Six In The Morning

Mubarak’s Youngest Victims  

Cairo’s street kids were duped into resisting the revolution, then shot by police in the chaos that ensued

Robert Fisk: Cairo’s 50,000 street children were abused by this regime

The cops shot 16-year-old Mariam in the back on 28 January, a live round fired from the roof of the Saida Zeinab police station in the slums of Cairo’s old city at the height of the government violence aimed at quelling the revolution, a pot shot of contempt by Mubarak’s forces for the homeless street children of Egypt.

She had gone to the police with up to a hundred other beggar boys and girls to demand the release of her friend, 16-year-old Ismail Yassin, who had already been dragged inside the station. Some of the kids outside were only nine years old. Maybe that’s why the first policeman on the roof fired warning bullets into the air.

Ladies And Gentlemen He Has Left The Building

In the end, the refusal of pro-democracy protesters to back down sealed his fate.

The West Loses Its Favorite Tyrant  

It was exactly 6:00 p.m. local time in Cairo when the decision was made public. In a curt statement, Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that President Hosni Mubarak, due to the “difficult situation” in the country, was leaving office. Power, Suleiman said, would initially be transferred to the Egyptian army.

The resignation is a triumph for the opposition. Weeks of growing demonstrations continually increased pressure on Mubarak. Three times, the president addressed his people. Three times he said he would not step down.

The 82-year-old Mubarak ruled his country for three full decades, but in the end, even he realized that he could not stand up to the mass protests that have rocked Egypt for the last 18 days.

They Watched Did They Care

EXCLUSIVE

Australians saw Habib tortured, says officer

DAMNING evidence from an Egyptian intelligence officer that names an Australian official who witnessed the torture of Sydney man Mamdouh Habib in Guantanamo Bay has been revealed as the trigger for a hushed-up government payout to Mr Habib and a high-level investigation.

The explosive 840-word statement, released exclusively to The Sun-Herald, was shown to government solicitors three days before they suddenly paid Mr Habib an undisclosed amount to drop his lawsuit claiming Australia was complicit in his CIA-engineered kidnap in 2001, transfer to Egypt and subsequent torture.

It’s A Little Late    

Brass meet on violence

NSC meets as political upheaval is slammed by rights groups and civil society bodies

Alarmed by the wave of violence sweeping through the country, the Zimbabwe’s top political leadership met on Friday as the National Security Council (NSC), chaired by President Robert Mugabe, tries to tackle the upsurge in violence before it spins out of control.

Apart from Mugabe, others who attend the NSC include co-vice-presidents Joyce Mujuru and John Nkomo, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his deputies, Thokozani Khuphe and Arthur Mutambara.

Always Making Sure The Less Fortunate Suffer  

Obama’s Budget Seeks Deep Cuts in Domestic Spending

President Obama, who is proposing his third annual budget on Monday, will say that it can reduce projected deficits by $1.1 trillion over the next decade, enough to stabilize the nation’s fiscal health and buy time to address its longer-term problems, according to a senior administration official.

Two-thirds of the reductions that Mr. Obama will claim are from cuts in spending, including in many domestic programs that he supports. Among the reductions for just the next fiscal year, 2012, which starts Oct. 1, are more than $1 billion from airport grants and nearly $1 billion from grants to states for water treatment plants and similar projects. Public health and forestry programs would also be cut.

It’s Party Time

After security forces swept armed gangs from a Rio shanty town, its people can now prepare for carnival with new hope

Samba replaces sound of gunfire as Rio de Janeiro favela is purged of drug traffickers

When Evandro Pereira de Souza saw tanks gathering at the entrance to his slum, he braced himself for the worst. It was last November and Rio’s notorious Complexo do Alemão shanty town was about to witness the largest military operation in the city’s history, part of an unprecedented government drive to expel heavily armed drug traffickers from the favelas.

“I was expecting a bloody disaster,” recalls Souza, a samba-obsessed 32-year-old better known by his stage name Wando Simpatia (Friendly Wando). “We slept at my aunt’s house.”