World Blog is closing down for the evening. We'll be back Tuesday morning.

You can follow major developments in Egypt overnight on msnbc.com's Middle East in Crisis special section and from our partners, The New York Times. You can track real-time developments on breakingnews.com and on Twitter at @breakingnews.

Other good sources:

• Al-Jazeera's English service. The channel's live stream is especially useful.

• Continuing coverage is available from Reuters' dedicated Egypt page and from The Associated Press' World page. 

• The BBC has live updates here.

• Quick updates and robust commentary is available on Twitter at two hashtags: #egypt and #jan25.

• The U.S. Embassy in Cairo is posting official U.S. government updates and travel advisories.

Emilio Morenatti / AP

A camel driver waits for tourists near the pyramids Monday in Giza, where the pyramids are closed to tourists.

The violence in Egypt is already hurting the country's tourism industry, and in turn, its economy, The Associated Press reports. It's also raising fears that other Middle Eastern countries will suffer as well:

The timing of the violence and political uncertainty couldn't be worse — winter is the high season for visitors. Large tour operators such as Gate 1 Travel and cruise companies including Norwegian Cruise Line have canceled Egyptian stops. Tours elsewhere in the Middle East haven't been canceled, but travel agents are getting a steady stream of inquiries about the status of planned trips. ...

Tourism is a major industry in Egypt, a country that struggles with poverty. It accounts for 5 percent to 6 percent of the country's gross domestic product, according to several estimates. Egypt is also often a starting point for people exploring Jordan and parts of Northern Africa.

Cairo International Airport is the second-largest airport in Africa after Johannesburg, handling roughly 16 million passengers a year. Most of them — 15 million a year — are tourists, according to the Egyptian Tourist Authority in New York.

Travel guide Lonely Planet has a compilation of tips for anyone who was contemplating a trip to Egypt, while the U.S. Embassy in Cairo has a special warden message with information for Americans trying to get out of the country.

The Egyptian Information Ministry tells CNN it's shutting down mobile phone networks ahead of tomorrow's "March of the Millions" demonstrations. 

While it hasn't been established that the government is behind the failure of Egypt's last public Internet service provider, the report confirms widespread predictions that it would seek to cut off communications with the outside world before the demonstrations begin. 

Many of those predictions got out to the rest of the world over a service Google set up over the weekend, which allows people to tweet by voice mail. 

"No Internet connection is required" to use the service, Google said on its official blog Monday. "We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there."

Many Egyptians are already taking advantage of the service, called Speak2Tweet; you can hear their tweets here. Presumably, traffic on that account will dwindle as cell networks go down overnight, but it shouldn't dry up completely, since the service works with landlines.

Renesys Corp., a network analyst that has closely followed the Internet problems in Egypt, confirms Twitter reports that the last major public Internet service provider in Egypt is down. 

"They are completely unavailable at present," Renesys says. 

The ISP, Noor, had remained in service after the government sought to block Internet access last week. It has been widely speculated that Noor was allowed to stay up because it connects the stock exchange and Western companies in Egypt.

Although it would seem logical that the government is behind the latest move, it hasn't been independently confirmed whether Noor has been shut down or is simply experiencing technical problems. Some Noor customers in Cairo said they had been told that the ISP was working on repairs and expected to be up in a few hours.

Technolog examined the effectiveness of the government's Net  shutdown here. The BBC, meanwhile, has a fascinating look at how Egyptians are getting around the government blockade using fax machines, ham radio and dial-up modems:

Dial-up modems are one of the most popular routes for Egyptians to get back online. Long lists of international numbers that connect to dial-up modems are circulating in Egypt thanks to net activists We Re-Build, Telecomix and others. ...

The group of internet activists known as Anonymous was also using faxes to get information to students at several schools in the country. Anonymous activists have been faxing copies of cables from Wikileaks relating to Egypt in the hope that the information they contain about the Mubarak regime will be more widely distributed. It is not clear how much impact this is having, however.

A U.S. military plane that ferried some U.S. citizens out of Cairo today had actually been sent in to Egypt to deliver additional security for the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, NBC News' Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube report. 

(Details of today's flights: World Blog: How many Americans are in Egypt?)

The plane brought in the 10 to 12 Marines to augment the security force already in Cairo. Rather than let it leave the country empty, the U.S. military agreed to fill the plane with U.S. citizens trying to leave the country. The flight took the Americans to Larnaca, Cyprus. 

The State Department has also sent in additional agents of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security to help with security needs in Cairo.

Update 4:01 p.m. ET: The State Department tells NBC News that Wisner is not a U.S. "envoy" and clarifies reports elsewhere by stressing he wasn't "sent" to Cairo.

Wisner frequently travels to Cairo on business, NBC's Andrea Mitchell and Courtney Kube report, and he may have contacted the State Department offering to help. It isn't clear who is paying for his travel. 

U.S. officials do says he can reinforce the message that has already been sent, both publicly and privately.

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At the daily State Department briefing, spokesman P.J. Crowley said Frank Wisner, who was U.S. ambassador to Egypt from 1986 to 1991, was in Cairo and suggested that he could be an intermediary to President Hosni Mubarak. 

NBC News' Andrea Mitchell has some background:

Wisner was one of the most senior diplomats before his retirement  and served as special representative to the Kosovo peace talks in 2005. 

