What it is aint exactly clear...

But let's try and get some perspective anyway.

The peaceful mass demonstrations in Egypt over the past ten days against dictator Hosni Mubarak turned into a pitched battle on February 2 when coordinated groups of "pro-government supporters" armed with knives, spears and machetes attacked the streets leading to Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and began throwing rocks at the protesters and systematically attacking journalists. They were supported by a cavalry charge of sorts as maniacs on horses and camels plowed into the crowds, lashing out wildly with their horsewhips. The coordinated nature of the assault was unmistakable as these "pro-government supporters" next sought vantage points on rooftops overlooking the masses of protesters and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks in every direction. Their fury and stark raving psychopathology stands in total contrast to the millions of peaceful protesters we've seen on the streets of Egypt's cities over the past week; organising neighbourhood watches, street-cleaning operations and security checkpoints to screen for the "pro-Mubarak supporters" and to detain the undercover policemen disguised as looters.

I'll clarify something here that mainstream pundits seem a little hazy on: there are no "pro-Mubarak supporters". Their numbers are predominantly made up of the police and security services that had disappeared from the city center on the third day of the revolution when the protesters chased them back across the October 6th bridge spanning the Nile river. They're joined by desperate youths enticed by promises of thirty pieces of silver and thousands of prisoners released from jails during the initial chaos on January 25. Mubarak's intention is for these neanderthals to create mayhem that will necessitate directing the enormous Egyptian army to finally do something about the "fighting between both sides." It's the old story of 'divide and conquer'.

A "Black Widow" suicide bomber planned a terrorist attack in central Moscow on New Year's Eve but was killed when an unexpected text message set off her bomb too early, according to Russian security sources.

The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt near Red Square on New Year's Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.

Security sources believe a message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her at a safe house.

A 91-year-old Minnesota man and his 82-year-old wife say they weren't scared, but the guy trying to rob them sure was.


A masked intruder wanting money barged into Wally and Betty's apartment in St. Charles over the weekend. However, he got something in return.

Wally was sitting at his computer when the man entered his home.

"He just stood there in that doorway, standing there with a shovel," said Wally. "I thought, 'what the hell is going on here?' I thought it was a joke!"

After hearing all the commotion, his wife, Betty, went to the front of the house and found him on the floor. Wally had been punched in the nose and it was bleeding.

"I sat on the edge of the bed. He says, 'give me your hands! I'm going to tie you up!' And I said, 'No, I don't think so," Betty said.

They both resisted. It happens to be in Wally's blood. The World War 2 veteran wasn't about to give in to the guy's demands - his wife wasn't either.

After a couple minutes of struggling, the man ran out the door with nothing.

"I'm damn near 92 years old. So, I've lived my life. He's got his ahead of him, and it might not be too rosy, you know?" Wally said.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have started a silent protest in the Albanian capital Tirana, a week to the day after clashes during an opposition rally killed three.

The demonstrators, headed by the leadership of the opposition Socialists and the families of the victims, started a march on the government buildings. People continued to pour into the downtown area near the government, bringing traffic in central Tirana to a standstill. Many protesters carried flowers.

Taking advantage of a NC Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) decision to allow them back into the ocean, commercial striped bass trawlers off of Oregon Inlet again killed and discarded thousands of striped bass today in a tragic and wasteful repeat of last month's fish kill.

Despite the massive striped bass kill last month, DMF director Dr. Louis Daniel reopened the ocean trawler striper season and once again the commercial trawlers left a miles-long trail of wasted, dead stripers.

"There are thousands of discarded striped bass covering an area approximately 1-1 ½ miles wide and 3-5 miles long," said one eyewitness observer who flew over the fish kill in a helicopter. "There is no disputing the fact that these fish came from the trawler fleet as there were no other boats in the area."

As brief power outages rolled across the state on Wednesday, certain places were intended to be exempt from a temporary loss of electricity. That included hospitals, nursing homes, fire stations, police stations, other emergency response facilities... and Cowboys Stadium?

