Syria launched a major military offensive to seize back parts of Damascus under de facto rebel control on Sunday, a day after the Arab League said it was abandoning its monitoring mission in the face of out-of-control violence.

Government forces killed at least 19 people, activists said, in some of the bloodiest fighting in the capital since Syria’s 10-month uprising began. Witnesses inside Damascus described scenes of mayhem, with troops shelling residential areas and fierce house-to-house fighting.

“It’s urban war. There are bodies in the street,” one activist, speaking from the suburb of Kfar Batna, told Reuters.

Around 2,000 troops, together with at least 50 tanks and armoured vehicles, began a major operation at dawn, when they headed towards the al-Ghouta area in eastern Damascus. The foray was part of a wider offensive against the suburbs of Saqba, Hammouriya and Kfar Batna, activists said.

Video footage showed tanks trundling forward, followed by government soldiers on foot. The army pushed deep into the centre of Kfar Batna. Witnesses reported four tanks in the main square.

Activists said 14 civilians and five insurgents from the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) were killed. Gruesome unconfirmed video showed the mangled bodies of what appeared to be civilians caught by mortar or shellfire. …

Megaupload goes down

Google is under fire for plans to collect data on individual users across all of its websites and merge the information into a single profile that can be used to alter the person's search results and target them with advertising and services.

Users will have no way to opt out of being tracked across the board when the search company unifies its privacy policy and terms of service for all its online offerings, including search, Gmail and Google+. The move is being criticised by privacy advocates and could attract greater scrutiny from anti-trust regulators.

"If you're signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services," Google's director of privacy, product and engineering, Alma Whitten, wrote in a blogpost.

After the new policy comes into effect, user information from most Google products – such as YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google+ and Android mobile – will be treated as a single trove of data, which the company could use for targeted advertising or other revenue-raising purposes.

An article in the Washington Post raised concerns about details of people's private meetings, health, politics and finances becoming part of their digital dossier kept by Google. Confidential discussions via Gmail of a meeting location might be transferred to Google Maps without the user's consent, for example. ...

Ain't that no shit.

Ta, Matt.

A security breach has led to the WikiLeaks archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables being made available online, without redaction to protect sources.

WikiLeaks has been releasing the cables over nine months by partnering with mainstream media organisations.

Selected cables have been published without sensitive information that could lead to the identification of informants or other at-risk individuals.

The US government warned last year that such a release could lead to US informants, human rights activists and others being placed at risk of harm or detention.

A Twitter user has now published a link to the full, unredacted database of embassy cables. The user is believed to have found the information after acting on hints published in several media outlets and on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed, all of which cited a member of rival whistleblowing website OpenLeaks as the original source of the tipoffs. ...

Majority of 88 detainees who have died since start of uprising against regime said to have been tortured

The names of several News of the World journalists who ordered a private detective to hack into mobile phones belonging to six public figures will not be publicly disclosed after Scotland Yard intervened to prevent their publication.

The names were passed to Steve Coogan on Friday by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the paper, in compliance with a high court order the actor obtained earlier this year.

The names are critical to the phone-hacking investigation because they could show how far the practice was widespread at the paper, which was closed down by Rupert Murdoch last month, despite consistent denials from its owner News Group Newspapers. Coogan is one of several celebrities suing the paper for breach of privacy.

The high court order instructed Mulcaire to reveal who at the paper asked him to illegally intercept messages left on mobile belonging to former model Elle Macpherson, publicist Max Clifford and four others.

Mulcaire, who was employed exclusively by the News of the World, was also told to reveal who at the paper ordered him to target Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor, his colleague Jo Armstrong and football agent Sky Andrew.

He was refused leave to appeal against the order earlier this month and handed over the names on Friday, the deadline set by the high court for making the information available.

Law firm Schillings was contacted by Mulcaire's solicitor Sarah Webb of Payne Hicks Beach on Friday and asked not to make the names public. Webb said: "The issues of confidentiality are of concern to the Metropolitan police and we asked Coogan's solicitors not to disclose the information until the Met could consider the matter." ...

Fresh evidence has emerged of other voice messages allegedly hacked from the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's by the News of the World.

A report suggested that the former Sunday tabloid newspaper had details of more voicemails left on her mobile phone than originally thought.

The Wall Street Journal said it had obtained earlier print editions of the newspaper from 2002, which made reference to more messages on the missing teenager's phone.

It states that it undertook a review of the News International-owned newspaper and found that early versions on one day contained detailed quotes from three voicemails.

In the final edition, the article only contained one passing reference to a single voicemail.

On 14 April 2002, the News of the World published a story in its final edition about a woman allegedly pretending to be Milly who had applied for a job with a recruitment agency. It suggested that the hoaxer had given the agency Milly's real mobile number, which it used to contact her when a vacancy arose, leaving a message on her voicemail six days after she went missing.

The newspaper later informed the police about the voicemail that it is alleged to have intercepted.

However, the Wall Street Journal has now said that it has obtained earlier editions of the newspaper from the same day, which include an article that makes reference to two further messages left on the phone. ...

Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, has been ordered by a court to reveal who instructed him to access the voicemails of model Elle Macpherson and five other public figures, including Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat deputy leader.

Mulcaire is due to reveal these details by the end of next week in a move that will throw further light on the scale of phone hacking at the now defunct News International tabloid.

The Guardian has learned that Mulcaire has lost an attempt to appeal against a court order obliging him to identify who instructed him to hack the phones, something he has resisted since February.

Mulcaire, who was jailed in 2007 after pleading guilty to hacking the phones of members of the royal household for the NoW, has been forced into making the disclosure after legal action by Steve Coogan. In February, the actor's lawyers argued in court that if it were proved that the paper had instructed Mulcaire to hack into the phones of the six public figures, it would show that phone hacking was taking place on an industrial scale.

Mulcaire must now name names in relation to Macpherson, Hughes and four others: Max Clifford; the football agent Sky Andrew; Jo Armstrong, a legal adviser to the Professional Footballers Association; and Gordon Taylor, the former head of the PFA. At his trial in 2006 Mulcaire also admitted hacking the phones of five of the six names in Coogan's court order. ...

The Liberal Democrat MP, Simon Hughes, is to sue News International over phone hacking at the News of the World, he confirmed on Thursday.

Hughes told the Evening Standard: "It is important now that all those who were clearly the subject of criminal activity help to get to the bottom of what happened during this dark period in British journalism."

Hughes's decision to take legal action against Rupert Murdoch's Sunday tabloid, which was closed last month, is significant because the private investigator employed by the paper has already been convicted of targeting his mobile phone.

Glenn Mulcaire pleaded guilty to hacking into Hughes's messages, along with those left on mobiles belonging to seven other people, in 2006.

That means Mulcaire will be unable to resist complying with any court order Hughes obtains that requires the former investigator to say who asked him to intercept Hughes's messages.

In other cases currently going through the civil courts, Mulcaire's legal team has successfully appealed against such orders by arguing that he would be incriminating himself if he were to comply with them by admitting his guilt.

Mulcaire will not be able to mount the same argument when Hughes takes legal action, against News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers, because he pleaded guilty to hacking his phone five years ago.

That could lead to more News of the World journalists being named. Three of the original eight victims named in the 2006 legal action have already sued the paper's owner. ...

A leading tabloid journalist has joined those suing the News of the World for allegedly hacking into voicemails, reviving claims that the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper has been spying on its rivals to steal their stories.

According to the high court registry, Fleet Street veteran Dennis Rice has issued proceedings against the NoW and its private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire. Rice, who is now freelance, was the investigations editor at the Mail on Sunday (MoS) when Mulcaire was at the peak of his activity between 2005 and 2006.

A source familiar with Mulcaire's activities claims that, acting on orders from an NoW editorial executive, he intercepted voicemail messages from Rice and half a dozen other journalists at the MoS. They say that among other targets, the paper was keen to steal stories that Rice was filing from Germany, where England were playing in the World Cup in the summer of 2006, generating tabloid interest in the players' wives and girlfriends.

The same source said that by hacking into voicemails, Mulcaire obtained a password which would have allowed him to access the MoS internal computer system, potentially disclosing all of its email traffic and every story awaiting publication.

Some journalists who have worked for the NoW claim they were also attempting to penetrate the security of the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People.

If proved, the claim could break the alliance of silence which has seen most Fleet Street papers refuse to investigate the scandal. Rice's legal action is only the latest in a number of indications that the claim may be correct. ...

Eight New York residents are suing China and its biggest search engine company, accusing Baidu of conspiring with the government to censor pro-democracy content.

The lawsuit claims violations of the US constitution, and according to the plaintiffs' lawyer, is the first of its type. In an unorthodox move, it names not only a company but also the Chinese government as defendants.

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday, more than a year after Google declared it would no longer censor search results in China, and rerouted internet users to its Hong Kong website.

Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo declined to comment.

According to the complaint filed in the US district court in Manhattan, Baidu acts as an "enforcer" of policies by the ruling Communist party in censoring such pro-democracy content as references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square military crackdown.

This censorship suppresses the writings and videos of the plaintiffs, who are pro-democracy activists, to the extent that the materials do not appear in search results, the complaint said.

It also violates US laws because the censorship affects searches in America, according to the complaint. ...

... Grant...described the closeness of successive governments to the Murdoch press as "repulsive" and claimed his films, such as Love Actually, did not rely on publicity in the tabloid press for their success.

"Only one actress spoke to a newspaper in publicising that film. The tabloid press is completely unnecessary in my industry," said Grant.

He added that a film's success was 97% down to a good film, 2% to publicity material such as a trailer and 1% publicity in the press. "Almost no one will talk to the tabloid press," he said.

"People who have a bit of success in life will do anything in the world to avoid talking to a tabloid newspaper."

Warming to his theme, Grant said: "So little do we need the tabloid press that if I won a big libel case against a tabloid I wouldn't [want money], I would want an assurance that they would never mention my name again.

"We don't need them. The sooner they go out of business the better. They rely almost entirely on stealing people's privacy. Those journalists might go back to proper journalism in six or 12 months. They might actually be grateful ... they might feel better about themselves."

He added: "Basically they have all gone down the easy route, especially in the digital age. They just steal someone's privacy and sell it for money." ...

Yemeni forces have opened fire on demonstrators in three major cities, killing at least 18 and wounding hundreds in one of the fiercest bouts of violence witnessed in nearly three months of popular unrest aimed at toppling President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The clashes between a defected faction of Yemen's army and the republican guard, have raised fears that Yemen may be reaching a critical juncture as public fury continues to mount at the president's refusal to step down.

Violence broke out in the capital when a throng of 2,000 protesters tore away from the main sit-in area at Sana'a University and surged en masse towards the cabinet building in downtown Sana'a with shouts of "God is great" and "Allah rid us of this tyrant".

As they neared their destination they were halted by republican guards who, after trying to disperse them with tear gas and water cannons, began firing live rounds at the crowd.

Soldiers positioned on the balconies and roofs of nearby houses rained bullets down on the angry mob of protesters, who responded by hurling chunks of broken-off paving slabs.

The standoff, which lasted for around four hours, climaxed when soldiers loyal to a defected general, Major Ali Mohsin, arrived in pickup trucks and began returning fire at Saleh's troops.

It was the first time the two sides have clashed in the capital since Mohsin declared his support for the opposition in late March.

Local press reported that a lieutenant colonel, Yahya Muhammad al-Ansi, belonging to the rebel general's first armoured division, was killed in the clashes. ...

Ian Tomlinson death: IPCC rules Met officer 'reckless' in conduct

Detective Inspector Eddie Hall falsely claimed Tomlinson fell down before encountering PC Simon Harwood

Iran helping Syrian regime crack down on protesters, say diplomats

Claim comes as four women shot dead by security forces in first use of violence against an all-female demonstration

Syrian tanks move into city of Homs

12-year-old boy reported killed as residents describe hearing gunfire and shelling

Syrian security forces opened fire on a demonstration on Friday in the coastal city of Latakia – the heartland of the ruling elite – wounding at least five people as thousands took to the streets in several places across the country, witnesses said.

President Bashar al-Assad's regime has stepped up its deadly crackdown on protesters in recent days by unleashing the army along with snipers and tanks. On Friday protesters came out in their thousands, defying the crackdown and using it as a rallying cry.

A witness in Latakia said about 1,000 people turned out for an anti-government rally when plainclothes security agents with automatic rifles opened fire. He said he saw at least five people wounded. Like many witnesses contacted by the Associated Press, he asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisal.

Other demonstrations were reported in Banias and in the north-eastern city of Qamishli.

The government had warned against holding any demonstrations on Friday. Syrian state television said the interior ministry had not approved any "march, demonstration or sit-ins" and that such rallies sought only to harm Syria's security and stability.

Many of the protests were held in remembrance of more than 50 people killed in the last week alone in Deraa, a southern city at the centre of the revolt. Deraa has been under military siege since Monday when thousands of soldiers stormed in backed by tanks and snipers.

A devastating picture has been emerging from the city – which is largely sealed off, without electricity and telephones – as residents flee to neighbouring countries. ...

Activists are claiming that dozens of politically linked Facebook accounts have been removed or suspended by the company in the last 12 hours.

The list of suspended pages include those for the anti cuts group UK Uncut, and pages that were created by students during last December's university occupations.

A list posted on the UCL occupation blog site says the Goldsmiths Fights Back, Slade Occupation, Open Brikbeck, and Tower Hamlet Greens pages as no longer functioning.

It is not yet known how many websites have been affected in total or why they are not working. Facebook is currently looking into the issue.

Guy Aitchison, 26, an administrator for one of the non-functioning pages said, "I woke up this morning to find that a lot of the groups we'd been using for anti-cuts activity had disappeared. The timing of it seems suspicious given a general political crackdown because of the royal wedding."

"It seems that dozens of other groups have also been affected, including some of the local UK Uncut groups."

Earlier, it was reported that the Metropolitan police had invoked special powers to deter anarchists in central London ahead of the royal wedding.

Police threw a section 60 cordon around the whole of the royal wedding zone on Friday morning to respond to anarchists masking up at a small gathering in Soho Square in central London. ...

The Metropolitan police has admitted that during the first four years of the phone-hacking affair it warned only 36 people they may have been targeted by the News of the World's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Scotland Yard's latest inquiry, which was launched in January, is believed to be contacting up to 4,000 people whose names and personal details were found in Mulcaire's possession during the original police investigation in 2006.

The disclosure of the number – which Scotland Yard had previously insisted on keeping secret – exposes the Met to the complaint that it breached an agreement with the director of public prosecutions that it would warn all "potential victims" in the affair.

It will also revive criticism that it has consistently played down the scale of criminal activity commissioned by the News of the World.

Scotland Yard has previously repeatedly refused to disclose the number of victims it had warned, rejecting applications under the Freedom of Information Act on the grounds that releasing it would necessarily disclose the identities of those warned, and that this would breach their privacy.

However, in a sharp change of policy, the Met's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, volunteered that during the 2006 inquiry police had warned 28 people they may have been victims; and that after the Guardian revived the affair in July 2009 they warned eight more.

In a letter to John Whittingdale, chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, Yates – who was responsible for dealing with the hacking affair for nearly 20 months – gave no explanation for the failure to inform more than 36 potential victims. He said: "I have accepted that more could and should have been done in relation to those who may have been potential victims." ...

Millions of smartphone users and BT customers who use Wi-Fi wireless internet "hotspot" connections in public are vulnerable to fraud and identity theft, a Guardian investigation has established.

In tests conducted with volunteers – to avoid breaching telecommunications and computer misuse laws – security experts were able to gather usernames, passwords and messages from phones using Wi-Fi in public places.

In the case of the best-selling Apple iPhone 4 and other smartphone handsets, the information could be harvested without the users' knowledge and even when they were not actively surfing the web if the phone was turned on.

BT, the UK's biggest provider of such hotspots with five million of its "Openzone" connections in the UK in train stations, hotels and airports, admitted that it has known of the weakness for "years" and that it is working on a permanent fix. But it has no timetable for when it might be implemented.

Using a £49 piece of communications equipment and software freely available for download from the internet, the investigation established that crooks could set up bogus Wi-Fi "gateways" to which the latest generation of mobile phones would automatically connect. Once a connection is established, all the information passing through the gateway can be either be read directly or decrypted using software that will run on a laptop.

In another test, a fake Wi-Fi hotspot invited people to "pay" for internet access with their credit card – but required them to click a box to accept terms and conditions which clearly stated "you agree we can do anything we like with your credit card details and personal logins".

A number of people entered their details. The Guardian did not retain any users' details in the experiment.

Not only could the information be used to steal identities, hijack email accounts and commit fraud but also to gather information about individuals and company employees. With the information gained in our investigation, fraudsters could have bought goods online or sent multiple e-gift vouchers worth as much as £1,000 each to pre-set email addresses. It is believed that such vouchers are already being traded by crooks over the internet. ...

Bahrain accused of systematic attacks on doctors

Medical workers targeted because they have evidence of security force atrocities, claims US-based human rights group

Syria troops kill protesters in country's bloodiest day of turmoil

Dozens reportedly killed as live bullets and teargas used against rallies after Friday prayers

The Nation magazine has revealed that Koch Industries sent a letter to most of its 50,000 employees on the eve of the November elections, advising them on whom to vote for and warning them of the dire consequences should they choose to vote otherwise. As a result of the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling last year, Koch Industries and other corporations are now legally allowed to pressure their workers to adopt their political views. Koch Industries is run by the billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, who have helped bankroll the Tea Party movement and dozens of other right-wing causes, including the recent attacks on public sector employees and unions going on in many states. ...


Ta much, dear Glenn321

Security researchers have discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of where you go – and saves every detail of it to a secret file on the device which is then copied to the owner's computer when the two are synchronised.

The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone's recorded coordinates along with a timestamp, meaning that anyone who stole the phone or the computer could discover details about the owner's movements using a simple program.

For some phones, there could be almost a year's worth of data stored, as the recording of data seems to have started with Apple's iOS 4 update to the phone's operating system, released in June 2010.

"Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you've been," said Pete Warden, one of the researchers.

Only the iPhone records the user's location in this way, say Warden and Alasdair Allan, the data scientists who discovered the file and are presenting their findings at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. "Alasdair has looked for similar tracking code in [Google's] Android phones and couldn't find any," said Warden. "We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this."

Simon Davies, director of the pressure group Privacy International, said: "This is a worrying discovery. Location is one of the most sensitive elements in anyone's life – just think where people go in the evening. The existence of that data creates a real threat to privacy. The absence of notice to users or any control option can only stem from an ignorance about privacy at the design stage."

Warden and Allan point out that the file is moved onto new devices when an old one is replaced: "Apple might have new features in mind that require a history of your location, but that's our specualtion. The fact that [the file] is transferred across [to a new iPhone or iPad] when you migrate is evidence that the data-gathering isn't accidental." But they said it does not seem to be transmitted to Apple itself. ...

Fuck you, usa.

Syria to lift emergency rule after 48 years – but violence continues

Biggest concession yet to pro-democracy movement, which is gathering steam but has not reached tipping point

... Tomlinson, a newspaper seller, collapsed and died less than three minutes after being hit with a baton and pushed to the ground by a police officer, PC Simon Harwood, during the demonstrations near the Bank of England.

He had been trying to get home from work at around 7.20pm on 1 April 2009 when he encountered the Metropolitan police officer.

Paramedics were unable to resuscitate Tomlinson, a father of nine, who was pronounced dead more than an hour later.

Prof Kevin Channer, a heart expert at Royal Hallamshire hospital, was asked by the inquest to analyse chart readings from a defibrillator that was used on Tomlinson by paramedics.

Channer's expert evidence, contained in a report to the inquest, was that the electrocardiogram (ECG) data obtained by paramedics as they fought to resuscitate Tomlinson was inconsistent with an arrhythmic heart attack. The heart pulse data was however consistent with the 47-year-old dying of internal bleeding, Channer said.

The medical cause of Tomlinson's death has proved a key area of controversy in his inquest, which is now in its fourth week. ...

Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across Yemen on Sunday, denouncing President Ali Abdullah Saleh for saying women should not take part in protest rallies.

At least 10 people were shot and wounded in Sana'a by forces loyal to the president, doctors said, and around 200 were overcome by teargas. Clashes were also reported to have taken place in Dhamar, just south of the capital.

In a speech on Friday, Saleh had condemned the mingling of men and women at demonstrations, saying it violated Islamic law. The comments enraged many Yemenis and prompted the youth movement to call for mass protests, on what they called a day of honour and dignity.

There was a significant turnout, with more than 100,000 people – including significant numbers of women – taking to the streets in Taiz, and tens of thousands more marching in Ibb, Aden, Shabwa and other cities. Demonstrators also demanded the president step down.

Abdel-Malek al-Youssefi, a youth movement activist and organiser, said the protests could be "the last nail in Saleh's coffin".

Yemen has been racked with anti-government demonstrations for the past two months. The protesters are calling for steps to improve livelihoods and open up the country's restricted political life.

A young woman first led anti-Saleh rallies on a university campus in January, but women did not begin taking part in large numbers until early last month.

While Yemen has conservative social and religious traditions, women can vote, run for parliament and drive cars, unlike in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Near-daily protests and defections by key allies in the military, powerful tribes and diplomatic corps have failed to bring an end to Saleh's 32-year autocratic rule. A crackdown on protesters by government forces has killed more than 120 people, according to Yemeni rights groups, but has not deterred the crowds from gathering.

Last week, the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council suggested Saleh transfer power to his deputy, seeking an end to the unrest. The opposition criticised the proposal for not suggesting that the power transfer should be immediate. Opposition members are expected in the Saudi capital on Sunday to explain their position to Riyadh and other Gulf mediators. ...

Senior officers policing protests in London last month focused too heavily on kettling to contain activists, Liberty says. The rights group, which had 120 observers, including two inside Scotland Yard's special operations room (SOR), for the TUC march on 26 March, said the tactic was "under near constant consideration" when potential trouble emerged.

"In the SOR, there seemed to be a continual expectation that a containment would be imposed at some point," Liberty's report said, adding that the tactic "does appear seriously to undermine the relationship of trust and confidence between peaceful protesters and the police".

The report added: "The possibility of mass containment of peaceful protesters has undoubtedly had a chilling effect on many people's rights to freedom of expression and assembly." ...

... Successfully forging the belief that tabloid journalism is a worthwhile use of your brief time on this planet must require a mental leap beyond the reach of Galileo. This is one reason why so many tabloid stories are routinely peppered with lies – if their staff didn't continually flex their delusion muscles, a torrent of dark, awful self-awareness might rush into their heads like unforgiving black water pouring through the side of a stricken submarine, and they'd all slash their wrists open right there at their workstations. The newsroom hubbub would be regularly broken by the dispiriting thump of lifeless heads thunking on to desks. Each morning their bosses would have to clear all the spent corpses away with a bulldozer and hire a fresh team of soon-to-be-heartbroken lifewasters to replace the ones who couldn't make it, whose powers of self-deception simply weren't up to the job. Who couldn't cope with the knowledge that they were wasting their lives actively making the world worse.

And now – on top of all of these trials and indignities, on top of the harrowing leukaemia-of-the-soul their career choice inflicts upon them – now their job has got even harder. Because for a while, at least, wasting your life actively making the world worse was relatively easy. You could pay someone to root through someone's dustbins. Then, when the early mobiles arrived, you could get a £59 frequency scanner and sit outside a soap star's flat, surreptitiously recording their calls. And when phones went digital, there was the voicemail wheeze, which made life even easier. You could sit at your desk illegally invading the privacy of strangers just by pushing buttons.

But now, having abused all those tricks, like they abused their talent – not for any noble cause, but to find out which girlband member snogged which boyband member – those easy games are up. And it couldn't have come at a worse time: with plummeting sales, the need for sensational stories is higher than ever. All of which means all those people wasting their lives actively making the world worse will now have to expend colossal effort in order to do so: like prisoners forced at gunpoint to dig their own graves – but with a rubber shovel.

There is no fate more tragic. Pity them. Pity them hard.

Fuck you, chinastan.

Fuck you, chinastan.

Thousands may sue over police kettling at G20 protests

High court rules way in which police kettled up to 5,000 demonstrators at G20 protests in April 2009 was illegal

Briton dies in Dubai police custody after 'severe beatings'

Foreign Office demands full investigation after death of Lee Brown during detention in Dubai over a row at luxury hotel

The News of the World reacted to the unexpected arrest of one of its most senior reporters by clearing his desk.

Despite the paper having promised that it would co-operate fully with police inquiries, executives descended on the desk of former news editor James Weatherup moments after learning of his arrest. Under the eyes of their legal team, they bagged up notebooks, papers and recording machines and removed them "via our lawyers", a firm whose identity the publisher refused to confirm.

A few hours later, the police arrived and took the bags to Scotland Yard.

The unexpected arrest of Weatherup, one of the most senior journalists at the News of the World, at his home leaves little room for doubt that the new police team investigating the phone-hacking scandal is determined to succeed where its much-criticised predecessors failed.

It was three weeks ago that the News of the World dumped a vast archive of data at Scotland Yard's door – a trove that has turbo-charged the Met investigation.

The data, which comprises millions of emails from everyone at the newspaper – and which the NoW previously claimed had been lost – could implicate the paper in more instances of malpractice than have been previously suggested.

There are 8,000 emails relating to Sienna Miller alone. An examination of their contents could reveal that many more public figures were also targeted by the newspaper, in addition to the 24 who are already bringing legal actions, including football agent Sky Andrew and the former culture secretary, Tessa Jowell. ...

Girl, 6, frisked by security at US airport
The parents of a young child have called for changes to airport security procedures after their six-year-old daughter was body-searched at New Orleans airport.
14 Apr 2011

Selena Drexel said her daughter Anna was confused and began crying after the pat-down.

"When it was over and the camera was off, she got very weepy," she said. "She was apologetic: 'I'm sorry Mommy, I don't know what I did wrong, I don't know why they're mad at me'."

Mrs Drexel said searches were inappropriate for children because they are usually told not to let adults touch them in sensitive areas.

Airport screeners would not tell her why they were frisking her six-year-old daughter, she added.

Security officials said the officer followed proper procedures but that the security agency was reviewing its screening policies.

Detectives investigating illegal news-gathering at the News of the World are planning to question Rebekah Brooks, the paper's former editor who is now Rupert Murdoch's chief executive in the UK, according to police sources.

The revelation came on the day that Brooks denied to MPs that she had "knowledge of any specific cases" of police officers being paid for information by any newspaper – despite having told MPs eight years ago that her journalists had paid officers in the past.

It is understood that Brooks now faces questioning from Operation Weeting, Scotland Yard's third attempt to investigate the interception of voicemail messages by News of the World journalists. At the same time, the Guardian has established that during an earlier inquiry Scotland Yard was so concerned by allegations that the paper was paying bribes to serving officers and other key workers that it tapped Brooks's telephone. Police found no evidence that she had committed any offence.

The tapping of her phone was carried out with a Home Office warrant early in 2004 as part of an inquiry by Scotland Yard's anti-corruption command into allegations that the News of the World was bribing serving officers, buying confidential data from the police national computer and making regular cash payments of up to £1,000 a week to employees of phone companies who were selling information from the accounts of public figures.

The paper's then assistant editor (news), Greg Miskiw, is believed to have been arrested and questioned. Four men were convicted of selling information from the police computer to the News of the World and other papers. But neither Brooks, Miskiw nor anyone else from Fleet Street was charged. ...

Yemen’s embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh has lost the backing of his closest allies in the Arab world who called on him to pass power to his vice president to ensure the country’s “unity, safety and stability.”

The Gulf Cooperation Council urged for the transition of power to Vice President Abduraboo Mansur Hadi and the creation of an opposition-led national unity government, Abdel Latif al Zayyani, secretary general of the GCC, told reporters in the Saudi capital Riyadh late yesterday. The group renewed its invitation to Saleh’s government and Yemen’s opposition to hold GCC-brokered talks in Riyadh.

“It has seemed more and more likely over the past week that Saleh would have to pass on power, whether in the two months that the opposition has called for or by the end of the year as the ruling party has said,” Abdul Ghani Aryani, an independent political analyst, said in a telephone interview from Sana’a. “With the GCC formally backing the transition, it will probably be at some point in between.”

In Yemen, the poorest Arab country, anti-government protests mirroring those across the Middle East and North Africa, are entering their third month. Saleh’s army, government and much of his tribal base have abandoned him as violent clashes between security forces and protesters calling for his removal escalated. At least 662 Yemenis, including 24 children, have been killed in the civil unrest since Feb. 18, the United Nations’ children’s fund said yesterday. ...

Bradley Manning: top US legal scholars voice outrage at 'torture'

Obama professor among 250 experts who have signed letter condemning humiliation of alleged WikiLeaks source

Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, blocked an attempt by Gordon Brown before the general election to hold a judicial inquiry into allegations that the News of the World had hacked into the phones of cabinet ministers and other high-profile figures. ...

Rupert Murdoch used his political influence and contacts at the highest levels to try to get Labour MPs and peers to back away from investigations into phone hacking at the News of the World, a former minister in Gordon Brown's government has told the Observer.

The ex-minister, who does not want to be named, says he is aware of evidence that Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, relayed messages to Brown last year via a third party, urging him to help take the political heat out of the row, which he felt was in danger of damaging his company.

Brown, who stepped down as prime minister after last May's general election defeat for Labour, has refused to comment on the claim, but has not denied it. It is believed that contacts were made before he left No 10. The minister said: "What I know is that Murdoch got in touch with a good friend who then got in touch with Brown. The intention was to get him to cool things down. That is what I was told."

Brown, who became increasingly concerned at allegations of phone hacking and asked the police to investigate, had claimed that he was a victim of hacking when chancellor. He made Murdoch's views known to a select few in the Labour party.

In January, it was revealed Brown had written at least one letter to the Metropolitan police over concerns that his phone was targeted when he was still at the Treasury.

Suggestions that Murdoch involved Tony Blair in a chain of phone calls that led to Brown have been denied by the former prime minister. A spokesman for Blair said the claim was "categorically untrue", adding "no such calls ever took place". The allegation will, however, add to concerns about the influence Murdoch wielded over key political figures at Westminster and in Downing Street.

It will also raise further questions over the decision by David Cameron to appoint Andy Coulson, a former NoW editor who resigned over phone hacking, as his director of communications. ...

News of the World phone hacking victims get apology from Murdoch

Confession that practice was rife is likely to cost News International millions of pounds in compensation

The actor Leslie Ash has spoken out for the first time against the Metropolitan police for failing to investigate claims that a private investigator working for the News of the World had hacked into her mobile phone, even though the force had held evidence since 2006 that he had targeted her along with her husband and two children.

Ash, a former star of Men Behaving Badly, told the Guardian: "I feel I've really been let down. I can't understand their behaviour at all." Ash and her husband, the former footballer Lee Chapman, are suing the News of the World for breach of privacy after the Met confirmed in January that in a 2006 raid on the investigator Glenn Mulcaire, it had seized notepads in which he had recorded their mobile phone numbers and those of their two sons.

Despite holding that information, which Ash said includes phone numbers for her GP, bank and a teacher at her sons' school, Scotland Yard failed to tell her that she was a target.

"The police were actually withholding evidence," she said. "I've been brought up to trust the police. It's not a good time for the police at the moment."

Ash became a regular in the headlines as soon as she appeared in the hit laddish comedy Men Behaving Badly, but tabloid pressure reached its peak when cosmetic surgery left her with inflamed lips in 2003 and when she contracted a form of MRSA in hospital the following year.

Her family feared she would die. Now Ash says that messages left on mobile phones belonging to her and her children at that time were used by newspapers. ...

The former news editor and current chief reporter from the News of the World have been arrested on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting mobile phone voicemail messages.

Ian Edmondson and Neville Thurlbeck had voluntarily presented themselves at different London police stations this morning and were arrested. It was expected their homes would be searched by officers at midday.

Scotland Yard has confirmed that two men, aged 50 and 42, "were arrested this morning after attending separate police stations in south-west London by appointment".