He served under eight U.S. presidents as ambassador in four countries, including Egypt, India and the Philippines. He is someone with the stature to deliver a tough message to Mubarak if needed, and he is someone whom Mubarak might listen to. 

Wisner's father was a legendary CIA figure portrayed in the film "The Good Shepherd." And an unusual personally note: His wife was previously married to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's father.

Arno Burgi / EPA file

Update 4:12 p.m. ET: Reuters weighs in with more details of the constitutional "dialogue":

Egypt's vice president, Omar Suleiman, said Monday that President Hosni Mubarak has asked him to start dialogue with all political forces, including on constitutional and legislative reforms, a key demand voiced by anti-Mubarak protesters.

The constitutional amendments include easing restrictions on those who are eligible to stand in presidential election.

"The president has asked me today to immediately hold contacts with the political forces to start a dialogue about all raised issues that also involve constitutional and legislative reforms in a form that will result in clear proposed amendments and a specific timetable for its implementation," Suleiman said in a televised address.

Constitutional amendments are key demands by Egyptian opposition groups and protesters who have staged rallies since last week in Cairo and other cities to press Mubarak to step down after a 30-year rule.

_____

Egypt's new vice president, Omar Suleiman (right), has just spoken on state TV and announced that the new government will review whether elections last year were legitimate. 

Suleiman, a controversial former intelligence chief whom Mubarak appointed Saturday as part of his new government, said the review would be part of a "dialogue" for constitutional changes that Mubarak had asked him to undertake with all political parties.

CARLOS BARRIA / Reuters

Hu Yi Xin, left, embraces her daughter Rong Xi as she arrives from Egypt at the Pudon International airport in Shanghai on Monday.

BEIJING - For nearly a week now, as much of the world remains riveted by the events unfolding in Egypt, China is making assiduous efforts to appear uninterested.

At least judging from what’s being reported and what’s being discussed here.

The political turmoil in Cairo has received barely a headline in the People’s Daily, the main Communist Party newspaper, or much coverage by Xinhua, the state-run news agency. And a quick thumb through issues of the China Daily since last Tuesday show the protests only made the front page a couple of times, and photographs from the streets of the Egyptian capital were conspicuously rare.

What has been written is sanitized and the focus is largely on lawlessness. “[W]e hope Egypt could restore social stability and normal order at an early date,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Sunday. 

The coverage also avoids details of the underlying political factors or the calls for democracy, with the demonstrations characterized generally as “anti-government” or “anti-American.”

Information online hasn’t been any more comprehensive. Over the weekend, searches for the word “Egypt” was discovered to have been banned on Weibo, the leading microblogging site run by Sina, and then from other Twitter-like sites and online discussion groups.     

No discussion of dissent
The tight restrictions on media coverage and Internet discussion of the protests in Egypt isn’t much of a surprise.  Beijing, after all, played from the same rulebook in July 2009 after riots broke out between ethnic Han Chinese and Uighurs in Xinjiang. Internet and cell phone services were immediately cut off in the northwestern province and were only reinstated very gradually over the following year. 

There’s been no public official pronouncement, of course, on the information restrictions, but an editorial in the Global Times, a state-run newspaper with strong nationalist leanings, reinforced the fact the Chinese government tolerates no discussion that might lead to questions about its supremacy:

“[D]emocracy has been accepted by most people. But when it comes to political systems, the Western model is only one of a few options. It takes time and effort to apply democracy to different countries, and to do so without the turmoil of revolution.”

The Chinese, of course, know a little something about the turmoil of revolution. The scars from China’s 20th century upheavals – the Great Leap Forward (1959-61) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), to name just two that caused the deaths of tens of millions – have left the Chinese government, and arguably the Chinese people, with little appetite for political instability.

At least that’s what some China-watchers are betting.

Is China next?
As the protests in Egypt entered their second or third day, and unrest appeared to spread to Lebanon and Yemen, foreign journalists began wondering aloud whether China would be next.  To some, it seemed obvious. The images of tanks rolling through the streets of Cairo, in particular, recalled the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and could well rekindle that kind of mass uprising in China.

In fact, Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times arrived in Cairo’s Tahrir Square over the weekend and drew immediate comparisons to Tiananmen Square, which he’d covered for the newspaper. 

One reporter even point-blank asked U.S. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs at a press conference: “Does the U.S. believe – or do you think that China should be concerned in any way about what’s happening in Egypt? Or do you think it’s – they're such completely different societies and that this is mostly an Arab-Muslim thing at this point?”

Here, in the land of China-watchers, the question provoked confident responses of “No.”

‘Churning change…’
While acknowledging “anything is possible,” Richard Burger, a PR specialist who has lived in Taiwan and the mainland, explained why he believed China is different.

“China has done a far better job than Egypt and Tunisia in terms of keeping people employed and placated,” said Burger. “Its public works projects and subsidies of Chinese businesses have helped keep unemployment in check and, unlike in Tunisia, the mood in China [is] wildly optimistic.”

C. Custer over at ChinaGeeks, a China-watcher’s blog, is more circumspect, noting that the chief reason for Beijing’s sensitivity to Egypt coverage is because “the protests in Egypt are motivated by factors that exist in China, too: wealth disparity, corruption, censorship, etc. Of course, China is not Egypt. But the spin machine is still running.”

