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Significant winds of change in Egypt

It is hard not to remember all the demonstrations in Egypt earlier this year - especially all those people massed around the clock, for days at an end, in Tahrir Square.

So, where are things at months later? The Independent has an update "New dawn, same old problems: Egypt wakes up to fresh uprising".

"Egypt opens its border with the Gaza Strip today in a radical move that upends the 30-year-old alliance between the US, Israel and Egypt under the rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

The Egyptian foreign minister has described the blockade of 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza as "disgusting". Soon Egypt will reopen diplomatic links with Iran.

Unprecedented changes are also happening at home. Last week the Egyptian prosecutor charged Mr Mubarak with the premeditated killing of protesters, corruptly accepting as a gift a palace and four villas at Sharm el-Sheikh, and involvement in promoting a corrupt deal supplying gas to Israel. The once all-powerful Mr Mubarak has become such a pariah that businessmen in Sharm el-Sheikh, where he once hosted world leaders, want him moved from a hospital there because he is deterring tourists from visiting the resort.

But for hundreds of thousands of Egyptians who demonstrated in Cairo, Alexandria yesterday these developments, inconceivable at the start of the year, are not radical enough. Many saw the rallies and marches as the moment to launch a "Second Egyptian Revolution" to shatter the status quo. They say Egypt was a military dictatorship before the 25 January revolution and so it largely still is. Orders are given by the shadowy Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) without any consultation or explanation. Many leading protagonists and cronies of the old regime are still in place. But hundreds of pro-democracy protesters have been sentenced to five years in prison after a 30-minute trial by military tribunals. Torture continues with some female political detainees subjected to humiliating "virginity tests"."

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