"They remain in custody for questioning after being arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section 1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977, and unlawful interception of voicemail messages, contrary to Section 1 Ripa [Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act] 2000," the briefing added.

"The Operation Weeting team is conducting the new investigation into phone hacking. It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details regarding this case at this time." ...

The US supreme court heard oral arguments Tuesday on what could be the largest class action civil rights suit in US history. Or it could be the case that stops class action history in its tracks. Monster megastore Walmart is challenging a lower court's decision to permit women employed at thousands of Walmart stores to join together to contest alleged gender discrimination in pay and promotion practices.

"This has been a ten-year process," says plaintiff Edith Arana. What keeps the women of Dukes v Wal-Mart going, she says, is the belief that something bigger than them is at stake. (Walmart revised the form of its name a few years back.) Says Arana:

"I know what happened to me and it's not just me. The women of this lawsuit are the poster children for the all the women who couldn't do this, and they each have families and names and faces."

That, when it comes to class action lawsuits, is the whole point. Class action lawsuits have probably been the best tool since the passage of the 1964 civil rights act to bring forth claims and win cases against companies that discriminate. The case now before the court will decide not only if women like Arana and Betty Dukes experienced discrimination, but if an entire class of workers did.

It couldn't be a more contentious issue, at a more contentious moment. As Columbia University political science professor Dorian Warren noted on GRITtv this week, the Walmart case comes before a court that has been sceptical not just of discrimination cases, but of the very idea of "class action". And it comes before a nation that – from Madison to Main Street in just about every state – is in the streets over that very concept.

Coming up on 4 April is a nationally coordinated day of action by US trade unions and their allies: We Are One. The protesters will be recalling Dr Martin Luther King's legacy – on the anniversary of his assassination. But they could do worse than to take a tip from the Tea Party types and read the US Constitution while they're at it. Listen in to one of those Tea Party recitations and you'll find constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech, of the press and of the right peaceably to assemble and petition government for redress. For working Americans living in the most dramatically divided economy in a century, every one of those avenues is under attack.

Freedom of the press? Concentration of media ownership is consolidating press power into a few mighty hands. As in the recently approved NBC/Comcast merger, the power in question is the power to shut others out.

Assembly? After weeks of inconvenient public protest for labour rights and against draconian cuts to public services and the people who provide them, the city of Madison just restricted speech in the people's Capitol building to a small "free speech zone" – for the first time in Wisconsin history. In Albany, New York, protesters faced a sign that told them only "senators, staff and lobbyists" were welcome in the state's house. ...

No surveillance without oversight
Given the FBI's record of fallibility – and without genuine safeguards for citizens – this $1bn biometrics project is alarming

Jay Stanley
Wednesday 30 March 2011

The FBI recently announced that its Next Generation Identification System (NGIS) has "reached its initial operating capacity". This vast new biometrics project, for which Lockheed Martin won a $1bn contract in 2008, encompasses not only fingerprints but also, possibly, such biometrics as iris scans, face recognition, bodily scars, marks and tattoos.

Such a system raises a number of concerns from a civil liberties perspective. Many types of biometrics are of particular concern because they allow individuals to be tracked secretly and at a distance. For instance, facial recognition may allow a person to be tracked by various CCTV cameras across a city. Worse, in the future, this may be automated and done by computers.

The FBI is rushing ahead with this system in a larger context that is very troubling. Since 9/11, we've repeatedly seen the government throw together new identity and tracking systems without building in the necessary protections to make sure innocent people aren't caught up in them. A good example is aviation watchlists. Countless travelers have found themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare – improperly listed as suspected terrorists, hassled, arrested or worse, and with no way to clear their names in the eyes of the government's secretive security bureaucracies. The problem is not just errors and mistaken identification, or the lack of due process or rigorous procedures for keeping the lists accurate, but also the possibility that government bureaucrats have used a "when in doubt, thrown a name on the list" approach.

We don't want to see the NGIS operate that way. Unfortunately, the FBI's record does not inspire confidence. In 2003, the bureau exempted its main criminal database, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), from a requirement under the Privacy Act that agencies maintain records with "such accuracy, relevance, timeliness and completeness as is reasonably necessary to assure fairness to the individual". Some people have experienced the reality of this, such as a Maryland woman named Amy Studnitz who was fired from her job after an NCIC background check erroneously reported that she had a criminal record (even after the error was discovered, she was not rehired).

The experience of Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield is also a cautionary tale. Considered a suspect in the 2004 bombing of a Madrid train due to a faulty fingerprint match, the FBI spied on Mayfield without a warrant, broke into his home several times and arrested him under the "material witness" statute. The FBI also investigated 19 other individuals whose fingerprints, like Mayfield's, were deemed similar to those found on evidence in Madrid.

Finally, the FBI's giant biometric project is taking place in a context where the United States – almost alone in the industrialised world – has no strong, overarching privacy laws, and no robust, independent institutions to enforce such laws. In another country where such institutions existed to protect people from error and abuse, this kind of programme might be cause for less concern. But rather than building such institutions, the US government has instead been granting sweeping new powers to our security agencies, and dismantling the checks and balances that are needed to ensure those powers are not misused. ...

Earlier this month, I was asked by an MIT graduate student why the United States government was "torturing" Private First Class Bradley Manning, who is accused of being the source of the WikiLeaks cables that have been reported by the Guardian and other news outlets and posted online. The fact is the government is doing no such thing. But questions about his treatment have led to a review by the UN special rapporteur on torture, and challenged the legitimacy of his pending prosecution.

As a public diplomat and (until recently) spokesman of the department of state, I was responsible for explaining the national security policy of the United States to the American people and populations abroad. I am also a retired military officer who has long believed that our civilian power must balance our military power. Part of our strength comes from international recognition that the United States practises what we preach. Most of the time, we do. This strategic narrative has made us, broadly speaking, the most admired country in the world.

To be clear, Private Manning is rightly facing prosecution and, if convicted, should spend a long, long time in prison. Having been deeply engaged in the WikiLeaks issue for many months, I know that the 251,000 diplomatic cables included properly classified information directly connected to our national interest. The release placed the lives of activists around the world at risk.

Julian Assange and others have suggested that the release of the cables was to expose wrongdoing. Nonsense.

While everyone can point to an isolated cable, taken as a whole, the cables tell a compelling story of "rightdoing" – of US diplomats engaged in 189 countries around the world, working on behalf of the American people, and serving broader interests as well. As a nation, we are proud of the story the cables tell, even as we decry their release.

But I understood why the question was asked. Private Manning's family, joined by a number of human rights organisations, has questioned the extremely restrictive conditions he has experienced at the brig at Marine Corps base Quantico, Virginia. I focused on the fact that he was forced to sleep naked, which led to a circumstance where he stood naked for morning call.

Based on 30 years of government experience, if you have to explain why a guy is standing naked in the middle of a jail cell, you have a policy in need of urgent review. The Pentagon was quick to point out that no women were present when he did so, which is completely beside the point.

The issue is a loss of dignity, not modesty.

Our strategic narrative connects our policies to our interests, values and aspirations. While what we do, day in and day out, is broadly consistent with the universal principles we espouse, individual actions can become disconnected. Every once in a while, even a top-notch symphony strikes a discordant note. So it is in this instance.

The Pentagon has said that it is playing the Manning case by the book. The book tells us what actions we can take, but not always what we should do. Actions can be legal and still not smart. With the Manning case unfolding in a fishbowl-like environment, going strictly by the book is not good enough. Private Manning's overly restrictive and even petty treatment undermines what is otherwise a strong legal and ethical position. ...

Security forces fired shots and used teargas to disperse up to 4,000 protesters in the volatile Syrian city of Deraa on Monday as frustration mounted at the slow pace of promised reforms.

Despite the widespread presence of security forces, protesters appeared to consolidate their positions in Deraa in the deep south and in the northern port city of Latakia, which are the two main fronts in the challenge to the Syrian regime.

According to human rights activists, more than 150 people have been killed in 11 days of unrest, which have seen protesters calling for increased freedoms.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, who has not been sighted during the protests, is expected to deliver a speech within days.

The government has pledged to lift an almost five decade old emergency law, which – among other things – severely limits citizens' rights to demonstrate. That and other reforms are yet to be implemented.

A witness said demonstrators in Deraa had converged on a main square chanting "no to emergency laws". ...

The News of the World has revealed that its computers have retained an archive of potentially damning emails, which hitherto it had claimed had been lost.

The millions of emails, amounting to half a terabyte of data, could expose executives and reporters involved in hacking the voicemail of public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, actor Sienna Miller, and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell.

The archived data is likely to include email exchanges between the most senior executives, including former editor Andy Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron's media adviser in January, as well as three former news editors – Ian Edmondson, Greg Miskiw, and Neville Thurlbeck – implicated in the affair by paperwork seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was on the News of the World's books. Edmondson was sacked in January. Miskiw and Thurlbeck were interviewed by police last autumn. No charge has been brought against any of them. Coulson and the three former news editors have all denied all involvement in criminal activity.

MPs on the home affairs select committee are likely on Tuesday to ask about the emails to John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, when they question him over allegations he misled parliament in evidence he gave about the number of hacking victims originally identified by Scotland Yard. Yates told the committee six months ago the Met had only identified "10 to 12" individuals in a 2006 inquiry because the Crown Prosecution Service advised it to adopt a narrow legal definition of what constituted an offence. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has said that prosecuting counsel never adopted this narrow definition.

Several News of the World journalists have since been linked with phone hacking after victims began legal battles, raising questions about why Scotland Yard failed to conduct a more comprehensive inquiry. Only one reporter, former royal editor Clive Goodman, was convicted of a crime along with Mulcaire. Both men were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007. ...

The former US state department spokesman who resigned over the treatment of Bradley Manning has said he has no regrets about his comments criticising the manner of the soldier's detention, saying it has undermined the investigation into his role as the alleged source for WikiLeaks.

PJ Crowley resigned this month after calling the Pentagon's treatment of Manning "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid". ...

A sixth police officer has been unmasked as an undercover spy in the protest movement as it emerged that Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist, is considering suing Scotland Yard.

In an interview with the Guardian Weekend magazine, Kennedy, who went "rogue" and offered to help environmental campaigners accused of planning to break into a power station, says he has suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder and has been suicidal. His lawyers have been instructed to consider legal action against the police.

The latest officer was reported to have been embedded in an anti-capitalist group for four years under the fake name of Simon Wellings. Newsnight on BBC2 reported that his true identity was discovered through a police blunder.

Wellings inadvertently phoned a campaigner with the Globalise Resistance anti-capitalist group on his mobile phone while discussing photographs of demonstrators with another officer at a police station.

The call was recorded on the campaigner's answerphone and Wellings is heard being pressed to identify protesters at demonstrations, according to Newsnight. He is recorded saying: "She's Hanna's girlfriend – very overt lesbian – last time I saw her, hair about that long, it was blonde, week before it was black."

The infiltration of police spies became controversial after the identification of Kennedy and four others who had posed as members of a variety of political groups including environmental, anti-racist and anti-globalisation campaigns.

The infiltration is the subject of four official investigations after police chiefs and ministers admitted the undercover operations had gone "badly wrong".

Kennedy believes that other undercover officers have been similarly ostracised. "The way the police handled the whole extraction .. is absolutely thoughtless from a psychological point of view and from a safety point of view."

He argues that the damage caused by such undercover work is too great, and that the police should rely more on electronic rather than human intelligence. ...

Syria's government pledged to consider protesters' "legitimate demands" after thousands took to the streets for the funerals of nine people killed by the military.

Rights activists described Wednesday's shootings in the southern city of Daraa as a massacre, claiming that more than 100 people may have been killed when troops fired on a mosque in the early hours and throughout the day.

With protests called for after Friday prayers, Buthaina Shaaban, adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, announced that the government would consider ending Syria's emergency law and revise legislation for political parties and the media. Similar reform pledges have been announced in the past, and are unlikely to satisfy protesters.

In Deraa, funeral-goers chanted "God, Syria, Freedom" and "The blood of martyrs is not spilt in vain!", Reuters news agency reported. Some reports said that up to 20,000 people attended, but this could not be verified. The city has been cordoned off.

Deraa's hospital reported receiving 37 bodies from Wednesday's violence. YouTube videos apparently showed bloody scenes at the mosque.

Electricity and communications in the city were cut before the attack, which sources said was by a unit of forces headed by the president's brother, Maher al-Assad.

"This is a crime against humanity because forces opened fire on unarmed civilians without any warning," said Radwan Ziadeh, head of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. ...

The extraordinary public clash between the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions during which each side has implied that the other has misled parliament continued with controversial claims before a Commons committee.

The quarrel continued as new claims were made that private investigators working for newspapers may have targeted the families of Milly Dowler, the Surrey schoolgirl who was abducted and murdered in March 2002, and of Holly Chapman, one of the two 10-year-old girls murdered by Ian Huntley in Soham in August 2002.

The Met-DPP clash continued at a special session of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, where Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, conceded for the first time that the original 2006 inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World should have done more, and that police had failed to do enough for victims of hacking.

Asked if he accepted that the affair had seriously damaged the reputation of the Metropolitan police, he said: "I would certainly say that it has been very challenging for us. We are working extremely hard to put that right."

But it was his evidence on the legal advice provided by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, that was most controversial. The immediate focus of the dispute is an arcane point of law.

Its underlying significance is the light it may shed on the question of whether Scotland Yard has tried to hide the truth about the number of people whose phones were hacked by journalists and private investigators working for the NoW.

In his evidence, Yates listed a series of occasions on which prosecutors had advised police that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) made it an offence to intercept voicemail only if the message had not already been heard by its intended recipient.

He said this advice had been given repeatedly during the original inquiry in 2006: "It permeated every aspect of the investigative strategy." It was on this basis, Yates added, that he had previously told parliament that police had found only 10 to 12 victims of the hacking, even though the emerging evidence now suggests there were many more.

Yates's evidence directly clashes with a written submission from Starmer last October to the home affairs select committee. Starmer said the question of how to interpret Ripa had not arisen during the original inquiry.

Prosecutors had attached no significance to the point in preparing charges or presenting the facts, he said. "It is evident that the prosecution's approach to Ripa had no bearing on the charges brought against the defendants or the legal proceedings generally," he wrote. ...

Syrian police have sealed off a southern city after security forces killed at least five protesters.

Residents of Daraa were being allowed to leave but not enter the city , said prominent Syrian rights activist Mazen Darwish.

The cordon seemed aimed at choking off any spread of unrest after earlier clashes and emotional funeral processions for the dead.

President Bashar Al-Assad, who has boasted that his country is immune to the demands for change that have already toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, sent a delegation to the southern city to offer his condolences to families of the victims, according to a Syrian official.

Serious disturbances in Syria would be a major expansion of the region's unrest. Syria, a predominantly Sunni country ruled by minority Alawites, has a history of brutally crushing dissent.

Security forces launched a harsh crackdown on Friday's demonstrations calling for political freedoms. Protests took place in at least five cities, including the capital, Damascus. But only in Daraa did they turn deadly. ...

The growing number of public figures suing the News of the World won a major high court victory when a judge said Scotland Yard must hand over a mass of phone-hacking evidence that has never before been disclosed.

The ruling by Justice Geoffrey Vos, who was appointed this week to handle the 14 phone-hacking cases currently going through the courts, means the Metropolitan police will be forced to pass reams of documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World, to lawyers acting for the politicians, celebrities and football figures who are suing the paper. They include Sienna Miller, Paul Gascoigne, Steve Coogan and the former culture secretary Tessa Jowell.

Vos ruled on Friday that the Met must give unredacted documents – including Mulcaire's emails, address and contacts books, and phone bills – to another hacking victim, the football agent Sky Andrew. The decision sets a precedent for the other hacking cases and has far-reaching implications for the NoW, police and other litigants. It will lead to a flood of hacking documents being released to other claimants, all of whom are seeking copies of papers seized by police in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire's home. ...

Security forces in Bahrain arrested six key opposition members whom they accused of having contacted "foreign agents", as a crackdown on a two-month anti-government rebellion continued.

Several were accused of incitement to murder. They include Hassan Musaima and Abdul Jalil al-Sangaece, who had been jailed for allegedly plotting to overthrow the monarchy but had been freed in February as part of an amnesty designed to build trust. The pair had been critical of the government since their release.

Clashes continued in the capital, Manama, but not on the same scale as the pitched battles on Tuesday and Wednesday which drew strong international condemnation and set Bahrain's rulers at odds with the US, their key western backers.

Friday prayers loom as a further flashpoint in the violent rebellion, which has seen the Shia majority pitch against a ruling Sunni elite. Tensions soared this week after Bahrain's beseiged rulers invited into the kingdom troops from the Gulf Co-operation Council, led by a contingent from Saudi Arabia, which had felt increasingly threatened by the Shia uprising on its northern border. ...

The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.

The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.

The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.

The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".

Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated Facebook messages, blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.

Centcom's contract requires for each controller the provision of one "virtual private server" located in the United States and others appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world. ...

The US government's plan to use technology to create and manage fake identities for social interaction with terrorists is as appalling as it is amusing. It's appalling that in this era of greater transparency and accountability brought on by the internet, the US of all countries would try to systematise sock puppetry. It's appallingly stupid, for there's little doubt that the fakes will be unmasked. The net result of that will be the diminution, not the enhancement, of American credibility.

But the effort is amusing as well, for there is absolutely no need to spend millions of dollars to create fake identities online. Any child or troll can do it for free. Millions do. If the government insists on paying, it can use salesforce.com to monitor and join in chats. There is no shortage of social management tools marketers are using to find and mollify or drown out complainers. There's no shortage of social-media gurus, either.

Tools are quite unnecessary, though. Just get yourself a fake email account, Uncle Sam, and you can create and manage anonymous and pseudonymous identities across most any social service.

Hell, if the government wants to spread information around the world without being detected, why doesn't it just use WikiLeaks? Oh, that's right. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called WikiLeaks disclosures "not just an attack on America [but an] attack on the international community". The leaks, she said, "tear at the fabric" of government.

Yes, indeed, they tore at the fabric of the Tunisian government and helped launch the revolts in the Middle East and a wave of freedom – and, we hope, democracy – across borders. The movement of liberation we are witnessing came not from war and weapons or spying and subterfuge but from a force more powerful: transparency; openness; honesty.

I remain sorely disappointed that the Obama administration's reflexive response to the WikiLeaks revelations was to clamp down and then condemn, attack, and reportedly torture the alleged leaker and his allies in accountability. Obama missed the opportunity to separate himself from a secretive and sometimes deceitful history of government.

He could make good on his campaign pledge to run the transparent administration. Even while disapproving of the theft of documents, he could acknowledge the lesson of the leaks: that government keeps too much from its people. Government is secret by default and transparent by force when it should be transparent by default and secret by necessity. ...

The European Union is to enshrine a "right to be forgotten online" to ensure that, among other things, prospective employers cannot find old Facebook party photos of someone wearing nothing but a lampshade.

In a speech to the European parliament, the EU justice commissioner, Viviane Reding, warned companies such as Facebook that: "A US-based social network company that has millions of active users in Europe needs to comply with EU rules."

In a package of proposals to be unveiled before the summer, the commissioner intends to force Facebook and other social networking sites to make high standards of data privacy the default setting and give control over data back to the user.

"I want to explicitly clarify that people shall have the right – and not only the possibility – to withdraw their consent to data processing," Reding said. "The burden of proof should be on data controllers – those who process your personal data. They must prove that they need to keep the data, rather than individuals having to prove that collecting their data is not necessary."

Under the proposals, national privacy watchdogs will be endowed with powers to investigate and launch legal proceedings against companies with services that target EU consumers.

Reding's spokesman, Matthew Newman, said: "A year ago she issued Facebook a warning because the privacy settings changed for the worse and now she's legislating to put flesh on those bones."

Facebook profiles have been accessible by default since January last year. Users have to opt in to ensure that their photographs and other information can be viewed only by friends.

Newman said companies "can't think they're exempt just because they have their servers in California or do their data processing in Bangalore. If they're targeting EU citizens, they will have to comply with the rules."

Privacy settings are often so complex that a typical user does not know how to use them, Reding's staff say. The new legislation will ensure privacy is inbuilt and not tacked on later as an added extra. The rules will also outlaw the surreptitious gathering of data without the user explicitly giving permission.

Newman said that the laws would make the EU the first jurisdiction to deliver a "right to be forgotten". ...

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal is set to reach a new peak of embarrassment for the paper and for Scotland Yard with the naming of the sixth and most senior journalist yet to be implicated in illegal news-gathering.

A BBC Panorama programme claims that Alex Marunchak, formerly the paper's senior executive editor, commissioned a specialist snooper who illegally intercepted email messages from a target's computer and faxed copies of them to Marunchak's News of the World office.

The embarrassment is heightened by the fact that the target was a former British army intelligence officer who had served in Northern Ireland and was in possession of secrets which were deemed so sensitive that they had been suppressed by a court order.

Rupert Murdoch's News International, which owns the News of the World, has claimed repeatedly that only one of its journalists – the former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman – was involved in illegal news-gathering. When Goodman was jailed in January 2007, Scotland Yard chose not to interview any other journalist or executive on the paper.

And Panorama reports that the illegal interception of emails happened in July 2006, when the prime minister's former media adviser Andy Coulson was editing the paper. ...

Yemeni security forces have killed four people and wounded hundreds more in the second day of a harsh crackdown on anti-government protests, witnesses said. One of the dead was a 15-year-old student.

The assault with gunfire and tear gas was the toughest yet by the government in a month of protests aimed at unseating the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 32 years. An ally in the Obama administration's fight against al-Qaida, Saleh had appeared to be one of the Arab leaders most threatened by the regional unrest inspired by revolts in Egypt and Tunisia.

The violence began with a pre-dawn raid on a central square in the capital, Sana'a, where thousands of pro-democracy protesters have been camped out.

Eyewitnesses said security troops surrounded the square with police cars and armoured personnel carriers shortly after midnight and began calling on protesters through loudspeakers to go home. At 5am, security forces attacked, firing bullets and tear gas.

One protester died from a bullet to the head, which may have come from a sniper on the rooftop of a nearby building, witnesses said.

"We were performing dawn prayers when we were surprised by a sudden hail of bullets and tear gas," said Walid Hassan, a 25-year-old activist. "The protesters began throwing rocks at security ... it was total mayhem, a real battlefield."

A few hours later, another protester was shot dead in a nearby street. In the city of Dar Saad in the southern province of Aden, police used live fire and tear gas to disperse a crowd of several thousand, killing one demonstrator. ...

The money came pouring in. Jonathan Rees worked from a dingy office in south London. He lived in a cramped flat upstairs. He was divorced, overweight and foul-mouthed but his business was golden: he traded information. His sources may have been corrupt. His actions may have been illegal. But the money kept coming – from one golden source in particular. As Rees himself put it: "No one pays like the News of the World do."

There was only one problem with Rees's lucrative business. He had caught the eye of Scotland Yard's anti-corruption command who strongly suspected that he was paying bribes to various serving officers and, with great care and some skill, they had managed to place a covert listening device inside his office.

It was that bug which recorded him gloating about the pay he received from the News of the World. It also recorded the vivid detail of an empire of corruption, run with casual ease by Rees and his business partner, Sid Fillery – and liberally greased with cash from the News of the World and other Fleet Street titles. The News of the World alone was paying him more than £150,000 a year.

The listening device was placed in Rees's office in mid-April 1999. It did its job for only six months. In that short time, it provided one highly revealing chapter in a long tale of promiscuous criminality. Further chapters were provided by three other private investigators, all of whom worked separately for the News of the World, all of whom finally ended up in court, all of whom were publicly linked with illegal news-gathering.

Over the following years, the Guardian published a lengthy exposé of Rees's involvement with corrupt police and the procurement of confidential information for the News of the World; the Sunday tabloid's assistant editor is believed to have been arrested and accused of paying bribes to police and other key workers, although he was never charged; the paper was named in a London court as the paymaster for the purchase of information from the police national computer; Rees was jailed for a conspiracy to frame an innocent woman and then accused of conspiracy to murder.

And yet the man who became the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, has always maintained in evidence to parliament and on oath in court that he knew nothing of any illegal activity during the seven years he spent at the top of the News of the World. The entire story unfolded without ever catching his eye. In the same way, the prime minister and his deputy were happy to appoint Coulson last May to oversee the communication between the British government and its people, even though they were already fully aware of all the essential facts.

It begins with the bug....

A man cleared of murder can be named as a private investigator with links to corrupt police officers who earned £150,000 a year from the News of the World for supplying illegally obtained information on people in the public eye.

Jonathan Rees was acquitted of the murder of his former business partner, Daniel Morgan, who was found in a south London car park in 1987 with an axe in the back of his head. The case collapsed after 18 months of legal argument, during which it has been impossible for media to write about Rees's Fleet Street connections.

The ending of the trial means it is now possible for the first time to tell how Rees went to prison in December 2000 after a period of earning six-figure sums from the News of the World.

Rees, who had worked for the paper for seven years, was jailed for planting cocaine on a woman in order to discredit her during divorce proceedings. After his release from prison Rees, who had been bugged for six months by Scotland Yard because of his links with corrupt police officers, was rehired by the News of the World, which was being edited by Andy Coulson.

The revelations call into question David Cameron's judgment in choosing Coulson as director of communications at 10 Downing Street in May 2010. Both he and the deputy prime minister had been warned in March 2010 about Coulson's responsibility for rehiring Rees after his prison sentence.

Nick Clegg had been informed in detail about Jonathan Rees's murder charge, his prison sentence and his involvement with police corruption – and that he and three other private investigators had committed crimes for the News of the World while Coulson was deputy editor or editor.

In September 2002 the Guardian published a lengthy exposé of Rees's involvement with police corruption and illegal newsgathering. But since April 2008 the press have been prevented from revealing Rees's connections with the News of the World, or placing it in the context of News International's denials about any knowledge of illegal activity on behalf of the company. ...

Nick Davies, the Guardian journalist who revealed the News of the World had made a series of legal payments to hide the full extent of the phone-hacking scandal, wrote to the paper's former editor Andy Coulson on 23 February last year.

He put a series of allegations to Coulson, who was then head of the communications for the Conservative party. At the time of Davies' letter, the Guardian could not reveal the full extent of the phone-hacking affair because one of the private investigators who had worked for the paper was facing a murder charge.

The email containing the charges was sent two months before the general election. Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg – later to be prime minister and deputy prime minister – knew about the allegations. Despite that, Cameron appointed Coulson as his director of communications in Downing Street in May 2010. Coulson resigned in January this year. ...

BT, Sky and Virgin Media – along with the rest of Britain's leading internet service providers – will next week outline an industry-wide "code of practice" on how they explain controversial "two-speed internet" policies to customers.

The group will make their announcement at a ministerial summit on net neutrality chaired by culture minister Ed Vaizey – which will also be attended by Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the web and a strong supporter of net neutrality – on 16 March.

The ISPs plan to publish how they manage internet traffic – such as video viewing, music streaming and movie downloading – in comparison to their rivals. That will make clear if they throttle popular services such as the BBC's iPlayer to maintain capacity for all customers on their network.

However, the companies – whose ranks also include the leading mobile operators – will not commit to a minimum service standard, even though some phone companies believe that "there should be a basic commitment to let people browse everything on the internet".

The agreement follows a wide-ranging debate on "net neutrality" – whether ISPs should be allowed to charge content companies such as the BBC or Google for faster delivery to the nation's homes.

BT, TalkTalk and others argue that ISPs should be free to strike deals for more efficient delivery.

Under the plans, described as a "voluntary code of conduct" by people at the meeting, ISPs will be compelled to publish a "scorecard" of how they speed up and slow down traffic and for which companies. But internet providers will still be allowed to throttle public access to video and peer-to-peer services if they wish.

The Broadband Stakeholders Group, which has been facilitating meetings with ISPs on traffic management since late last year, will publish a statement shortly after the meeting. ISPs hope the move will head off an enforced code of practice by the communications regulator Ofcom. ...

Prince Andrew has pulled out of a proposed trip to Saudi Arabia after almost three weeks of damaging revelations about his personal integrity and links with corrupt and repressive regimes.

The Duke of York was due to travel next week to boost defence contracts in his role as Britain's trade envoy.

Buckingham Palace denied the trip was cancelled in light of the allegations, saying simply that the trip had been "postponed" because of safety concerns.

"The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UK Trade and Investment and the palace have agreed to postpone the visit given the current circumstances in the region," the palace said.

"Any suggestion that this had anything to do with recent UK media coverage is absolutely not the case."

The Queen is reported to have held private talks with Andrew on Tuesday over the mounting scandal. The Duke, who is fourth in line to the throne, has been plagued by revelations about his close friendship with convicted sex offender and billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. ...

As unrest escalated across the Middle East, activists in Saudi Arabia demanded a political voice as well. Rather than promises of democracy, they got a $36 billion handout and a slap down from Islamic clerics.

Saudi academics, writers and representatives of the minority Shiite Muslim population called on King Abdullah, the sixth monarch in the Arab world’s largest economy, to move the country toward a constitutional monarchy. Anti-government demonstrators are advocating a “Day of Rage” today.

“Demands for political reform will inevitably increase in the kingdom as democracy takes root in the region,” said Thomas Hegghammer, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment in Oslo and author of “Jihad in Saudi Arabia.” “If the regime does nothing, tension will grow between conservative and progressive factions.”

More than two months of protests have rocked the Middle East and North Africa as citizens demand civil rights, higher living standards and the ouster of entrenched autocratic regimes. In Bahrain, a Saudi neighbor and home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, mainly Shiite protesters are pressing their demands for free elections and a constitutional monarchy.

The Saudi Tadawul stock index has dropped 9 percent since Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted by a popular movement and fled to Saudi Arabia on Jan. 14. The benchmark had been down as much as 21 percent since that date when it slumped close to a two-year low on March 2. Crude oil has advanced 19 percent since turmoil in Libya started on Feb. 17.
‘Urgent Matter’

“The monarchy is trying hard to absorb demands for political change and cast them as economic demands,” Madawi Al- Rasheed, a professor of Anthropology of Religion at King’s College London, said in response to e-mailed questions. “Political reform is an urgent matter.”

Saudi Arabia has so far tried to calm oil markets and avoid the political upheaval with a package of new jobless benefits, education and housing subsidies and debt write-offs. There was also a warning from the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars that public protests won’t be tolerated. ...

... The witness, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared government reprisal, said police in the area opened fire and at least one protester was injured.

The Reuters news agency reported one witness as saying police fired percussion bombs to disperse the crowd of around 200 people.

Last week Saudi Arabia banned public protests following demonstrations by minority Shia groups.

The ruling came after widespread demonstrations in the Middle East – including those that led to the downfall of regimes in Egypt and Tunisia – and two weeks of Shia agitation in Saudi Arabia itself, during which 22 people were arrested.

A statement issued by the country's council of senior clerics at the time said: "The council ... affirms that demonstrations are forbidden in this country. The correct way in sharia [law] of realising common interest is by advising, which is what the Prophet Muhammad established.

"Reform and advice should not be via demonstrations and ways that provoke strife and division, this is what the religious scholars of this country in the past and now have forbidden and warned against."

The statement made clear the council's stance against political parties, which are banned as they are deemed to be not in keeping with Islam.

... The Queen is reported to have held private talks with Andrew about the mounting scandal over his trade dealings with despots for the government and his personal links to the US financier Jeffrey Epstein, who has been convicted of sex offences with young girls.

The prince's spokesman refused to comment on the meeting, said to have taken place at the Queen's private apartments at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, after more than two weeks of daily reports criticising his conduct and judgment as the UK's international trade envoy.

"I understand that she asked him if any more stories are going to come out in the next few days," the Daily Mail reported a senior aide as saying. "If the answer was yes, then his position will be untenable. I suspect he will make a decision in the next 48 hours or so."The newspaper said the Queen was concerned that scrutiny of the duke was overshadowing preparations for the wedding next month of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which the royal family hopes to use to increase public support.