At the New Yorker, however, Evan Osnos, who has experience both in Egypt and in China, noted, “For all of China’s problems these days, the simple fact is that the dominant sensation in China is the polar opposite of that in Egypt: China is a place of constant, dizzying, churning change…[T]he lives of average Chinese citizens continue to improve fast enough that they see no reason to upturn the system.”

At any rate, today saw slightly more coverage of Egypt in the Chinese media. In part, that came because Beijing issued a warning to its citizens not to travel to Egypt and made arrangements for some 500 Chinese travelers currently stranded in Egypt to be evacuated by plane.

Whether that is the only ripple effect remains to be seen. 

Melissa Phillip / AP

Doaa Khedr, with her daughter, Maryam Ali, 1, protests along with others outside the Egyptian Consulate in Houston, Texas on Sunday. Click here to view a slideshow.

See a slideshow world reactions to Egypt's protest

1 February Update:

One more China pundit enters the fray.  Christina Larson at Foreign Policy notes a few more features that set China apart.  "There is no widespread seething anger towards China's rulers equivalent to what exists in Tunisia and Egypt," she writes.  "In recent years, high-profile protests in China have erupted over specific grievances – ethnic tensions, land rights, environmental degradation among them – but they have not touched Beijing.”

But perhaps all this speculation is misdirected.  As Adam Minter writes, “It might be better – if not more empirical – to step back and ask whether China has sufficient, robust institutions whereby average Chinese citizens can vent their frustrations, anger, and grievances.”

Update 2:32 p.m. ET: Gibbs says there's no hard deadline for Mubarak to take the right steps: "That will be determined by the people of Egypt."

Update 2:24 p.m. ET: Gibbs says Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hasn't done enough. "No one believes the actions taken so far" are sufficient to meet the demands of the Egyptian people, he says.

Update 2:10 p.m. ET: Gibbs says fundamental changes in Egypt's constitution should be strongly considered. He says the U.S. Embassy is in regular touch with non-governmental and business leaders but hasn't yet reached out to Mohammed El Baradei.

Developing: White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is briefing reporters now and reiterates that "there must be an orderly transition." That includes negotiations with opposition groups, because "it is not up to us to determine when the grievances of the Egyptian people are resolved."

Update 2:15 p.m. ET: The Associated Press has details of the Egyptian army's declaration:

A military spokesman, Ismail Etman, has appeared on state TV saying the military "has not and will not use force" against protesters, but he urged them not to commit acts harming security or damage property.

The statement was the strongest sign to date that the military will allow week-old protests to continue and even grow as long as they are peaceful. The statement did not specify what demands the military views as legitimate — but the main demand by protesters is the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

_____

Original post 1:46 p.m. ET: The Egyptian army says it considers the Egyptian people's demands "legitimate" and will not use force against protesters tomorrow.

Al-Arabiya tweeted the bulletin at 1:28 p.m. ET.

The BBC, citing state television, says that "while asserting that it 'will not use force against the people', the Egyptian army has also warned against 'the carrying out of any act that destabilises the security of the country'."

Sky News followed up quickly with a report quoting the army as saying it considers the people's demands 'legitimate.'" Sky's Tim Marshall writes:

I think it really will gain momentum tomorrow. Being in the square today, there were tents and platforms being erected, lots of loud speakers and people are coming up with speeches which are holding the attention of the masses.

Khaled El Fiqi / EPA

Foreigners and locals sit at the Cairo airport as they try to leave the country Monday.

Update 4:56 p.m. ET: NBC News reports that one of the planes evacuating Americans dropped off 10 to 12 Marines to bolster security at the U.S. Embassy.

Update 4:35 p.m. ET: NBC News' Courtney Kube reports that four more flights have left Cairo today, with two more expected soon. That would bring the total of flights today to nine, evacuating about 1,200 Americans to Turkey, Greece and Cyprus.

The United States plans six more flights tomorrow, according to the State Department. At least 50 U.S. citizens overnighting at the Cairo airport will be the first on those flights, it says.
_____

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo tells NBC News that two more flights evacuating Americans have now left Egypt, bringing the total to five flights carrying out official and private American residents. A sixth flight is about to depart for Istanbul, Turkey. About 2,400 About 2,600 Americans (Monday afternoon update) have asked for government-chartered evacuation flights, the State Department says. 

"There will be a limited number of seats available on evacuation flights on January 31," it says in a new warrant message for Egypt. 

No one has a good grasp on how many Americans are in Egypt, but whomever you trust, it's clear that the evacuation flights are taking only a tiny percentage out of the country.

State Department officials say about 52,000 Americans are registered with the embassy in Cairo, but they caution that the count is very squishy because many people don't register at all, and others fail to deregister when they leave. "About 50,000" is the number being used by most news sources, but The New York Times — without saying it how it arrived at its figure — puts the number at about 90,000.

In case you were wondering, yes, you are expected to reimburse the U.S. government for the flight "at a later date," the Cairo embassy says.

NBC News’ Producer Charlene Gubash has lived and worked in Egypt for over 20 years. In a Q &A over the phone from Cairo, she explained the mood in the city today and her sense of how the country is on a precipitous tipping point that could go either way.

