Speaking before a sea of angry protesters on Cairo's Tahrir Square Jan. 30, dissident leader Mohamed ElBaradei hailed "a new Egypt in which every Egyptian lives in freedom and dignity." Empowered by the newly formed National Coalition for Change—bringing together several opposition movements including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood—to negotiate with the regime, ElBaradei said: "We are on the right path, our strength is in our numbers. I ask you to be patient, change is coming." Government warplanes flew low over the gathered multitudes in a show of force, as the crowd defiantly responded "Mubarak, go to Saudi Arabia!" President Hosni Mubarak meanwhile met with army brass.

Students clashed with police in Khartoum on Jan. 30 as youths answered calls to take to the streets for a day of anti-government protests—despite a heavy security deployment in the Sudanese capital. Hundreds gathered outside the presidential palace, calling for the resignation of President Omar al-Bashir before they were dispersed by riot police. Slogans included, "We want change! No to the high price of goods! and "Revolution against the dictatorship!"

Riot police in Gabon's capital Libreville fired tear gas to break up a protest by some 5,000 opposition supporters on Jan. 29, with up to 20 people wounded in the clashes, including at least one police officer. It was the second such clash in Libreville since opposition leader Andre Mba Obame declared himself president on Jan. 25 and urged Gabonese to take inspiration from Tunisia's popular uprising that ousted long-ruling Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

Dozens of protesters calling for the ouster of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh clashed on Jan. 29 with the regime's supporters in Sana'a, the capital. Plainclothes police also apparently attacked the demonstrators, who marched to the Egyptian embassy in solidarity with the protesters in Cairo, chanting "Ali, leave leave."

Israeli forces injured one Palestinian at the weekly anti-wall rally Friday Jan. 28 in the West Bank village of Bil'in, near Ramallah. Soldiers fired tear gas to disperse dozens of locals and international demonstrators protesting Israel's separation wall, which confiscates large swathes of village land. The Israeli military said troops responded to protesters throwing rocks.

The WikiLeaks revelations on Egypt's Hosni Mubarak regime provide an interesting political Rorschach test—viewed either as evidence that the US backs unsavory dictators or as vindicating paranoia about neocon conspiracies behind the current wave of unrest in the Arab world. In the words of The Telegraph's incredibly distorted lead Jan. 28: "Even as they were officially supporting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, American officials were secretly helping dissidents interested in using social media to overthrow his regime, a secret dispatch from the US embassy in Cairo has revealed." In fact, the Dec. 30, 2008 cable (on the Wikileaks website) only "reveals" that the US embassy helped a young activist attend an "Alliance of Youth Movements Summit" in New York, while keeping his identity secret from the Egyptian security services.

Thousands of people took to the streets in Egypt in a fifth day of protests Jan. 29, despite President Hosni Mubarak appearing on TV to announce he is sacking his government. In Cairo, after police used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up a protest at the Interior Ministry on Tahrir Square, they resorted to real bullets—leaving some ten protesters dead. Clashes with police are also reported from Ismailiya and Alexandria, where several police stations were torched. At least six are reported dead in Alexandra, including one police officer. Police finally retreated in Alexandra, leaving the city in the hands of protesters. Opposition activist Mohamed ElBaradei, who arrived in the country three days earlier, called for Mubarak to step down, saying "the Egyptian people have revolted against 58 years of repression." (NYT, Jan. 29; BBC News, AlMasry AlYoum, AlMasry AlYoum, Reuters, Jan. 28)

The US is doing away with the color-coded terrorism alerts adopted by the Bush administration in the wake of 9-11, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced in the State of Homeland Security address at George Washington University on Jan. 27. The following day, Russia's Duma voted to adopted such a system in response to this week's deadly bombing at the Moscow airport. (UPI, Jan. 28; RTT, Jan. 27)