But backing for the prince came from Sir David Tang, the Hong Kong restaurateur and businessman. He met the prince before his visit last October to promote business interests in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, GeneWatch UK, which has campaigned against the police national DNA database, has disclosed that the UK Forensic Science Service is involved in a plan to DNA-test the entire population of the United Arab Emirates, under a contract signed in the presence of Andrew in 2006.

Dr Helen Wallace, of GeneWatch UK, called on ministers to scrap the contract under which a universal DNA database is to being built and linked to a national identity card scheme. "This would allow the Emirates to track every citizen and identify their relatives, a frightening prospect for dissidents and women," she said. ...

Not quite the sharpest crayon in the box are ye, Andy?

Once upon a time, when Apple was mainly a computer manufacturer, people used to liken it to BMW. That was because it made expensive, nicely designed products for a niche market made up of affluent, design-conscious customers who also served as enthusiastic – nay fanatical – evangelists for the brand. It was seen as innovative and quirky but not part of the industry's mainstream, which was dominated by Microsoft and the companies making the PCs that ran Windows software. This view of Apple was summed up by Jack Tramiel, the boss of Commodore, when Steve Jobs first showed him the Macintosh computer. "Very nice, Steve," growled Tramiel. "I guess you'll sell it in boutiques."

That was a long time ago. Now, with a market capitalisation of just over $331bn, Apple is the second most valuable company in the world – bigger than Microsoft ($220bn), Oracle ($167bn) or Google ($196bn). The quirky little computer company has grown into a giant. But not necessarily a giant of the Big Friendly variety, as the world's magazine publishers have recently discovered and as the music and software industries have known for some time. For Apple now controls the commanding heights of the online content business and it looks like doing the same to the mobile phone business. At the moment, it looks as though nobody has a good idea of how to stop it.

Every year, Fortune magazine polls a sample of US CEOs asking for their opinions of their competitors. The results for 2011 have just been released and they show that Apple is the "most admired" company in America. This is the sixth year in a row that it has held that title.

The reasons are obvious. On the product side, Apple creates beautifully designed, highly functional and user-friendly devices that delight customers and provide fat profit margins; it has a corporate culture that reliably delivers these products by specified dates; it's much more innovative than any of its competitors; and it has a unique mastery of both hardware and software.

On the strategic side, the company has displayed a deep understanding of technology and a shrewd appreciation of potential devices and services for which people will pay over the odds. Most CEOs would kill to run a company that possessed a quarter of these competencies. Apple appears to have them all. Its current dominance is built on three big ideas. The first is that design really matters. It's not something you can outsource to a design consultancy – which is what most companies do – and design is as much about ease of use as it is about aesthetics. The second insight was that the maelstrom of illicit music downloading triggered by Napster couldn't last and that the first company to offer a simple way of legally purchasing music (and, later, other kinds of content) online would clean up. And third – and most important – there was the insight that mobile phones are really just hand-held computers that happen to make voice calls and that it's the computing bit that really matters.

Most of the media commentary about Apple attributes all of these insights to Steve Jobs, the company's charismatic co-founder, on the grounds that Apple's renaissance began when he returned to the company in 1996.

This may well be true, though it seems unlikely that such a comprehensive corporate recovery could be the work of a single individual, no matter how charismatic. What's more plausible is that Apple's corporate culture took on some of the characteristics of its CEO's personality, much as Microsoft was once a corporate extension of Bill Gates, with all that implied in terms of aggression and drive.

Whatever the explanation, the fact is that Apple now has a dominant position in several key businesses (content distribution and mobile computing) and is having a seriously disruptive impact on the mobile phone industry. In particular, its iTunes Store gives it control of the tollgate through which billions of paid-for music tracks and albums, videos and apps cascade down to millions of customers worldwide. It levies a commission on everything that passes through that gate. And every Apple mobile device sold can only be activated by hooking up to the gate.

This gives Apple unparalleled power....

Chinese authorities have closed Tibet to foreign visitors as the third anniversary of anti-government riots approaches.

The region's top official confirmed the restrictions after travel agents reported orders not to arrange trips for tourists, who need a special permit to visit the region in addition to the visa for China.

Zhang Qingli, the Communist party secretary in Tibet, said there were "some control measures" for safety reasons, citing potential overcrowding and freezing winter weather.

He told reporters at an annual political meeting in Beijing that the region was stable. "It's not that the anti-Chinese forces and the Dalai clique haven't thought of it but the fact is they haven't been able to stir up any unrest since the March 14 incident."

Twenty-two people, almost all Han Chinese, died when Tibetans took to the streets of the capital, Lhasa, in 2008, burning shops and attacking passers-by. Unrest rippled out across other Tibetan areas in western China.

Exiles allege that scores of Tibetans died in the ensuing crackdown. It has not been possible to verify the claims. ...

... Leonid Nikolayev and Oleg Vorotnikov, members of the radical art collective Voina, were freed from custody last week after nearly four months awaiting trial for overturning police cars in St Petersburg.

They held a press conference on Thursday to talk about their ordeal. On their way home, accompanied by Oleg's wife Natalia Sokol and his two-year-old son, Casper, they noticed they were being followed by seven men, who looked like "typical thugs".

When Natalia started taking pictures of the men, they tried to grab the camera. In the struggle she was pushed into a puddle and dragged by the hair, so violently that one of her braids was ripped out.

"They said they were from the Criminal Investigation department," she said when I eventually reached her by e-mail. "But if they really were police investigators they behaved pretty strangely."

Oleg added: "They waved their IDs, but we couldn't examine them. Then they attacked Leonid from behind and rained down blows on my back and my head."

The baby pram was given a violent push, knocking Casper's face hard against a wall.

St Petersburg police could not be reached for comment but a spokesman told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that "preliminary investigations" were under way. ...

Britain froze the assets of Muammar Gaddafi and his five children on Sunday evening at an emergency meeting of the Privy Council at Windsor castle presided over by the Queen.

The chancellor, George Osborne, acted amid reports that the Libyan leader had moved £3bn to Britain last week. In a separate cloak-and-dagger operation, £900m of Libyan currency was impounded in Britain.

Earlier ministers announced they had stripped the Gaddafi family of its diplomatic immunity in Britain.

A special meeting of the Privy Council at 5.15pm on Sunday approved an order in council freezing the assets of Gaddafi, his sons Saif al-Islam, Hannibal Muammar, Khamis Muammar, and Mutassim, and his daughter Aisha Muammar. The Times reported on Saturday that Gaddafi had deposited £3m with a Mayfair-based private wealth manager last week.

The chancellor said: "I have today taken action to freeze the assets in the UK of Colonel Gaddafi and his family or those acting on their behalf so that they cannot be used against the interests of the Libyan people. This follows the UN security council resolution tabled by the UK and France.

"I decided to implement this UN resolution in the UK as quickly as possible, before the financial markets reopened. This is a strong message for the Libyan regime that violence against its own people is not acceptable."

The order in council freezes "all funds, financial assets and economic resources owned or controlled by the listed individuals and entities, or by anyone acting on their behalf or by entities controlled" by the named members of the Gaddafi family. The City of London has been informed that "no funds or economic resources can be made available to listed persons or entities, or for their benefit". ...

"Have a good revolution," said the Tunisian customs officer, handing back our passports. We set out across the short stretch of no man's land towards Libya beneath a giant image of Muammar Gaddafi, his chin lifted, hands held together in a gesture of unity and victory.

Before we could reach him, a car bearing the flag of Libya's revolution raced out and its driver gestured us inside before speeding around the border post in a wide circle. We could make out the gaping expressions of the police and intelligence officers as they receded into the distance.

"This [is] all free now," the driver said, gesturing at the expanses of mountain and desert.

The roads in western Libya are clogged with makeshift checkpoints. Barricades built of burnt-out cars and rocks and manned by a patchwork of armed militias block the entrances to towns and villages. The fighters here are an assortment of turbaned Amazigh, or Berber, tribesmen, defectors wearing army uniforms and volunteers in mismatched combat fatigues.

The leaders of this uprising are equally varied: one burly military commander, Talibi, in civilian life is an Amazigh poet. Other revolutionaries we met were doctors, engineers, tribal elders, even a web-savvy youth in a baseball cap.

Night had fallen by the time we reached Nalut, where dozens of Amazigh tribesmen stood around campfires guarding barricades and manning checkpoints in the cold. Some carried weapons they had looted from army bases, the rest carried hunting rifles and clubs. The Amazigh we spoke to could not hide their euphoria.

"The fear of decades was broken after what happened in Egypt and Tunisia," said Khairy as he handed us small cups of green tea. The Amazigh have long struggled to retain their cultural rights in Gaddafi's Libya. "We never thought this could happen in our lifetime," he said. ...

... But the men in Zawiyah were not foreigners, or drugged – as Gaddafi had previously claimed. Nor were they bearded Islamists or even rebels from outside. Instead, they were the town's people. There were doctors and engineers, teachers, local youths and old men all anxious to speak, although many of them still fearful that the army – whose nearest positions were only two kilometres away – would try to enter Zawiyah again.

In a small mosque off the main square, locals led us into a small storeroom to show off two captured teenage soldiers, one whose family had come from Chad.

Terrified, the boys were led out of the room, one with a dressing on a face wound. We were told they were being handed over to one of the boys' fathers.

Youssef Mustapha, a doctor who had been working at the aid station, said he believed 24 people had died in the fighting in this city, which began last Thursday night and continued for almost four days.

"We saw all kinds of injuries," he said. "People shot in the head and neck. Shotgun and rifle wounds and injuries caused by heavy calibre weapons. The firing always came from the south and east. Have you seen the graves?"

These are in the centre of Martyrs Square. Those killed in the fighting are now buried there and a pair of open graves waited to be filled.

Ghari Ahmed, a computer engineer was worried about the soldiers outside: "They control all of the main roads into city," he explained. "Villagers from around the town want to come in, but the army is blocking them. I am afraid they will try to attack again." ...

Police in Beijing and other cities mounted a major show of force following an anonymous call for protests inspired by the Middle East uprisings.

A US journalist was punched and kicked in the face and more than a dozen other journalists manhandled, detained or delayed as they covered the events which revealed official anxiety over similar protests against authoritarian rule in China.

Few expected Chinese citizens to answer the "jasmine revolution" appeal, which urged them to express their desire for reform by "strolling" past a McDonald's on Wangfujing shopping street and spots in 22 other mainland cities.

In addition to the heavy police presence, street cleaning vehicles and men with brooms swept back and forth along the designated streets in Beijing and Shanghai, preventing pedestrians from slowing down. A construction site appeared on Wangfujing earlier this week, blocking off a stretch outside the hamburger bar.

Associated Press reported that Shanghai police used whistles to disperse a crowd of around 200, although it was unclear if the people were anything more than onlookers. It said officers detained at least four Chinese citizens in the city and two others in Beijing. It was not clear, however, if those detained had tried to protest.

In a statement, the Foreign Correspondent's Club of China said it was "appalled by the attack on one of our members by men who appeared to be plain clothes security officers in Beijing. This video journalist was trying to do his job when he was set upon and repeatedly punched and kicked in the face by officers as part of a general crackdown in Wangfujing following calls on the internet for a protest in this area. ...

International efforts to respond to the Libyan crisis are gathering pace under US leadership after a still defiant Muammar Gaddafi launched counterattacks to defend Tripoli against the popular uprising now consolidating its hold on the liberated east of the country.

The White House said Barack Obama planned to call David Cameron and France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss possible actions, including a no-fly zone or sanctions to force the Libyan leader to end the violence. Switzerland said it had frozen Gaddafi's assets.

Gaddafi, in power for 42 years, has used aircraft, tanks and foreign mercenaries in eight days of violence that has killed hundreds in the bloodiest of the uprisings to shake the Arab world. Up to 2,000 people may have died, it was claimed by a senior French human rights official.

But there was no sign Gaddafi was prepared to change course. In another semi-coherent and abusive speech on Thursday, he accused protesters of being drugged and agents of al-Qaida. "Their ages are 17. They give them pills at night, they put hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee," he said in a telephone interview with Libyan state TV – suggesting he may already have left his heavily guarded Tripoli compound.

It only boosted the growing impression that he is desperate and out of touch with reality. "This is the speech of a dead man," said Said el-Gareeny in the eastern city of Benghazi, which is now in opposition hands.

"People always warn about al-Qaida and say this will become an Islamic state ... to get support from western countries. This isn't true. The Libyan people are free. That's it." ...

Tensions are mounting in the Syrian capital, Damascus, after the third peaceful demonstration in three weeks was violently dispersed on Wednesday. There are increasing reports of intimidation and blocking of communications by secret services in the wake of violent unrest in neighbouring Arab countries.

Fourteen people were arrested and several people beaten by uniformed and plainclothes police on Tuesday after about 200 staged a peaceful sit-in outside the Libyan embassy to show support for Libya's protesters.

Witnesses said at least two women were among those beaten.

The demonstrators carried placards reading "Freedom for the people" and "Down with Gaddafi", and chanted slogans such as "Traitors are those that beat their people."

Witnesses said authorities warned the group to disperse but they reconvened shortly afterwards in the central neighbouring suburb of Sha'alan. When they tried to march back to the embassy they were met with a heavy police presence.

Several witnesses told the Guardian there were nearly twice as many secret and uniformed police as protesters. Some protesters were punched, kicked and beaten with sticks..

All present had their identities recorded. Fourteen people were detained but later released, Human Rights Watch in Beirut confirmed.

"They hit two girls, I saw them on the ground crying," said a witness who was briefly detained.

"There were so many of them, we didn't know where they all came from."

Under emergency law, public congregations are banned in Syria. This kind of protest is very rare but last Friday 1,500 people took part in a seemingly spontaneous demonstration outside the central Hamidiyah souq. It was reportedly in protest at the police beating of a local shop owner, rather than being directed at the government. People chanted "The Syrian people will not be humiliated", "Shame, shame" and "With our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice for you Bashar" in reference to the country's president, Bashar al-Assad. Syria's interior minister has promised an investigation. ...

So many messages are being examined by Scotland Yard's phone-hacking inquiry that it is difficult to identify every mention of a celebrity's name among "hundreds of intercepts", lawyers for the police have claimed.

The proliferation of legal actions generated by complaints against the News of the World is also in danger of congesting the courts with "parallel claims", the judge hearing applications for disclosure in three cases has implied.

Official recognition of the scale of the problem came as three more alleged victims of the practice of hacking into voicemail messages sought high court orders granting them access to documents that may substantiate claims for damages. Lawyers for Paul Gascoigne, George Galloway and Mick McGuire, former deputy chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, were granted permission to see relevant sections of transcripts.

The notebooks are among material seized by the Metropolitan police from the convicted private investigator Glenn Mulcaire who was employed by the newspaper.

Gascoigne and McGuire's applications were supported by Newsgroup Newspapers, owners of the News of the World, because, the court heard, the company "wishes to show it was not involved in the interception of information" relating to them.

Explaining the need for efficient case management, Mr Justice Vos told the court: "There have been numerous parallel applications with different counsel and solicitors ... raising identical or nearly identical points". He wanted to avoid duplication, he said.

At least 14 cases were already before the courts, agreed Jeremy Reed, counsel for Gascoigne and McGuire. There is speculation there will be many more, he added.

Lawyers for Gascoigne requested that any intercepted messages "about him or concerning him" should be included in the disclosure order because private information about his medical treatment had been obtained by hacking into other people's phones.

Edwin Buckett, representing the Met, said that would mean the police "having to listen to every transcript to see if Mr Gascoigne is mentioned". There are "hundreds of intercepts", he said. "It makes it so wide, it's difficult to comply with."

The judge ordered the police to hand over anything in the transcripts that was "about or concerning" Paul Gascoigne.

The names of more journalists may appear after the judge ordered that ''redactions'' – the blanked-out sections in the transcripts handed to the claimants – should not hide the names of employees of the News of the World.

The three claimants were also granted access to information on breaches of privacy gathered by the Information Commissioner's Office during its Operation Motorman inquiry into the matter. ...

Ta much, dear MSiegel

Gaddafi speech and Libya unrest – as it happened

• Gaddafi: 'I cannot leave my country, I will die a martyr'
• Libyan leader makes rambling speech after days of unrest
• 'Anyone who undermines state will be punished by death'
• Hague: 'Structure of Libyan state is collapsing'

Gaddafi urges violent showdown and tells Libya 'I'll die a martyr'

• Muammar Gaddafi tells loyalists to take to streets of Libya
• Witnesses speak of mercenaries in death squads
• International condemnation of bloodshed grows

The wife of the jailed Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo said she and her family are "hostages", according to a friend. The comment is thought to be her first contact with the outside world for four months.

Supporters have been unable to reach Liu Xia since shortly after October's announcement that her husband had won the award. It was initially thought she was under house arrest at the couple's home in Beijing, but it is now believed she may be being held at her parents' house. ...

...The Washington Post said it received the document from the friend, with whom she had communicated online, via an intermediary.

"I don't know how I managed to get online," Liu Xia wrote in the five-minute chat on Thursday night. "Don't go online. Otherwise my whole family is in danger."

Asked whether she was at home, she [replied], "Yes. Can't go out. My whole family are hostages."

She added: "So miserable. I'm crying. Nobody can help me."

The chat ended when her friend asked her to log out because he was concerned he would cause her more trouble, adding: "We miss you and support you. We will wait for you outside."

Liu Xiaobo is serving an 11-year sentence for inciting subversion of state power for co-authoring Charter 08, a bold call for democratic reforms, and other essays posted online.

The author was represented by an empty chair at the Nobel ceremony last year because none of his family was able to attend.

The authorities placed his wife under house arrest when he won. Her communications were cut off a few days later, although she had said she was able to visit him in prison after the announcement.

In her online chat, she wrote: "I only saw him once,"...

Liu Xiaobo's case has sparked international condemnation. Campaigners are particularly alarmed at the treatment of his wife, because she has never been accused of any crime. ...

... Human rights groups say they fear the authorities are increasingly turning to unlawful methods to silence unwanted voices, citing cases such Liu Xia's, the disappearance of the lawyer Gao Zhisheng and the house arrest of the legal activist Chen Guangcheng following his release from prison. ...

With his flawless English, his expensive Italian suits and his place at the London School of Economics, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi appeared to be a man with whom the west could do business: a man who could smooth access to his country's vast mineral resources while avoiding the need to deal with his famously capricious father.

As state security forces were reported to be firing relentlessly into crowds of civilian protesters on Monday, and with Gaddafi Jr appearing on television to threaten a civil war in which the regime "will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet", many of his erstwhile associates were questioning their friendships with him.

The LSE has been quick to distance itself from Saif, issuing a statement in which it said the university had had a number of links with Libya, but that "in view of the highly distressing news from Libya over the weekend of 19-20 February, the school has reconsidered those links as a matter of urgency".

Although the LSE had accepted £1.5m from the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, an organisation headed by Saif – some of which was to finance "a virtual democracy centre" – the university stressed that it was to be paid over five years, and only £300,000 has been received to date. "In current difficult circumstances across the region, the school has decided to stop new activities under that programme," the statement said. The LSE has also received scholarship funding in return for advice given to the Libyan Investment Authority in London. "No further receipts are anticipated," the university said.

Professor David Held, an academic advisor to Saif Gaddafi during his four years at the LSE, said: "Watching Saif give that speech – looking so exhausted, nervous and, frankly, terrible – was the stuff of Shakespeare and of Freud: a young man torn by a struggle between loyalty to his father and his family, and the beliefs he had come to hold for reform, democracy and the rule of law. The man giving that speech wasn't the Saif I had got to know well over those years." ...

It was a front page few thought they would ever see. After weeks of dismissing pro-change Egyptian protesters as traitors, anarchists and malevolent foreign agents – at one point it was even suggested that demonstrators were secretly receiving free meals from the American fast-food giant KFC – the country's most venerable official daily carried a single headline in the heady hours after Hosni Mubarak's fall. The people have brought down the regime, declared Al-Ahram, triumphantly. As one newspaper vendor remarked, state-controlled media's own revolution had begun.

But discontent at the status quo within Egypt's colossal state media complex – which comprises eight TV channels, numerous radio stations, dozens of newspapers and magazines and 46,000 employees in Cairo alone – had been rumbling long before Mubarak's resignation. Grievances against Egypt's government-appointed paper editors and broadcast network chiefs – often ageing regime acolytes parachuted in – have been stewing for years, as has internal disillusion with an entity notorious for corruption scandals, compromises of editorial integrity and an institutional aversion to reform. ...

Idi Amin finished up in Saudi Arabia. Mobutu Sese Seko went to Togo then settled in Morocco. Mengistu Haile Mariam, author of Ethiopia's Red Terror, is living out his days in Zimbabwe. And so, if the once unthinkable should happen and the dictator falls in Libya, whither Muammar Gaddafi?

Burkina Faso, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are among the contenders floated by analysts if the self-declared "doyen of Arab leaders, king of kings of Africa and imam of all Muslims" was forced to seek asylum. Saudi hospitality has previously been extended to ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif and overthrown Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. But its relations with Libya have been strained for years; in 2009 Gaddafi told King Abdullah: "You are propelled by fibs towards the grave and you were made by Britain and protected by the US."

Venezuela is a stronger candidate having had close ties with Libya of late. Gaddafi was seen shopping on a Venezuelan island during a summit 18 month ago. President Hugo Chavez has visited Libya several times and a football stadium there was named in his honour.

But Gaddafi also has a long history with the rest of Africa, which intensified after he switched from promoting Arab unity to buying influence at the African Union – debts he may now seek to call in. Adekeye Adebajo, executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution at Cape Town University in South Africa, said: "He has enough friends to be able to find a safe haven in many parts of Africa, but obviously there would be a lot of people scared to take him."

Adebajo noted Gaddafi's past involvement in funding rebel movements in Liberia and Sierra Leone. "A lot of insecure African leaders would be nervous to have him on their territory." ...

Libya and Bahrain protests – Saturday 19 February

• Dozens reported killed in deadly crackdowns
• Video shows Libya protester shot in head
• Iran opposition calls for more demonstrations

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is confronting the most serious challenge to his 42-year rule as leader of Libya by unleashing his army on unarmed protesters.

Unlike the rulers of neighbouring Egypt, Gaddafi has refused to countenance the politics of disobedience, despite growing international condemnation, and the death toll of demonstrators nearing 100.

The pro-government Al-Zahf al-Akhdar newspaper warned that the government would "violently and thunderously respond" to the protests, and said those opposing the regime risked "suicide".

William Hague, the UK's foreign secretary, condemned the violence as "unacceptable and horrifying", even as the Libyan regime's special forces, backed by African mercenaries, launched a dawn attack on a protest camp in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

Britain is scrambling to extricate itself from its recently cosy relationship with Gaddafi, initiated by then prime minister Tony Blair in 2004. That rapprochement saw Libya open its doors to British oil companies in exchange for becoming a new ally in the "war on terror" while Britain sold Gaddafi arms.

Hague's outspoken comments came a day after the government revoked arms export licenses to both Bahrain and Libya for their use of deadly force against protesters calling for a change in the regime.

With internet services in Libya shut off for long periods, foreign journalists excluded and access already blocked to social networking sites, Gaddafi appeared determined to quell a revolt centred in the country's east, which has long suffered a policy of deliberate economic exclusion.

Libya has also jammed the signals of Al-Jazeera, the Arab broadcaster to the country. Reports from inside the country claimed pro-regime forces had deliberately aimed at protesters' heads. ...

Violence in Bahrain and Libya: live updates

• Bahrain: dozens injured as shots fired at protesters
• Libya: reports claim up to 50 killed
• Obama condemns violent attacks on protesters
• Egypt: protesters return to Tahrir Square
• Yemen: crowds demonstrating in Sana'a and Taiz ...

Ali Ismail had helped wash the body of a dead protester for burial and he was already talking of more blood. "We will go to them and they will attack us," he said of Bahrain's riot police. Within hours he was proved correct.

Just after 5.30pm on Friday, central Manama again erupted in gunfire and screaming. Up to 200 demonstrators had attempted to march on Pearl Square, the scene of Thursday morning's savage assault that left three dead. Just over a mile from the central Bahrain landmark, soldiers and police opened fire, killing at least one more protester and leaving 50 others wounded.

"We don't care if they kill 5,000 of us," a protester screamed inside the forecourt of the Salmaniya hospital, which has become a staging point for Bahrain's raging youth. "The regime must fall and we will make sure it does."

Just before dusk, riot police advanced on the hospital, apparently chasing protesters who had attempted to link up with the group bound for Pearl Square. Sound grenades cracked in the distance, gradually getting closer as protesters beat a retreat to the only place in Manama where they now feel safe to gather in numbers.

Within minutes, the bitter scent of tear-gas had wafted into the hospital grounds, sparking panic that the riot police were coming for them there as well. The police backed off and the crowd in the hospital swelled to at least 7,000 people, all of them chanting anti-regime slogans that they would not have dared to utter a month ago.

"Down with the king, down with the Khalifas," they cried, referring to the kingdom's ruling family. Anger among the overwhelmingly Shia Muslim demonstrators towards the Sunni dynasty that has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years is now virulent.

"They have done nothing for us in the past except discriminate against us," said one nurse, sobbing against a hospital gurney. "Now their new trick is to kill us."

Inside the hospital I saw a young man being wheeled into a makeshift trauma room, which is usually used to conduct angiograms. The gurney was soaked in blood and he had been shot in the head.

"There are at least two bullets. I don't think he will live," said a young doctor as he left the room.

He didn't.

The man's death takes to at least five the number killed during clashes with police since Wednesday. Scores more have been injured. Most of those brought to the emergency ward had wounds from rubber bullets, although at least one youth had a gaping wound to his calf that specialists said was caused by a live round. ...

Violence in Libya and Bahrain has claimed scores of lives and left many more injured as the two Arab countries were united by popular protests that continue to shake the status quo and sound alarm bells across the region and the world.

Just a week after Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, was forced to stand down, dozens of Libyans were reported killed by Muammar Gaddafi's security forces. Meanwhile Bahraini troops shot dead at least one protester and wounded 50 others after mourners had buried four people who were gunned down on Thursday in the worst mass unrest the western-backed Gulf state has ever seen.

"We don't care if they kill 5,000 of us," a protester screamed inside the forecourt of the Salmaniya hospital, which has become a staging point for Bahrain's raging youth. "The regime must fall and we will make sure it does."

Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa went on television to promise a national dialogue once calm has returned. But Bahrain's most senior Shia cleric, Sheikh Issa Qassem, condemned attacks on protesters as a "massacre" and said the government had shut the door to such dialogue.

But while the unrest in Bahrain was broadcast instantly around the world, the unprecedented bloodshed in the remote towns of eastern Libya was far harder for global media to cover.

Amid an official news blackout in Libya, there were opposition claims of 60 dead as diplomats reported the use of heavy weapons in Benghazi, the country's second city, and "a rapidly deteriorating situation" in the latest – and the most repressive – Arab country to be hit by serious unrest.

Libyans said a "massacre" had been perpetrated in Benghazi, al-Bayda and elsewhere in the region. Crowds in the port city of Tobruk were shown destroying a statue of Gaddafi's Green Book and chanting "We want the regime to fall," echoing the slogan of the uprising in Egypt.

Umm Muhammad, a political activist in Benghazi, told the Guardian that 38 people had died in the city. "They [security forces] were using live fire here, not just tear gas. This is a bloody massacre – in Benghazi, in al-Bayda, all over Libya. They are releasing prisoners from the jails to attack the demonstrators." Benghazi's al-Jala hospital was appealing for emergency blood supplies to help treat the injured. ...

A BBC journalist was held for 15 hours at Bahrain international airport before having her equipment confiscated, amid radical anti-government protests in the country.

The BBC declined to name the detained producer, but confirmed that she was allowed into the country on Friday after having her equipment – including her mobile phone – confiscated indefinitely.

Bahrain security forces have tightened restrictions on journalists entering the country in the past 24 hours, as tens of thousands of protesters intensify calls for the downfall of the country's ruling monarchy. Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, said 16 foreign journalists, including those from the BBC, ABC and CNN, were being held at Bahrain airport on Friday.

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, said on Twitter on Thursday: "Bahrain barring journalists from entry at airport. King Hamad doesn't want witnesses to his brutality."

Political unrest has swept across the Middle East this week in the aftermath of last Friday's events in Egypt where president Hosni Mubarak was ousted. Attempts to break up the protests by security forces in Yemen, Libya, and Bahrain have been largely fruitless.

Attempts by Bahrain security forces to obstruct journalists had remained relatively non-violent, but on Friday that situation showed signs of escalating as government forces in a helicopter fired on a reporter and cameraman who were filming the unfolding violence in Manama's Pearl Square, according to the New York Times. There were also reports of sniper fire from rooftops in the square. ...

On 1 February, Issan Nadir tipped petrol on his clothes and set fire to himself outside the education ministry in the Moroccan capital of Rabat. It was yet another desperate act of self-immolation in a region where the example set by Muhammad Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit seller who sparked a wave of revolution, has been imitated from Mauritania to Saudi Arabia.

The flames were doused before Nadir, a 27-year-old volunteer teacher demanding a paid job, could do as much damage to himself as Bouazizi. Video footage seen by the Guardian shows firefighters frantically putting out flames in front of the ministry.

After a week in Rabat's Ibn Sina hospital, Nadir is recovering in his home town of Safi. "He doesn't want to see anyone," says his friend and fellow protester Hafid Libi."If they don't do anything, there may be more of the same."

Nadir is not the only protester to have set fire to himself. Last week 26-year-old Mourad Raho died in Benguerir, 36 miles north of Marrakech. Five similar attempts have been reported in recent weeks.

Popular demonstrations called for this Sunday will be a test of both public upset with the regime led by King Mohammed VI and how far Morocco – which claims to be more liberal than its north African neighbours – is prepared to tolerate protest. ...

Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the News of the World phone-hacking case, passed phone intercept information to several individuals working on the tabloid's news desk, the high court heard today.

The private eye – who was on a £100,000-a-year contract with the News of the World – was quoted in court documents as saying that he dealt with so many people on the news desk at the tabloid that he cannot recall precisely who received certain items of information.

Mulcaire's admission, if true, was "devastating" to the News of the World's long-held insistence that phone hacking was the work of a "lone, rotten journalist", Jeremy Reed QC told the court.

Reed was representing Sky Andrew, a football agent who is suing the paper's immediate parent, News Group Newspapers (NGN) for breach of privacy over phone hacking.

Mulcaire was jailed for six months in 2007 for hacking into phones belonging to staff at Buckingham Palace, along with the News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman.

However, in that trial the court also heard that Mulcaire hacked into the phones of high profile individuals such as publicist Max Clifford and supermodel Elle Macpherson, as well as Andrew.

Earlier this year, Mulcaire also said in court documents that he had been instructed by Ian Edmondson, the assistant editor (news) at the tabloid, to intercept Andrew's voicemails. Edmondson was initially suspended, and has now been sacked.

Today's case saw lawyers for Andrew lodge a claim against the Metropolitan police, seeking greater access to heavily redacted documents released by the force to his legal team. ...

Riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets have stormed a landmark square occupied by anti-government protesters in Bahrain's capital Manama, driving out demonstrators and destroying a makeshift encampment that had become the hub for demands to bring sweeping political changes to the kingdom.

The main opposition group Al Wefaq said at least two people were killed in the pre-dawn assault on Pearl Square, which was littered with flattened tents, trampled banners and broken glass. There was no official word on deaths or injuries.

After police regained control of the plaza, they chased protesters through sidestreets and put a ring of vehicles around the area with blue lights flashing in the darkened city just as the dawn call for prayers rang out.

The blow by authorities marked a dramatic shift in tactics. It appeared Bahrain's leaders had sought to rein in security forces after clashes on Monday that left at least two people dead and brought sharp criticism from Western allies, including the US – which operates its main naval base in the Gulf from Bahrain. ...

Protesters in Libya were planning to take to the streets for a "day of rage," inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, but rights groups warned of a possible crackdown by security forces.

In a country where public dissent is rare, plans for the protests were being circulated by anonymous activists on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and it was not clear if the demonstrations would materialise.