What is the mood in Cairo today?  
People are already gathering in Tahrir Square today in anticipation of Tuesday’s planned “million-person march.” Hundreds of thousands of people are reportedly already camping out for the night.

President Hosni Mubarak has just named the new Cabinet – but it hasn’t been accepted by anyone because it’s very similar to the old Cabinet. Many names are similar, but the major posts have changed.    

Basically, people are demanding that Mubarak step down and that there is a transitional government – but they obviously don’t want it to include members of the old government.

What to watch next?
A huge portion of the Egyptian population have now joined the young activists who got the protests going – it’s now swollen into a popular movement to bring down Mubarak’s government.

People are no longer afraid of anything. They are no longer afraid of the police, they have found their voice.  And they are going through with this thing until the end – until Mubarak steps down and the government is changed.

That’s what we have to watch out for.

Meantime, the security situation – is bad. It’s so bad that the U.S. Embassy has offered to help Americans to leave Egypt. Out of the tens of thousands of Americans who are here, many of them have taken the U.S. up on their offer and are heading to places nearby like Istanbul and Athens. 

There is also an exodus of Egyptians. One person who has already left is Mubarak’s daughter-in-law. Many other wealthy families – including one of the most reviled people in the country and a prominent person in the government, Ahmed Ezz, – have left. They have flown to various destinations – primarily London. So, a lot of money has presumably flown out of the country, too. And a lot of other business men are trying to get out. 

As someone who has lived in Egypt for over 20 years, are you surprised by how quickly things have changed? Does the speed of recent turn of events seem almost unbelievable?
My sense is that Egypt has entered a new era. This may be the day that people rue actually.

They need to have a transition – a true democratic transition – with a leader like Mohamed ElBaradei around whom the country can coalesce as kind of a progressive, reformist, revered world figure who is well respected by everyone. Or Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, who is also well-respected by a large segment of the population.

Unless they have moderate transition figures and democratic elections where we don’t see an Islamist figure emerge as the leader of the country, then this country may be headed down the path of becoming another Islamic state. I don’t think that’s completely out of the picture.

It’s a very conservative society. There is no real vigorous political or civil life here.  For example, the best organized-party is the Muslim Brotherhood.

People have become increasingly conservative over the years, so there is a fear that if people do vote, they may be swayed to vote for something like the Muslim Brotherhood. 

There is a real concern that Egypt will move away from being what it was – which is an extremely tolerant, Westernized society – to something that is more of an Islamist, conservative society that would be hostile to Israel.

If it went that way, probably one of the first things Islamist leaders would do would be to abrogate the peace treaty with Israel which has been a big demand of the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups for years. 

But by the same token, you talk to a lot of people and they do bring up the names of ElBaradei and Moussa as people they would like to see as candidates.

So what I think we have to look for is: what’s going to happen with the government. That’s the million dollar question.

Obviously appointing the former head of intelligence as the vice president was not well received. Unless Mubarak appoints someone like ElBaradei or Moussa to head up the government or as vice president and then resigns so that person can effectively become head of a transitional government, I think that these demonstrations will continue until they force the government to fall.

People are coming out because they feel like unless Mubarak steps down, the bloodshed will continue, the looting will continue, the criminality will continue.

You have to understand this is a place where there was almost no crime. For instance, rape is punishable by death. You could walk on the street at 3 or 4 a.m. and no one would touch you. So people have this feeling of safety all the time here – unlike what you would find almost anywhere else in the world. And now it’s the total opposite of that.

So for people to be subjected to the kind of criminality we saw over the weekend – is completely foreign. It’s a different place. It’s like it lost its innocence. 

How do Egyptians see ElBaradei? As an outsider or do they revere him?
A lot of Egyptians do see him as an outsider. He did two things wrong in Egyptian’s eyes when he recently ran for president. 

When he had the chance to explain his platform, he never really did. He said he didn’t really have a plan of action, he didn’t really have a five-year-plan. He said he was coming to listen – and that wasn’t enough for people, they wanted something concrete. That was just before he returned to Egypt. Then when he did come to Egypt, he left right away and didn’t come back until just now.

I think a lot of Egyptians are wondering, why was he absent so long? Why did he just come back now? Is he being an opportunist? So he really needs to prove himself to people.

Of course, they are immensely proud of him because he is a Nobel laureate, he was head of the IAEA, he stood up to the United States. So he has a lot of credentials, but he does have prove himself as a patriot. 

And Mubarak?
I think he’ll hang on until the bitter end. If he were not going to hang on, one would think he would seen the writing on the wall and have left by now out of concern for the country.

But it’s difficult to say. He’s obviously out of touch. He’s obviously concerned about the stability of the country. And I think in his mind, stability means having a tight grip on things.  

Update 3:52 p.m. ET: U.S. Soccer, the sport's governing body in the United States, has announced that the Feb. 9 U.S. international match against Egypt in Cairo has been canceled "due to the current conditions in the country." 

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It might seem like a small point — who cares about sports when you're in the middle of a possible revolution? — but in a smart piece for Sports Illustrated, Dave Zirin explains why it was important for the Egyptian Soccer Federation to indefinitely suspend the soccer league: 

Clearly this was a case of too little, too late. Even without games, the football fan associations have been front and center organizing everything from the neighborhood committees that have been providing security for residents, to direct confrontation with the state police. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Alaa Abd El Fattah, a prominent Egyptian blogger said, "The ultras — have played a more significant role than any political group on the ground at this moment." Alaa then joked, "Maybe we should get the ultras to rule the country."

