Egypt After Mubarak: Three Ex-Ministers Arrested

Habib el-Adly has been blamed for deadly police violence during the protests Continue reading the main story

Ahmed Ezz was a close ally of President Mubarak Mr Ezz is a senior leader in Mr Mubarak's party and owner of Ezz Steel.

The authorities in Egypt have arrested three ex-ministers for corruption including the former Interior Minister, Habib el-Adly. Mr Adly and the ex-ministers for housing and tourism, Ahmed Maghrabi and Zuheir Garana, were detained for 15 days along with steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz. All four, who are already banned from travelling abroad, deny any wrongdoing.

Suspicions of corruption at the top fuelled the protests which forced out President Hosni Mubarak last week. Correspondents say the arrest of four prominent figures from the Mubarak era are an attempt by the military-led interim government to quell continuing unrest. Charges were filed against Mr Maghrabi, Mr Garana and Mr Ezz last week, along with former Trade and Industry Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who also denies misconduct. Allegations against the four men arrested on Thursday range from money laundering to abuse of authority and squandering state wealth.

Mr Adly was in charge of police during the massive demonstrations against President Mubarak in Cairo and other cities and is blamed by some for the deadly use of force by riot police against protesters. Prosecutors froze the bank accounts of Mr Adli and his family members on accusations that over 4m Egyptian pounds (£420,000; $680,000) were transferred to his personal account by the head of a contractor company, Reuters news agency reports, quoting Egyptian state TV.

Some policemen have been calling for the prosecution and even execution of the former minister. The company said in a statement last week that he strongly denied the accusations against him and the investigation was a personal matter that would not affect its operations. In all, about a dozen ex-ministers and businessmen are now under investigation for corruption or abuse of authority, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Anti-corruption campaigners have been pressing prosecutors to open an investigation into the assets of Mr Mubarak and his family. The family's wealth - put at anywhere from $1bn to $70bn - has come under growing scrutiny since Mr Mubarak resigned on 11 February after three decades in power. All his assets have been fozen until the investigation is complete.

Lara Logan of CBS News Victim of Brutal Sexual Assualt in Egypt

Lara Logan of CBS News was the victim of a "brutal and sustained sexual assault " while covering the celebrations in Egypt last Friday . While reporting for "60 Minutes " in Cairo's Tahrir square after Hosni Mubarak stepped down as the country's president , Logan became separated from her crew. "She was surrounded and sustained a sexual assault and a brutal beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers ," said CBS News in a statement.

Lara Logan eventually reconnected with her team and returned to the United States on Saturday. She is currently recovering in a hosiptal . We wish her a quick recovery. Sadly, the memories will linger.

Stardust Makes Comet Flyby

4 views of the comet

Images from the encounter early on Tuesday should give scientists unique information on how these great balls of ice and dust change over time. Tempel 1 was visited by another probe back in 2005. It fired a projectile at the body to disturb the surface. The crater left by that impact is visible in the new pictures, but its soft outline suggests some of the pit's features have undergone modification. The 2005 spacecraft, which was called appropriately Deep Impact, never got to see the crater because its view was obscured by all the ice thrown up in the collision.

"We saw it; we saw the crater and it's subdued," said Pete Schultz, a co-investigator on the Stardust mission from Brown University."It's about 150m across and has a small central mound. It looks as if from the impact that the stuff went up and came back down. So we did get it; there's no doubt. And I think one of the bottom-line messages is that this surface of the comet where we hit is very weak. It's fragile; the crater partly healed itself."

The Stardust spacecraft went to within 180km of the 7.5km-wide object, passing by at some 10.9km/s. All the systems onboard the probe, including the camera and dust analysis instruments, performed as expected. Nasa called the Stardust extension mission a very cost effective bonus.

 
Stardust was commanded to take more than 70 high-resolution pictures, and the dust analysis instruments investigated the environment around the comet.  The data will be pored over by scientists for years, but it was immediately clear from the information at hand that the object had experienced significant change since the Deep Impact observations.

Areas that in 2005 that had looked like flows of material on the surface appeared on this occasion to have undergone some erosion. There were new pits and wells to be seen, and new areas of layered terrain were also evident. When the comet comes close to the Sun, the temperature of the surface increases enough for the ices to start evaporating - that's why we see gases and dust coming from a comet.  This is why the topography of the comet changes.

The Stardust spacecraft is on what Nasa calls a "bonus mission". The probe was launched back in 1999 with the primary goal then of visiting another comet altogether - Wild 2.  This it did in 2004, capturing dust particles from around the comet nucleus that it later returned to Earth in a capsule for study. But with sufficient fuel supplies still in its tanks, the probe was re-tasked by the US space agency to visit Tempel 1.

This extended mission has been dubbed Stardust-NExT, which is short for "New Exploration of Comet Tempel 1".