Libya has been tightly controlled for over 40 years by Muammar Gaddafi - who is now Africa's longest-serving leader - but the oil exporter has felt the ripples from the overthrow of long-standing leaders in its neighbours Egypt and Tunisia.

Though some Libyans complain about unemployment, inequality and limits on political freedoms, analysts say an Egypt-style revolt is unlikely because the government can use oil revenues to smooth over most social problems.

Witnesses and local media reported that several hundred people clashed with police and Gaddafi supporters on Tuesday night in the city of Benghazi, about 1,000km (600 miles) east of the Libyan capital.

Late on Wednesday evening, it was impossible to contact witnesses in Benghazi because telephone connections to the city appeared to be out of order. ...

A supporter of Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh holds a traditional dagger as pro-government protesters attempt to get at his opponents in Sana’a University. Photograph: Gamal Noman/AFP/Getty Images
[What does it tell you, girls and boys, when the pro-government supporters have big scary knives (& dollar-sign ballcaps??? WTF) but the anti-gov't protesters don't?]

Anti-government protests flared in Yemen for the sixth consecutive day, turning violent as protests sprang up across the country, spurred on by the resignation last week of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

In Yemen's main southern city of Aden, security forces chased hundreds of people who took to the streets of Al-Mansura neighbourhood demanding the resignation of President Ali Abdallah Saleh. At least one protestor was shot dead by police as demonstrators hurled stones at police, set tyres and vehicles on fire and stormed a municipal building.

In the capital city, a student-led protest inside the gates of Sana'a University calling for an improved curriculum and the removal of the university dean turned into an anti-government rally when hundreds of other students flocked to the scene.

"The people want to overthrow the regime" and "Oh Ali, son of Saleh, your regime is no good," the protesters chanted, mirroring a growing sense of frustration that has been swelling in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest state.

A street battle broke out when a handful of armed [Ed. Note: and doubtless paid] Saleh supporters, mainly middle-aged men armed with batons, arrived in buses and began chanting government slogans. ...

The Iranian regime has been accused of hijacking the death of a young pro-democracy protester killed during rallies in Tehran on Monday.

A family member of Saane Zhaleh, a 26-year-old theatre student at Tehran University of Arts, told the Guardian that the Iranian authorities had launched a campaign to depict the pro-opposition protester as a member of the government-sponsored basiji militia who had been killed by what they described as terrorists.

"They [security forces] have killed him and now they want to hijack his dead body and exploit his funeral for their own purposes. His family is totally devastated and inundated in sorrow," said the family member, who asked not to be identified.

Opposition websites reported that two protesters were killed in clashes between security forces and thousands of defiant protesters who marched in a banned rally organised by the leaders of the green movement on Monday.

Iranian state news agencies later identified them as Zhaleh, a member of Iran's Kurd and Sunni minority, and 22-year-old Mohammad Mokhtari, but blamed the opposition for their death.

Iran's semi-official FARS news agency published a basiji identity card that it said belonged to Zhaleh, but the opposition immediately questioned its authenticity. In response, activists sympathetic to the green movement published a photo of Zhaleh on social networking websites that showed him in a meeting with grand Ayatollah Montazeri, a leading opposition figure who died in 2009. ...

Nothing Egypt's military council has done in its past suggests it has the capacity or inclination to introduce speedy and radical change. Guaranteed its $1.3bn (£812m) annual grant from the US — a dividend from the Camp David peace accord with Israel – it has gained the reputation as a hidebound institution with little appetite for reform.

The frustration of the military's American benefactors shines through in leaked US cables, where the criticism focuses mostly on the man at the top, 75-year-old Field Marshal Muhammad Tantawi.

In March 2008 cable [146040], the US ambassador to Cairo, Francis Ricciardone, described Tantawi as "aged and change-resistant".

"Charming and courtly, he is nonetheless mired in a post-Camp David military paradigm that has served his cohort's narrow interests for the last three decades. He and [Hosni] Mubarak are focused on regime stability and maintaining the status quo through the end of their time. They simply do not have the energy, inclination or world view to do anything differently," it reads.

The ambassador also notes that Tantawi has used his influence in the cabinet to oppose economic and political reforms which he sees as weakening central government power.

"He is supremely concerned with national unity, and has opposed policy initiatives he views as encouraging political or religious cleavages within Egyptian society," the cable says. ...

Egypt's uprising has sent powerful shockwaves across the Middle East , with two deaths reported in street clashes in Iran and Bahrain and violent demonstrations in Yemen, as further protests and strikes erupted across Egypt.

Thousands of Iranians defied a government ban and volleys of teargas to join a rally in Azadi Square in the centre of Tehran. The protests were the biggest since those that erupted after the disputed 2009 presidential elections.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, leader of the Iranian Green movement, was placed under house arrest, as was Mehdi Karroubi, another prominent opposition figure. Protest rallies were also held in Isfahan and Shiraz.

Iran's Islamic regime has hailed the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, though neither involved organised activity by Islamist opposition movements. Both protests were led by young people seeking political freedoms and an end to autocracy – just like many Iranian demonstrators.

Large numbers of police and security forces, wearing riot gear and many mounted on motorbikes, were stationed around Tehran's main squares. Mobile phone connections were down in the area of the protests.

Unrest in the Gulf island state of Bahrain on a "day of rage" organised by activists using Twitter and Facebook appeared to be similarly inspired by events in Cairo and Tunis but rooted in local factors, especially anger at discrimination against the Shia majority by the Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty.

It was the first sign of post-Egypt unrest anywhere in the wealthy Gulf states. Riot police fired teargas and rubber bullets at demonstrators demanding the release of Shia detainees. "Our movement is peaceful and our demands are legitimate," read one slogan. At least 14 people were injured in Newidrat in the south-west of the kingdom, — a key western ally that hosts the US fifth fleet. "We are only asking for political reforms, right of political participation, respect for human rights, stopping of systematic discrimination against Shias," activist Nabeel Rajab told al-Jazeera. He said one person had died of injuries sustained during the protests.

In the Yemeni capital Sana'a, protesters marched for a fourth consecutive day, demanding the removal of President Ali Abdullah Saleh....

Thousands of defiant protesters in Iran's capital have clashed with security officials as they marched in a banned rally. One person was reported killed, with dozens injured and many more arrested.

Supporters of the Green movement appeared in scattered groups in various locations in central Tehran and other big cities in what was seen as the Iranian opposition's first attempt in more than a year to hold street protests against the government.

The riot police and government-sponsored plainclothes basiji militia used teargas, wielded batons and opened fire to disperse protesters who chanted "death to the dictator", a reference to both Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Witnesses told the Guardian that despite a heavy security presence, small groups of people succeeded in gathering in main squares leading to Azadi ("freedom") Square – a chosen focal point.

HRANA, a human rights website, reported that one protester was killed and three injured when riot police opened fire at protesters near Tohid Square in Tehran. The website also said that at least 250 protesters have been arrested. Opposition websites also reported significant gatherings in the cities of Shiraz, Isfahan, Rasht, Mashhad and Kermanshah.

An Iranian student who participated in a protest in Enghelab Square in Tehran, who asked not to be identified, said: "What I saw in the streets today was very promising. It showed that the green movement is quite alive in spite of all crackdowns and arrests and people are still striving for freedom." ...

A "treasure trove" of information could be accessed on actor Steve Coogan's mobile phone at a time when journalists at the News of the World were instructing a private investigator to hack into it, the high court was told today.

Coogan's counsel, Jeremy Reed, said his witness statement showed: "He conducts business by voicemail messages. He tends to let messages stack up ... There is essentially a treasure trove of commercial information on his voicemail at any one time."

Coogan is suing News of the World publisher News Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, and former private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who worked for the paper.

Lawyers for Coogan and former Sky Sports presenter Andy Gray, who is also suing, were in court for a pre-trial hearing. They are trying to force Mulcaire to name the News of the World executives who ordered him to hack into phones.

"The News of the World entertainment section is likely to be extremely interested in what Mr Coogan ... or some other actor or director seeks to charge when they are working for Baby Cow," Reed said, referring to the TV production company co-owned by the comedian.

Scotland Yard has written to Coogan to confirm that the actor's mobile number, voicemail pin, password and other account details were found in Mulcaire's notebooks, which were seized in a police raid on his home in 2006.

Gray has been handed redacted copies of Mulcaire's notes, which allegedly show he was targeted by the investigator, along with billing information showing his mobile voicemail number was called about a dozen times from landlines registered to Mulcaire in a six-month period.

The court was reminded that copies of Mulcaire's notes also showed the private investigator wrote "Greg" on the left-hand side of the page. Reed said that was a reference to Greg Miskiw, a former News of the World investigations editor. ...

Three large energy companies have been carrying out covert intelligence-gathering operations on environmental activists, the Guardian can reveal.

The energy giant E.ON, Britain's second-biggest coal producer Scottish Resources Group and Scottish Power, one of the UK's largest electricity-generators, have been paying for the services of a private security firm that has been secretly monitoring activists.

Leaked documents show how the security firm's owner, Rebecca Todd, tipped off company executives about environmentalists' plans after snooping on their emails. She is also shown instructing an agent to attend campaign meetings and coaching him on how to ingratiate himself with activists. The disclosures come as police chiefs, on the defensive over damaging revelations of undercover police officers in the protest movement, privately claim that there are more corporate spies in protest groups than undercover police officers.

Senior police officers complain that spies hired by commercial firms are – unlike their own agents – barely regulated.

Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which until recently ran the secretive national unit of undercover police officers deployed in protest groups, said in a speech last week that "the deployment by completely uncontrolled and unrestrained players in the private sector" constituted a "massive area of concern".

Revelations about Mark Kennedy and three other undercover police officers in protest groups caused a furore last month and led to four official inquiries into their activities.

Now a Guardian investigation has shed new light on the surveillance of green campaigners by private security firms whose intrusive operations include posing as activists on mailing lists and infiltrating full-time agents into campaign groups over many years. ...

At 8.04pm, an agent using the conspicuous alias Vandango007 received an email setting out the details of his deployment. The message had come from Rebecca Todd, chief executive of Vericola, a company spying on environmental campaigners on behalf of some of Europe's largest power companies.

It was September 2009, and green activists involved in the Climate Camp network were planning a major demonstration against Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire, owned by one of Todd's clients, the energy company E.ON. A meeting to plan the protest was being held at London's SOAS university, and Todd wanted someone on the inside.

"Hola Carlos," she wrote to Vandango007 – whose real name is Carl Bishop – in an email providing details of the rendezvous. "It should only last 2 hours … same people that you have met before."

Todd, 33, gave Bishop tips on how to explain his recent absence from the group. "Apologise for delay in getting back to them – you have had girlfriend issues!!!! That sounds better than family or work issues!!!" She added: "Use your own wording – do your own thing be yourself. Do not mention that your [sic] going to Munich – obviously they hate short haul flights." She signed off the email: "Over and out!"

The email was one of dozens of Vericola communications leaked to the Guardian as part of the ongoing investigation into surveillance of the protest movement.

Much of the evidence was gathered by environmental activists, who have been quietly investigating suspicious activities in their movement.

The disclosures come after four inquiries were launched into undercover police activities after a month of revelations concerning undercover officer Mark Kennedy and three other police spies.

Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which ran the secret police unit Kennedy worked for, said he was "staggered" that espionage conducted in the private sector had not prompted similar outrage. In a speech last week he highlighted "the deployment by completely uncontrolled and unrestrained players in the private sector".

Privately, senior officers claim there are "without question" more corporate spies embedded in the protest movement than police officers. Among their number are former police officers cashing in on their surveillance skills for a host of companies that target protesters. ...

A juror in a controversial trial of environmental activists has castigated police for withholding covert recordings that he said could have led to them being declared not guilty.

Jezz Davis, 39, a construction worker, took the rare step of speaking out after hearing revelations that Nottinghamshire police allegedly suppressed surveillance tapes of activists convicted of conspiring to shut down one of Britain's biggest power stations for a week.

He told the Guardian the police's behaviour was "outrageous" and "corrupt" and left him "feeling betrayed by the British judicial system".

His criticism is likely to intensify the disquiet about police conduct in the trial. Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, has ordered an investigation into the safety of the convictions, while the Independent Police Complaints Commission is scrutinising the police's alleged failure to disclose the tapes to court.

Mark Kennedy, the 41-year-old undercover officer who infiltrated the environmental movement for seven years, says he secretly recorded a private meeting of the activists before the planned invasion of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire. He is alleged to have played a key role in organising the planned break-in of the power station for four months.

Davis told the Guardian that there was "no question" that the tapes should have been heard in court. "When called for jury service, you assume with good faith that all relevant evidence will be presented. The absence of potentially verdict-changing evidence is utterly outrageous."

"It just exposes the corruption in what is meant to be the system that you trust, that you place your faith in to do things by the book. They are the law. If you can't trust the law, who can you trust ?"

He said revelations about Kennedy's activities – which emerged after the trial – "turned everything on its head", as it became clear police knew through their spy about the planned action long before "but did nothing about it". He said it amounted to "prolonged entrapment".

The jury delivered guilty verdicts on the 20 activists in December after a trial lasting more than three weeks. The activists had relied on a legal strategy – known as "necessity", in which they admitted they were conspiring to shut the power station but said they did so to prevent death and serious injury caused by carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. The prosecution argued that the activists were lying and were intending to pull off a publicity stunt.

The activists, who are seeking to overturn their criminal convictions, say Kennedy's tapes would have supported their case in court as their intentions, recorded at the private meeting before the planned break-in, would rebut the prosecution's position. ...

When it finally came, the end was swift. After 18 days of mass protest, it took just over 30 seconds for Egypt's vice-president, Omar Suleiman, to announce that President Hosni Mubarak was standing down and handing power to the military.

"In the name of Allah the most gracious the most merciful," Suleiman read. "My fellow citizens, in the difficult circumstances our country is experiencing, President Muhammad Hosni Mubarak has decided to give up the office of the president of the republic and instructed the supreme council of the armed forces to manage the affairs of the country. May God guide our steps."

Moments later a deafening roar swept central Cairo and protesters fell to their knees and prayed, wept and let loose victory chants. Hundreds of thousands of people packed in to Tahrir Square, the centre of the demonstrations, waved flags, held up hastily written signs declaring victory and embraced soldiers.

"We have brought down the regime, we have brought down the regime," chanted the crowd.

Among those in the square was Mohammed Abdul Ghedi, a lifeguard in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where the former president and his family flew on Friday. Abdul Ghedi held up a sign in English that said: "Mubarak you are nothing, you are heartless, without mind, just youkel, worthless, fuck off."

"This is my first day here and he is gone. Mubarak is a liar. When he promised to leave in three or six months we don't believe him. We only believe him when he is gone," he said. "Now Egyptians are free. All of Egypt is liberated. Now we will choose our leaders and if we don't like them, they will go."

Another protester with tears in his eyes, Karim Medhat Ennarah, said: "For 18 days we have withstood teargas, rubber bullets, live ammunition, Molotov cocktails, thugs on horseback, the scepticism and fear of our loved ones, and the worst sort of ambivalence from an international community that claims to care about democracy. But we held our ground. We did it." ...

Hosni Mubarak's presidency was born amid gunfire and bloodshed and ended in an equally dramatic fashion. As vice-president, Mubarak was sitting next to Anwar Sadat on 6 October 1981 at an army parade in the Cairo district of Nasser City when soldiers with Islamist sympathies turned on their leader, pouring automatic weapons fire into the reviewing stand. Sadat was killed outright. Mubarak narrowly escaped. Eight days later, he was sworn in as Egypt's third president.

That Mubarak should be ejected from the job he has held for nearly 30 years is, with hindsight, hardly a surprise. It had become clear to Egyptians and the world in recent years that even at the age of 82 he regarded the presidency as his by right, hence his nickname of "pharaoh" – and that he would not quit voluntarily. As the crisis overwhelmed him, he said he had had no intention of standing again in September. Few believed him. Others assumed he planned instead to install his second son, Gamal, in a dynastic succession.

Mubarak's attitude to his people was by turns paternalistic, aloof and repressive. Though he claimed to love his fellow Egyptians, he did not trust them, maintaining the harsh emergency laws imposed after Sadat's assassination throughout his reign. Leading an unswervingly secular, pro-western regime, he demonised even moderate Islamist parties and made of the Muslim Brotherhood a bogeyman with which to scare the Americans.

Yet, in rare interviews he implied that he believed he held some sort of divine mandate, that he ruled through and by God's will. After he survived an attempt on his life by Gema'a Islamiya (Muslim Group) terrorists in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in June 1995, one of up to eight attempted assassinations over 30 years, he returned to Cairo proclaiming that God had saved him through an act of divine providence, as in 1981.

Imperious, abstemious (he does not smoke or drink), and intensely private, he suggested Egyptians were lucky to have him in charge. Without him, he said repeatedly, there would be only chaos. And this claim to ensure stability was, in truth, his entire electoral manifesto.

Yet mixed up with his vague sense of God-given power and obligation was a strong strand of regal hubris, bordering on self pity. "I've only had three months' holiday in my 56-year career," he told a television interviewer in 2005. "I've been doing hard labour for 56 years and it's all for Egypt." He never cried, he said, he never despaired, and he never allowed himself to be provoked. Influenced perhaps by his military background, he clearly saw such emotional repression as a virtue.

Speaking this week, Mubarak returned to his favourite theme of self-sacrifice. As hundreds of thousands of demonstrators demanded he follow Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali into exile, he insisted he would serve Egypt until his last breath. "This dear nation ... is where I lived, I fought for it, and defended its soil, sovereignty and interests. On its soil I will die. History will judge me like it did others." Talking to ABC television last week on Thursday,he repeated his life-long, heart-felt mantra: that, if he left, chaos would descend.

For all his vanities and inadequacies, Mubarak's early achievements were significant. To the turmoil that followed Sadat's death, he brought a steady hand and, at a moment of great peril, held the nation together. Confronting the ostracism of Egypt by Arab and Muslim countries following Sadat's 1979 peace treaty with Israel (the Arab League decamped from Cairo to Tunis in disgust), he worked assiduously to restore relations, finally succeeding by 1989 with all but the rejectionist leaders of Tehran. ...

Hundreds of thousands of innocent people are to have their DNA profiles deleted from the national police database under the coalition's flagship civil liberties legislation published on Friday.

The protection of freedoms bill will also regulate the use of CCTV by the police and local authorities for the first time to ensure they are used "proportionately and appropriately".

Home Office ministers said the legislation was not intended to reduce the estimated 4 million CCTV cameras in use.

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said it was landmark legislation that would restore hard-won civil liberties and result in an "unprecedented rolling back of the state".

The 146-page bill includes the reform of counter-terrorism legislation, including stop and search powers, the scaling back of local authority surveillance and the vetting and barring criminal record checks system, the end of fingerprinting of children in schools without parental consent, and the repeal of powers to hold serious fraud trials without a jury.

It also contains some quirky proposals such as relaxing matrimonial laws to allow people to marry outside the hours of 8am to 6pm and repealing the right of police officers to enter your home to search for German enemy property. The change in the marriage hours stems from suggestions on the government's Your Freedom website and is likely to trigger a mini-boom in evening wedding venues. ...

The Egyptian military has secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak began, and at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian.

The military has claimed to be neutral, merely keeping anti-Mubarak protesters and loyalists apart. But human rights campaigners say this is clearly no longer the case, accusing the army of involvement in both disappearances and torture – abuses Egyptians have for years associated with the notorious state security intelligence (SSI) but not the army.

The Guardian has spoken to detainees who say they have suffered extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organised campaign of intimidation. Human rights groups have documented the use of electric shocks on some of those held by the army.

Egyptian human rights groups say families are desperately searching for missing relatives who have disappeared into army custody. Some of the detainees have been held inside the renowned Museum of Egyptian Antiquities on the edge of Tahrir Square. Those released have given graphic accounts of physical abuse by soldiers who accused them of acting for foreign powers, including Hamas and Israel.

Among those detained have been human rights activists, lawyers and journalists, but most have been released. However, Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, said hundreds, and possibly thousands, of ordinary people had "disappeared" into military custody across the country for no more than carrying a political flyer, attending the demonstrations or even the way they look. Many were still missing.

"Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not," he said. "It's unusual and to the best of our knowledge it's also unprecedented for the army to be doing this."

One of those detained by the army was a 23-year-old man who would only give his first name, Ashraf, for fear of again being arrested. He was detained last Friday on the edge of Tahrir Square carrying a box of medical supplies intended for one of the makeshift clinics treating protesters attacked by pro-Mubarak forces.

"I was on a sidestreet and a soldier stopped me and asked me where I was going. I told him and he accused me of working for foreign enemies and other soldiers rushed over and they all started hitting me with their guns," he said. ...

The sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device sounded like an angry rattlesnake as it passed within inches of my face. Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor.

A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: "In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don't behave – electrocution and rape."

Cuffed and blindfolded, like my fellow detainees, I lay transfixed. My palms sweated and my heart raced. I felt myself shaking. Would it be my turn next? Or would my outsider status, conferred by holding a British passport, save me? I suspected – hoped – that it would be the latter and, thankfully, it was. But I could never be sure.

I had "disappeared", along with countless Egyptians, inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat, President Hosni Mubarak's vast security-intelligence apparatus and an organisation headed, until recently, by his vice-president and former intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, the man trusted to negotiate an "orderly transition" to democratic rule.

Judging by what I witnessed, that seems a forlorn hope.

I had often wondered, reading accounts of political prisoners detained and tortured in places such as junta-run Argentina of the 1970s, what it would be like to be totally at the mercy of, and dependent on, your jailer for everything – food, water, the toilet. I never dreamed I would find out. Yet here I was, cooped up in a tiny room with a group of Egyptian detainees who were being mercilessly brutalised.

I had been handed over to the security services after being stopped at a police checkpoint near central Cairo last Friday. I had flown there, along with an Iraqi-born British colleague, Abdelilah Nuaimi, to cover Egypt's unfolding crisis for RFE/RL, an American radio station based in Prague.

We knew beforehand that foreign journalists had been targeted by security services as they scrambled to contain a revolt against Mubarak's regime, so our incarceration was not unique.

Yet it was different. My experience, while highly personal, wasn't really about me or the foreign media. It was about gaining an insight – if that is possible behind a blindfold – into the inner workings of the Mubarak regime. It told me all I needed to know about why it had become hated, feared and loathed by the mass of ordinary Egyptians. ...

Talks between the Egyptian government and opposition have all but collapsed after the regime balked at surrendering power to a transitional administration in the hope that mass protests would die down.

Instead, the unrest is spreading as some of the largest demonstrations yet against President Hosni Mubarak were joined by labour strikes across the country, including on the Suez canal, in the city of Alexandria and by public transport workers in Cairo.

A prominent member of a key opposition group, the Council of Wise Men, said negotiations had "essentially come to an end". A western diplomat said Washington was alarmed by the lack of progress and the vice-president Omar Suleiman's warning of a coup if the opposition refused to accept the government's terms.

Diaa Rashwan, of the Council of Wise Men, said he offered Suleiman a compromise in which Mubarak would have remained president but with his powers transferred to a transitional government.

Rashwan said this proposal was rejected at the weekend and there had been no further movement. He said: "Suleiman's comments about there being a danger of a coup were shocking to all of us – it was a betrayal of the spirit of negotiations, and is unacceptable. The regime's strategy has been just to play for time and stall with negotiations. They don't really want to talk to anyone."

Instead, the largest demonstration so far took place in Cairo on Tuesday, the same day as 25 big demonstrations elsewhere in Egypt and the start of a series of strikes as trade unions joined the fray. Some stoppages are mainly about wage demands, but in the present crisis there is little doubt they are timed to support the pro-democracy movement. Tens of thousands of workers stayed away in Alexandria to demand Mubarak's resignation. Employees of the state-run Suez Canal company, public transport workers in Cairo and iron and steel workers in other areas have also joined the strikes.

At least two people were killed and several wounded in clashes between thousands of protesters and police in New Province, 300 miles from Cairo. This takes the estimated number of deaths at the hands of government forces above 300.

Rashwan said that the lack of progress in talks and the rise in protests had shifted the initiative back to the street. ...

Omar Suleiman may be starting to deserve the adjective "embattled" that has often been attached to his boss, Hosni Mubarak, since Egypt's uprising began.

Appointed vice-president as a safe and loyal pair of hands, Mubarak's former intelligence chief has been mandated to run "an inclusive and serious national dialogue with participants from the whole political spectrum to deliver an orderly transition to democracy by September".

But doubts about the regime's real intentions, present from the start of the crisis, are growing fast.

The first talks on Sunday were inconclusive. The impression is strengthening, say analysts in Egypt and abroad, that Suleiman is not serious about a constitutional review, a timetable for change, protecting freedom of expression, allowing peaceful protest, and ending the state of emergency. His remarks on Tuesday, rejecting an immediate departure by Mubarak or any "end to the regime", did not sit well with his wish to resolve the crisis through dialogue. His warning of a possible "coup" sounded like a threat of more overt military intervention than has been seen so far.

The view from Cairo is that the regime, though confused, is taking a hard line, and that the negotiations have essentially come to an end. The regime's strategy has been to play for time, believing that the protests would fade in the face of a faltering economy and government initiatives such as raising wages for state employees.

In a fast-moving situation, the mood changes from day to day. Only last Friday the government seemed to have acted wisely by not sending back its thugs to Tahrir square. That eased pressure from abroad, with the US, Britain and others tacitly accepting that Mubarak was unlikely to leave office before September. Worries about the Muslim Brotherhood taking advantage of the chaos may also have played into western calculations.

Now, with protesters showing determination and resilience after Tuesday's big rally, and another massive turnout planned for Friday, there is a tougher line from Washington. Joe Biden, the US vice-president, urged Suleiman to rescind the emergency laws immediately. ...

The reopened police investigation into phone hacking by News of the World journalists has identified a number of new potential victims, including Lord Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, the Guardian has learned.

Just a fortnight after reopening their inquiry, in the wake of an 18-month campaign by the Guardian, police said a re-examination of the evidence they had held for years, but failed to fully investigate, combined with new evidence from the Sunday tabloid, had thrown up an "important and immediate new line of inquiry". The new investigation, they said, had already established "reasonable evidence" that up to 20 people, mainly prominent public figures, were targeted by the paper.

The development represents Scotland Yard finally beginning to take the lid off the phone-hacking scandal. More than five years after they first started to investigate the illegal interception of voicemail messages by a private investigator working for the News of the World, the Met announced that its new inquiry would:

• Review all the decisions made by their two previous inquiries.

• Contact thousands of public figures who have never been told that their personal details were recorded by the private investigator.

• Warn some public figures that they had previously been misled when they asked the Yard for information.

Police had been dismissive of Prescott's suspicions that he had been targeted, but the head of the new investigation, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, saw Prescott on Wednesday. He was told that invoices recovered by police showed he was targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, the private eye used by the NoW, who was an expert in phone hacking. They also have notes made by Mulcaire about Prescott, who as deputy prime minister was in possession of highly sensitive information. After his briefing by the police chief, Prescott told the Guardian that previous police investigations had been "completely inadequate".

The new evidence is understood to show that Prescott was targeted in April 2006, the month he admitted to having an affair with his diary secretary Tracey Temple. In a statement Prescott told the Guardian: "I can confirm that at her request I met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers today. She informed me that significant new evidence relating to phone hacking and myself had been discovered and that they were investigating it. I think this proves my long-held belief that the original Met police investigation into Mulcaire and News International was completely inadequate and failed to follow all the evidence. I now look forward to the Met police finally uncovering the truth." ...

Russia's foreign ministry has reversed its decision to deport the Guardian's Moscow correspondent, saying that Luke Harding would be granted an extension to his visa to carry on reporting if the newspaper wanted him to.

The U-turn came just before a rare visit by Russia's foreign minister to the UK and follows widespread criticism from British politicians of the journalist's removal.

Alexander Lukashevich, a spokesman for the ministry, said the country was ready to issue a visa so Harding could "continue his activity for the amount of time his tenure in Russia has been extended".

On Tuesday Harding had been told that he would only be allowed to return to Russia until his visa expired at the end of May – with the foreign ministry blaming the journalist for failing to take a press card with him before going abroad.

Last weekend Harding was deported when he returned to Russia after a stint in London reporting on the WikiLeaks cables, becoming the first journalist employed by a newspaper or broadcaster to be kicked out of the country since the end of the cold war. ...

8.36am: The Egyptian newspaper, Youm7, has images and reports of violence overnight in the town of Al-Wadi al-Jadid in the south-west. It says 100 people have been injured including eight seriously.

Scott Lucas, an academic from the University of Birmingham, writing on the blog Enduring America has anunconfirmed report of a "massacre" taking place in the area. It names one man reported to have been killed.

The police cut off the electricity and water about 2-3 hours ago. They fired live bullets at the protesters. After brutally beating the protesters, the police were forced to retreat. While retreating they set a gas station on fire. The protesters successfully put out the fire using buckets full of sand.

The protesters set the NDP HQ, Governorate building, and the police station on fire (the police station is unconfirmed). The police arrested a lot of youth randomly and took them to an unknown destination. Also the police set a lot of convicts from the Wadi Prison free to scare the people,keeping only political detainees. The latest news was that the convicts are set to attack the museum, and the protesters are preparing Molotovs for defense. Mohammed Hassan Belal, a 20-year-old protester, is the first confirmed death.

8.18am: Protesters have turned on the Egyptian pop singer Tamer Hosny after he appeared on state TV to support Mubarak, al-Jazeera reports.

He tried to address the crowd in Tahrir square, but was shouted down, it reports. It also shows a video of protesters chanting against him.

8.00am: Wael Ghonim, the released activist and newly anointed voice of the revolution, has urged protesters to keep up the pressure for Hosni Mubarak to stand down.

In a series of Twitter message today he spoke of his pride following yesterday's massive demonstration in central Cairo, and he urged Egyptians living aboard to return home to join the protests.

He also rejected opposition talks with the government. ...

The Middle East peace process is in danger of falling victim to the revolutionary tide sweeping the Arab world, the foreign secretary, William Hague, has warned.

Speaking on an emergency tour of the region, Hague also urged Israel to tone down its "belligerent" language in the wake of the uprisings that have spread from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond. Hague said the "scale of any military conflict" between Israel and Hezbollah was growing, and that soon "peace may become impossible".

The intervention came as the situation in Egypt intensified, with thousands of protesters again on the streets of Cairo demanding President Hosni Mubarak's immediate departure.

In an interview with the Times en route to Jordan, Hague said: "Amidst the opportunity for countries like Tunisia and Egypt, there is a legitimate fear that the Middle East peace process will lose further momentum and be put to one side, and will be a casualty of uncertainty in the region."

He added: "Part of the fear is that uncertainty and change will complicate the process still further. That means there is a real urgency for the Israelis and the United States.

"Recent events mean this is an even more urgent priority and that's a case we are putting to the Israeli Government and in Washington."

Hague responded to pronouncements by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been urging his nation to prepare for "any outcome" and vowing to "reinforce the might of the state of Israel".

"This should not be a time for belligerent language," the Hague said. "It's a time to inject greater urgency into the Middle East peace process." ...

... 12.49pm: Al Jazeera reports that 20 lawyers have lodged a petition alleging that Mubarak and his family have stolen state funds. Such a lawsuit is unprecedented and, like many of the events since the protests began, would have been unthinkable 15 days ago. The regime's response to the petition should be interesting. ...

Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who helped organise the protests that started Egypt's uprising, has been hailed as a hero and a symbol of hope amid calls for him to be appointed spokesman for the country's democracy movement.

Ghonim, a marketing manager and web activist who was lionised by demonstrators after he went missing on 27 January, confirmed in an emotional TV interview immediately after he was freed from detention on Monday that he was behind a Facebook page that galvanised protests by angry youth.

Ghonim broke down and wept openly live on camera for Dream TV and his remarks were translated and quickly posted on Twitter to become what has been widely described as a rallying point to keep the protests alive. ...

Hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have turned out for the largest demonstration to date in Cairo, with renewed demands for the immediate resignation of their president, Hosni Mubarak.