The involvement of the clubs has signaled more than just the intervention of sports fans. The soccer clubs' entry into the political struggle also means the entry of the poor, the disenfranchised, and the mass of young people in Egypt for whom soccer was their only outlet.

Although his blog is in Arabic, El Fattah is offering frequent observations in English on his Twitter feed. 

Egypt has moved about 800 troops into the Sinai peninsula with Israel's consent, Reuters reports: 

Permission was granted in response to a request from Cairo, and the forces have been deployed around the southern Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, one [Israeli] official said. Two other officials confirmed that Israel had granted such a request. ...

Israel Radio said "Israel is looking the other way" as Egypt positions forces in the Sinai "to try to make sure the situation doesn't get out of hand" there.

Israel last let Egypt station armed forces in Sinai after it pulled its own troops out of Gaza in 2005.

Update 11:03 a.m. ET: Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood tell NBC News in a call to its Cairo bureau that it "rejects the new government and calls on Egyptian people to continue with demonstrations and to spread the demonstrations throughout the country until the regime has fallen. We call on people to have patience until they succeed."

Catching you up on the protests in Egypt after a momentous weekend:

• The seventh day of protests opened today with the wholesale replacement of President Hosni Mubarak's Cabinet as thousands of protesters poured into Tahrir Square chanting, "Get out ... we want you out," and singing the national anthem. Msnbc.com rounds up developments.

• Israelis are closely watching the situation in one of their few allies in the region, NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports from Tel Aviv:

• A flight carrying 42 dependents of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo has just touched down in Larnaca, Cyprus, this morning, NBC's Tom Aspell  reports from the Cypriot capital. Another charter flight with 150 or more evacuees is expected, but there is no word yet on when it will arrive. 

Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Janice Jacobs tells MSNBC there are seven charter flights scheduled for today heading to Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. If all the scheduled flights go out, the United States have transported more than 900 Americans out of Egypt and expects to remove 1,000 more tomorrow. 

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports that the U.S. military has no direct role in the airlift but is watching the situation closely and planning for contingencies.

• State newspapers have published a sharply worded letter from Mubarak ordering the new prime minister, former Air Force Gen. Ahmed Shafiq, him to move swiftly to introduce political, legislative and constitutional reforms. 

• Preparations are continuing for a massive demonstration of more than 1 million people tomorrow in Cairo. The New York Times has details. 

• The Washington Post reports that uniformed police are back on the streets after not having been in evidence over the weekend. The army has not interfered with the protests and has not enforced the curfews. That could change, however, with police back in the picture," it says. 

• Al-Jazeera, which has been the leading conduit of news from the country, reports that six of its journalists were arrested and held for about 90 minutes. "The move comes a day after Al Jazeera was told to shut down its operations in the country and saw its signal to some parts of the Middle East cut," it says. 

• China is also censoring reports to its huge population. "A search for 'Egypt' on the Twitter-like service Sina brings up a message saying, 'According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown,'" The Christian Science Monitor reports.

As rioting and protests erupted for a third straight day in Egypt on Thursday, social networking sites were abuzz with talk that Friday's rallies could be some of the biggest so far calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power. Millions will gather at mosques across the Cairo for Friday prayers – providing organizers with a huge number of people already out on the streets that they hope to tap into.

MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY / Reuters

Egyptian anti-government protesters attack a riot police car in the port city of Suez, about 80 miles east of Cairo, on Thursday.

Here are some good resources on the Web to watch for developments:

Twitter:
Twitter has been blocked in Egypt, but news about demonstrations, arrests and police retaliation are still being circulated on the Twitter hashtags #Egypt and #jan25. The date Jan. 25 refers to when the violent mass protests started. 

Al Jazeera’s staff has compiled tweets on the protests. YouTube
Protesters continue to upload video, like this one of a man standing in front of a water-cannon truck, dubbing it, “Egypt’s Tiananmen Square moment.” 

This YouTube video shows protests at the Tahrir bus station in downtown Cairo on Wednesday.

Blogs, web sites
The English edition of the independent Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm has regular updates. They reported that the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest political opposition organization in Egypt, will join Friday’s demonstration.

The Guardian newspaper is live blogging the protests.

Global Voices, an international community of bloggers, translates local social media into English and has a page dedicated to Egypt Protests 2011.  
 
Al Jazeera has extensive coverage of the protests.

The New York Times’ Lede blog has coverage of the protests – particularly video emerging on social media sites.

The Council on Foreign Relations has coverage of the foreign policy implications with one of the Middle East experts, Steven Cook, blogging from Cairo.  

Foreign Policy also has an interesting analysis on the million-dollar question: “Will the Arab revolutions spread?”

The Economist also covers the current Middle East phenomenon that Egyptians have jokingly dubbed a “Tunisami” and the question of whether the wave of popular revolt on the Arab street will take down Egypt.

See a slideshow of some of the Egyptian bloggers who brave police intimidation to spread information.

If you know of other Egypt news resources, send them in? We’ll continue to update this list.

