Africa, Hosni Mubarak | featured news

'Leave, leave like Mubarak!' protesters chant as tens of thousands break through barbed wire at the presidential palace to denounce President Mohamed Morsi. Tens of thousands of Egyptians broke through barbed wire and marched to the presidential palace Friday demanding that President Mohamed Morsi step down even as government officials appeared to offer a slight concession on a controversial proposed constitution.

Having pressed the new Egyptian president, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday sought to mobilize what influence the United States still has with the army chief whose key role in post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt is splitting the country between those who see the military as a threat to democracy and those clinging to it as a guarantor of stability.

Egypt’s dissolved parliament defied a court order and reconvened Tuesday, escalating the power struggle between the newly elected Islamist president and the military over the political future of a nation still tangled in the legacy of toppled leader Hosni Mubarak.

The attorney for ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called recent reports of Mubarak's death an "outrageous rumor," saying the former leader was regaining his health.

Egypt's state news agency said Tuesday that Hosni Mubarak has suffered a stroke, and prison officials said he is likely to be moved out of his prison hospital to a military facility nearby....

Egypt entered its final day of voting on Sunday with very few people going to the polls to choose Hosni Mubarak’s successor under a cloud of apprehension and anticipation. Turnout appeared dismal in a sign of just how polarizing and demoralizing the choice between a military strongman and conservative Islamist is for the Arab World’s most populous nation.

The developments, reported on the Web site of the official newspaper Al Ahram, further escalated tensions over court rulings on Thursday that invalidated modern Egypt’s first democratically elected legislature. Coming on the eve of a presidential runoff, they thrust the nation’s troubled transition to democracy since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak last year into grave doubt.

Doctors used a defibrillator twice on Hosni Mubarak Monday when they could not find a pulse, the latest health crisis for the ousted Egyptian president since he was sentenced to life and moved to a prison hospital nine days ago, security officials said.

Interior Ministry officials said on Wednesday that prison authorities are close to a decision to return Hosni Mubarak, the former president, to a hospital outside the penal system.

Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison Saturday for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising that forced him from power last year.