Vice-president Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief who is leading negotiations with Egypt's opposition groups, sought to appease protesters with a TV assurance that Mubarak had endorsed a timetable for a "peaceful and organised transfer of power" in September.

Suleiman said that Mubarak has set up a committee to recommend constitutional amendments to remove tight restrictions on who can run for president, and promised there will be no reprisals against protesters.

"The president welcomed the national consensus, confirming that we are putting our feet on the right path to getting out of the current crisis," Suleiman said.

However, in a sign of growing impatience with the demonstrations, he warned last night the protests could not go on indefinitely. "We can't bear this for a long time, and there must be an end to this crisis as soon as possible," he said. State news agency Mena said he made the remarks at a meeting with newspaper editors, where he rejected any departure for Mubarak or "end to the regime" and said they prefered to deal with the crisis using dialogue, adding, "We don't want to deal with Egyptian society with police tools."

But the consensus among the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who packed into Tahrir Square on the 15th day of protest – discrediting government claims that support is fading – was that Mubarak must go now and that the regime cannot be trusted.

On the streets, the concessions were viewed as further evidence of the government's weakness and spurred a determination to keep protesting. ...

The government has been asked to revoke an invitation to the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, to visit the UK next week until Russia gives a full explanation of why it has expelled the Guardian's Moscow correspondent, Luke Harding.

The Labour MP Chris Bryant asked the British government to block the visit after he requested an urgent statement from the Foreign Office on the issue.

In a question-and-answer session in parliament, Bryant said the government should rescind the invitation until the circumstances surrounding Harding's expulsion from Russia became clearer. He said the British government should state that Lavrov was "not welcome in this country while British journalists are not welcome in Russia".

Later, Russia's foreign ministry appeared to reverse its decision to deport Harding, saying he would be able to return to carry on with his job. ...

Will George W. Bush set foot in Europe again in his lifetime?

A planned trip by Bush to speak at the Switzerland-based United Israel Appeal later this week has been canceled after several human rights groups called for Swiss authorities to arrest Bush and investigate him for authorizing torture. Bush has traveled widely since leaving office, but not to Europe, where there is a strong tradition of international prosecutions.

The Swiss group and Bush's spokesman claim that it was threats of protest, not of legal action, that prompted the cancellation. But facing protests is nothing new for Bush. What was different about this trip was that groups including Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights argued that Switzerland, as a party to the UN Convention against Torture, is obligated to investigate Bush for potential prosecution.

Amnesty's memo to Swiss authorities cites, among other things, Bush's admission in his own memoir that he approved the use of waterboarding....


Ta much, dear Anneliese

The hardcore of revolutionaries who refuse to step outside of Tahrir Square is down to 1,000 or so.

Each night they are squeezed into the cluster of tents planted on the large roundabout at the heart of the square.

The protesters are an unusually mixed community: young and middle-aged, mostly men but a few women and families too. Muslims, Christians and those who choose not to pray have been thrown together in a single cause.

At times the easygoing atmosphere has the air of a festival, as do the long lines for the toilets.

But a glance over at the ever-present soldiers on the edge of the square and the strategically piled rocks – sometimes used to spell out demands such as "leave now" and "get out" – are reminders, if any were needed, of the bloody price paid a few days ago to keep the square in the protesters' hands.

Once the sun is up, Tahrir Square starts to fill. On some days, hundreds of thousands have squeezed in after showing identity cards to the soldiers ringing the square in a disconcerting demonstration of orderliness and respect.

The overnight residents take to clearing up, brushing dirt from the roads, putting rubbish in bags for the dust carts that arrive each day and stacking the stones. The tea sellers emerge and the young boys who sell Egyptian flags for E£10 (£1.40) each.

The morning arrivals come with bread and vegetables for those who have stayed through the night. Amr Mahmoud, who has been in the square since the beginning of the protest a fortnight ago, waves his hand at the small bowl of food before him. He is outraged.

"The government says we are eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. Where is the Kentucky?" he asks. "They say we are paid to be here but we have no money."

The KFC just across the street is firmly shut. It is plastered in anti-government posters and graffiti, as is just about every other business in the square except for a small gift shop whose owner remains a fan of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president. ...

Leading opposition groups in Egypt, including the Muslim Brotherhood, are standing by a demand that President Hosni Mubarak resign before there can be a political agreement to end two weeks of mass protests against his regime.

Pro-democracy campaigners called another mass demonstration for Tuesday to keep up the pressure on Mubarak to quit in the face of the government's attempts to marginalise the street protests as no longer relevant because political talks are under way.

In Washington, Barack Obama expressed optimism about developments in Egypt. "Obviously Egypt has to negotiate a path, and I think they're making progress," he said.

But there remains considerable suspicion within the opposition about the intentions of Mubarak's vice-president, Omar Suleiman, who is overseeing the political transition and leading the negotiations, particularly after the continued arrest of opposition activists and fresh harassment of the press.

Mubarak's new cabinet, installed after he sacked the previous one in an attempt to placate protesters, held its first meeting today and promptly announced a 15% pay rise for government employees in an apparent attempt to buy support among workers hit by sharply rising food prices.

The government also promised investigations into official corruption and widespread fraud that delivered the ruling party its large victory in last year's parliamentary election. The curfew was relaxed by an hour.

But the government's attempts to return Egypt to normality with a call for a return to work and an end to the demonstrations met with only partial success. Banks opened for a second day but the stock exchange, which the government hoped would be trading, remained closed, as did schools and many businesses. The value of the Egyptian pound fell sharply.

Suleiman met major opposition groups, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, yesterday and made a series of concessions in the hope of defusing the protests. But Muslim Brotherhood members who attended the meeting said today that they "will continue in dialogue only if people's demands are respected".

The Islamist group said this required "the immediate resignation of President Mubarak" as well as the dissolving of parliament, the release of political prisoners and the lifting of oppressive emergency laws. ...

Human rights groups have vowed to track George W Bush round the world after their success in forcing him to cancel a trip to Switzerland amid concerns over protests and a threatened arrest warrant.

Katherine Gallagher, a lawyer with the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, said: "The reach of the convention against torture is wide. This case is prepared and will be waiting for him wherever he travels next.

"Torturers, even if they are former presidents of the United States, must be held to account and prosecuted."

Although Bush has travelled freely round the world since leaving the White House in January 2009, human rights groups believe he is vulnerable to prosecution after admitting in his autobiography last November that he authorised waterboarding and other interrogation techniques.

"Waterboarding is torture, and Bush has admitted, without any sign of remorse, that he approved its use," said Gallagher, who is also vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights.

Bush's staff, as well as US embassies around the world, will have to factor into their planning of future trips whether a country is a signatory to the convention on torture, as most countries are, which should at least theoretically trigger near-automatic action by legal authorities, and negotiate with governments to ensure there will be no arrest warrants. They will also seek assurances that Bush has diplomatic immunity.

Since the arrest of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998 over alleged murders, senior politicians linked to war, internal conflict and oppression have had to be more careful in their travel plans.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights, backed by other human rights organisations, has published a 2,500-word "indictment for torture" against Bush. It was to have been filed with a Swiss court today, but that plan had to be dropped when Bush cancelled a visit to Geneva on Saturday to deliver a speech. Under the original plan, a criminal complaint would have been brought on behalf of two former Guantánamo prisoners who claim they were tortured. ...

Undercover policing operations should be authorised in advance by a judge, the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said today.

Sir Hugh Orde, the Acpo president, said the change was needed to restore public confidence in the system after concerns about the role played by the ex-Metropolitan police constable Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist.

Orde said the benefits of judicial oversight of future operations would "far outweigh the additional administrative burden".

Speaking at a policing seminar held by the human rights group Liberty in central London, he said: "The current system of retrospective inspection is, in my judgment, no longer sufficient to secure the confidence of right thinking people that such interference with citizens' rights – with its foreseeable collateral intrusion on many – is appropriate.

"Therefore, the solution must take the form of some independent pre-authority that is already a common feature in other areas of policing in this country.

"It is not for me to suggest the level or form, but I do believe that an additional element of judicial oversight, in keeping with our traditions of accountability to the rule of law, need not be over-bureaucratic and the benefit would far outweigh the additional administrative burden."

Control of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), to which undercover officer Kennedy belonged, was transferred from Acpo to Scotland Yard last Monday. ...

The Guardian's Moscow correspondent has been expelled from Russia, in what is believed to be the first removal of a British staff journalist from the country since the end of the cold war.

Luke Harding's forced departure comes after the newspaper's reporting of the WikiLeaks cables, where he reported on allegations that Russia under the rule of Vladimir Putin had become a "virtual mafia state".

The journalist flew back to Moscow at the weekend after a two-month stint reporting on the contents of the leaked US diplomatic cables from London, but was refused entry when his passport was checked on his arrival.

After spending 45 minutes in an airport cell, he was sent back to the UK on the first available plane – with his visa annulled and his passport only returned to him after taking his seat. Harding was given no specific reason for the decision, although an airport security official working for the Federal Border Service, an arm of the FSB intelligence agency, told him: "For you Russia is closed."

The tightly controlled nature of Russian politics means the expulsion is likely to have been ordered at a very senior level, but the British government has so far been unable to find out any more details about the decision.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, contacted his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Monday afternoon in an effort to establish what had happened. It is understood Lavrov had no explanation to offer, and promised only to look into the matter. ...

Russian authorities either denied entry to or deported more than 40 members of the media between 2000 to 2008, according to statistics from the Moscow-based press freedom group Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations. British journalists who have been denied entry or expelled include...

There is a lot more behind Hosni Mubarak digging in his heels and setting his thugs on the peaceful protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square than pure politics. This is also about money. Mubarak and the clique surrounding him have long treated Egypt as their fiefdom and its resources as spoils to be divided among them.

Under sweeping privatisation policies, they appropriated profitable public enterprises and vast areas of state-owned lands. A small group of businessmen seized public assets and acquired monopoly positions in strategic commodity markets such as iron and steel, cement and wood. While crony capitalism flourished, local industries that were once the backbone of the economy were left to decline. At the same time, private sector industries making environmentally hazardous products like ceramics, marble and fertilisers have expanded without effective regulation at a great cost to the health of the population.

A tiny economic elite controlling consumption-geared production and imports has accumulated great wealth. This elite includes representatives of foreign companies with exclusive import rights in electronics, electric cables and automobiles. It also includes real estate developers who created a construction boom in gated communities and resorts for the super-rich. Much of this development is on public land acquired at very low prices, with no proper tendering or bidding.

It is estimated that around a thousand families maintain control of vast areas of the economy. This business class sought to consolidate itself and protect its wealth through political office. The National Democratic party was their primary vehicle for doing so. This alliance of money and politics became flagrant in recent years when a number of businessmen became government ministers with portfolios that clearly overlapped with their private interests.

Mubarak presided over a process in which the national wealth passed into a few private hands while the majority of the population was impoverished, with 40% living below the poverty line of less than $2 a day, rising rates of unemployment, and job opportunities for the young blocked. In the last few months of 2010, Egyptians protested for an increase of the minimum monthly wage to less than $240, but the now departed Nazif government decreed that less than $100 was sufficient as a basic income. This, at a time when the prices of food staples and utilities tariffs increased at very high rates. Indeed, as one local economist asserted, every single commodity and service cost significantly more under the Nazif government – which is the government of business that ended progressive taxation and replaced it by a single unified income tax.

Additionally, public social services underwent masked privatisation, taking health and education beyond the reach of vast segments of the population. Many poor families were forced to give up the hope of educating children and had to send them to do menial work to contribute to the income of the household. There was little public investment in most services, and in infrastructure such as roads, water and sewerage. In the 2000s, Egypt witnessed numerous demonstrations by ordinary people across the country for the construction of overpass bridges on fast roads and for clean water in towns and villages. ...

The news dribbled in to Tahrir Square in phone calls, text messages, by word of mouth. The details were vague but the demonstrators, some of whom have been camped in the square for nearly a fortnight, agreed that concessions offered by the man who increasingly appears to run Egypt, the vice president and former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, were a good sign. The regime was crumbling.

But what of President Hosni Mubarak? The news was disappointing.

Tens of thousands of people packed in to Tahrir Square again, as determined now to rid Egypt of the man who has ruled for 30 years as they were when the uprising began nearly a fortnight ago.

Some welcomed news of talks between Suleiman and opposition figures as further evidence that the regime's power is waning. But they still wanted to see the protests through until their central demand – for Mubarak's resignation – has been met.

Many were wary of the apparent deal being cooked up between Washington and Suleiman, with European backing, for the old regime to oversee the transition to democracy.

"If Mubarak is still president, nothing will happen. If he will leave, then Omar Suleiman, no problem if he meets our demands," said Amr Mahmoud, who has spent 12 days in the square with his wife, Reem. "But Suleiman was part of the old system. We want a new system." ...

The Egyptian government has offered a series of concessions at the first talks with opposition groups, including the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, in an attempt to end the mass pro-democracy protests across the country.

But opposition leaders said that Egypt's vice-president and longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, did not go far enough in his proposals for greater political freedom and pledge of free elections.

In Cairo, demonstrators again packed Tahrir Square to demand President Hosni Mubarak's immediate removal from office as a prerequisite for any deal, undermining the government's attempts to get people back to work because of the huge economic losses caused by the crisis.

While the mood was relaxed in the square for much of the day, with even a wedding taking place, the army fired warning shots after dark in an apparent confrontation with some protesters. There are concerns that demands by the military to remove barricades blocking roads are a move towards breaking up the demonstration.

A government statement said that Suleiman, who is apparently playing an increasingly powerful role, agreed to a number of measures including the formation of a committee of political and judicial figures to oversee changes to the constitution which would scrap provisions that limit the ability of the opposition to run for the presidency.

The government said it will also immediately release "prisoners of conscience of all persuasions" and end legal restrictions on the press. However, it gave only a partial commitment to lift the state of emergency, which gives the president considerable powers and has been used to jail opponents, saying that it will be rescinded "based on the security situation and an end to the threats to the security of society".

The meeting was greeted with scepticism by Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, who is now a prominent opposition voice.

"The process is opaque. Nobody knows who is talking to whom at this stage. It's managed by Vice-President Suleiman. It is all managed by the military and that is part of the problem," he said on NBC. ...

Egypt's new vice president, Omar Suleiman, has long sought to demonise the opposition Muslim Brotherhood in his contacts with sceptical US officials, leaked diplomatic cables show, raising questions whether he can act as an honest broker in the country's political crisis.

US embassy messages from WikiLeaks's cache of 250,000 state department documents, which Reuters independently reviewed, also report that the former intelligence chief accused the Brotherhood of spawning armed extremists and warned in 2008 that if Iran ever backed the banned Islamist group, Tehran would become "our enemy".

The disclosure came as Suleiman met opposition groups, including the officially banned Brotherhood, to explore ways to end Egypt's political crisis. The US has been exploring options for speeding up President Hosni Mubarak's resignation, including a scenario that calls for turning over power to a transition government led by Suleiman and backed by the military.

Mubarak, who had done without a vice president for 30 years, hurriedly appointed 74-year-old Suleiman as his deputy last month as protesters demanded the forcing out of the autocratic ruler. ...

A former Israeli soldier is facing a long prison sentence after admitting that she passed thousands of classified military documents to a newspaper reporter.

Anat Kam, 24, has been under house arrest since she was charged in January 2010 with espionage and intent to harm state security with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. In a plea bargain, that charge was dropped when she admitted to collecting and passing on secret information. She faces a maximum sentence of 15 years, but prosecutors are reportedly asking for about nine years.

Among the documents leaked by Kam to the Haaretz reporter Uri Blau were papers showing that Israeli military and security officials had authorised the killing of Palestinian militants in operations where they could have instead been arrested. Kam made copies of 2,000 documents, including 700 marked top secret, during her national service as a clerk in the office of a top Israeli general.

Blau published an investigation revealing the content of the documents in November 2008. The assassinations contravened an Israeli high court judgment which ruled that militants must be arrested where possible.

Blau's article was approved by the military censor, and Kam was not arrested for more than a year after publication. The Haaretz journalist remained in London, where he was at the time of Kam's arrest, for many months, fearing he would face prosecution if he returned to Israel. He flew back in October after his lawyers struck a deal with the Shin Bet security service under which he returned the documents. ...

With condolences to the iPad and Sarah Palin's Twitter account, WikiLeaks is the media story of our time. Since the one-two punch of the release of military reports about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and November's trove of diplomatic cables, the government, the media, and the public have been playing catch-up with the implications of this new media frontier.

Much of the traditional media has seemed lost on how to handle this hi-tech interloper. As a result, too much of the coverage has been meta – focusing on questions about whether the leaks were justified – while too little has dealt with the details of what has actually been revealed and what those revelations say about the wisdom of America's ongoing effort in Afghanistan. There's a reason why the Obama administration has been so upset about these leaks.

As has too often been the case since 9/11, the WikiLeaks controversy has found a great deal of the media once again on the wrong side of the secrecy debate. As Harvard's John Perry Barlow tweeted: "We have reached a point in our history where lies are protected speech and the truth is criminal."

Whether old or new, the media's job, as Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian, isn't to protect the powerful from embarrassment. Its job is to play the role of the little boy in The Emperor's New Clothes – brave enough to point out what nobody else will say. And when the press trades truth for access, it is WikiLeaks that acts like the little boy.

Without that little boy, we get truth-for-access traders like Judith Miller, whose breathless, spoonfed – and ultimately inaccurate – accounts from Iraq help lead America to war. When her facts proved wrong, Miller shrugged it off by saying: "My job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of the New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." In other words, her job is to tell citizens what their government is saying, not what their government is doing.

The establishment media may be part of the media, but they're also part of the establishment. And, with WikiLeaks, they've been circling the wagons. They conflate the secrecy that governments use to operate and the secrecy that allows governments to mislead us. Nobody, including WikiLeaks, is promoting the idea that governments should exist in total transparency, or that, for instance, all government meetings should be live-streamed and cameras placed around the White House like a DC-based spin-off of Big Brother.

But a government's legitimate need for secrecy is different from the government's desire to get away with hiding the truth. Conflating the two is dangerously unhealthy for a democracy. This is why it's especially important to look at what WikiLeaks is doing, as distinct from what its critics claim it's doing.

It's also important to look at the fact that even though the cables were published in mainstream outlets such as the Guardian, the information first went to WikiLeaks. "You've heard of voting with your feet?" said New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen. "The sources are voting with their leaks. If they trusted the newspapers more, they would be going to the newspapers." ...

America yesterday swung its support behind Egypt's vice-president, Omar Suleiman, and the political transition he is leading, calling for a process of orderly reform. The policy, made clear by Hillary Clinton at the Munich Security Conference, was the latest sign of steps by the US and senior members of the Egyptian military to nudge President Hosni Mubarak aside and contain the potential for street violence.

The move came as senior members of the leadership of the ruling National Democratic party resigned from the party in response to the protests. They included Mubarak's powerful son, Gamal, long expected to succeed his father. A relative liberal, Hossam Badrawi, was appointed the party's new secretary general. ...

11.29pm: More from the Reuters interview with ElBaradei:

"To hear ... that Mubarak should stay and lead the process of change, and that the process of change should essentially be led by his closest military adviser [Sulieman], who's not the most popular person in Egypt, without the sharing of power with civilians, it would be very, very disappointing.

ElBaradei said he did not think the demonstrations were running out of steam, though he worried the situation could get bloodier. "There is of course a little fatigue everywhere," he said, adding that there was a "hard core" of demonstrators who would not give up as long as Mubarak held onto power:

It might not be every day but what I hear is that they might stage demonstrations every other day. The difference is that it would become more angry and more vicious. And I do not want to see it turning from a beautiful, peaceful revolution into a bloody revolution."

ElBaradei suggested that the United States did not appear to have a clear policy on Egypt:

It would appear that you [the United States] are just responding to who is more powerful for each day rather than a principled position, which would be for me personally disappointing and for all the people who are demonstrating."

11.05pm: Barack Obama called leaders from Germany, Britain and the United Arab Emirates today to discuss the situation in Egypt and the need for political change there, Reuters reports. The White House said:

The President emphasized the importance of an orderly, peaceful transition, beginning now, to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people, including credible, inclusive negotiations between the government and the opposition."

Obama also voiced "his serious concern about the targeting of journalists and human rights groups, and reaffirmed that the government of Egypt has a responsibility to protect the rights of its people and to release immediately those who have been unjustly detained".

10.57pm: The Huffington Post has a video of "what appears to be a protester shot in the streets of Alexandria".

10.51pm: Mohamed ElBaradei has told Reuters that US support for Mubarak or Suleiman to lead Egypt's transition would be a "major setback".

ElBaradei also said he feared the demonstrations could become "more angry and more vicious" if Mubarak holds onto power. ...

Barack Obama yesterday tried to nudge Hosni Mubarak towards the exit, sending his strongest message yet to the Egyptian president that it was time for him to quit.

But Mubarak, even after hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere in Egypt to call on him to go, remained defiant and showed little sign of preparing to depart.

Mubarak earlier this week promised to leave in the autumn but that has failed to satisfy the protesters who want him to go immediately.

Obama, taking questions from the media for the first time since the crisis began, used a White House press conference to drop a series of heavy hints that the US regarded Mubarak as having outlived his usefulness and that it would be better if he went.

"In light of what's happened the last two weeks, going back to the old ways is not going to work," Obama said. "Suppression is not going to work. Engaging in violence is not going to work."

He added that work on an orderly succession had to begin "right now", had to be meaningful and broad-based, which meant involving opposition groups.

The US president stopped short of calling unambiguously for Mubarak to stand down immediately but his comments went further in support of the protesters than his brief statement on Tuesday. ...

Andy Coulson was aware that phone hacking was taking place at Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire and "told others to do it", a former executive at the News of the World told MPs.

In written evidence given to the home affairs select committee and published for the first time today, Paul McMullan, a former features executive and investigative journalist at the title, said former editor Coulson "knew a lot of people" used the technique when Coulson worked at sister paper the Sun. He joined the News of the World in 2003, where he worked alongside McMullan for 18 months.

McMullan said: "As he sat a few feet from me in the [News of the World] newsroom he probably heard me doing it, laughing about it … and told others to do it".

Coulson, who last month quit as David Cameron's director of communications, worked at the Sun for more than a decade before joining the News of the World.

"Andy Coulson knew a lot of people did it at the Sun on his Bizarre [showbiz] column and after that at the NOTW," McMullan claimed.

McMullan, who is now a pub landlord, also described a flourishing trade in private information at the News of the World, which he said was regularly supplied with details of celebrities' medical records and mobile phone pin numbers.

"People who worked for Vodaphone [sic] etc would sometimes ring up the newsdesk offering to sell numbers and codes of stars' phones," he said, "as indeed people at the tax office, people in doctors' receptions."

In separate evidence also published today, Vodafone told the committee: "A small minority of customers were targeted by unscrupulous individuals."

The company said it had passed all evidence to the police during their 2006 investigation into phone hacking carried out by former News of the World journalist Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

McMullan told the Guardian last year that Coulson must have been well aware the practice was "pretty widespread".

Coulson has continued to deny this. ...

12.30am GMT: Things remain quiet in Cairo for the time being – quiet enough for al-Jazeera to start running cricket items – other than a few bursts of gunfire in warning from the army, so it's time to wrap up the blog for the night. Here's a summary of the latest events:

• Thousands of protesters remain in Cairo's Tahrir Square after a day that saw largely peaceful mass demonstrations throughout the country

• Greek prime minister George Papandreou is to visit Egypt on Sunday to deliver a message from the EU to President Mubarak face to face

• Al-Jazeera's offices in Cairo were destroyed and the Arabic channel's bureau chief was taken into custody by security forces, continuing official attacks on the Qatari network

• Barack Obama says "some discussions have begun" about the transition of power within Egypt, an apparent confirmation of reports aimed at replacing Mubarak

• Egypt's health minister said 11 people are dead, and 5,000 injured, since the start of the protests – a lower estimate than many others which put the dead at 100 to 300

Thanks for reading today. You can follow the Guardian coverage on our World news site.

12.15am GMT: On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh appeared to be mocking the capture of two New York Times journalists in Cairo – until he heard that a Fox News journalists had been beaten up.

Brad Friedman's Brad Blog reports Limbaugh's first response:

Ladies and gentlemen, it is being breathlessly reported that the Egyptian army ... is rounding up foreign journalists.

I mean, even two New York Times reporters were detained. Now, this is supposed to make us feel what, exactly? How we supposed to feel? Are we supposed to feel outrage over it? I don't feel any outrage over it. Are we supposed to feel anger? I don't feel any anger over this. Do we feel happy? Well, do we feel kind of going like, 'neh-neh-neh-neh'?

I'm sure that your emotions are running the gamut when you hear that two New York Times reporters have been detained along with other journalists in Egypt. Remember now, we're supporting the people who are doing this.

Then Limbaugh is informed about the Fox News journalist:

Fox News' Greg Palkot and crew have been severely beaten and are now hospitalized in Cairo. Now we were kidding before about the New York Times, of course. This kind of stuff is terrible. We wouldn't wish this kind of thing even on reporters. ...

... 7.05pm: Khalid Abdalla, a British-Egyptian actor, who has been in Tahrir square for over a week, told me people are not getting frustrated yet:

People here [in Tahrir Square] feel secure and they know they've got to keep fighting and they know what they're fighting for and the longer we are here the clearer the message.

6.48pm: Apologies if I'm late to the party on this one but Egyptian hip hop group Arabian Knightz have recorded a protest track called "Rebel" featuring a sample from Lauryn Hill.

6.23pm: There are still huge numbers of pro-democracy protesters in Alexandria.

6.21pm: After Mubarak said Obama did not understand Egyptian culture (7.32am) Egypt has now turned its ire to the UN, Reuters reports:

Egypt has told the United Nations it is unhappy with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's public criticism of the Egyptian government and his calls for change, according to a spokeswoman for Egypt's UN mission. Ban this week urged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his government to take "bold measures" to address the concerns of people demonstrating for change. He urged Mubarak's government to view the demonstrations "as an opportunity to engage in addressing the legitimate concerns of the people."
Egypt's mission to the United Nations in New York expressed its annoyance with Ban, who made public remarks about Egypt while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as well as during visits to Britain and Germany. "Egypt has verbally complained about the characterization of the SG (secretary-general) of the situation in Egypt," Nihal Saad, a spokeswoman for the Egyptian mission, said in an e-mail late on Thursday. "The remarks made by the SG, whether in Davos or London, were viewed as raising the bar above all the other remarks that have been made by other member states, including those who criticized Egypt," she added.
U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed that U.N. officials had discussed Ban's remarks with the Egyptian mission and added: "We stand by what he has been saying."

6.16pm: Egyptian PM Ahmed Shafiq has been talking on al-Arabiya defending Mubarak's right to stay in office and he said it was "unlikely" he would hand over to his vice president Omar Suleiman.

I don't think that a president after 30 years....after all these years of public service..these five months are not going to make much difference.

The whole point is that they do make a difference to the protesters.

6.05pm: Some sad news. Al Ahram journalist Ahmed Mahmoud who was shot during protests on January 29 has reportedly died.

6.00pm: The Egyptian blogger and journalist, Wael Abbas, has been released after being arrested (4.56pm) by the army.

army released us, but getting stopped by every single checkpoint, rabbena yestor!

5.52pm: Egyptian blogger @suzeeinthecity has tweeted what she says are the seven demands of the protesters (see the four drawn up by youth groups we detailed at 5.05pm


1. Resignation of the president

2. End of the Emergency State

3.Dissolution of The People's Assembly and Shora Council

4. Formation of a national transitional government

5.An elected Parliament that will ammend the Constitution to allow for presidential elections

6. Immediate prosecution for those responsible of the deaths of the revolution's martyrs

7. Immediate prosecution of the corrupters and those who robbed the country of its wealth.

5:47pm: In an interview with al-Jazeera Arabic, Mohamed ElBaradei has apparently denied telling an Austrian newspaper that he would not stand for president.

From @draddee, who has been prolifically tweeting on the protests since they began:

lBaradei Just denied the quote carried by the Austrian paper that he will not run: "I will run if called to it" #jan25 ...

1.47am GMT: Time to wrap up the live blogging for the night. Here's the Guardian's latest wrap-up of the day's events from our correspondents in Cairo, Alexandria, Washington DC and London.

A summary of what we've learned in the last few hours:

• US and Egyptian officials are working on a plan for Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to stand down immediately, and replaced by a three-man junta, according to a report in the New York Times

• Mubarak remained defiant in an interview with ABC News's Christiane Amanpour, saying: "If I resign today, there will be chaos"

• Fighting saw estimates of the death toll around Cairo's Tahrir Square rise to 13, with hundreds more injured, as protesters fortified the centre of the square

• Protesters are gearing up for an expected mass demonstration on Friday

• Attacks aimed at journalists and TV crews forced media off the streets and reduced the coverage of events in central Cairo...

The Obama administration is working on a plan in which the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, would stand down immediately in spite of claims yesterday he was intent on clinging on to power until the elections in the autumn.

The White House, the state department and the Pentagon have been involved in discussions that include an option in which Mubarak would given way to a transitional government headed by the Egyptian vice-president, Omar Suleiman. Such a plan has the backing of the Egyptian military, the New York Times reported.

Anti-government protesters are hoping they can force Mubarak from office today, a day they have dubbed "departure Friday". Fridays after midday prayers is traditionally an explosive point in Middle East countries, with masses taking to the streets after attendance at mosques.

But Mubarak was defiant yesterday, insisting that he intended remaining in office until the autumn election. He said that while he was fed up after six decades of public service and wanted to leave, he feared that an early departure would lead to chaos.

In his first major interview since protests began, Mubarak told America's ABC News: "I am fed up. After 62 years in public service, I have had enough. I want to go."

Mubarak expressed no sense of betrayal over Barack Obama's call on Tuesday for him to begin the transition to democracy "now". But there was a hint of resentment when he said Obama did not understand Egyptian culture and the trouble that would ensue if he left office immediately. "If I resign today, there will be chaos," he told ABC's Christiane Amanpour. ...

Dozens of foreign journalists were arrested, attacked and beaten yesterday as the Egyptian government and its supporters embarked on what the US state department called a concerted campaign to intimidate the international media.

Human rights workers also fell victim to crowd violence, while police raided the offices of two groups in Cairo, the Hisham Mubarak Law Centre and the Centre for Economic and Social Rights, and arrested observers. Amnesty International said one of its staff was detained at the law centre, with a Human Rights Watch colleague.

A group of reporters from Daily News Egypt, an independent, English-language paper, were among those targeted. They were set upon by a group of passers-by in Dokki, west of the Nile, that quickly swelled into a 50-strong crowd after they ventured out of their offices to investigate a story about rising petrol prices.

"It was terrifying," said Amira Ahmed, the publication's business editor. "They were chanting: 'We've found the foreigners, don't let them go,' and calling us traitors and spies. When I pointed out to them that I was Egyptian, they responded: 'Your Egypt isn't the same as ours.'"

Like many who were caught up in similar incidents today, Ahmed said the most chilling part of the encounter was the mob mentality that took hold. "We had one French journalist with us who we managed to put in a taxi and get to safety. But the people who were showing up had no idea why we were the targets. They just took up the cry of 'foreigners' and 'journalists' and joined in. There was no leader we could appeal to for reason."

Ahmed and her companions agreed to be handed over to the army to avoid provoking any more violence. On the way, they were followed by men on motorbikes and one youth who clung to the trunk of their cab. The army took custody of them and released them without harm. "I've never felt unsafe in Egypt before. I always felt that if anything ever happened to me on the street here, other Egyptians would come in to protect me," said Ahmed.

"But today was different and it was horrible. There was no logic to any of it; people are divided and people are raging, and they're casting out for targets to direct that rage against."

The Egyptian interior ministry arrested more than 20 foreign journalists in Cairo, including the Washington Post's bureau chief and a photographer. Al-Jazeera said three of its journalists were detained. ...