By Lawahez Jabari, NBC News Producer 

Al Jazeera recently revealed documents showing that Palestinian negotiators offered to hand over almost all of East Jerusalem to Israel – much more substantial peace concessions than previously known. 

Many Palestinians were confused and angry, but not surprised, by the revelations leaked in the minutes from a 2008 meeting between Palestinian, U.S. and Israeli officials that showed a senior Palestinian proposing that Israel annex all but one of its major Jerusalem settlements as part of a broad deal to end their decades-old conflict.

Assad Rabuh, a 53-year-old auto accessories shop owner, had lost faith in the peace process long ago.

"I never trust Palestinians or Israelis,” said Rabuh. “I knew that the Palestinians will cede everything to the Israelis, with those documents we have a proof now of their secrets negotiations.”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the documents showed the Palestinian Authority’s attempts to undermine the Palestinian people's rights.

"We consider these documents are further evidence of the security and political decadence which the PA stooped to," Abu Zuhri said.
One particularly sensitive issue in the leaked documents touched on the plight of Palestinian refugees who want to create a state on land Israel seized in a 1967 war. According to the documents, the Palestinians agreed that Israel would take in 10,000 refugees a year for 10 years – a total of 100,000.  

“We are living in a bad situation, as you see in this camp, hoping that we will go back to our homes one day,” said Mossa, a 65-year-old living in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus,  in the West Bank. “No one has the right to take this hope from me. Millions like me in the Arab world share the same hope. If that's true, negotiators have to be punished.”

Another painful revelation for the Palestinians was that despite all the major concessions they offered, Israel offered nothing in return – and even rejected the offer, saying it did not go far enough. That point revived doubts that Israel even wants to participate in the peace process.

“All the concessions that Palestinians gave were rejected by Israelis. It proves that Israel doesn't want peace,” said Dr. Mustafa Barghuti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political party that views itself as a “democratic third force” in Palestinian politics besides Fatah and Hamas.

“To depend on negotiations is wrong, it’s a failure,” said Barghuti.  

By NBC News’ Atia Abawi 

KABUL – Chaos is a word quite frequently used to describe various situations in Afghanistan. This time it’s about the parliament. 
Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai created confusion by announcing that he was going to delay the opening of parliament for one month because of disputes over September's parliamentary elections and protests around the country by losing candidates.

Musadeq Sadeq / AP

Supporters of former legislator Najibullah Mujahed shout slogans against last September's parliamentary poll during a demonstration in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday.

But on Tuesday, the presidential palace sent out a press release saying that the inauguration of the new parliament will go ahead Wednesday – ending a tense stand-off with lawmakers.

So, what was all the confusion about? 

Disputed elections
On Sept. 18, 2010, millions of Afghans ignored insurgent threats and headed to the polls to vote for candidates they hoped to send as representatives to Kabul. It was Afghanistan’s second parliamentary vote ever.

But even though millions did show up, millions more felt threatened and did not. It had the lowest turnout yet of any election Afghanistan has had.

Like past Afghan elections, it was tarred by allegations of fraud and corruption. Complaints of ballot stuffing, fake voter registration cards, and indelible ink that magically disappeared with a quick wash were among just a few of the complaints submitted to the authorities. 

But the biggest problem of all was the insurgency that continues to plague much of the country.

Ethnic divide?
Because of voter insecurity in many of the ethnic Pashtun regions – areas where the Taliban have a strong hold – many people in those areas did not vote. Therefore, many of the votes – and in turn, the new parliamentarians – come from the Tajik and Hazara ethnicities.

That has led to fears that Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in the country, may feel so alienated that they turn away from the government and into the hands of the Taliban.

For example, Ghazni Province, in eastern Afghanistan, is about 70 percent Pashtun, with some districts made up of Hazara and Tajik ethnicities. In the last parliament Ghazni was represented by six Pashtuns, three Hazaras and two Tajiks.

But because of voter insecurity during the recent election, most of the Pashtuns didn’t make it to the polls – so all the winners this time were of the Hazara minority.  

AHMAD MASOOD / Reuters

A member of Afghanistan's parliament leaves a meeting hall at the Inter-continental hotel in Kabul on Saturday. Defiant Afghan lawmakers met with Karzai on Saturday for last minute talks to stave off a showdown over when to open parliament that has brought political turmoil and fears of street violence to Kabul.

As a result, Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, has once again found himself in a precarious situation.

If untouched, the majority of the new parliament’s lower house, made up of 249 seats, will be Tajik and Hazara.

Latest problems
Karzai has created a special tribunal to investigate the hundreds of voter complaints.

But because their job is not complete, the tribunal and the attorney general asked Karzai to delay the inauguration of parliament by 30 days to address the problems. Karzai initially agreed. 

But Karzai’s decision angered the parliamentarians who expected to be inaugurated on Jan. 23.  That’s when the pandemonium really began.

A substantial number of the new parliamentarians decided they would disobey the president and inaugurate themselves, which according to the Afghan constitution is illegal.

Compromise?  
To avoid “chaos” again, Karzai ended up offering the parliamentarians a deal. 

He said he would inaugurate the new parliament on Wednesday, three days after their initial date, on the condition that they  obey the findings of his tribunal. If any parliamentarian is found guilty of voter fraud, they will be kicked out of the new parliament.

