ELECTIONS

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the former ruler of Tunisia is seriously ill in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, where he fled to exile, according to various media reports.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday that an election promised by September would not be held if Hamas refused to allow voting in the Gaza Strip.

Fierce clashes between protesters and government loyalists left at least 40 wounded in Yemen on Thursday, the seventh day of demonstrations demanding an end to President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule.

The cancellation of plans by two Iranian naval vessels to pass through the strategic Suez Canal removed on Thursday a potential foreign policy headache for the new military rulers struggling to get Egypt back on its feet.

Egyptian youth leaders moved to set up a new political party on Thursday in the post-Mubarak era while a committee worked on changing the constitution to prepare for elections promised by military rulers within six months.

Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Thursday threatened to boycott presidential and parliamentary elections if rival President Robert Mugabe called them for 2011.

What is happening in the Middle East is a major historical critical juncture, said Dilshod A. Achilov, a professor of political science at East Tennessee State University.

A defiant Silvio Berlusconi vowed on Wednesday to see out his term as Italian Prime Minister until 2013, saying he was unworried by an order to stand trial for abuse of power and paying for sex with an underage girl.

Some workers ignored a call by military rulers to return to work on Wednesday, and a committee hammered out changes in Egypt's constitution to pave the way for democracy to replace 30 years of Hosni Mubarak's iron rule.

Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, said he will run for president in Egypt's upcoming presidential elections, according to Al-Arabia TV.

The Egyptian army, praised for overseeing a mostly peaceful revolution, is running into a storm of wage and subsidy demands overtaking pressure for democracy and piling more burdens on an already teetering economy. That has already happened in Tunisia, where strikes and protests continue more than a month after citizens ousted their strongman president and galvanized Egypt's opposition forces to do the same with theirs last week.

Attacks by a renegade militia in south Sudan's oil state of Jonglei have killed at least 211 people, a southern minister said Tuesday, doubling earlier estimates of the death count.

Egypt's military said on Tuesday it hoped to hand over to an elected government in six months, while the Muslim Brotherhood said emergency law should be lifted and political prisoners freed now.

South African police fired rubber bullets, live rounds and tear gas on Tuesday at demonstrators protesting against the government's delivery of basic housing and education.

A group of conservative Iranian members of parliament are calling for the trial and execution of two senior opposition leaders in response to the anti-government riots that struck the streets of central Tehran yesterday and resulted in the deaths of at least two people and the arrest of dozens.

Though the budget makes a start in the deficit reduction front, it avoids addressing some really big questions, according to Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight.

Obviously in Iran, what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Both Egypt and Iran, the masses were raising the same demands - freedom, democracy, free and fair elections.

An influential Pakistani Islamist party accused the United States on Tuesday of riding roughshod in the case of a U.S. consular employee held over the killing of two Pakistanis and said it would hold protests if he is freed.

India, struggling to balance between cutting its costly fuel subsidies and curbing inflation, may tweak fuel taxes in the Feb. 28 budget to cushion the blow of rising global crude prices on state-run oil retailers.

Egypt's generals are asserting their command over the country following the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, preparing on Monday to ban strikes and to warn they will act against chaos and disorder.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Monday he had no intention of stepping down and dismissed a weekend demonstration by thousands of women across Italy over his involvement in a sex scandal.