Anyone who thinks the book (ie the codex) is dead and buried in the Age of Amagoogle should reflect on the bizarre and improbable, but enthralling, story of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. This Australian computer hacker turned cyber-anarchist has exploited the opportunities afforded by underground digital publishing to create a latterday samizdat that has generated a worldwide nervous breakdown among diplomats, journalists, and international copyright lawyers. Now wanted dead or alive more or less everywhere, Assange has flourished in the Wild West of the IT revolution.

Paradoxically, the more his profile (and influence) has been expanded by the new media, the more Assange has turned to the old media of print journalism and – as of this week – the book. In its opening chapters, the Assange story was emblematic of the age. First, it was extreme, and it was viral. The mass of secret data released by Wikileaks was on an unprecedented scale. The Pentagon Papers of 1971 numbered some 2.5m words. Wikileaks has exposed some 300m, most of them still largely unmediated or fully digested. The world's response was extreme, too. To some he is a cyber Messiah. To others, especially in the US, conservatives like Sarah Palin, he is a traitor who should be tried and executed.

Assange, secondly, is a zeitgeist figure in another way, too. He is truly – and astonishingly – global: constantly on the move, flitting from time zone to time zone, he is the McCavity of the laptop, always a nanosecond away from a screen, protected by a phalanx of international lawyers. Third, another paradox: this public phenomenon is obsessively, even comically, secretive. He is a fierce advocate of "transparency", but will threaten to sue the press on whom he has depended when faced with any loss of independence or control.

But lately – and this is where the Assange story gets interesting – he is appearing in the pages of books.

In Germany, there is Wikileaks: Enemy of the State. At the same time, another disgruntled former Wikileaks associate, Daniel Domscheit Berg, will launch his inside story on 11 February. In Paris, where Le Monde named Assange man of the year, French publishers are also jumping on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, a new transatlantic print-on-demand publisher, OR Books, is promising Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency by Micah L Sifry, later this month. It will be published in a trade edition by Yale in due course.

Most intriguing of all, both the Guardian and the New York Times, prime movers in the global howl inspired by Wikileaks, have just released "instant paperbacks" (respectively, Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, and Open Secrets: Wikileaks, War and American Diplomacy, with an introduction by Bill Keller).

To anyone who has memories of the Penguin Specials of the 1960s or the Sunday Times's Insight books (on, for example, the Thalidomide scandal), these titles will provoke a sharp attack of déja vu. Both represent an extraordinary feat of writing and publishing, with the Guardian version in both print and ebook format, and the NYT title appearing as an ebook. ...

David Cameron yesterday marked a break with the era of Andy Coulson by appointing a senior BBC TV news editor with no links to the Murdoch empire as the new No 10 communications director.

Craig Oliver, who made his name revamping the News at Ten and who ran the BBC's general election coverage last year, will be paid £140,000 a year and will act as a political special adviser.

The recruitment of a senior BBC figure shows that Cameron and George Osborne, who met Oliver over the weekend, recognise that they need to place some distance between Downing Street and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

Coulson announced his resignation on 21 January after concluding that the swirl of allegations about illegal phone hacking from his time as News of the World editor had made his job impossible. Coulson has always denied knowledge of any wrongdoing.

Downing Street said that No 10's relations with News Corp had nothing to with the decision to hire a BBC executive. One source said: "Craig was simply the best candidate."

Fears of offending the Murdoch empire were highlighted yesterday when Tom Baldwin, Oliver's Labour counterpart, asked members of the shadow cabinet to show restraint on phone hacking and not to attack one newspaper group "out of spite".

In an email sent on his behalf, which was leaked to the New Statesman, Baldwin also called on shadow ministers not to link allegations of phone hacking with questions about News Corp's bid to take control of BSkyB.

The email said: "On phone hacking … this is not just an issue about News International. Almost every media organisation in the country may end up becoming embroiled in these allegations … We must guard against anything which appears to be attacking a particular newspaper group out of spite."

Further evidence that hacking was used regularly by the News of the World emerged yesterday when new details of the case brought by Nicola Philips, the publicist who is suing the newspaper, were published. Philips alleges the tabloid obtained a story about an affair between actor Ralph Fiennes and a Romanian singer by hacking into her mobile phone. ...

12.14am GMT: It's after 2am in Cairo – time to wrap up the live blog for the evening, although we'll be keeping a close eye on any outbreaks of further violence. Here are the highlights this evening:

• At least three people were killed and as many as 1,500 injured in a day of violence in central Cairo, as supporters of the Mubarak regime appeared in force. Protesters found plainclothes policemen among them

• Fighting continued around Tahrir Square past midnight, with both sides building barricades and pro-government supporters throwing molotov cocktails, setting fire to cars and buildings while the army refused to intervene

• The US government incrementally increased its pressure on Mubarak to step down and for reforms to take place, with Hillary Clinton speaking directly to vice president Omar Suleiman

• Pro-government forces appear to have arrested or attacked journalists reporting on the bloody events in Cairo. CNN presenter Anderson Cooper and his crew were among those attacked

Thanks for reading – we'll be back tomorrow.

12.01am GMT: One last entry – a very depressing piece of analysis by Robert Springborg in Foreign Policy, who argues the upshot will be "back to business as usual with a repressive, US-backed military regime":

While much of American media has termed the events unfolding in Egypt today as "clashes between pro-government and opposition groups," this is not in fact what's happening on the street. The so-called "pro-government" forces are actually Mubarak's cleverly orchestrated goon squads dressed up as pro-Mubarak demonstrators to attack the protesters in Midan Tahrir, with the Army appearing to be a neutral force. The opposition, largely cognizant of the dirty game being played against it, nevertheless has had little choice but to call for protection against the regime's thugs by the regime itself, ie, the military. And so Mubarak begins to show us just how clever and experienced he truly is. The game is, thus, more or less over.

The threat to the military's control of the Egyptian political system is passing. Millions of demonstrators in the street have not broken the chain of command over which President Mubarak presides. Paradoxically the popular uprising has even ensured that the presidential succession will not only be engineered by the military, but that an officer will succeed Mubarak. The only possible civilian candidate, Gamal Mubarak, has been chased into exile, thereby clearing the path for the new vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman.

On that happy thought: good night. ...

1am GMT: That's it for today's live blog – here's a summary of the main events on a packed day:

• Huge protests throughout Egypt saw city centres packed with protesters demanding the end of President Mubarak's rule as president

• Mubarak announced that he would not run in the coming presidential elections, promising constitutional reforms and a transfer of power

• President Obama spoke directly to Mubarak for 30 minutes and later said an orderly transition "must begin now"

• Mubarak's concessions were rejected by many protesters and opposition parties, with continued calls for Mubarak's removal from office

• Plans appear to be underway for another mass protest on Friday outside the presidential palace in Cairo

• Small groups of pro-Mubarak demonstrators were reported in Cairo and elsewhere, while violence and looting continues to be a concern around the country

• Protests in Jordan and Yemen led to hurried responses by their respective governments ...

Egypt's army gave a powerful boost to the country's opposition last night by announcing that it would not use force to silence "legitimate" demands for democratic reforms in the Arab world's largest nation.

On the eve of a million-strong protest planned for today and amid multiplying signs that the US is moving steadily closer to ditching its long-standing ally, Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, now has few options left.

Last night, in an apparent attempt to soften popular anger, the Egyptian vice-president said Mubarak had asked him to start a dialogue with all the country's political parties. According to state TV, Omar Suleiman said it would involve constitutional and legislative reforms.

The White House said in a statement that the crisis should be settled by "meaningful talks", while the EU called for an "orderly transition" to democracy via "free and fair" elections. Mubarak has shown no sign of accepting either.

The veteran Egyptian leader formed a new cabinet yesterday, after appointing his intelligence chief as his vice-president, but there was no indication that popular pressure for him to quit was abating.

The military's statement, reported by the state-run Mena news agency, said: "The presence of the army in the streets is for your sake and to ensure your safety and wellbeing. The armed forces will not resort to use of force against our great people." It referred to the "legitimate demands of honourable citizens".

It was not clear whether the pledge not to use force was intended to draw the sting from protests or signal a weakening of support for the president, who relies heavily on the armed forces as the guarantor of the regime and its stability.

On the seventh consecutive day of unrest, tens of thousands of people again rallied in Cairo's Tahrir Square chanting "Get out … we want you out" and singing Egypt's national anthem emphasising the patriotic motives of the unprecedented mass unrest.

"We have spoken. When the citizens speak, we cannot go back," said Ahmed Mustafa. "I came here to fight the fear inside me. People have lost their fear." ...

The industrial city of Abu Rawash sits in the desert beyond the pyramids. You reach it down a dusty road that seems to lead to nowhere. Then the factories and warehouses begin: Toyota, Hyundai, Mazda and Jeep deserted save for a handful of security guards sitting in front of a vacant parking lot for absent staff.

Outside the gates of the Toyota warehouse Ayman Ibrahim is talking to the gatekeeper. The factories are closed, the man tells Ibrahim, who owns a window business on the same site. They won't reopen until at least mid-week. Perhaps even Friday. No one really knows.

The closures in places such as Abu Rawash have been accompanied by calls from unions for an indefinite general strike. "I'm losing £10,000 pounds a week," says Ibrahim. "But it's worth it, I've been to the protest in Tahrir Square for the past three days with my kids. Mubarak is costing me money, but he has been costing Egypt money for 30 years."

It is not only Ibrahim whose business is being hurt financially by the crisis. All of Egypt is hurting. On the main road close to the factories the large Carrefour-Dandy mall is as deserted as the car plants. Egypt's stock market, the bourse, is closed after losing 16% in value last week. Moody's and Fitch – the debt rating companies – have revised their outlook for the country's bonds to negative. The country's banks have been closed for the past two days in fear of a run on the county's bank system.

It is damaging Egypt at all levels. Already some bank machines have run out of money. Some petrol stations have begun running out of fuel. Economists are warning of the risks of shortages of staples, such as bread and water.

Elsewhere shops are shuttered. Those not shut, like some in the paved streets in the financial district close to the epicenter of Egypt's uprising in Tahrir Square, are empty. The owners sit on plastic chairs. "This is very, very bad," says Ah Mahmoud, who owns a clothes shop called Polo. "The problems between the people and president Hosni Mubarak are bad for business. Bad for work. With no money coming in how will we eat?" ...

Two out of three people believe the prime minister showed poor judgment in employing Andy Coulson as his Downing Street director of communications.

In an opinion poll carried out by ComRes for the Independent newspaper, 66% said they thought David Cameron should not have hired Coulson knowing he had resigned as editor of the News of the World over the phone-hacking scandal.

Coulson quit his role in the government 10 days ago after repeated inquiries into his knowledge of phone hacking at the News of the World, saying the affair limited his ability to devote himself to his job.

Nine out of 10 of those polled believe it is wrong for journalists to hack into the private telephone voicemail messages of celebrities and politicians.

The poll also showed that 67% thought the allegations of telephone hacking meant the newspaper industry should no longer regulate itself.

ComRes polled 1,002 adults over the weekend between the 28-30 January.

Last night, giving the Hugh Cudlipp memorial lecture in London, the editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, warned that Britain's newspapers risked political "retribution" in the form of statutory regulation following the phone hacking scandal. He accused Rupert Murdoch's News International – publishers of the NoW – of failing to pursue a policy of "own up rather than cover up", and he criticised the bulk of the industry for failing to "take the issue seriously" because their titles may also have been implicated in the illegal practice.

In a trenchant lecture, he described "the phone hacking scandal" as a "watershed - not just for News International but also for tabloid journalism" arguing that a 2006 report by the Information Commissioner suggested that 305 journalists from a range of titles used the services of a private investigator. ...

8.26am: David Cameron has just appeared on the BBC 1 breakfast sofa, to call for a reform. Egypt must go down the path of reform, not repression, he said according to BBC tweet.

Once again news is coming thick and fast on Egypt.

• Protesters have called for a million people to take to the streets of Cairo tomorrow, al-Jazeera reports.

• The rating agency Moody's has downgraded Egypt to Ba2 status reflect growing anxiety among investors about the continuing unrest. "Moody's decision to downgrade Egypt's government bond ratings is driven by increased event risk," Moody's said in an emailed statement, according to the Wall Street Journal. "This has resulted from escalating political tensions in the country following the recent uprising in Tunisia, with large-scale antigovernment protests taking place."

• Israel has urged the world to temper the criticism of Mubarak, according to the Israeli parper Ha'aretz. "The Americans and the Europeans are being pulled along by public opinion and aren't considering their genuine interests," one senior Israeli official told the paper. "Even if they are critical of Mubarak they have to make their friends feel that they're not alone. Jordan and Saudi Arabia see the reactions in the West, how everyone is abandoning Mubarak, and this will have very serious implications." A columnist in the Jerusalem Post describes the unrest in Egypt as "worst disaster since Iran's revolution".

8.09am: Mubarak appeared to blame the Muslim Brotherhood for "infiltrating" the protest, in his statement read out on state TV last night.

"The citizens and the young people of Egypt have gone out to the streets in peaceful demonstration asking for their right for the freedom of speech," he said according to a transcript reported on CNN.

"However, their demonstrations have been infiltrated by a group of people who use the name of religion who don't take into consideration the constitution rights and citizenship values."

This is a "desperate ploy" according to the Middle East analyst Juan Cole.

He [Mubarak] contrasted the hooliganism of the Brotherhood with the peaceful aspirations of most Egyptians, and pledged to work for economic and social reform (while giving the pledge no content). Mubarak is attempting to split the movement against him by sowing seeds of doubt among its constituents.

These include Coptic Christians, educated middle and upper middle class Muslims, and non-ideological youth, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. By suggesting that the MB is taking advantage of the protests to conduct a campaign of sabotage behind the scenes, with the goal of establishing a theocratic dictatorship, Mubarak hopes to terrify the other groups into breaking with the Muslim fundamentalists. Since middle class movements such as Kefaya (Enough!) are small and not very well organized, Mubarak may believe that he can easily later crush them if he can detach them from the more formidable Brotherhood.

It is a desperate ploy and unlikely to work. Mainstream Muslim Egyptians and Copts do have some fear of the Muslim Brotherhood as a sectarian and fundamentalist tendency, but their dislike of the Mubarak government for the moment seems to overcome their anxieties about a theocracy.

7.49am: What will happen next?

Writing on his own blog al-Bab, the Guardian's Middle East expert Brian Whitaker, assesses the current stand off and the prospects for the next few days.

Today, in an effort to restore a semblance of normality, the police will be back on the streets – reportedly with instructions not to confront the protesters. They had been withdrawn over the weekend, apparently to facilitate looting by the regime's thugs and provide the excuse for a crackdown. That move was thwarted by the public, who organised their own unofficial policing.

One of the most striking things about the uprising so far has been the resourcefulness of the protesters and their determination. At the same time though, on the other side, we have President Mubarak – equally implacable and determined to stay put.

The result, for now, is deadlock. But the deadlock is not going to be broken on the streets by the army or the police. At some point there will have to be movement on the political front – and that is not going to happen instantly. (It's worth repeating that the removal of Ben Ali in Tunisia took four weeks; the Mubarak regime is a tougher nut to crack and the uprising began less than a week ago.)

There seems to be widespread recognition, even by some of the regime stalwarts, that Egypt is moving towards "transition". The argument, basically, is whether it will be a transition supervised by Mubarak or not. The protesters' fear is that a transition under Mubarak will merely bring a change of faces without real change in the system they are protesting about. As far as the protesters are concerned, that is a deal-breaker.

Mohamed ElBaradei offered the regime a carrot yesterday by putting himself forward as "leader" of the opposition. Like him or not, this means a channel is now open for dialogue if and when the regime is ready to talk – though on the protesters' side that can't happen until Mubarak goes.

7.44am: Egyptian protesters have called for general strike today after another night of demonstrations in defiance of a curfew. ...

... 11.30pm GMT: Time to wrap things for today's live blogging. Here's a final summary of the day's events:

• Egypt's army said for the first time that it would not use force on protesters, declaring in a televised statement that "freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed," and said it recognised the "legitimate demands" of the protesters.

• The Mubarak regime made its first public offer to speak directly to protesters, as newly-appointed vice president Omar Suleiman offered to hold talks with members of the opposition during an appearance on state television.

• Plans are underway for a "march of millions" and a general strike on Tuesday as protests intensify and pressure on the Mubarak regime is maintained for a week.

• Al-Jazeera journalists in Cairo are arrested by Egyptian security forces and then released after strong intervention from the White House and other governments.

• Egypt's last functioning commercial internet service provider is shut down, while the government appears to be canceling train services and public transport ahead of Tuesday's protests.

• The US announced that a special US envoy to Egypt is in Cairo and holding talks with members of the government and other actors. The White House continued to call for an "orderly transition" of power and democratic reforms.

And of course we'll be back on Tuesday morning with more live coverage. In the meantime, visit our world news site for all the latest news. Thanks for reading.

11.15pm GMT: A first: a US Senator calls on Mubarak to resign. Bill Nelson, the Democratic senator for Florida, has a comment piece in The Hill newspaper in Washington DC:

"Mr Mubarak will have to go – but not without an exit strategy that prevents the government from falling and leaving the door open for extremists."

11pm GMT: Renesys, a US internet monitoring firm, has traffic data showing Noor's disappearance from the internet, as Egypt's last functioning internet service provider shuts down.

Update: Twitter user @ioerror points to two networks that are still operating in Egypt: the library of Alexandria and the ministry of information.

10.56pm GMT: One way to get around Egypt's internet blackout: the engineers at Google have helped build a new "speak-to-tweet" feature for those in Egypt who want to get their message out....

... This has nothing to do with any political party. It is truly a popular movement. There is concern about what is going to happen next. We need to continue to experience this with joy. We have to remain peaceful until we get our demands. Look, there are more and more people walking into Tahrir Square.

We want new elections to set up a committee to write a new constitution. We want clean elections; once we have a new constitution, we can elect a new government. We are not less than South Africa. Tell the Americans we are not less than South Africa. We deserve our rights. So far the judges have not spoken yet. We are waiting to hear from the judges about bringing about the constitutional changes that we need. But the judges are not being allowed to speak to the people.

Clinton just spoke: she says we deserve human rights. We want political rights. Please tell the people in America we want our rights. Please explain we don't have internet. Everyone has to understand that the rights of the Egyptian people are being sold for Israel's security. Our rights are being sold. It's as if we are monkeys. They have one strategic consideration and that's Israel.

We sleep at night in fear. We sleep without police at night. Do you know what that's like? To wake up one day and there's no police, no prisons, no safety? The police is over. We are scared. The curfew was for 6pm and the police were told to go home. There are two theories of what happened to the police a) the police were shocked by the people's reaction, got scared and took off b) the ministry of the interior is teaching us a lesson, so they withdrew the police to scare us.

But it backfired. We were out all night in the streets guarding our neighbourhood in Zamalek. Together, neighbour with neighbour. We worked together. Most of us hadn't even met before this. The ministry of the interior pulled all the police to scare us: it backfired. We are taking care of each other. ...

11.31pm: We're just about to wrap up the live blog here, but we'll finish with a summary of the main points on day seven of the protests in Egypt:

• Opposition leader Mogamed ElBaradei called for President Mubarak to step down at once as demonstrators massed in Cairo's central Tahrir square to ignore a night-time curfew. ElBaradei, who predicted change within "the next few days", said he wanted to negotiate about a new government with the army, which he described as "part of the Egyptian people".

• Western leaders pointedly declined to throw their support behind the country's embattled president. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said she wanted Egyptians to have a chance to chart a new future, but added: "It's not a question of who retains power. It's how are we going to respond to the legitimate needs and grievances expressed by the people."

• Al-Jazeera satellite TV was ordered to close because of its coverage of the protests. The channel denounced the move as an attempt to "stifle and repress" open reporting.

• Thousands of prisoners, including Muslim Brotherhood activists, escaped from four jails. Armed gangs took advantage of the chaos in Cairo and other cities to free the prisoners, starting fires and engaging prison guards in gun battles, officials said.

• The death toll over the past six days was reported to have risen to 102.

• Large-scale protests erupted in Alexandria, Egypt's second city, after the funerals of victims of the unrest.

• British nationals in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez were told to leave if it was safe.

• The US said it was organising flights to evacuate its citizens and urged all Americans in Egypt to consider leaving.


11.28pm: America's highest-ranking military officer has praised the "professionalism" and restraint of Egypt's armed forces, following a phone call with a senior Egyptian commander. Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Lieutenant General Sami Enan, chief of staff of Egypt's armed forces, of his "appreciation for the continued professionalism" of the Egyptian military. "Both men reaffirmed their desire to see the partnership between our two militaries continue, and they pledged to stay in touch," a Pentagon spokesman announced.

10.51pm: Senior judges and scholars from Al-Azhar University are among those lending their support to the late-night demonstrators in Tahrir Square, Al Jazeera TV reports.

10.26pm: According to Egyptian state television, President Hosni Mubarak has promised that his new government will preserve subsidies, control inflation and provide jobs. "I require you to bring back confidence in our economy," Mubarak wrote in a letter to his new prime minister. "I trust your ability to implement economic policies that accord the highest concern to people's suffering." ...

Egyptian opposition leader, Mohamed ElBaradei, tonight predicted change within "the next few days" as western leaders pointedly declined to throw their support behind the country's embattled president, Hosni Mubarak.

In another dramatic day, thousands of protesters kept up the pressure on a defiant Mubarak amid sporadic violence and signs that the US and allies may ditch him unless he allows an "orderly transition".

ElBaradei, the former top UN nuclear arms inspector and de facto leader of the opposition, called for the president to step down at once as demonstrators massed in Cairo's central Tahrir Square to ignore a night-time curfew.

ElBaradei, who is now backed by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition groups, said he wanted to negotiate about a new government with the army, which he described as "part of the Egyptian people".

As crowds streamed towards the rally, military helicopters and F16 fighters flew overhead – an apparent show of force that provoked both fear and ridicule. ...

International alarm about the political and security implications of continuing unrest in Egypt intensified tonight as the United States, Israel and Turkey sent aircraft to evacuate their stranded citizens, and other countries advised their nationals to get out by any means possible.

Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, said UK nationals should avoid nonessential travel to large cities such as Cairo, Alexandria and Suez. But the government did not offer to help evacuate those already there. They should leave by commercial flights unless they had vital reasons for remaining, Hague said.

The situation in Egypt's Red Sea resorts, where most Britons are staying, remained calm, he added. "We will watch over it very, very carefully, I'm sending extra resources to our embassy there."

The US government announced an immediate airlift for all Americans wishing to leave. "The department of state is making arrangements to provide transportation to safe haven locations in Europe," it said. Airlifts were also announced by Turkey and Israel.

Hague said Britain was concerned that Egypt could fall into the hands of extremists, but would not intervene directly. "What matters is that the process [of political reform] takes place, whatever that means for President Mubarak personally," he told Sky News. "It is important for him to initiate that transformation and broadly based government, and that is what we would like to see. That is far preferable of course to Egypt falling into the hands of extremism or a more authoritarian system of government." ...

11.24pm: AFP says the death toll from five days of protests has reached 102.

10.58pm: AP and Al Jazeera report that 19 private jets carrying families of wealthy businessmen have left Cairo for Dubai.

10.43pm: Writing below the line, @Kritik has alerted us to this moving video of Waseem Wagdi, an Egyptian living in London, talking about the recent events during a protest outside the Egyptian embassy. ...

... 10.16pm: Reuters has a Q&A on what might happen next:

Will the appointment of a vice-president end the unrest?
Mubarak's decision to pick Suleiman gave a clear indication that the Egyptian leader understands the magnitude of the social and political upheaval that has gripped his country.
Five days of unrest have forced Mubarak to make the long-delayed move of picking a deputy, signalling that his days in power may be numbered and that he may not run in a presidential election scheduled for September.
With protests keeping the momentum and his army and police failing to quell running battles in the streets, the pressure seems to have grown on the 82-old president from allies and aides to prepare for a transition.
Mubarak's legitimacy has all but evaporated under the overwhelming unrest in which 74 people have been killed and more than 2,000 injured.
It has also diminished the probability that he or his son Gamal, who has been lined up as a possible contender, would run in this year's presidential election.
"Mubarak has been damaged. I can't see how this is not the beginning of the end of Mubarak's presidency," said Jon Alterman, Director of the Middle East Programme for the Center of International Studies.
"It seems that his task now is to try and manage the transition past his leadership. I have a hard time believing that he will be the president in a year."
So far protesters responded to the announcement by stepping up anti-government demonstrators.
Witnesses reported seeing looters ransacking and setting public buildings on fire. Nothing less than Mubarak stepping down can quell the unrest, some said.
"The story of Gamal and Mubarak is over. Now, the regime is looking for who will rescue it. Mubarak, Omar Suleiman and Ahmed Shafiq know each other on a personal level," said Safwat Zayat, a military analyst.
"Their task in the coming months would be to ensure Mubarak's safety until the end of his reign. They will reorganise the regime's internal affairs."

What might happen on the streets?
The army has deployed tanks and troops alongside police forces but has so far refrained from using force.
Security forces however have warned that they could resort to tougher measures to impose order.
They said that those arrested carrying out acts of vandalism would be tried in military court.

Is this the beginning of the end for Mubarak?
The revolt is the most serious challenge to the Egyptian government since the 1952 coup that ended monarchy and inaugurated a procession of military strongmen.
It has shaken the government to its core, sent shock waves across the Middle East and alarmed Western and regional allies.
Mubarak's nomination of an influential military figure with strong diplomatic credentials as his possible successor speaks volumes about the authorities' resolve to ensure that power stays in the hands of military and security institutions.
Mubarak also secured the much-needed support from the army.
"Mubarak is gone, because of his illness, because of his age and because of what happened now in Egypt," said Bassma Kodmani, the head of Arab Reform initiative.
"This man will be gone by September 2011. He is not an option and everyone knows that and his inner circle knows that.
"Mubarak is buying time. He needs to buy time to provide the needed minimum stability and control of the country to allow for an orderly transition."

What did he learn from Tunisia?
Neither Mubarak nor his close aides, including Suleiman, want to see a Tunisia-style exit.
When Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali appeared on television after weeks of rioting, those watching the address said fear appeared to be his dominant emotion.
When Mubarak appeared on TV on Friday, the contrast could not be greater. His was a poised and confident performance. Yet, it did little to calm tens of thousands of protesters.
Seeking to avoid appearing weak, Mubarak delivered a tough message and showed his resolve to stay in power.
The message involved giving the military full control and acknowledging people's economic frustrations, as well as promises to help the poor and introduce political reform.
"Ben Ali made concessions and a day later he was out of the country. He didn't want to make the same mistakes. The regime has broader support than Ben Ali had in the last days," said Alterman.
"The military in Tunisia not only didn't defend the president but they helped push him out of the country. In Egypt, the military rather than push Mubarak is his next line of defence," he said.
"The appointment of Omar Suleiman is intended to send a message that if Hosni Mubarak leaves, the regime remains in place. It is not intended to mollify (the protesters). It is intended to show resolve."

9.46pm: Reuters reports that police shot dead 17 people trying to attack two police stations in Beni Suef governorate, according to witnesses and medical sources. Twelve of those shot were attempting to attack a police station in Biba while five others were trying to attack another in Nasser city. Dozens of others were injured in the exchanges.

9.32pm: The New York Times describes an interview on CNN with Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian blogger and journalist.

Eltahawy ... appealed to the media to not fall for what she described as a Mubarak regime plot to make the protests in Egypt seem like dangerous anarchy. "I urge you to use the words 'revolt' and 'uprising' and 'revolution' and not 'chaos' and not 'unrest, we are talking about a historic moment," she said.

Moments later, as Ms. Eltahawy suggested that looting and damage to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo shown on Egyptian television was the work of "the police and the thugs of Hosni Mubarak," the lower third of the screen displayed the banner headline: "EGYPT IN CHAOS."

She added, "Egyptians want to fix Egypt, they don't want to destroy Egypt."

The network then displayed video from Egyptian state television of damage to the museum, which has been shown around the world on Saturday.

9.29pm: Al Jazeera reports that gangs have been arrested in Alexandria, and that flares have once again been fired at the ruling party's headquarters in Cairo ...

We've waited for this revolution for years. Other despots should quail

Change is sweeping though the Middle East and it's the Facebook generation that has kickstarted it

Mona Eltahawy
Saturday 29 January 2011

My birth at the end of July 1967 makes me a child of the naksa, or setback, as the Arab defeat during the June 1967 war with Israel is euphemistically known in Arabic. My parents' generation grew up high on the Arab nationalism that Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser brandished in the 1950s. But we "Children of the Naksa", hemmed in by humiliation, have spent so much of our lives uncomfortably stepping into pride's large, empty shoes.

But here now finally are our children – Generation Facebook – kicking aside the burden of history, determined to show us just how easy it is to tell the dictator it's time to go.

To understand the importance of what's going in Egypt, take the barricades of 1968 (for a good youthful zing), throw them into a mixer with 1989 and blend to produce the potent brew that the popular uprising in Egypt is preparing to offer the entire region. It's the most exciting time of my life.

How did they do it? Why now? What took so long? These are the questions I face on news shows scrambling to understand. I struggle with the magnitude of my feelings of watching as my country revolts and I give into tears when I hear my father's Arabic-inflected accent in the English of Egyptian men screaming at television cameras through tear gas: "I'm doing this for my children. What life is this?"

And Arabs from the Mashreq to the Maghreb are watching, egging on those protesters to topple Hosni Mubarak who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, because they know if he goes, all the other old men will follow, those who have smothered their countries with one hand and robbed them blind with the other. Mubarak is the Berlin Wall. "Down, down with Hosni Mubarak," resonates through the whole region.

In Yemen, tens and thousands have demanded the ousting of Ali Abdullah Saleh who has ruled them for 33 years. Algeria, Libya and Jordan have had their protests. "I'm in Damascus, but my heart is in Cairo," a Syrian dissident wrote to me.

My Twitter feed explodes with messages of support and congratulations from Saudis, Palestinians, Moroccans and Sudanese. The real Arab League; not those men who have ruled and claimed to speak in our names and who now claim to feel our pain but only because they know the rage that emerged in Tunisia will soon be felt across the region.

Brave little Tunisia, resuscitator of the Arab imagination. Tunisia, homeland of the father of Arab revolution: Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old who set himself on fire to protest at a desperation at unemployment and repression that covers the region. He set on fire the Arab world's body politic and snapped us all to attention. His self-immolation set into motion Tunisian protests that in just 29 days toppled Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year dictatorship. We watched, we said wow and we thought: that's it? Ben Ali ran away that quickly? It's that easy? ...

Egypt appears to have cut off almost all access to the internet from inside and outside the country from late on Thursday night, in a move that has concerned observers of the protests that have been building in strength through the week.

"According to our analysis, 88% of the 'Egyptian internet' has fallen off the internet," said Andree Toonk at BGPmon, a monitoring site that checks connectivity of countries and networks.

"What's different in this case as compared to other 'similar' cases is that all of the major ISPs seem to be almost completely offline. Whereas in other cases, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter were typically blocked, in this case the government seems to be taking a shotgun approach by ordering ISPs to stop routing all networks."

The cutoff appears to have happened around 10.30pm GMT on Thursday night.

Only one internet service provider appears to still have a working connection to the outside world: the Noor Group, for which all 83 routes are working, and inbound traffic from its connection provider, Telecom Italia. ...

Airlines are suspending flights and adjusting schedules to and from Cairo to work around Egypt’s nationwide curfew, as violent anti-government street protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s governance continue across the country.

Mobile phone and internet networks have been cut across Egypt, including in tourist resorts close to the Red Sea and Egyptair’s website has reportedly been down since Friday. ...

...many Egyptians are finding ways around the cuts and getting back on the Internet, allowing them to more easily communicate with the outside world and spread information from the inside. One popular method is to use the local phone lines, which remain intact. The trick is to bypass local Egyptian ISPs (Internet Service Providers) by connecting to remote ones hosted in outside countries -- many are hosted here in the United States; Los Angeles seems, for whatever reason, to be a popular site. This is easy enough for the most computer-illiterate among us to do using basic settings and a built-in 'Help' function, but Egyptians have a second hurdle as most homes in the country are unable to call internationally. One way that many are getting around this is by linking through a mobile phone network by establishing a connection between a cell with built-in bluetooth compatibility and a laptop with similar functionality or a computer with a bluetooth dongle.

