Breaking News

By Ali Abdelaty and Maggie Fick CAIRO (Reuters) - A protester was killed in Egypt and a bomb wounded two policemen on Sunday, the anniversary of the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, security sources said. The anniversary is a test of whether Islamists and liberal activists who have faced a tough security crackdown have the resolve to challenge Egypt's U.S.-backed government once again. Security forces have been stamping out dissent since the army ousted president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013 after mass protests against his rule. Dozens of protesters were killed during last year's anniversary of the revolt centred in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

LONDON (AP) — When cartoonists at a French publication that had poked fun at the Prophet Muhammad were shot dead, millions around the world felt it as an attack on freedom of speech.

By Yara Bayoumy SANAA (Reuters) - No sooner had Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi announced his resignation than his country's tenuous political fabric began to disintegrate.     Provinces across a nation barely held together by a complex web of tribal and religious alliances said they would no longer take military commands from Sanaa after the Iranian-allied Shi'ite Houthi group besieged Hadi's home and palace this week. The emerging fragmentation of the Arabian Peninsula country has sparked fears of the "Somalization" of a state which is home to a revitalized al Qaeda insurgency as well as a neighbor to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.     For Washington, Yemen's splintering would make it hard to carry out a counter-terrorism strategy against al Qaeda plotters who have targeted it and its ally Saudi Arabia and claimed responsibility for the Jan. 7 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. Through Hadi, a supporter of U.S. drone strikes on al Qaeda, Yemen was a top U.S. ally in the Washington's fight against islamist militancy.