To date, spacecraft have flown close by seven comets.  Comets are thought to contain materials that have remained unchanged since the formation of the Solar System. They incorporate compounds that are rich in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Intriguingly these are the elements that make up nucleic and amino acids, the essential ingredients for life as we know it; and there are some who believe comet impacts in the early years of the Solar System could have seeded the Earth with the right chemical precursors for biology (forms of life).

Tuesday's flyby event occurred at a huge distance from Earth - approximately 336 million km (209 million miles) away. Radio messages take 18 minutes to travel this kind of distance. If a comet could have seeded earth with the building blocks of life, it is logical to assume that other comets could have seeded other planets. We most likely won't see an extra terrestrial in our lifetime, perhaps not for thousands of years, due to the enormous distances between planets, solar systems and galaxies but maybe it's time to accept the probability that they exist somewhere.

Iran Protests 'Going Nowhere', Says Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the opposition protests seen in Iranian cities on Monday are "going nowhere" and vowed to punish their organizers. Mr Ahmadinejad told state television that "enemies" were trying to "tarnish the Iranian nation's brilliance".

Two people were killed and several wounded in clashes between protesters and security forces in central Tehran, officials said. US President Barack Obama sharply criticized the authorities' response."I find it ironic that you've got the Iranian regime pretending to celebrate what happened in Egypt, when in fact they have acted in direct contrast to what happened in Egypt by gunning down and beating people who were trying to express themselves peacefully." Mr Obama said the US could not dictate what went on inside Iran, but hoped people would have the "courage to be able to express their yearning for greater freedom and a more representative government".

Not long afterwards, Iran's president dismissed the protests in Tehran and other major cities, saying they wanted to undermine a rally held last Friday to mark the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. "It is clear the Iranian nation has enemies because it is a nation that wants to shine, conquer peaks and change [its international] relations," he said. He added: "Of course, there is a lot of hostility against the government. But they knew that they would get nowhere." Mr Ahmadinejad said the organizers of the protests  "just wanted to tarnish the Iranian nation's brilliance". "It is a shining sun. They threw some dust towards the sun... but the dust will return to their eyes."

On Monday, thousands gathered at Tehran's Azadi Square in solidarity with the uprisings in Tunisia in Egypt,  their first major show of dissent since December 2009, when eight people were killed. Many chanted "Death to dictators".

Food Prices at Dangerous Levels, Says World Bank

The World Bank says food prices are at "dangerous levels", record levels and have pushed 44 million more people into poverty since last June. According to the latest edition of its Food Price Watch, prices rose by 15% in the four months between October 2010 and January this year. Food price inflation is felt disproportionately by the poor, who spend over half their income on food.

The Bank called on this week's G20 meeting to address the problem. The World Bank's president, Robert Zoellick, said in a statement: "Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people around the world." He also said that rising food prices were an aggravating factor of the unrest in the Middle East, although not its primary cause.

Rapid food price inflation in 2008 sparked riots in a number of countries. At that time, the World Bank estimated 125 million people were in extreme poverty.  The World Bank says prices are not quite back at those levels - just 3% below - although they are 27% higher than a year ago. A separate report earlier this month from the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said that world food prices had hit a record high in January.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 group of developed and developing nations are meeting later this week in Paris. It's great that you are meeting guys but all you can do if file reports. I hope someone reads them.

Egyptian Army Sets Reform Deadline

The military is trying to quell strikes and protests still being held

 around the country.

Egypt's ruling military council has announced that work on reforming the country's constitution is to be completed in 10 days. A committee led by a retired judge has been tasked with proposing legal changes, said the council. It earlier suspended the current constitution, which was amended during ousted President Hosni Mubarak's tenure to strengthen his grip on power. Mr Mubarak stepped down last week after more than two weeks of protests.

The higher military council - which assumed power after Mr Mubarak stepped down - said on Tuesday that the amended constitution would be put to a popular referendum. The eight-member committee is mostly made up of experts in constitutional law but it includes a senior figure from the opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood. It is headed by Tariq el-Bishri, considered one of Egypt's top legal minds, and on Tuesday held its opening meeting with Defence Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. The committee is instructed to "amend all articles as it sees fit to guarantee democracy and the integrity of presidential and parliamentary elections".  It looks as if the military council is fulfilling its pledge to hand the country back to civilian rule as quickly as possible.

Tahrir Square, the focus of protests in Cairo, has largely returned to normal The speed of the move will reassure the opposition, he says, although there might be some nervousness about whether it is an attempt to push through changes in too much of a rush.  The military council has also repeated its calls for an end to strikes that spread across the country during Sunday and Monday. The stoppages are dealing a further blow to Egypt's ailing economy, damaged by three weeks of unrest.

Meanwhile, Mr Mubarak, 82, is reported to be in poor health in his residence in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. In his final speeches to the nation, Mr Mubarak said that he would die in Egypt. He has not been seen in public since stepping down.

I found It

I found it!  How many times have you been up there without one?

My work is done.