So for now, at least, it  seems we will see the inauguration on Wednesday.

But the story will not be over any time soon. 

Ever since the election results were announced, candidates who did not win a seat and felt cheated have led weekly protest marches through the streets of Kabul and around the country.

And they have vowed to continue to disrupt the process they say they were cheated out of. So chaos averted, for now.

By NBC News’ Carol Grisanti and Mushtaq Yusufzai

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Sultan Ameer Tarar, a U.S.-trained former Pakistani spymaster who guided the Taliban as they rose to power in Afghanistan, has died – after being kidnapped by the same people he once helped.

And now the group is apparently holding his body for ransom.
 
A colorful figure also widely known by the code name Col. Imam, Tarar was instantly recognizable by his small white turban and army camouflage jacket.

Once asked if he was copying Osama Bin Laden by wearing the same style turban, he replied, “No, Osama has copied me.”
 
Mullah Omar’s trainer
Tarar was trained as a commando with U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., in 1974 as part of routine training of Pakistani forces by the U.S. at the time.

Later, as an American ally, Tarar helped the CIA train, support and funnel thousands of young fighters into Afghanistan during the 1980s to fight the Soviet invaders. After the Soviets’ defeat in Afghanistan, former President George H.W. Bush acknowledged Tarar’s contribution by inviting him to the White House.
 
“I trained 95,000 fighters over a 10-year period,” Tarar told NBC News in an interview last year. “I trained all the trainers for the jihad; I was in charge.”
  
He was perhaps best known for teaching a young cleric, Mullah Omar, how to wage guerrilla warfare. Omar went on to become the leader of the Taliban and the spiritual head of the movement.

More recently, U.S. government officials believed that he was among a group of retired officers for the ISI, Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, who continued to help the Taliban fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan. However, Tarar always denied the charge. 
 
Best laid plans went awry
Despite his ties to the Afghan Taliban, Tarar was kidnapped last March as he traveled with another retired ISI official, Khalid Khawaja, and British-Pakistani journalist, Asad Qureshi, in North Waziristan.

They planned to make a documentary on the Pakistani branch of the Taliban, interview their leaders and highlight the effects of the U.S. drone strikes on the civilian population in North Waziristan.

But almost from the beginning, their plans went terribly wrong.

Soon after they arrived in North Waziristan, a little known Taliban offshoot, The Asian Tigers, kidnapped the three men and demanded a ransom of $25 million. A few months later, the militants accused Khawaja of spying for the CIA and executed him. Qureshi, the journalist, was freed after ransom money was paid to two Asian Tiger commanders – but Tarar was stuck in captivity.

Taliban and tribal sources told NBC News that Tarar’s health had deteriorated while he was in their custody. “Talks had been underway for his release, when he suffered a heart attack and died,” said a senior Taliban commander.
 
The family has still not received any official confirmation of Tarar’s death, nor word about where, or if, they can collect his body. 

“Someone called us this morning to say that our relative is no more, but would not give us anymore details,” a close family member told NBC News, requesting anonymity out of fear of the Taliban.

However, one Taliban source told NBC News that the group was still holding Tarar’s body. “We have informed the family and the Pakistan government of our demands before we hand over the body,” he said.

The Taliban are, allegedly, demanding that the Pakistan army release five of their most prominent fighters from prison and that the family pay an undisclosed amount in ransom for them to release the body.

‘They are ruthless’
Before venturing off into North Waziristan last year, Tarar spoke often with foreign journalists. He insisted that negotiations with the Taliban were the only way to end the 10-year-old war. However, his kidnapping and death demonstrates the complexities and changing relationships among the different parties in the conflict and the disparities among the various groups of militants.

Tarar surely felt that he would be welcome among the Taliban in the tribal areas because of his previous ties to them and to their leader, Mullah Omar. It was a fatal miscalculation.
 
“I knew him well; we worked together when I was running the ISI. He was a very good officer,” said Javed Ashraf Qazi, a former director-general of the ISI. “He should not, however, have attempted to play any kind of role to reconcile the Taliban in his private capacity because as we all can see dealing with the Taliban is dangerous business. They are ruthless.”

Ian Williams / NBC News

Testing for malaria in a village near Pailin, Cambodia.

PAILIN, Cambodia – The border crossing between Thailand and Cambodia at Pailin has a rather bleak feel about it at the best of times. In the heavy monsoon rain, the dingy checkpoints are reduced to gray smudges. But a little beyond, on the Cambodian side, the neon of a casino beckons those Thais willing to brave the downpour for gambling tables, illegal in their country.

Until the late 1990s, these border areas were the last holdout of the murderous Khmer Rouge, which was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million Cambodians.

But this mosquito-infested area now has another sinister claim to fame – for deadly malaria. This is the region where resistance to just about every major anti-malarial drug has first taken hold.

And history shows that once resistance emerges, it can quickly spread worldwide, rendering the drugs useless in the fight against a mosquito-borne parasite that still kills nearly a million people worldwide each year, most of them in Africa.

The Khmer Rouge have now been defeated, but not drug-resistant malaria. The Pailin area is now the epicenter of a fight to contain a growing resistance to Artemisinin, which is the world's main anti-malarial drug.