When officials with Oncor said that the Arlington site of Sunday's Super Bowl XLV would not be a part of the rolling outages, many residents became furious. But this was not entirely a choice made by the local utility company.

With thousands of reporters huddled in North Texas hotels and thousands of rabid football fans attending the NFL Experience at the Dallas Convention Center, and two football teams preparing to do battle on the field of Cowboys Stadium this Sunday, the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee had a big request to make. "It is vitally important we don't have blackouts," said committee vice president Tony Fay.

Fay asked the City of Dallas, the City of Fort Worth and the City of Arlington to ensure that rolling blackouts did not prevent planned events from happening at Super Bowl venues. That news really steamed up some homeowners who were left without power for hours. "We're not prioritizing," said frustrated Plano resident Allen Hooser. "Hospitals and the grocery store, which is out. But for a PR stunt, where you can go throw a football, you have power and heat."

They are the critical care safety nets for North Texas: Parkland, Baylor, Methodist and Presbyterian Dallas. So, during Wednesday's rolling outages, why was the power cut to these vital hospitals?

Jorie Klein runs disaster management for Parkland Hospital, and is still upset that her hospital was included in the rotating outages. "We were not happy," she said. "You can't just go down for 15 minutes and come back up. It really does disrupt hospital care."

Because of the sensitive life-saving equipment, hospitals are considered "critical care facilities," and supposed to be exempt from rolling blackouts. That's exactly what Presbyterian Dallas was led to believe. "We were of the understanding that hospitals and other critical-care providers were not supposed to be affected by planned outages," said hospital spokesman Stephen O'Brien.

Oncor admits that a mistake was made. "We are sorry this happened. We are in a process of refining our processes, so in the unlikely event of future mandates for rotating outages, hospitals will be excluded," said Oncor spokeswoman Catherine Cuellar.

New York - E-mails and other internal documents show that executives at JPMorgan Chase were complicit in Bernard Madoff's massive fraud, lawyers seeking to recover funds for his victims said Thursday.

The lawyers work for a court-appointed trustee who filed a $6.4 billion complaint under seal late last year against JPMorgan, the disgraced financier's primary bank for two decades. The parties agreed to make portions of it public on Thursday.

Among the e-mails cited is one in 2007 in which an unidentified JPMorgan Chase employee recounts being told "there is a well-known cloud over the head of Madoff and that his returns are speculated to be part of a (P)onzi scheme."

The material supports allegations that "the bank's top executives were warned in blunt terms about speculation that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme," attorney Deborah Renner said in a statement. "Yet the bank appears to have been more concerned only with protecting its own investments in (the Madoff firm's) feeder funds."

In a statement on Thursday, JPMorgan said the complaint "is meritless and is based on distortions of both the relevant facts and the governing law."

Attacks on Foreign Press Growing During Egyptian Uprising

A group of angry Egyptian men carjacked an ABC News crew and threatened to behead them today in the latest and most menacing attack on foreign reporters trying to cover the anti-government uprising.

Producer Brian Hartman, cameraman Akram Abi-hanna and two other ABC News employees were surrounded on a crowded road that leads from Cairo's airport to the city's downtown area.

While ABC News and other press agencies had been taking precautions to avoid volatile situations, the road to the airport had been a secure route until today. One of their two vehicles was carrying cameras and transmission equipment strapped to the roof, indicating they were foreign journalists.

Hartman says it was only through the appeal of Abi-hanna, who is Lebanese and a veteran ABC cameraman, that they were saved from being killed or severely beaten.

"We thought we were goners," Hartman said later. "We absolutely thought we were doomed."

An anonymous arsonist has contacted Kent Police to claim responsibility for five major fires in Maidstone.

The first blaze took place at Lenham Ironmongers on October 28, which spread to the constituency office of Faversham and Mid Kent MP Hugh Robertson.

Boughton Monchelsea service station was set alight on December 29, followed by a bathroom studio in Chart Sutton on January 28, garages off Headcorn High Street on January 30, and a car garage in Ulcombe between January 29 and 30.