Egyptian People

Detained Egyptian opposition leader Ayman Nour ended a hunger strike Saturday after President Hosni Mubarak announced proposals to allow multi-candidate presidential elections, his wife said. Nour called the amendment "an important step toward the party's and the Egyptian people's demand for extensive constitutional reform," said his wife, Gamila Ismail.

Riot police with truncheons Thursday chased protesters away from Egypt's high court as two pro-reform judges faced a disciplinary hearing for alleging fraud in last year's parliamentary elections. At least 16 demonstrators were arrested and one was beaten, said the organizers, the Kifaya, or Enough, opposition group. Police declined to confirm the arrests or clashes.

For centuries, before its steady decline of recent decades, Egypt was the center of the Arab world; Cairo its focus of learning, culture and political power. Now, the country suddenly is changing again in ways likely to reshape the region for years to come. The implications encompass religion, the role of the military and the meaning of citizenship in authoritarian societies. The changes will complicate relations with Israel and pose challenges for U.S. foreign policy. They will affect rising non-Arab powers such as Turkey and Iran.

Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt, an Arab storyteller who chronicled the search for human values from the Nile delta of the Pharaohs to the back alleys of modern Cairo, won the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature today. Mahfouz, the first Arab writer to win the award in its 87-year history, has been compared to Charles Dickens for his vivid portrayals of poverty. One book of his was banned in Egypt, and another attacked former President Gamal Abdel Nasser's domestic and pan-Arabist policies.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dismissed his government but gave no sign in a defiant national television address early Saturday that he would be driven from office by widespread protests that have shaken his security forces, killed at least 25 people and left spirals of smoke across the capital. His speech shortly after midnight was an indication that he believed his security forces and military had a tight grip on the country despite protests Friday that shut down much of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other cities.

Iran's two main opposition leaders have called on Tehran's hard-line rulers to walk the walk instead of just talking the talk. Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have asked the Interior Ministry, which is controlled by an acolyte of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, to allow for a march at Tehran's Azadi Square on Feb. 14 in support of the Egyptian uprising and the Tunisian revolution. Iran's hard-line authorities won't approve a permit for the march, especially at the same site where up to 3 million anti-government protesters staged a rally on June 15, 2009.

SANA, Yemen -- The Israeli killing of Hamas' military chief Ahmed Jabari in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday came amid a much-altered political landscape in the Arab world, especially in Islamist-led Egypt looking to regain its regional prominence. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has long had close ties to Hamas, became the  dominant force in Egypt after last year's overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is certain to encounter increased pressure from ultraconservative Islamists to scrap Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

When safety is last Re "Dine at your own risk in China," Column One, June 27 The horrors of Chinese food safety abuse, in which companies put profit before consumer welfare, are harbingers of what can happen in the U.S. if for-profit corporations are allowed to self-regulate. Here in the U.S., we constantly have to fight conservatives' efforts to underfund agencies that protect the public from the kinds of horrendous practices found in China: soy sauce made from hair clippings, melamine-tainted baby formula, steroids in pork and recycled oil from sewers.

The streets of the Arab world's largest city were quiet after Friday prayers for the first time since war began March 20, as a massive security presence aborted two planned demonstrations and the public seemed increasingly resigned to the likelihood Saddam Hussein's regime would fall. "Heavy security and events in Iraq are taking the steam out of the protests," political activist Marwan Hamdy said outside Al Azhar Mosque, where an announced street demonstration never materialized.