Several Western powers banded together Saturday in urging Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to do all he can to prevent bloodshed and speedily fulfill his promises of reform.

The heads of England, France and Germany joined their counterpart in the United States on Saturday in calling on Egypt's leader to institute substantive police changes in short order as well as new, open elections.

"It is essential that the further political, economic and social reforms President Mubarak has promised are implemented fully and quickly, and meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people," said a joint statement issued by British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"The Egyptian people have ... a longing for a just and better future," the statement continued. "We urge President Mubarak to embark on a process of transformation, which should be reflected in a board-based government and in free and fair elections." ...

With Egypt in turmoil, it’s widely being reported that the United States gives $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the government in Cairo each year. And with the U.S. at risk of running a $1.5 trillion deficit this year, that means it’s only a matter of time before budget hawks start picking apart U.S. foreign aid.

The $1.5 billion requested for Egypt in the president’s fiscal year 2011 budget puts the country fourth on the list of recipients for aid managed by the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development. Only Afghanistan ($3.9 billion), Pakistan ($3.1 billion) and Israel ($3 billion) have more aid requested for them. Most of the money for these four countries is allocated for “peace and security,” a broad category that includes combating drug traffickers and terrorists as well as preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In Egypt specifically, $1.3 billion of the requested amount this year is for “peace and security.” ...

Dial-Up Provides Internet Access for Cut-Off Egypt
By Curt Hopkins / January 29, 2011

Most people were extremely grateful to ditch their old dial-up Internet connections. But for the last couple of days, some Egyptians in the darkness of the Internet blackout, have been grateful to have it back. After over 90% of Egyptian access was shut down with its major ISPs, some have been coordinating these old-style connections through the country.

Manal and Alaa, an Egyptian couple currently living in South Africa, and Jacob Appelbaum, and American hacker associated with Wikileaks, have both contributed to the establishment and promotion of dial-up connections in Egypt during the #jan25 uprising.

Dial-up is not the only avenue for those who cannot access the remaining, functional ISP in Egypt, Noor.

al j cop run.jpgIn fact, all legacy tech seems increasingly important as the latest in communications technologies prove themselves more vulnerable than most of us would have liked to have believed and none of us should have been surprised to see.

Ham radio users are busy transforming from (sorry, folks) eccentric anachronism to vital link in the export of Egyptian information.

The old-fashioned phone has proven extremely valuable, as well, though both mobile and land lines have been up and down over the last few days. There is a Twitter account, Jan25 Voices, that exists solely to tweet news that comes in to contributors by phone.

Very few Egyptians and others in country are able to reach out via Twitter and similar tools. Some of the exceptions, such as Ben Wedeman from CNN and Sarah El Sirgany of Daily News Egypt, have satellite and other workarounds in place.

In fact, a situation like this almost insists that traditional journalists prove that far from being replaced by technology, they are its guarantor...

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali goes to buy new boots. As soon as he enters the shop, the salesman hands him a pair. “How did you know my size?” asks Ben Ali. The answer: “You’ve stomped on us for 23 years, how can we not?”

Two weeks ago, the only time Tunisia’s dared mention Ben Ali’s name, was to praise him. Now, he is the butt of jokes, of online caricatures and of songs even aired on state TV.

Ben Ali fled Tunisia on Jan. 14, after weeks of protests demanding freedom from police rule.

On Facebook and online, activists who had been muzzled for so long immediately posted caricatures of the ousted president, his wife and her family, who many Tunisians accuse of accumulating wealth at the expense of the people.

One shows Ben Ali as a donkey, led along by his wife Leila. Another depicts Ben Ali milking the cash cow that is Tunisia.

State television, long an instrument of Ben Ali propaganda, broadcast a rap song that mocked his wooden tones with a video clip that appears to compare him to Adolf Hitler.

The last page of the newspaper Sabah, or Morning, which was owned by Ben Ali’s son-in-law, has been filled with caricatures of the former strongman. One shows Ben Ali about to drown, yelling “now I believe in democracy.” ...

As thousands of people joined student rallies in Manchester and London today to protest against public spending cuts and the rise in tuition fees, the National Union of Students leader Aaron Porter had to be escorted by police away from angry crowds calling for his resignation.

Some of the protestors in Manchester turned on Porter – who had been due to speak at a rally in the city – calling him a "Tory too". Porter had previously been calling for unity in the student movement, which has fractured as opinions differ over how best to conduct the demos and sit-ins being organised around the country against the cuts and fee increases.

Eggs and oranges were also thrown by a handful of the protesters at Shane Chowen, the NUS vice-president, when he tried to address the crowd. Up to 5,000 people had gathered to hear speeches from trade union leaders and later some scuffles broke out between the police and a group of about 150 people who tried to force their way into the University of Manchester's student union.

In London the protest remained mostly peaceful, though an attempt by a group to break through police lines and reach the Tory party HQ at Millbank – where angry scenes took place at previous demonstrations – resulted in a handful of arrests.

In their march through central London to Parliament, the protesters chanted slogans including: "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts" and banged drums. ...

Tanks moved on to the streets of Cairo and Alexandria as protesters in Egypt defied a nationwide curfew ordered by President Hosni Mubarak in an effort to quell the fourth and most violent day of demonstrations against his 30-year rule.

In a late-night TV address, Mubarak refused to relinquish power, but dismissed his government, promising a new administration to tackle unemployment and promote democracy.

But his call for stability appeared to cut little ice with many protesters, who surged on to the streets as soon as he finished speaking, defying a curfew. Protesters who had earlier been forced into nearby side streets by the military could be heard chanting "People want to change the regime" immediately after Mubarak's broadcast to the nation finished.

One eyewitness said that a small fire had been set at the Mogama building, housing several government offices in the central Tahrir square, which was shrouded by clouds of smoke and teargas.

Mubarak, in his first public appearance since unrest broke out four days ago, said on state television: "It is not by setting fire and by attacking private and public property that we achieve the aspirations of Egypt and its sons, but they will be achieved through dialogue, awareness and effort."

Two weeks to the day after Tunisia saw its veteran president flee into exile, the capital of the Arab world's largest country witnessed extraordinary scenes as tens of thousands of demonstrators braved teargas, rubber bullets and baton charges to vent their fury at repression, poverty, unemployment and corruption.

Medical sources said at least five protesters had been killed and 1,030 wounded in Cairo. Thirteen were killed in Suez, and six in Alexandria. A teenager was shot dead in Port Said, al-Jazeera reported.

The toll of wounded from other towns and cities was not immediately available. ...



GTFO, mubarek!

Police brutality in Egypt is "routine and pervasive" and the use of torture so widespread that the Egyptian government has stopped denying it exists, according to leaked cables released today by WikiLeaks.

The batch of US embassy cables paint a despairing portrait of a police force and security service in Egypt wholly out of control. They suggest torture is routinely used against ordinary criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers.

"The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders. One human rights lawyer told us there is evidence of torture in Egypt dating back to the time of the pharoahs. NGO contacts estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone," one cable said.

Under Hosni Mubarak's presidency there had been "no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution", it said. The police's ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence.

Some middle-class Egyptians did not report thefts from their apartment blocks because they knew the police would immediately go and torture "all of the doormen", the cable added. It cited one source who said the police would use routinely electric shocks against suspected criminals, and would beat up human rights lawyers who enter police stations to defend their clients. Women detainees allegedly faced sexual abuse. Demoralised officers felt solving crimes justified brutal interrogation methods, with some believing that Islamic law also sanctioned torture, the cable said. ...

The five people arrested in the UK in connection with a spate of online attacks in support of WikiLeaks were today released on police bail, while in the US the FBI has issued search warrants as part of its investigation into online group Anonymous.

The FBI yesterday issued more than 40 search warrants across the US as part of its Anonymous probe, where the distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks the group carried out on the websites of companies including MasterCard and Visa are punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Last night Anonymous issued a statement branding the UK arrests "a serious declaration of war" against the group of internet "hacktivists".

Yesterday's arrests are the first in the Metropolitan police's central e-crime unit investigation in the UK. ...

The convictions of 20 environmental campaigners involved in a protest at Britain's second largest coal-fired power station are to be reviewed less than two weeks after they were sentenced.

The urgent investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) into the safety of the convictions was welcomed by one of the activists, Ben Stewart, a Greenpeace employee who branded the trial a miscarriage of justice.

The CPS decision follows revelations in the Guardian about the role of PC Mark Kennedy, allegedly at the centre of a £250,000-a-year undercover operationwithin the climate change movement. Under the name Mark Stone the former Metropolitan police officer infiltrated environmental groups across Europe.

The demonstrators were convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at the coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire. ...

Running battles between police and anti-government protesters continued in Egypt for a second day today, despite an official ban by the government on protests and gatherings, and a huge deployment of police in Cairo.

Riot police and plainclothes officers armed with staves and bars broke up a demonstration outside one of the capital's biggest tourist hotels, the Ramses Hilton, on the banks of the river Nile.

Tonight demonstrators and police are still playing a violent game of cat and mouse through the city centre with protesters quickly regrouping after being broken up.

The sound of police sirens and detonating teargas canisters could be heard across the city in the biggest protests against the regime of 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak in three decades.

Protests took place across Egypt, with gatherings broken up by police outside a number of locations in the capital, including the supreme court, Nasser metro station and on Ramses Street.

Police continued to round up scores of people, including photographers and reporters covering the demonstrations. The latest clashes came on a day when officials announced that 860 people had been rounded up following mass protests against Mubarak on Tuesday, when at least four people died. Two people died yesterday in Cairo but security officials contradicted each other on the circumstances. One told reporters a protester and a policeman were killed in clashes. But another official later said they died in a traffic accident.

The crackdown by authorities brought harsh words from European leaders, who said the events underlined the need for democratisation and respect for human and civil rights. One of the toughest comments came from German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, who said he was "extremely concerned" and called on all involved to show restraint. "We are seeing in the last few weeks that a country's stability is not endangered by granting civil rights. It is through the refusal of civil and human rights that societies become unstable," he said in a reference to Tunisia. ...

Scotland Yard reopened its investigation into phone hacking today – four years after the only convictions in the case – after the News of the World passed on "significant new information" alleged to implicate one of the paper's top executives in the practice.

Shortly afterwards the paper announced that it had sacked its assistant editor (news), Ian Edmondson. This came hard on the heels of the arrival in London of its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, said to be in town to deal with both the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed the paper and his corporation's bid to take complete control of BSkyB.

The sacking, and the new police investigation, come after 18 months of Guardian reports into allegations of widespread phone hacking at the News of the World.

Until shortly before Christmas the paper had always alleged that only one rogue reporter and a private investigator were involved in the practice, and the police had repeatedly insisted that there was no evidence available to link any other News Corporation employees with hacking.

Tonight a source close to the new police investigation said the latest evidence passed to the Metropolitan police so far amounted to only a small number of emails, although detectives believe there may be many more.

"It's hard to believe these are the only ones. There may be a shedload of shit still to come," said one source. ...

The international row over undercover police officer Mark Kennedy escalated tonight after the full scope of his activities were revealed in a secret sitting at the German parliament.

Germany's federal police chief, Jörg Ziercke, was forced to admit to MPs at the Bundestag that not only had Kennedy had a long-term lover in Berlin – in direct violation of a law forbidding police officers to have sexual relationships while undercover – but that he had been invited to Germany by the authorities to infiltrate the anti-fascist movement.

Ziercke also revealed that Kennedy, the Metropolitan police officer at the centre of a controversy over the infiltration of peaceful environmental groups across Europe, worked for three German states during at least five visits to the country between 2004 and 2009.

He said the agent committed at least two crimes, but the cases against him were dropped at the behest of German authorities who knew Kennedy's true identity.

Kennedy first broke the law during protests at Heiligendamm, the town near Rostock where the G8 meetings took place in 2007. He later committed arson, Der Spiegel said, during a demonstration in Berlin at which he set fire to containers.

The revelations are published today in Der Spiegel, which says Kennedy's involvement in criminal activity during his time in Germany highlights concerns that he was working as an agent provocateur and not just an observer of the activists.

In addition, the newspaper says, the fact that investigations into both crimes were shelved suggests police authorities wielded an unacceptable influence over the country's judicial process. ...

Egypt is not Tunisia. It's much bigger. Eighty million people, compared with 10 million. Geographically, politically, strategically, it's in a different league – the Arab world's natural leader and its most populous nation. But many of the grievances on the street are the same. Tunis and Cairo differ only in size. If Egypt explodes, the explosion will be much bigger, too.

Egyptians have been here before. The so-called Cairo spring of 2005 briefly lifted hopes of peaceful reform and open elections. Those hopes died, like autumn leaves, blown away by a withering sirocco of regressive measures and reimposed emergency laws. Food and price riots in Mahalla el Kubra in 2008 briefly raised the standard of revolt again. They were quickly suppressed.

But Tuesday's large-scale protests were different in significant ways, sending unsettling signals to a regime that has made complacency a way of life. "Day of Rage" demonstrators in Cairo did not merely stand and shout in small groups, as is usual. They did not remain in one place. They joined together – and they marched. And in some cases, the police could not, or would not, stop them.

This took President Hosni Mubarak and his ministers way out of their comfort zone. Interior minister Habib al-Adli had said earlier he held no objection to stationary protests by small groups. But marching en masse, uncontrolled and officially undirected, along a central Cairo boulevard, heading for the regime heartland of Tahrir Square – this was something new and dangerous.

The protests' organisation was different, too – recalling Tunisia, and Iran in 2009. The biggest opposition grouping, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, for so long a useful Islamist idiot manipulated to bolster western support for the secular regime, declined to take part. Egypt's establishment rebel, the former UN nuclear watchdog chief, Mohammad ElBaradei, also steered clear.

Instead an ad hoc coalition of students, unemployed youths, industrial workers, intellectuals, football fans and women, connected by social media such as Twitter and Facebook, instigated a series of fast-moving, rapidly shifting demos across half a dozen or more Egyptian cities. The police could not keep up – and predictably, resorted to violence. Egypt's protests already have their martyrs, killed by police or burned to death by their own hands. But Egypt does not yet have a Neda Agha-Soltan. Pray it never does.

The language and symbolism were different, too. "Enough, enough (Kifaya)!" they shouted in 2005, giving a name to the movement for change. Now the message is: "Too much, too far, for too long!"

"Mubarak, Saudi Arabia awaits you," the demonstrators chanted, referring to the refuge of the Tunisian ex-dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. "Out! Out! Revolution until victory," shouted a group of mothers, babes in arms. Across Cairo, Alexandria and beyond, the banners of the Tunisian intifada waved liked semaphore flags, wishfully signalling an end to the ancien regime. ...

Alastair Campbell has written to the Metropolitan police to say he suspects his phone was hacked by the News of the World while he was advising Tony Blair's government.

As the Commons home affairs select committee announced it is to publish a list of victims of alleged phone hacking, Blair's former communications director said his lawyers had contacted the Met with details of a specific incident.

Campbell believes his phone was hacked shortly after he left Downing Street in 2003 when he advised a senior member of Blair's cabinet. A News of the World photographer was waiting outside Campbell's house when the minister arrived for a meeting which had been arranged in mobile phone calls and text messages without reference to civil servants.

Campbell said: "Phone hacking is more widespread than people realise and was carried out by many more newspapers.

"That is why it is not being pursued by most of the press. Just as John Prescott has been pursuing it, I intend to get to the bottom of it."

The intervention by Campbell came as Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the home affairs select committee, said he would be publishing a list of people whose phones were allegedly hacked. ...

Egypt's authoritarian government is bracing itself for one of the biggest opposition demonstrations in recent years tomorrow, as thousands of protesters prepare to take to the streets demanding political reform.

An unlikely alliance of youth activists, political Islamists, industrial workers and hardcore football fans have pledged to join a nationwide "day of revolution" on a national holiday to celebrate the achievements of the police force.

With public sentiment against state security forces at an unprecedented level following a series of high-profile police brutality cases and the torture of anti-government activists, protest organisers are hoping that a large number of Egyptians will be emboldened to attend rallies, marches and flash mobs across the country in a sustained effort to force concessions from an increasingly unpopular ruling elite.

In a move that suggests the uprising in Tunisia may be spreading to other parts of the Arab world, Tunisian activists announced they would be holding their own protests in solidarity with their Egyptian counterparts, while many Egyptians plan to wave Tunisian flags. Parallel protests are also scheduled to take place outside the Egyptian embassies in London and Washington.

Demonstrators are calling for the sacking of the country's interior minister, the cancelling of Egypt's perpetual emergency law, which suspends basic civil liberties, and a new term limit on the presidency that would bring to an end the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak, one of the Middle East's most entrenched dictators.

State security officials have branded the protests illegal, and said that those taking part will be dealt with "strictly". ...

News Corporation refused to say today what Rupert Murdoch's son James was told about evidence of phone hacking by News of the World journalists when he signed off a £700,000 settlement with the football chief Gordon Taylor.

The company declined to comment on any of a set of questions asked by the Guardian about which board members were made aware of the fact that the practice of phone hacking extended beyond the former royal editor Clive Goodman, and the reasons for payouts to Taylor and the public relations specialist Max Clifford.

News Corp also refused to reply to further questions about what was discussed at a social meeting between David Cameron, James Murdoch and its UK chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, over the Christmas period.

Rupert Murdoch today spent the day at News International's Wapping offices in east London, where he had lunch in the company canteen with his son, Brooks, Dominic Mohan, the editor of the Sun, and James Harding, the editor of the Times.

There has so far been no explanation as to why James Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp's operations in Europe and Asia, decided to sign off the payment to Taylor. One friend of Rupert Murdoch's younger son said he had failed to appreciate the significance of the hacking allegations until recently. ...

Following the resignation of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as David Cameron's media man, the voicemail hacking scandal has snowballed to include other newspapers.

Mark Lewis, a lawyer who has already brought one damages claim against the NoW for phone hacking, told the Observer last night that he is now representing four people who believe their voicemail was tapped by journalists.

And Lewis, who acted for Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers' Association in his previous case, said none of the four had been the victims of News Group newspapers. (News Group is a Murdoch company which controls the NoW.)

He told the paper: "Lots of people were doing it. It was such a widespread practice, this was almost kids' playtime.

"Although it is a crime, people were regarding it as though it was driving at 35mph in a 30mph zone, that you just sort of do it and hope you don't get caught."

The allegation that the practice spread beyond the NoW will surely be a welcome one for Rupert Murdoch.

The latest intrigue over Coulson's behaviour at one of his papers could not have come at a worse time for the Australian mogul. Murdoch's News Corp, the parent company of News Group, is still hoping to avoid having its bid to take full control of BSkyB brought before the Competition Commission. ...

All Sherry Rehman wants is to go out – for a coffee, a stroll, lunch, anything. But that's not possible. Death threats flood her email inbox and mobile phone; armed police are squatted at the gate of her Karachi mansion; government ministers advise her to flee.

"I get two types of advice about leaving," says the steely politician. "One from concerned friends, the other from those who want me out so I'll stop making trouble. But I'm going nowhere." She pauses, then adds quietly: "At least for now."

It's been almost three weeks since Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer was gunned down outside an Islamabad cafe. As the country plunged into crisis, Rehman became a prisoner in her own home. Having championed the same issue that caused Taseer's death – reform of Pakistan's draconian blasphemy laws – she is, by popular consensus, next on the extremists' list.

Giant rallies against blasphemy reform have swelled the streets of Karachi, where clerics use her name. There are allegations that a cleric in a local mosque, barely five minutes' drive away, has branded her an "infidel" deserving of death. In the Punjabi city of Multan last week opponents tried to file blasphemy charges against her – raising the absurd possibility of Rehman, a national politician, facing a possible death sentence. "My inbox is inundated. The good news is that a lot of it is no longer hate mail," she says with a grim smile. "But a lot of it is."

Pakistani politicians have a long tradition of self-imposed exile but 50-year-old Rehman – a former confidante of Benazir Bhutto, and known for her glamour, principled politics and sharp tongue – is surely the first to undergo self-imposed house arrest. Hers is a luxury cell near the Karachi shore, filled with fine furniture and expensive art, but a stifling one. Government officials insist on 48 hours' notice before putting a foot outside. Plots are afoot, they warn. ...

Yemen sparked a new wave of protests today with the arrest of a female activist who led student rallies against the government in the capital last week.

Inspired by the ousting of Tunisia's president, Tawakul Karman led two protests at Sanaa University, criticising autocratic Arab leaders and calling on Yemenis to topple President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Police stopped Karman on her way home early today and charged her with organising unlicensed demonstrations without permission, said her husband, Mohamed Ismail al-Nehmi, who was with her.

"I have no accurate information about her whereabouts," Nehmi said. "Maybe at the central prison, maybe somewhere else, I don't know."

Several hundred students gathered outside Sanaa University demanding her release. Riot police clashed with two TV cameramen filming the protests and confiscated their cameras, a witness said. One was briefly arrested.

About 60 policemen armed with shields and batons prevented the crowd from marching towards the general prosecutors' office, the witness said.

Karman, a member of the Islamist party Islah who heads the Yemeni activist group Women Journalists Without Chains, had called on Yemenis to support the Tunisian people. The overthrow of the Tunisian president has shattered the image of oppressive, military-backed Arab rulers as immune to popular discontent. ...

Criticisms of the police handling of the phone-hacking scandal intensified tonight after a senior minister accused Scotland Yard of failing to properly investigate the allegations, while it emerged that Gordon Brown has asked police to establish whether he had been a victim.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat energy secretary, cast doubt on News International's claims that hacking was the work of a "rogue reporter". He criticised the initial handling of the allegations by the police and accused them of reacting to his calls for a full inquiry last year by "scurrying back to Scotland Yard" and dismissing the idea in an afternoon.

"It seemed to me clear that the number of people that were being hacked clearly was not consistent with it being one rogue reporter who happened to be the royal correspondent. Why would the royal correspondent be interested in hacking the voicemails of Simon Hughes, my colleague who is a Liberal Democrat MP, for example?" he told the BBC's Daily Politics.

"We know the police were not keen on the subject because when I called for a very clear review of this, the police scurried back into Scotland Yard, spent less than a day reviewing it and popped out again in time for the six o'clock news to say they had discovered no further evidence."

Asked whether he thought the police had been deterred from carrying out a full investigation after their failure to make charges in Labour's "cash for honours" scandal, he said: "I certainly think that may well have played a part of it because obviously they had been through a very thorough investigation there and they got nowhere, so they may have decided that messing with the political process was something that they didn't want to bother doing." He quickly added: "I really don't know, I mean you'll have to ask a police officer that."

Huhne's intervention is a guarantee that the row over phone hacking won't disappear with Andy Coulson's resignation as director of communications from Downing Street last week. The former editor of the News of the World stepped down claiming that the continued controversy over phone hacking was making it difficult for him to do his job. ...

MI5 and MI6 will argue in a test case before the supreme court tomorrow that in future no intelligence gathered abroad, even if initially obtained through torture, should ever be disclosed in a British court.

Last year an appeal court dismissed what it described as an attempt to undermine a fundamental principle of common law: that a litigant must see and hear the evidence used against him or her.

Now the security and intelligence agencies are challenging that ruling in an unprecedented case. The Guardian, the Times, the BBC, and the human rights groups Liberty and Justice will argue before the country's most senior judges that if the agencies get their way, the right to a fair trial will be eroded, while public confidence in decisions taken by the courts will be diminished.

These principles are particularly important when allegations of official incompetence or wrongdoing are concerned, their lawyers will argue.

The case stems from demands by six British citizens and residents held in Guantánamo Bay with, they say, the connivance of MI5 and MI6. They sought documentary evidence of what British agencies knew about the US decision secretly to render them to the base, and what part they played.

Though the six have reached a compensation settlement believed to total millions of pounds, the agencies want to establish a new principle that henceforth no intelligence-related information will be disclosed in any civil or criminal case.MI5 and MI6 have already expressed alarm about their long-running dispute with high court judges over pressure to disclose evidence of their involvement in the abuse of Binyam Mohamed, a UK resident held secretly in Pakistani and Morrocan jails before being flown to Guantánamo. Judges overrode fierce objections from the former Labour foreign secretary, David Miliband, by disclosing a brief summary of CIA information passed to MI5 and MI6. ...

Britain's tabloid newspapers are now facing a major crisis after being drawn into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Twenty-four hours after Andy Coulson, the prime minister's communications chief and former News of the World editor, was forced to resign, a lawyer confirmed other newspapers were facing legal claims.

Mark Lewis, who acted for Gordon Taylor of the Professional Footballers' Association in a damages claim against the NoW, confirmed to the Observer that he was now representing four people who believe they were targeted by other newspapers.

Lewis said that none of the four had been hacked by News Group Newspapers, owner of the News of the World and the Sun. "Lots of people were doing it," Lewis said. "It was such a widespread practice."

He added that he had been preparing the cases since Christmas. "We are at an initial stage in our investigations made with police forces and phone companies. But we believe there is a prima facie case that information has been obtained unlawfully.

"This was almost kids' playtime. It was such a widespread practice. Although it is a crime, people were regarding it as though it was driving at 35mph in a 30mph zone, that you just sort of do it and hope you don't get caught."

Speculation about further law suits, and the prospect of fresh evidence in the form of emails and audio tapes stretching back over years, has heaped pressure on News Group over the past few weeks. It emerged earlier this month that News of the World executive Ian Edmondson had been suspended as a result of claims in a case brought by actress Sienna Miller. ...

Three people were shot dead in Tirana yesterday as protesters and police clashed in what Albania's prime minister Sali Berisha called an opposition attempt to foment a Tunisia-style uprising.

Supporters of the opposition socialist party, which refuses to accept the result of a 2009 election, protested outside Berisha's office against what they see as official corruption and electoral fraud.

Some pelted the building and police with stones, sticks and umbrellas. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannon and stun grenades. Smoke billowed from burning cars, some of them police vehicles.

Socialist party leader Edi Rama said the crowd was provoked and police had behaved unprofessionally.

The violence was the worst since the storming of the Albania government building in 1998.

"Albania is not in a state of emergency and will not pass into a state of emergency. But scenarios of violence will not be tolerated," Berisha said.

Alfred Gega, deputy director of Tirana's military hospital, told reporters three civilians had died, one with a gunshot wound to the head and the other two with bullet wounds to the chest from close range.

33 protesters and 17 policemen were wounded. A civilian and a policeman were in a critical condition, Gega added.

Protesters packed the main avenue. Witnesses estimated the crowd size at around 20,000; the opposition reported there were more than 10 times as many.

"I call for calm and maturity," President Bamir Topi said after the violence erupted. "Albania needs to heal its wounds, not to open new ones." ...

Andy Coulson resigns – as it happened

Andy Coulson, David Cameron's director of communications, has quit in the wake of the latest phone-hacking revelations

5.15pm: Here's a summary of events tonight.
Live blog: recap

The intensification of the phone-hacking scandal, a story that refuses to go away, has forced Andy Coulson into a second resignation. Coulson quit as director of communications at Downing Street, blaming "continued coverage" of the phone-hacking scandal which forced him from the editorship of the News of the World. He said: "When the spokesman needs a spokesman, it's time to move on." (It was later revealed that the satirist Armando Iannucci first used this line last September.)

Coulson's resignation has once again raised questions over the judgment of David Cameron, who knew of the controversy surrounding his editorship of the News of the World. Cameron said of Coulson: "He has been a brilliant member of my team and has thrown himself at the job with skill and dedication."

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, attempted to turn the focus onto Cameron. Miliband said: "I think it raises real questions about David Cameron's judgment that he hung on to Andy Coulson for so long."

It is understood that Coulson told Cameron of his decision on Wednesday night. Some commentators have questioned the decision to announce his departure today – as Tony Blair was giving evidence to the Iraq war inquiry, but Downing Street denied the timing was deliberate.

The MP who triggered the latest Commons inquiry into phone hacking called on the police to conduct a thorough investigation. Chris Bryant, a Labour MP, said: "I hope now finally that the police will be able to conduct the full, transparent, and thorough inquiry into phone hacking that we are still waiting for and that the murky truth will come to light."

4.56pm: Coulson has been shown on the news channels leaving Downing Street. As the flashbulbs popped, Coulson strode off, saying nothing. I'll resist the temptation to sugggest that, as the sun sets over London, he looked as if he was slunking away into the shadows. I'll just confine myself to noting that Adam Boulton, Sky's political editor, reckons that he won't be back at No 10 before he leaves his job in a few weeks. I guess he'll just be working from home, then.

4.48pm: My colleague Mark Sweney has been trawling through the archives to see what key figures said about phone hacking in the past. My favourite is the one from Rebekah Brooks, who preceded Coulson as editor of the News of the World. On 10 July 2009, Brooks, who was then chief executive of News International, said:

"The Guardian coverage, we believe, has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public." ...

... 11.51am: This is the full statement issued by Andy Coulson today:

I can today confirm that I've resigned as Downing Street director of communications. It's been a privilege and an honour to work for David Cameron for three-and-a-half years.

I'm extremely proud of the part I've played in helping him reach No 10 and during the coalition's first nine months.

Nothing is more important than the Government's task of getting this country back on its feet.

Unfortunately, continued coverage of events connected to my old job at the News of the World has made it difficult for me to give the 110% needed in this role.

I stand by what I've said about those events but when the spokesman needs a spokesman, it's time to move on.

I'll leave within the next few weeks and will do so wishing the Prime Minister, his family, and his brilliant and dedicated team the very best for what I'm sure will be a long and successful future in Government.

11.51am: Here's the full statement from David Cameron:

I am very sorry that Andy Coulson has decided to resign as my Director of Communications, although I understand that the continuing pressures on him and his family mean that he feels compelled to do so. Andy has told me that the focus on him was impeding his ability to do his job and was starting to prove a distraction for the Government.

During his time working for me, Andy has carried out his role with complete professionalism. He has been a brilliant member of my team and has thrown himself at the job with skill and dedication. He can be extremely proud of the role he has played, including for the last eight months in Government.

I wish Andy all the very best for his future, which I am certain will be a successful one.

11.48am: This is the second time Coulson has lost a high-profile job over the phone-hacking scandal. He quit as editor of the News of the World in January 2007 when Clive Goodman was jailed. Until now, the prime minister, David Cameron, had maintained Coulson "deserved a second chance". ...

The lawyer for Bradley Manning, the army private suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, has filed a complaint that he is being unfairly treated at the marine base jail in Virginia.

David Coombs, Manning's lawyer, said that holding him in maximum custody over the last five months and placing him on suicide watch amounted to abuse. Coombs called for his removal from such tight monitoring.

The complaint was filed on Wednesday and on Thursday the marines downgraded his classification from suicide watch to prevention of injury. But Coombs argues that prevention of injury is not significantly different in practical terms and is seeking his removal from maximum security.

Coombs, writing on his office website, said that on Wednesday, against the recommendation of two forensic psychiatrists, the commander of the Quantico jail, James Averhart, listed Manning as a suicide risk, which meant he was confined to his cell 24 hours a day. "He was stripped of all clothing with the exception of his underwear. His prescription eyeglasses were taken away from him. He was forced to sit in essential blindness with the exception of the times that he was reading or given limited television privileges. During those times, his glasses were returned to him," Coombs wrote.

Manning, aged 23, who had been based in Iraq, was transferred to Quantico on July 29 last year. He is facing court-martial later this year and faces a heavy prison sentence if found guilty of leaking classified material. ...

Nearly a third of Zimbabwe's 5.5m registered voters are dead, research has found. Others appear to be up to 120 years old, improbably outstripping the country's average life expectancy of 43.

The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) said the country's electoral roll was a "shambles" and should be overhauled before fresh elections, which could be held this year.