Pre-emptive strike
"We've got to contain the parasite before it spreads throughout the region. If that happens it’s going to be a public health emergency," said Dr. Najibullah Habib, spearheading the containment project on behalf of the World Health Organization.

We met Habib not far from the border, where hundreds of health workers are moving from village to village, testing everybody, a pre-emptive strike to try to find, treat and monitor those with malaria symptoms.

"If we lose this first-line drug, this Artemisinin, then we are lost," said Christopher Raymond, an American drug specialist working with the project. He said that as of today there is no good backup if malaria becomes Artemisinin-resistant.  

The alarm was first sounded by U.S. Army researchers, who showed that in the border areas Artemisinin was taking far longer to clear malaria than in the past.

Ian Williams / NBC News

Malaria victim at the public hospital in Anlong Veng, Cambodia.

"It was clear that the parasites are becoming less susceptible to the drug," said David Saunders of the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS), which has now extended its study further along the border.

"We've really come in at a crucial time," said Saunders' colleague Stuart Tyner. "We're fortunate to have identified this now," he added, "at a time when it’s just becoming an issue."

He says there is still time to fight it, and working with Cambodian health officials their aim now is to see if it is spreading, how fast, and to test different combinations of drugs to fight it.

"It's harder for parasites to develop resistance to multiple drugs," Tyner told me as he studied through a microscope parasites recently extracted from a patient in the public hospital at Anlong Veng, where AFRIMS has set up a state-of-the-art laboratory.

They also want to learn how the parasite develops its resistance.

Why here? 
While U.S. experts are playing a crucial role in the research and containment projects, USAID and the Gates Foundation are throwing millions of dollars into the battle.

But why this border? Why has resistance always started here?
 
Experts speculate that conflict, poverty and a lot of migrants moving across the border have all played a part. 

Resistance also spreads when people don't take drugs properly, and counterfeit and sub-standard drugs are also to blame. They have been rife in the border areas.

"It's a race against time," said Christopher Raymond, an expert in counterfeit drugs, whose project is backed by U.S. Pharmacopeia and USAID. He's been part of a blitz on local pharmacies.

He says the fake drugs are often very good, though others contain just a pinch of the real thing.

"It's like putting out a fire with gasoline. It’s eventually going to explode into resistance because you are constantly under-treating it."

They have also banned the use of pure Artemisinin, figuring that the life of the drug can be better extended if it is used in combination with others.

Ian Williams / NBC News

After the rains. late afternoon near Pailin, the epicenter for drug-resistant malaria.

Officials say they are having an impact, though separately a Cambodian colleague said he was still able to buy banned anti-malarial drugs in three of six pharmacies he visited.

And before Christmas the WHO warned that a suspected drug-resistant strain of malaria has now been found along the Thai-Myanmar border and in a province of Vietnam – an ominous development.

Cambodia's rain-soaked border areas hardly look like the epicenter of anything, but the stakes are high: What happens here over coming months could impact the health of millions worldwide.

Lenin supporters gather in Moscow's Red Square on Friday, the 87th anniversary of the leader's death.

By Yonatan Pomrenze, NBC News

Red Square without Lenin? Hard to imagine. Like Trafalgar Square without Nelson. Or Times Square without the Naked Cowboy. But it’s an idea that’s floated every couple years – and it was proposed again yesterday, on the eve of the anniversary of Lenin’s death.

On Thursday, a deputy in Prime Minister Putin’s ruling United Russia party suggested removing Vladimir Lenin’s preserved body from the iconic mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square and finally burying him, 87 years after the leader's death. Vladimir Mendinski didn’t sugarcoat his language, referring to Lenin as an “extremely controversial political figure” and calling his Red Square burial an “absurd, pagan-necrophilic mission.”

The fighting words to Russia’s Communist Party didn’t keep a few hundred Lenin supporters from braving 10-degree weather to gather on Red Square today to lay flowers at the mausoleum.

“They want to falsify history,” said 63 year-old Lidiya Petrovna, when told of Mendinski’s comments. “They want to bury not just his body, but his ideas. We are here as Soviet citizens!” I reminded her that we are in Russia now, but she dismissed me. “I am Soviet. This isn’t my country.”

Anatoly Turenko, a 36-year-old Moscow Communist official, made it clear that his party was opposed to moving the body: “This is a decision for all Soviet nations to make together.”

For now, there is nothing for them to worry about: Media reports quoted the Kremlin press office saying they had no plans to move Lenin’s body. But it remains to be seen how much longer Lenin supporters can present a solid opposition. The average age of those gathered at Red Square today couldn’t have been under 65, and polls show a continuing decline of support amongst Russians to keeping Lenin in the mausoleum.

'It's the building that's so iconic'
Seeing Lenin’s body (or what is left of it – Mendinski claims that only 10 percent of what is left can actually be called Lenin’s body) is also a big draw for tourists. Five days a week, tourists line up to silently shuffle through the mausoleum and get a quick look at Lenin. Today’s anniversary events kept tourists from even getting near the mausoleum, but they still weighed in on the controversy.

“As long as the mausoleum stays, they can take the body,” said Simon Gay, a singer from the Westminster Abbey Choir, taking in Red Square before a performance. “It’s the building that’s so iconic.” As for how to settle the debate, Gay had a unique suggestion: “Maybe they can rotate a different body in there every week.”