News stories by Cam McGrath, page 7

With the nation's economy in tatters from the uprising that ousted its dictator of 30 years, Egypt's transitional government has turned its back on the Western lending institutions that once propped the Mubarak regime. But its decision to accept the massive aid packages dangled by the oil-rich Arab Gulf states has raised suspicions about their intentions, as well as its own.

Ali Mohsen knows how to tell a good fish story. The wiry, white-haired Egyptian mariner weaves a yarn about his childhood days when the sea was so full of fish that one could simply dangle a hand net over the side of the boat and pull up a seafood dinner. This morning, his crew spent hours out at sea with only four kilos of small fish to show for it.

The violence that engulfed downtown Cairo last week and left over 1,000 civilians injured took everyone by surprise, but was not unexpected. It had been brewing for nearly five months.

Throughout Egypt the once-ubiquitous name and image of ousted president Hosni Mubarak is becoming increasingly scarce as citizens attempt to purge the land of the former dictator's tarnished legacy.

Mohamed Saeed’s battle with a wrecking crew ended predictably. His refusal to leave the home his grandfather built and defiant attempts to throw himself in front of the giant hydraulic hammer bought his family some time, but by the end of the day their two-storey house was reduced to rubble.

Governments and international institutions that once bankrolled the authoritarian regimes of Tunisia’s Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak have begun floating aid packages to speed up the economic recovery and transition to democracy in these countries. Arab revolutionaries have reason to be wary.

Liberal and secular Egyptians at the core of mass protests that toppled the regime of Hosni Mubarak are scrambling to form a unified political front ahead of critical parliamentary elections in which they will face the better-organised Islamists.

Thousands of Egyptian civilians, including protesters who helped topple the authoritarian regime of president Hosni Mubarak, have been tried in military courts without due process. 'The use of military trials on this scale is without precedent,' says Adel Ramadan, a rights lawyer at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

The collapse of autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt has broken the state’s stranglehold on the local press, but journalists and bloggers must still be careful what they say.

Ousted president Hosni Mubarak ran Egypt as his own private estate, carving up its resources and siphoning off its capital into offshore accounts. But he didn’t do it alone: he had help from his family and a few trusted friends.