Mike Giglio

The pro-democracy protest is the biggest demonstration in Egypt in years. And women are increasingly taking part in the politics of the street.

After hundreds of arrests in Cairo Wednesday, some protest organizers have gone missing and are presumed jailed. Now activists are using Egypt's oldest social medium to keep up the fight.

Basem Fathi, an organizer of Monday's protests in Cairo, was scrambling around the capital, trying to buy towels and tents. On a day in which tens of thousands of people thronged the streets in the type of large-scale protests that authoritarian Egypt hasn't seen in decades, demonstrators had occupied the central Tahrir Square.

Tunisia's uprising last week invigorated frustrated activists around the region. Mike Giglio on a protest in Cairo that could mark the beginning of another upheaval.

A group of young Tunisians have helped to organize the protests that deposed a dictator with their activism online. Mike Giglio talks to the country's leading cyberdissidents.

A secular, grassroots movement in Tunisia has sent the president packing. Protesters say this is not a religious revolution.

Following a year of violent antigovernment protest and military backlash in Bangkok, and with elections likely soon, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva appears eager to show that Thailand is on the mend. In late December, the government lifted the state of emergency that had been in place in the capital for more than eight months.

Hugo Chávez went on the offensive in Caracas following his party's poor election showing this fall, pushing through a slate of measures that amounted to a sustained political power grab ahead of the swearing-in of the new Parliament last week. On the international scene, though, the famously combative Venezuelan president has been striking an unusually conciliatory tone.

In the annals of e-commerce, the last few years may be seen as a regulatory tipping point. Four states passed laws that require Amazon to collect local taxes, eliminating a major advantage for the site's retailers.

I was scared to death, to tell you the truth. I thought that I would probably be booed out of the place. But when I walked onto the field, it was an unbelievable response.

I've never killed anyone, never harmed anyone, never done anything to cause physical damage to anyone. And I'm sorry that I am seen as a person who would do that.

Recent protests in Stuttgart, Germany, were part of a grassroots anger that has taken hold across Europe in the wake of the financial crisis. In this "open source" phenomenon, people from a wide range of backgrounds and with a wide range of different objectives are lashing out against governments that they feel are ignoring them.

The cables might weaken some of the wilder anti-U.S. conspiracy theories that have become prime political currency for Hugo Chávez and other leaders, but they could still cause trouble given the region's special sensitivity to U.S. influence.

Widespread protests over Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to extend the life span of the country's nuclear-power plants have given another boost to the Greens, who look poised for unprecedented success in next year's state elections.

By 2013 the Obama administration hopes to run all arrest-related fingerprints through a U.S. database, identifying illegal immigrants in the process. Local law enforcement has resisted this, fearing it will hinder crimefighting in immigrant areas.

Could farming face the sickle? The president's deficit commission has proposed cutting a quarter of annual subsidies. And while the farm lobby has fended off previous slashes, John Boehner, the incoming House speaker, voted against the last agricultural bill. Buzzed-about broadsides like the film Food, Inc. are helping tilt the political calculus, too, as lawmakers begin the slog toward a new "ag" bill by 2012.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos created the post of national-security adviser and filled it with Sergio Jaramillo Caro.

German Green party co-leader Cem Özdemir has lately been a thorn in Chancellor Angela Merkel's side, challenging her on a controversial rail project in his home state of Baden-Württemberg as the Greens make unprecedented gains there and across the country.

Germany's steady stream of good economic news—last week, it announced that unemployment dropped below the 3 million mark for the first time since 1992—has been of oddly little help to Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych should emerge from Sunday's regional elections with an even firmer grip on power—a result bound to worry many in the West. Since taking office, the president has deftly bent Ukraine's democratic institutions to his will, stretching the Constitution to build a parliamentary coalition, winning the repeal of an amendment limiting presidential power, and tweaking electoral rules to outlaw independent candidates and blocs that could siphon his party's support.

Unable to push through a third presidential term for himself, Álvaro Uribe put his political heft behind his defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, who this summer won 70 percent of the vote. The result was expected for the new bearer of the Uribe brand. Santos's swift shifts from it since have left even seasoned observers scratching their heads.

Álvaro Uribe's post at Georgetown has sparked a controversy at one of the country's most esteemed international universities and across academia. More than 150 scholars, including 10 Georgetown professors and leading experts on Latin America and Colombia, have signed a letter calling for Uribe to be fired, citing human-rights abuses.

Violence is on the rise again in Colombia, especially in cities, even as the military continues its gains against the guerrilla insurgency. Murder rates in Medellín—while still a far cry from their 1990s peak—have tripled in the last three years, largely as the result of narcotrafficking.

Germany's immigration fears have been on full display thanks to a new book by provocateur Thilo Sarrazin that claims the country is being undermined by its growing Muslim population. NEWSWEEK's Mike Giglio spoke with Rauf Ceylan—a leading religious scholar at the University of Osnabrück who is leading a pilot imam-education program this fall, and whose new book, The Preachers of Islam, features interviews with nearly 300 imams in Germany—on the challenges of integration:

Although Colombia delivered some heavy blows in its war against the FARC, the country is facing violence on an entirely new front—from loose criminal networks rushing in to serve the ongoing demand for drug exports.

Cabinet appointments in Lower Saxony normally don't receive much attention. But political success is rare for minorities in Germany, and in April, Aygül Özkan—a little-known politician of Turkish descent—was heralded as a trailblazer for becoming the state's social-affairs minister. Her quick fall from grace shows how calcified Germany's system remains against candidates of immigrant descent.

The last time Burma's junta tried rigging an election in hopes of putting a civilian face on its military rule, in 1990, it was routed at the polls. The junta responded by annulling the results. Now, with the country's first vote in 20 years set for Nov. 7, the generals have apparently learned their lesson: this time, the process will be even more tightly controlled.

Is socialism really that bad? Thomas Geoghegan argues that people are happier, healthier, and better off in a European (read: German) social democracy, which gives them more bang for their tax buck—and strengthens capitalism to boot. Then he makes you read about his vacations.