LA Times News

LA Times News

Mubarak digs in against reform, as he always has

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 06:27 PM PST

As protests build, the U.S. faces the difficult task of supporting reform while maintaining ties with an ally who has long blamed the U.S. for the theocracy in Iran and the chaos in Iraq.

Embattled yet unbending, President Hosni Mubarak is sending a message that he remains deeply suspicious of reform efforts in Egypt and resistant to the calls from Washington and his own populace for him to step aside.

French groups struggle to beat back English

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 06:49 PM PST

Now, quelle horreur , the enemy is within: French Education Minister Luc Chatel has declared that schoolchildren should be taught English in nursery school from the age of 3.

For the best part of its 376 years, the Academie Francaise has fought to keep the French language as pure as the driven neige .

Egypt doctors attend anti-Mubarak protesters

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 05:35 PM PST

Street warfare has changed them. When they came they were idealistic. Now, they're battle-hardened. 'I don't care if they arrest us,' says laser surgeon Hisham Ibrahim. 'Freedom will not come easy.'

The two doctors say they joined the protests against President Hosni Mubarak to improve living conditions for themselves and for less fortunate Egyptians, some of whom they are now treating in makeshift clinics at Tahrir Square.

Egypt's Coptic Christians fear life without Mubarak

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 03:25 PM PST

The Copts have protested the harassment directed at them under the Egyptian president's rule, but worry that things would be far worse if Islamist extremists gained power.

The morning bells of All Saints Church beckon worshipers a little later these days, and Mass is celebrated more frequently.

Pro-Mubarak protester started out on the other side

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 07:38 PM PST

He says the Egyptian president's promise to resign is enough, and calls those who have taken over Tahrir Square 'not real Egyptians.'

Mohamed Sami Fahmi started out on the other side of the barricades.

Rape flourishes in rubble of Haitian earthquake

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 04:11 PM PST

Sexual violence against women has long been a scourge in Haiti, but rights activists had made real progress in recent years. Many of them died in the quake, and now women and girls are stalked by gang rapists.

Halya Lagunesse thought she knew despair. Nearly seven years ago, the soldiers who had killed her husband gang-raped the Haitian woman and her daughter Joann, who was 17 at the time.

Amid Moscow bombing investigation, Kremlin leaders at odds

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 05:51 PM PST

After Russian Premier Vladimir Putin says the airport suicide bombing is solved, President Dmitry Medvedev denies the assertion. Medvedev and Putin are considered rivals for the presidency in 2012.

The investigation of last month's suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport in which 36 people were killed and dozens more injured has exposed growing tensions between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Nepal chooses a new prime minister

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 01:11 PM PST

Jhalnath Khanal, leader of the Communist Party of Nepal, wins the post, ending a six-month logjam that followed the resignation of the government in June.

After 17 attempts, steadily diminishing expectations and paralysis in local government as budgets and appointments were delayed, Nepal late Thursday named a new prime minister.

Egypt officials offer concessions as battles spill out of Cairo square

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 03:06 PM PST

Vice president promises neither Mubarak nor his son will seek office in fall, but protesters set Friday as a deadline for Mubarak to leave. Fighting spreads out of Tahrir Square and foreign journalists face intimidation by suspected government forces.

As volleys of gunfire echoed through the heart of Egypt's capital, senior government officials Thursday offered a flurry of political concessions, seeking to placate protesters on the eve of a potentially explosive new confrontation between supporters and opponents of President Hosni Mubarak.

Violence in Egypt as Cairo protesters expand battleground

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 06:36 AM PST

In the second day of violent clashes in Cairo between foes and supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, anti-government protesters break out of Tahrir Square barricades. Soldiers, who have vowed not to use force, do little to halt the confrontations.

Gunfire erupted in downtown Cairo again Thursday afternoon when anti-government protesters broke out of their barricades on the edge of Tahrir Square. It was the second day of violent clashes between opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's army separates battling demonstrators

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 05:22 AM PST

A second day of clashes in Tahrir Square prompts decisive military action. The prime minister apologizes for the previous day's attacks, which left at least five dead.

Clashes flared for a second day Thursday between opponents and supporters of President Hosni Mubarak, spilling out of the central Cairo square occupied by antigovernment demonstrators and deepening the chaos gripping Egypt.

A landscape lies in tatters, but a movement stands its ground

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 01:35 AM PST

Egypt's walking wounded roam a Tahrir Square littered with wrecked vehicles and debris. 'We must hold this place,' one says.

The morning after in Tahrir Square resembled the aftermath of a hurricane: a desolate landscape of walking wounded, husks of wrecked vehicles and a scatter of random debris. Here, a rubber sandal, there a bloodied scarf, and on the periphery, a very small, very dirty kitten.

U.S. rights official condemns violence in Egypt

Posted: 02 Feb 2011 08:01 PM PST

At an awards event in Washington, he says any government forces involved must be held accountable. Egyptian honorees are absent.

The top State Department official on human rights called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday night to hold accountable any government forces that participated in the violent attacks in Cairo.