Sudan, the State Department order came after the government in Khartoum rejected a U.S. request to send a Marine antiterrorism unit to protect the embassy there, which came under attack by protesters Friday.

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.

Omar Ashour is a lecturer in Arab politics and director of the Middle East Graduate Studies Program at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, and author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements CAIRO - "The man who taught me to sacrifice my heart for Egypt is dead," said Vivian Magdi, mourning her fiancé. Michael Mosad was killed in the Maspiro area on Oct. 9, when an armored vehicle hit him during a protest called to condemn an attack on an Egyptian church in the southern Aswan region.

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 - Egypt's military ruler on Tuesday decreed a partial lifting of the nation's hated emergency laws, an apparent attempt to ease criticism of his policies ahead of the first anniversary of the popular uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi said in a televised address that the draconian laws, in force for more than three decades, would be lifted effective Wednesday but would remain applicable to crimes committed by "thugs. " The military has often labeled organizers of anti-government demonstrations "thugs.

EGYPT BOMB KILLS 2 IN COFFEE SHOP A bomb planted in a packed coffee shop in the heart of Cairo exploded last night, killing a Swede and a Turk and injuring 18 other people, including two Americans and a Canadian, police said. Security sources said Moslem extremists were suspected. There was no immediate word on their identities. The Wadi el-Nil coffee shop is on bustling Tahrir Square, frequented by thousands of tourists daily. The Egyptian Museum, Cairo's biggest subway station, the Nile Hilton Hotel and the Arab League headquarters are at the square.

JERUSALEM - Friends and relatives of a U.S.-born Israeli arrested in Egypt on spy charges said Monday that he is a law student in Atlanta with an avid interest in the Mideast - and not a Mossad agent out to sabotage Egypt's revolution, as Egyptian authorities allege. His mother and a fellow student said Ilan Grapel, 27, arrived in Cairo only in May. Late Monday, the official Egyptian News Agency said the investigation showed he arrived in Egypt just before the protests began Jan. 25 and was in Tahrir Square every day, "inciting sedition, spreading rumors, and urging protesters toward friction with the armed forces and to commit acts of violence.

CAIRO - A former high-ranking security official testified Thursday that forces loyal to Hosni Mubarak were ordered to use excessive force to crush protests in the early days of a revolution that would later topple the president. The police general's testimony said the order came from then-Interior Minister Habib Adli, an accusation that suggests the highest levels of the Mubarak government plotted the crackdown that killed more than 800 people between Jan. 25 and Feb. 11. It was unclear whether Adli called for firing live ammunition.