Hosni Mubarak, North Africa | featured news

An Egyptian court dismissed cases against 379 people accused of involvement in clashes with police during protests near the Interior Ministry in November 2011 in which 42 demonstrators were killed, the state news agency reported.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

A prosecutor in the trial of Hosni Mubarak demanded on Thursday that the ousted Egyptian leader be sentenced to hang on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters.

Hosni Mubarak's lawyer said the ousted Egyptian president has suffered a stroke and is in a coma. However, a doctor at the hospital where Mubarak has been held under arrest denied the report.

Egypt sacked nearly 600 top police officers Wednesday, the start of a promised cleansing of a force blamed for chronic abuses during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, state television reported.