Mubarak

  Pope Shenouda III, the charismatic patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church whose shrewd grasp of religion and politics guided Egypt's Christians through deepening animosities with Muslims, died Saturday. He was 88. The state news agency reported that Shenouda, who led the church for four decades, had struggled with respiratory and liver ailments. There was no announcement about a successor. A stately figure with a flowing gray beard, the pope had attempted in recent months to buttressEgypt'sestimated 9 million Copts against persecution from Islamists following the revolution that overthrew former President Hosni Mubarak.

As 16 U.S. citizens await trial in Egypt for accepting foreign financing to promote democracy, for the first time in more than 30 years there is a serious debate in Washington about whether to end the $1.3-billion annual military assistance to Cairo. There's no debate in Egypt, however. More than 70% of Egyptians, according to a recent Gallup poll, no longer want U.S. funding. By deciding to prosecute Americans, post-Mubarak Egypt has intentionally provoked a bilateral crisis. But the legal assault on U.S.-funded nongovernmental organizations and personnel is merely a symptom of a larger, more serious problem.

Bothaina Kamel is a novelty and a provocation in a single breath. The only woman running for Egypt's presidency, she travels without an entourage, wears a bracelet that says "Make poverty history," can outlast the most exasperating heckler in the crowd, and has no chance of winning. "I want to create culture shock. Yes, a woman is running for president," says Kamel, a television presenter and ex-wife of a former cultural minister. "Some people have come up to me and asked, 'Is it even legal for a woman to run?

Revolution 2.0 The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power: A Memoir Wael Ghonim Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 308 pp., $26 Wael Ghonim is an unlikely rebel. Born in Egypt in 1980, he began working his first Web job while studying at Cairo University, then moved to the U.S. (where he married an American) and eventually became Google's top marketing representative for the Middle East, based in Dubai. His opposition to Hosni Mubarak's regime was far down on his personal list of interests.

Men in pressed suits and polished shoes, some carrying holy books and sporting beards, rushed past concrete barricades and hurried beneath a silver dome to begin setting laws for a nation that for generations had oppressed and imprisoned many of those now rising to power. Egypt's new parliament held its inaugural session Monday, and a sense of wonder was mixed with the gravity of a country still under military rule and beset by economic turmoil. Dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, once banned from running for office, the chamber echoed with the raucous voices of a burgeoning political era that is replacing the specter of Hosni Mubarak's corrupt secular government.

It was a day of fortunes turned inside out: The Muslim Brotherhood, persecuted for decades by then-President Hosni Mubarak, moved closer Tuesday to winning Egypt's parliamentary elections while the disgraced former leader listened from a defendant's cage as a federal prosecutor demanded the "harshest penalty" for him. More than 14 million Egyptians were eligible to cast ballots Tuesday for 150 seats in nine governorates, with the Brotherhood having...

Hanan Milad, a house painter's wife with two children and one on the way, stood outside a polling station Monday, biting her lip and praying for patience as crowds swelled and ballots arrived late in Egypt's first free elections since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. "I can't wait all day to vote," Milad said as soldiers stood guard at the edge of a cement factory. "But I'm here because I want a future for my children. The revolution inspired us. You can see people are poor here. We don't know a lot about politics, but we have hope.

Ibrahim Shaban said he was 15, but he looked much younger in his pajama pants and sweat shirt with the worn-away rhinestones, dirt caked on his bare feet, a knife scar on his face. He strolled through the crowds in Tahrir Square the other day, watching banners unfurl, listening to speeches. He sometimes sounded like a miniature rebel, distilling the nation's rage in his narrow body. "My father died a month ago, so I've been living in the square," he said. "He had heart problems. He sold cups and glasses in the street.

One protester was killed and more than 600 others were injured Saturday in clashes with riot police in Tahrir Square, a fierce battle of tear gas, rubber bullets and stones that was one of the most violent since the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak nine months ago. At least one other protester was killed in Alexandria, where demonstrations and clashes also took place, wire reports said. Another eruption of anger at the ruling military council before next week's parliamentary elections, the fighting broke out when security forces moved to evacuate about 200 protesters who had staged a sit-in late Friday.

Egypt is frayed, bloody and slipping toward a new revolt. The clashes that erupted for the second day in a row Sunday between police and protesters are the most volatile challenge in months to the nation's military leaders. The anger glimpsed through the tear gas and on the bruised faces of demonstrators marked a dangerous chasm between the Egyptian people and the generals who have refused to relinquish power to a civilian government. What is unfolding in the streets of Cairo, Suez and the coastal city of Alexandria is the compounded anger over the unrealized promise of a revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February but has yet to steer the country toward a new democracy.