A new electoral register is a key demand of the Movement for Democratic Change , which has accused President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party of counting "ghost voters" in its own favour.

After conducting an audit of the roll, the ZESN reported that 27% of people registered to vote were dead.

"The computer test revealed that 2,344 people born between 1901 and 1909, therefore aged between 101 and 110 years, were on the voters' roll," it said. "Nine people born between 1890 and 1900, aged between 111 and 120 years, are registered voters."

Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 43 years, according to the World Health Organisation. Mugabe will soon turn 87. ...

Julian Assange vows to reveal tax details of 2,000 wealthy people

Swiss banker gives WikiLeaks founder data 'to educate society' about amount of potential tax revenues lost to offshore schemes

Esther Addley
Monday 17 January 2011

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, today pledged to make public the confidential tax details of 2,000 wealthy and prominent individuals, after being passed the data by a Swiss banker who claims the information potentially reveals instances of money-laundering and large-scale illegal tax evasion.

In a carefully choreographed handover in central London, Rudolf Elmer, formerly a senior executive at the Swiss bank Julius Baer, based in the Cayman islands, said he was handing the data to WikiLeaks as part of an attempt "to educate society" about the amount of potential tax revenues lost thanks to offshore schemes and money-laundering.

"As banker, I have the right to stand up if something is wrong," he said. "I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day business. I wanted to let society know how this system works because it's damaging society," he said.

Elmer will appear in a Swiss court on Wednesday charged with breaking Swiss banking secrecy laws, forging documents and sending threatening messages to two officials at his former employer.

He denies the charges. ...

The government will respond today to revelations that police spent millions of pounds running a network of undercover spies in the environmental protest movement.

Home Office minister Nick Herbert will be questioned by MPs about Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years living as an activist. Kennedy claims he has been "hung out to dry" by his handlers, makes numerous criticisms of the operation and admits to sexual relations with activists.

He also alleges that secret surveillance tapes would have exonerated six activists accused of breaking into a power station. He accuses senior officers of suppressing the tapes, a move that could have resulted in a serious miscarriage of justice.

Herbert, who has responsibility for policing, will appear before the home affairs select committee to answer questions on police financing. Members of the committee, including the Labour chair, Keith Vaz, are planning to question him over Kennedy. A programme to plant spies in the protest movement is now estimated to have cost £15m over the last decade.

Kennedy denies claims by activists that he was an agent provocateur in protests, including the attempt to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in 2009. He insists all of his activities were scrutinised and "sanctioned" by his superiors. ...

...it was some years before I heard he had been an informer. I was left feeling rather grubby, and rueing my taste in men. Yet I never thought that he had specifically targeted me, or that anything I said had been of particular use to his police handlers.

A far greater betrayal came in the form of Joy Harnden, another spy in my organisation, the End Conscription Campaign. We weren't particularly close but I remember being impressed by her dedication and intimate knowledge of the workings of the apartheid state. (Odd that.) I recall one conversation when she pumped me for personal information about a housemate who had recently been released from police detention. I should have noticed something was amiss, but I admired Joy and was pleased to spend time with her.

I later learned that she was a lieutenant in the security police and was responsible for the death of at least one ANC comrade. It still makes me feel sick. She changed her name and lived in Scotland for a while, and sometimes I fantasise about tracking her down and confronting her.

But it didn't cross my mind to take legal action against the police over any of this. After all, it was South Africa in the 1980s and we were trying to overthrow the state. We expected it. But it's not what I would expect if I was protesting against climate change in Britain today.

News Corporation's defence that phone hacking at the News of the World was the work of a single "rogue reporter" was on the verge of collapse tonight after Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective at the centre of the case, said the paper's head of news commissioned him to access voicemail messages.

Mulcaire is understood to have submitted a statement to the high court this afternoon confirming that Ian Edmondson, the paper's assistant editor (news) asked him to hack into voicemail messages left on a mobile phone belonging to Sky Andrew, a football agent. Andrew is suing the paper for breach of privacy.

It is also understood that Mulcaire said in the court statement that several other executives at the News of the World were aware that phone hacking was taking place, although he does not name them.

A spokesman for the News of the World said: "This is a serious allegation that will form part of our internal investigation."

Edmondson was suspended by the paper before Christmas after he was named in court documents in a separate case against the News of the World brought by the actor Sienna Miller.

His computer has been impounded as part of the paper's internal investigation and the company is trawling through his emails. He is expected to be questioned after colleagues have been interviewed.

Mulcaire's decision to name Edmondson helps to explains why News Group acted so quickly to suspend him. ...

Tunisia's president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has fled his country after weeks of mass protests culminated in a victory for people power over one of the Arab world's most repressive regimes.

Ben Ali had taken refuge in Saudi Arabia, at the end of an extraordinary day which had seen the declaration of a state of emergency, the evacuation of tourists of British and other nationalities, and an earthquake for the authoritarian politics of the Middle East and north Africa.

After hours of conflicting reports had him criss-crossing southern Europe by air, the Saudi state news agency confirmed he had arrived in the kingdom together with his family. Earlier, French media reported that Nicolas Sarkozy had refused Ben Ali refuge, although France denied that any request had been received.

In Tunisia, prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi announced that he had taken over as interim president, vowing to respect the constitution and restore stability for Tunisia's 10.5 million citizens. "I call on the sons and daughters of Tunisia, of all political and intellectual persuasions, to unite to allow our beloved country to overcome this difficult period and to return to stability," he said in a broadcast.

But there was confusion among protesters about what will happen next, and concern that Ben Ali might be able to return before elections could be held. "We must remain vigilant," warned an email from the Free Tunis group, monitoring developments to circumvent an official news blackout. ...

Even while under curfew following the ouster of their long-serving authoritarian leader, Tunisians on Saturday experienced newfound freedoms online as their acting president promised a "new phase" for his embattled land.

Filters on websites like Facebook and YouTube, put in place under former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, were dropped and Internet speed picked up considerably -- a development that followed the new government's vow to ease restrictions on freedoms.

In addition, three Tunisian journalists -- including two bloggers critical of Ben Ali -- have been freed from jail, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Saturday.

These developments come as Fouad Mebazaa was sworn in as the country's acting leader on Saturday, after Ben Ali and his family took refuge in Saudi Arabia following days of angry street protests against the government.

Speaking on national TV, Mebazaa, who had been the country's parliamentary speaker, promised to ensure the nation's "stability," respect its constitution and "pursue the best interest of the nation." ...

Twenty environmental activists are seeking to overturn recent criminal convictions in the wake of the Guardian's revelations about a network of undercover police officers embedded deep in the movement.

Lawyers for the group claim that a failure to disclose the role of covert police operative Mark Kennedy during their trial may have led to a miscarriage of justice and have written to the Crown Prosecution Service demanding details of his role.

Six other activists walked free from court earlier this week after their lawyer, Mike Schwarz, demanded details of the part played by Kennedy in planning the environmental protest they took part in at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, near Nottingham, in 2009.

However, last month, in a separate trial, the 20 green campaigners were convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass during the same protest, after failing to convince a jury that their actions were designed to prevent immediate harm to human life and property from climate change.

"The police allowed this trial, unlike the later one, to run all the way to conviction," said Schwarz, whose firm, Bindmans, represents both groups of protesters. "In the light of events last week, this must be seen as a potential miscarriage of justice."

Revelations of PC Kennedy's activities by the Guardian this week have triggered a crisis in undercover policing. He is alleged to have played a central role in organising a proposal to break into the power station.

Kennedy used the fake identity "Mark Stone" to live for seven years in the protest movement, infiltrating activist groups in 22 countries. He had sexual relationships with a number of women. He also revealed the identity of another undercover officer to fellow activists, leading to a security operation this week as police tried to ensure all their undercover officers were safe.

An investigation into the collapse of the trial of the six activists is expected to be launched shortly by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The body is also considering widening its inquiry to take into account whether or not Kennedy acted as an agent provocateur during his years undercover. A further review into the wider undercover operation and those organising it may also follow. ...

... 12pm: A Julian Assange colouring book.

12.10pm: How many Twitter followers does WikiLeaks have? A Forbes blog yesterday said its 637,000 had fallen by several thousand since WikiLeaks tweeted that all of them were the "target of US gov subpoena". The number today appears to be up – to 647,541.

1pm: Glenn Greenwald has a post following on from the Assange legal team's invocation of the possibility of extradition from Sweden to the US:

And now we have the spectacle of Julian Assange's lawyers citing the Obama administration's policies of rendition and indefinite detention at Guantanamo as a reason why human rights treaties bar his extradition to any country (such as Sweden) which might transfer him to American custody. Indeed, almost every person with whom I've spoken who has or had anything to do with WikiLeaks expresses one fear above all others: the possibility that they will end up in American custody and subjected to its lawless War on Terror "justice system." Americans still like to think of themselves as "leaders of the free world," but in the eyes of many, it's exactly the "free world" to which American policies are so antithetical and threatening

2.45pm: The Frontline Club - where Assange was living when he was in London - has put up video of a WikiLeaks discussion it held last night. The panel included Guardian deputy editor Ian Katz, Times columnist David Aaronovitch and Assange's lawyer Mark Stephens.

The Frontline Club has also written up the event on its blog.

3.45pm: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered his assessment of the leaked cables to a group of foreign journalists.

The WikiLeaks exposed the three main concerns of most, if not all, of the governments in this region. The first concern is Iran; the second concern is Iran; and the third concern is Iran

4pm: Assange claims to have an "insurance file" on Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation that would be released if either he or WikiLeaks came into difficulty, he says in an interview with the New Statesman. (Update: Press Gazette has more if the News Statesman's link to its own interview summary is slow. Update 2: MediaGuardian has more.)

4.10pm: More from Assange's interview with the New Statesman.

The "technological enemy" of WikiLeaks is not the US - but China, according to Assange.

"China is the worst offender," when it comes to censorship, says the controversial whistleblower. "China has aggressive and sophisticated interception technology that places itself between every reader inside China and every information source outside China. We've been fighting a running battle to make sure we can get information through, and there are now all sorts of ways Chinese readers can get on to our site."

On Bradley Manning - the US soldier accused of leaking the diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks - Assange says: "I'd never heard his name before it was published in the press." He argues that the US is trying to use Manning - currently stuck in solitary confinement in the US - to build a case against the WikiLeaks founder:

"Cracking Bradley Manning is the first step," says the Australian hacker. "The aim clearly is to break him and force a confession that he somehow conspired with me to harm the national security of the United States." ...

... After the hearing at Belmarsh magistrates court, Assange said he was "happy about today's outcome" and said the skeleton argument he and his legal team hastily produced over Christmas would be made publicly available later.

This outlines "some important issues which will be gone into in detail on 6 and 7 February", he said.

"I would also like to say that our work with WikiLeaks continues unabated and we are stepping up our publishing for matters relating to 'cablegate' and other materials. This will shortly be occurring through our newspaper partners around the world, big and small newspapers and some human rights organisations."

In today's 10-minute session, Assange's QC, Geoffrey Robertson, said all legal preparations were in place for a full two-day extradition hearing next month.

District judge Nicholas Evans released Assange, who spoke only to confirm his name, age and address, on conditional bail. Assange, who wore a dark suit and light-coloured shirt, listened intently as he sat behind a glass screen at the top-security court.

His bail was modified, allowing him to stay at the Frontline Club for journalists in Paddington on 6 and 7 February, so he does not have so far to travel.

Robertson said Assange's legal team was collecting evidence from further witnesses in Sweden, but the judge said the authorities there were likely to take the view that the extradition warrant would stand nevertheless. ...

... "Indeed, if Mr Assange were rendered to the USA, without assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out, there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty. It is well known that prominent figures have implied, if not stated outright, that Mr Assange should be executed." ...

... The woman who said she had had a sexual relationship with Kennedy now lives abroad and wants to be known only by her first name, Anna. She said she had sex more than 20 times with the undercover officer about five years ago, including at his house in Nottingham, when she was aged just 21. They met at protests around Europe, and it seemed clear to her that Kennedy was "seeing other women" around the same time. "I'm not sure personally if I would be willing to take part in an inquiry that touched on our sexual relationship," she said. "If the Met knew that this was going on, then obviously they should reveal this. There should be an inquiry into whether this is legal."

Kennedy, who joined the police in about 1994, is known to have had a wife and children before going undercover. There have also been unconfirmed reports that Kennedy had a long-term relationship with a woman in Nottingham while posing as an activist.

Questions over the ethics of the Kennedy operation have already been raised in Germany, where the MP Andrej Hunko has tabled questions asking whether authorities authorised the undercover officer to have "sexual relationships" in the country.

A Guardian investigation revealed on Monday that Kennedy had used a fake passport to travel to 22 different countries while posing as a campaigner, earning the trust of activists and feeding back intelligence to his commanders. ...

Glenn Mulcaire, the former private investigator jailed for intercepting voicemails on phones used by aides to Princes William and Harry at the behest of the News of the World, has run up a legal bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds as he battles a string of ongoing phone-hacking lawsuits.

The expensive defence, estimated to be in excess of £500,000, has triggered speculation that the costs are being paid by the publishers of the tabloid newspaper, whose controlling shareholder, Rupert Murdoch, has said he would take "immediate action" against anybody found to be caught hacking again.

Mulcaire's costs are likely to rise quickly as a string of actions from more public figures suing both him and the newspaper are expected to follow in the next few weeks, adding to the pressure on a south Londoner described as unemployed and receiving jobseeker's allowance in a court judgment in February of last year.

Mulcaire's legal team refuses to say who is paying his bills. When Sarah Webb, his lawyer, was asked if it was known whether News International – owners of News Group Newspapers, the publisher of NotW – was paying his fees, she replied: "No, we don't know that." News International declined to comment. ...

Hackers Celebrate Kim Jong-Un's Birthday With Video
by Louisa Lim
January 8, 2011

A website and Twitter account believed to be North Korea's state-sanctioned channels of communication have been hacked to show derogatory content on the birthday of North Korea's heir apparent.

A string of messages appeared on North Korea's Twitter account, calling North Koreans to rise up against leader Kim Jong-Il and his son, whom it referred to as the "sworn enemy."

Earlier, a two-minute animation had appeared on the communist state's YouTube account. It depicts the heir-apparent Kim Jong-Un teasing his father to buy him expensive birthday presents, then driving an expensive sports car into starving North Koreans. ...

Fresh rioting broke out in Algiers today as police were deployed around mosques and football matches were suspended after protests over food prices and unemployment.

Riot police armed with teargas and batons maintained a strong presence around the Algerian capital's main mosques. In the popular Belcourt district, rioting resumed after Friday prayers. Young protesters pelted police with stones and blocked access to the area.

The official APS news agency said protesters ransacked government buildings, bank branches and post offices in several eastern cities overnight, including Constantine, Jijel, Setif and Bouira. In Ras el Oued this morning, buildings belonging to the state-run gas utility Sonelgaz, the council and the tax authority were seriously damaged along with several schools, APS reported.

Earlier this week hundreds of youths clashed with police in several cities and ransacked stores in the capital. Police used teargas to disperse youths in the Algiers neighbourhood of Bab el-Oued, where the most violent protests occurred. ...

WikiLeaks has demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of any US subpoenas they may have received after it emerged that a court in Virginia had ordered Twitter to secretly hand over details of accounts on the micro-blogging site by five figures associated with the group, including Julian Assange.

Amid strong evidence that a US grand jury has begun a wideranging trawl for details of what networks and accounts WikiLeaks used to communicate with Bradley Manning, the US serviceman accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of sensitive government cables, some of those named in the subpoena said they would fight disclosure.

"Today, the existence of a secret US government grand jury espionage investigation into WikiLeaks was confirmed for the first time as a subpoena was brought into the public domain," WikiLeaks said in a statement.

The writ, approved by a court in Virginia in December, demands that the San Franscisco based micro-blogging site hand over all details of five individuals' accounts and private messaging on Twitter – including the computers and networks used.

They include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Manning, Icelandic MP Brigitta Jonsdottir and Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp. Three of them – Gonggrijp, Assange and Jonsdottir – were named as "producers" of the first significant leak from the US cables cache: a video of an Apache helicopter attack that killed civilians and journalists in Baghdad. ...

The Metropolitan police today faced calls for an independent review of its investigation into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal as the former home secretary Alan Johnson called for an independent inquiry and Ed Balls branded the affair as increasingly "murky".

MPs on the cross-party Commons culture select committee, who will discuss the scandal next week after the announcement that a senior News of the World executive had been suspended, said the latest development raised fresh questions about alleged collusion between the police and News International. ...

A senior News of the World executive has been suspended by the paper following a "serious allegation" that he was involved with phone hacking when the paper was edited by Andy Coulson, now the prime minister's director of communications.

It was revealed today that Ian Edmondson, the title's assistant editor, was "suspended from active duties" before Christmas, shortly after the Guardian obtained court documents which apparently showed that he had asked private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to hack into phones belonging to Sienna Miller and her staff in 2005.

The News of the World confirmed in a statement today that Edmondson had been suspended. It said it had launched an internal investigation into the claims and that "appropriate action" would be taken if they were found to be true.

The paper's former royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed along with Mulcaire in January 2007 after the two men were found guilty of illegally intercepting phone messages left on mobile phones belonging to members of the royal household. Coulson resigned when the men were sentenced, but he has always insisted that Goodman acted alone and that he and other executives knew nothing about their activities.

If it is proved Edmondson also used Mulcaire's services it would destroy the paper's carefully constructed public defence that Goodman was a rogue reporter. His suspension puts fresh pressure on Coulson, who has consistently maintained that he was unaware of any hacking while editor of the paper between 2003 and 2007. Edmondson was hired by Coulson and was part of the former editor's inner circle.

It also raises embarrassing questions for the Metropolitan police, who failed to interview any News of the World executive during the Goodman/Mulcaire investigation despite the fact that the name "Ian" appears on a number of documents seized from Mulcaire. ...

WikiLeaks: US targets EU over GM crops
US embassy cable recommends drawing up list of countries for 'retaliation' over opposition to genetic modification
John Vidal, environment editor
Monday 3 January 2011

The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show.

In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, a friend and business partner of former US president George Bush, asked Washington to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not support the use of GM crops.

"Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits.

"The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices," said Stapleton, who with Bush co-owned the St Louis-based Texas Rangers baseball team in the 1990s.

In other newly released cables, US diplomats around the world are found to have pushed GM crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative.

Because many Catholic bishops in developing countries have been vehemently opposed to the controversial crops, the US applied particular pressure to the pope's advisers.

Cables from the US embassy in the Vatican show that the US believes the pope is broadly supportive of the crops after sustained lobbying of senior Holy See advisers, but regrets that he has not yet stated his support. The US state department special adviser on biotechnology as well as government biotech advisers based in Kenya lobbied Vatican insiders to persuade the pope to declare his backing. "… met with [US monsignor] Fr Michael Osborn of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, offering a chance to push the Vatican on biotech issues, and an opportunity for post to analyse the current state of play on biotech in the Vatican generally," says one cable in 2008.

"Opportunities exist to press the issue with the Vatican, and in turn to influence a wide segment of the population in Europe and the developing world," says another.

But in a setback, the US embassy found that its closest ally on GM, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the powerful Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the man who mostly represents the pope at the United Nations, had withdrawn his support for the US.

"A Martino deputy told us recently that the cardinal had co-operated with embassy Vatican on biotech over the past two years in part to compensate for his vocal disapproval of the Iraq war and its aftermath – to keep relations with the USG [US government] smooth. According to our source, Martino no longer feels the need to take this approach," says the cable.

In addition, the cables show US diplomats working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto. "In response to recent urgent requests by [Spanish rural affairs ministry] state secretary Josep Puxeu and Monsanto, post requests renewed US government support of Spain's science-based agricultural biotechnology position through high-level US government intervention."

It also emerges that Spain and the US have worked closely together to persuade the EU not to strengthen biotechnology laws. In one cable, the embassy in Madrid writes: "If Spain falls, the rest of Europe will follow."

The cables show that not only did the Spanish government ask the US to keep pressure on Brussels but that the US knew in advance how Spain would vote, even before the Spanish biotech commission had reported.

Two journalists with access to a secret transcript of comments by Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking confidential material to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, have denied speculation that the material could potentially help a prosecution against Julian Assange.

The pair, from Wired magazine, said there was nothing "newsworthy" in unpublished internet chat logs between Manning and Adrian Lamo, a former hacker who claims to have discussed the leak with the young intelligence officer and later tipped off the FBI.

Wired.com claimed a scoop in June when it obtained a transcript of the chats and published excerpts in which Manning, 23, appeared to confess to being the source of classified material handed to WikiLeaks, which was founded by Assange.

However, in recent days the journalists have found themselves at the centre of an increasingly acrimonious spat with critics who accuse them of withholding crucial information about the largest leak of military data in history.

The dispute has centred on the 75% of the transcript Wired has not published, claiming the information would infringe Manning's privacy or compromise sensitive military information.

Amid reports that federal prosecutors want to establish that Assange "encouraged or helped" Manning to leak the material in order to make him a co-conspirator, Wired has found itself under pressure to reveal more about the unpublished chats. ...

Police have asked the government for a new counter-terrorism power to stop and search people without having to suspect them of involvement in crime, the Guardian has learned.

Senior officers have told the government the new law is needed to better protect the public against attempted attacks on large numbers of people, and are hopeful they can win ministers' backing.

A previous law allowing counter-terrorism stops without suspicion, section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, was scrapped this year by the home secretary, Theresa May, after European judges struck it down for breaching human rights.

But police, including the Metropolitan force, which leads the UK fight against terrorism, say they need a boost to their counter-terrorism powers, which they worry are now too weak. ...

Nicolas Sarkozy's war on illegal downloading has begun in earnest, with the state internet surveillance body dubbed "Big Brother" warning more than 100,000 French internet-users that they have been caught accessing pirate material.

The controversial anti-piracy law is one of Sarkozy's pet projects, backed by his singer wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. The couple argue that artists must be protected from the nation's massive illegal download culture – France is thought to be the world number one in illegally accessing film and music online.

The internet policing system, known under its acronym Hadopi, investigates specific incidents of illegal downloading reported by music and film companies. It obtains web-users' details from internet service providers and issues a series of warnings by email and letter. Repeat offenders risk one month's suspension from all internet access. Those accused of counterfeiting can be fined and cut off from the internet for one year. At least 100,000 warning emails have been sent since early October. ...

The founder of the WikiLeaks website, Julian Assange, has said he expects to earn more than £1m from book deals.

Assange, who achieved global notoriety after his whistleblower website began releasing more than a quarter of a million diplomatic cables, said he would use the money for legal costs.

The 39-year-old is fighting extradition to Sweden, where two women have accused him of sexual misconduct. He denies the allegations.

Since being released on bail earlier this month pending extradition proceedings, Assange has been living under virtual house arrest at Ellingham Hall, a Norfolk country mansion, from where he regularly gives media interviews.

He told the Sunday Times that he was forced to sign a deal worth more than £1m for his autobiography due to financial difficulties. "I don't want to write this book, but I have to," he said. "I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat."

He will reportedly receive $800,000 dollars from Alfred A Knopf, his American publisher, while a British deal with Canongate is said to be worth £325,000. An estimated £1.1m will be generated from the deal, including serialisation, he said.

Previously Assange told the Guardian that WikiLeaks does not have enough money to pay its legal bills, even though "a lot of generous lawyers have donated their time to us".

Legal costs for WikiLeaks and his own defence were approaching £500,000, he said. The decisions by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to stop processing donations have cost the organisation £425,000, enough to fund WikiLeaks' publishing operations for six months. At its peak the organisation was receiving £85,000 a day, he said. ...

...while most people still get their internet connections via fixed-line broadband, the likelihood is that in 10 years' time a majority will access the net via wireless connections. And if the FCC ruling stands, the wireless sphere will be anything but neutral. It will be dominated by the carriers – the telcos – who see no merit in neutrality. Which is why some people feel that the FCC's decision effectively means kissing goodbye to the open internet. "The neutering of the internet is now the unofficial policy of the Federal Communications Commission," writes Dan Gillmor, for example. "Contrary to the happy talk from FCC chairman Julius Genachowski... the move is well underway to turn the internet into a regulated playground for corporate giants."

Sceptics about net neutrality will doubtless portray this as an over-reaction. Until I read Tim Wu's new book – The Master Switch: the Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Knopf, 2010) – I might have agreed with them. But Professor Wu places all this in a more sombre context – of what he calls the Cycle. "History shows," he writes, "a typical progression of information technologies: from somebody's hobby to somebody's industry; from jury-rigged contraption to slick production marvel; from a freely accessible channel to one strictly controlled by a single corporation or cartel — from open to closed system."

Will the internet prove to be immune to Tim Wu's Cycle? I wouldn't bet on it.

Because the world’s most powerful military is being destroyed by a combination of a) goat herders in Afghanistan and b) some weird guy with a website, the Pentagon has just banned any kind of little gizmo that can save information off a computer. (It is apparently impossible to ban goat herders … yet.) As of immediately, any military person (or military contractor, maybe?) cannot use removable/portable disk thingies such as thumb drives or external DVD/CD writable drives when using the secret computers that have all the potential WikiLeaks stuff on them. Hooray, there will be no more leaks of information! ...

Julian Assange said today that it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to extradite him to the United States, and that the final word on his fate if he were charged with espionage would rest with David Cameron.

In an interview with the Guardian in Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk country mansion where he is living under virtual house arrest, the founder of WikiLeaks said it would be difficult for the prime minister to hand him over to the Americans if there was strong support for him from the British people.

"It's all a matter of politics. We can presume there will be an attempt to influence UK political opinion, and to influence the perception of our standing as a moral actor," he said.

Assange is currently fighting extradition to Sweden. He strongly denies allegations of sexual misconduct with two Swedish women. But he believes the biggest threat to his freedom and to WikiLeaks, his whistleblowing website, emanates from a wrathful United States.

There is no evidence of any imminent US move to indict him. But according to Assange, the Obama administration is "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old intelligence officer and alleged source of the more than a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables embarrassingly leaked last month. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, wants to indict Assange as a co-conspirator and is also examining "computer hacking statutes and support for terrorism", Assange claims.

Sitting in front of a log fire, his Apple MacBook Pro perched on his lap, Assange said his recent nine-day spell in Wandsworth jail had prepared him for the possibility that he might spend a long period in prison if indicted by the US. He said the prospect of solitary confinement was no longer an "intellectual abstraction" but a reality. The high court bailed him to Norfolk last Thursday, with his extradition hearing scheduled for 6-7 February.

He said: "Solitary confinement is very difficult. But I know that provided there is some opportunity for correspondence I can withstand it. I'm mentally robust. Of course it would mean the end of my life in the conventional sense."

If the US succeeded in removing him from the UK or Sweden, Assange said there was a "high chance" of his being killed "Jack Ruby-style"...




May all that is good and powerful in the Universe keep you strong and safe, Mr Assange.

US FCC fumbles ball on net neutrality: yes for fixed, not really for mobile

The reason why mobile broadband doesn't need net neutrality? It's obvious, isn't it: because Android is open. That's really what they said.

Charles Arthur Wednesday 22 December 2010

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which has the power to set the rules for use and, more importantly, charging for internet use in the US, has passed "limited" net neutrality rules by a 3-2 vote which split along Democratic (yes) and Republican (no) party lines.

It seems to have done the right thing - defending neutrality - for fixed-line broadband, but fumbled it on mobile, and the reason it gives for the latter is astonishing: it's because Android is open. Mull on that as we go along.

The FCC portrays the decision on its own website as "FCC Acts to Preserve Internet Freedom and Openness" - and just to prove how free and open it is, then has the press release in two formats: Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF. (Just to add to the fun, I couldn't get them to download on Wednesday morning. Links to the documents, courtesy of Matt Temple and Angrygoat, at end.)

Ars Technica notes that fixed-line broadband does seem to be getting net neutrality rules that you might recognise - where someone operating such a service "shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic over a consumer's broadband Internet access service" - although "Reasonable network management shall not constitute unreasonable discrimination". And reasonable network management purposes "include: ensuring network security and integrity, including by addressing traffic that is harmful to the network; addressing traffic that is unwanted by users (including by premise operators), such as by providing services or capabilities consistent with a user's choices regarding parental controls or security capabilities; and by reducing or mitigating the effects of congestion on the network."

However many people who are not in the FCC seem to think that it has not really preserved freedom or openness, and that it has really fumbled it on a particularly important field - mobile.

The rules seem to allow mobile carriers to decide that they can introduce pay-per-service charges, so that Skype or YouTube or Facebook might be charged to get their content onto the networks; alternatively (or perhaps additionally) users who wanted those services might find themselves being charged extra. That, obviously, means that those services are not being treated in a "neutral" way. Which means that you don't have net neutrality.

The gobsmacking reason given by the commissioners for not imposing net neutrality treatment on wireless? The fact that Google's Android is "open". Yes, you read that correctly: because there's a pseudo-open mobile operating system, therefore wireless networks don't need regulation about how they charge for content.

Or to quote from the FCC statements as seen by some sites:

"Further, we recognize that there have been meaningful recent moves toward openness, including the introduction of open operating systems like Android. In addition, we anticipate soon seeing the effects on the market of the openness conditions we imposed on mobile providers that operate on upper 700 MHz C-Block spectrum, which includes Verizon Wireless, one of the largest mobile wireless carriers in the U.S.

"In light of these considerations, we conclude it is appropriate to take measured steps at this time to protect the openness of the Internet when accessed through mobile broadband."

It's a stunning example of American legislature showing that it simply doesn't know enough to be trusted with big decisions. There's some rumbling at Engadget suggesting that Google might have lobbied with Verizon, which sells an estimated 80% of the Android phones sold in the US, in favour of this "limited" (actually: thin wedge-end) approach to differential charging. ...

Riot police beat back thousands of opposition supporters who tried to storm the main government building in Belarus last night in protest at what they claim was large-scale vote rigging in yesterday's presidential election.

As protests in Minsk against the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko turned violent, the opposition candidate Vladimir Neklyayev, 64, was reported to have been taken to hospital unconscious. Andrei Sannikov, another opposition candidate, was beaten and detained.

Tens of thousands of protesters swarmed into Minsk's central square after a pro-government exit poll claimed Lukashenko had won 79.1% of the vote. Polls cited by the nine candidates challenging Lukashenko indicated he had failed to win the 50% needed to hold on to power without a second round.

Video showed protesters waving flags and chanting "Lukashenko, no! Belarus, yes!" as they marched through Minsk toward the central election commission and the seat of government.

Several journalists, including a photographer for the New York Times and two cameramen for Russia Today, were among those injured.

Lukashenko, described as Europe's last dictator, has ruled the country since 1994, brokering no dissent. A US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks earlier this month said he "intends to stay in power indefinitely". ...

WikiLeaks cables: Julian Assange says his life is 'under threat'

• WikiLeaks founder says Swedish rape case is 'a travesty'
• Bank of America blocks WikiLeaks payments

David Batty
Saturday 18 December 2010

Julian Assange said today his life and the lives of his colleagues at the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks are under threat.

Speaking to reporters outside Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk house at which he is staying following his release on bail from prison, Assange said: "There is a threat to my life. There is a threat to my staff. There are significant risks facing us."

Assange is wanted in Sweden, after he was accused of committing sex offences. He denies the allegations and his lawyers have accused the Swedish authorities of waging a "vendetta".

He was initially remanded in custody but freed from prison on Thursday after a judge granted bail pending a court ruling on extradition to Sweden.

Assange said: "The case in Sweden is a travesty. No person should be exposed to that type of investigation and persecution.

"I have seen a statement from one of the witnesses that she was bamboozled ... I have heard a rumour that one has withdrawn her statement."

Meanwhile, Bank of America has become the latest financial institution to refuse to handle payments for WikiLeaks.

The bank released a statement saying it will no longer process any transactions that it believes are intended for the site, which has released thousands of secret US diplomatic cables.

"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments," the bank said.

The action comes as WikiLeaks says it plans to release information about banks.

Other financial institutions, including MasterCard and PayPal, have also stopped handling payments for the site. ...