Syria offers concessions amid wave of unrest (AP)
AP – Facing an extraordinary wave of popular dissent, Syrian President Bashar Assad fired his Cabinet on Tuesday and promised to end widely despised emergency laws — concessions unlikely to appease protesters demanding sweeping reforms in one of the most hard-line nations in the Middle East.
Google says China blocking its email services (AP)
AP – Google said Monday the Chinese government is interfering with its email services in China, making it difficult for users to gain access to its Gmail program, amid an intensified Internet crackdown following widespread unrest in the Middle East.
Libya live report (AFP)
AFP – 2130 GMT: This concludes the AFP Live Report for Libya and the Middle East for Friday. Here is a recap of the main events regarding Libya:
Obama steers clear of ‘doctrine’ as Arab tumult rages (AFP)
AFP – As a wildfire of revolt whips through the Middle East and North Africa, the White House is embracing pragmatism and shying away from embroidering a grand “Obama doctrine” for a region in turmoil.
After Bahrain crackdown, mourning and more protest
Outside a Manama hospital where wounded protesters are treated and the dead are laid out, grief mixes with renewed fury aimed at the ruling royal family. Authorities defend the crackdown. Beyond the hospital grounds, heavily armed police trying to secure this tiny kingdom against the contagion of unrest spreading across the Middle East manned checkpoints and grimly gripped their weapons. Within, perplexed and angry protesters insisted that they wouldn’t be cowed.
Egypt’s Mubarak Will Not Run for Re-Election
CAIRO, Egypt – Egyptian President Vows to Restore Security and Stability and to Ensure Peaceful Transition of Power. President Mubarak says he does not intend to run for president again. Egyptian state television confirmed Tuesday that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is planning to address the nation shortly. It was not clear what Mubarak would say, but Al-Arabiya television said there were unconfirmed reports that would he “accommodate all the demands made by the people” by not running in the next presidential elections, which are slated for September. A “senior administration official” in Washington also told CNN that Mubarak would not seek reelection. Than news came after a day in which at least a quarter-million people – and perhaps as many as 2 million – flooded Cairo’s main square Tuesday in a stunning and jubilant array of young and old, urban poor and middle class professionals, mounting by far the largest protest yet in a week of unrelenting demands Mubarak to leave after nearly 30 years in power. Mubarak has been nearly silent so far in the face of the protests. The New York Times, citing unnamed U.S. diplomats, reports that U.S. President Barack Obama may have been instrumental in pressuring Mubarak not to seek another term, “effectively withdrawing American support for its closest Arab ally.” The State Department had dispatched a retired senior diplomat – former ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner – to meet with Egyptian officials, and Wisner delivered Mr. Obama’s message to Mubarak himself, the Times reported. A senior American official told the Associated Press that Wisner told Mubarak the U.S. saw his presidency at an end and urged him to prepare for an orderly transition to real democracy with elections. Wisner and Mubarak are friends and the official said the retired ambassador made clear that it was the U.S “view that his tenure as president is coming to close.” Tuesday’s crowds – determined but peaceful – filled Tahrir, or Liberation, Square and spilled into nearby streets, among them people defying a government transportation shutdown to make their way …
Google Service to Let Egyptians Tweet by Voice
CBS News – Talk about a quick hack. Google is offering a new service to help Egyptians transmit Twitter messages by using a phone. Talk about a quick hack. Google is offering a new service to help Egyptians transmit Twitter messages by using a phone. The offering rests in part on engineering talent Google acquired when it bought a company called SayNow just a week ago. When a message is left on the service, called Speak To Tweet,, it will instantly tweet the message using the #egypt hashtag. The announcement was made on Google’s official blog: Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service–the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection. We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet. 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. The blog was co-authored by Ujjwal Singh, the co-founder of SayNow and AbdelKarim Mardini, a Google product manager in the Middle East and North Africa.
© 2012 Windham Media Network. 
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