WORLD AT A GLANCE

Writing on the wall for Hosni Mubarak

The week's world scene was dominated by a mass protest in Egypt demanding the immediate expulsion of President Hosni Mubarak whose 30-year-old rule would end sooner than it was ever thought of.

Chaos in Egypt as Mubarak backers launch offensive

The Egyptian capital turned into chaos last week, as angry supporters of President Hosni Mubarak stormed a crowded anti-government rally in a central Cairo square. On Friday at least 100,000 protesters packed into Tahrir Square demanding President Mubarak's resignation. President Mubarak announced on Tuesday evening that he would step down in September 2011. But his statement did not go far enough for the hundreds of thousands who gathered into Tahrir Square clashing with Government supporters.

Government supporters galloped in on horses and camels, only to be pulled down to the ground and beaten. Both sides used shovels and their hands to dig up roads and footpaths for rocks and bricks to throw at each other.The London based Economist (online) reported: "The 30-year-long reign of Egypt's President, Hosni Mubarak, came ever closer to an end, as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians filled the centre of Cairo, calling on him to step down. There were also big demonstrations in Alexandria, Suez and other Egyptian cities. A loose opposition front took shape, including secular liberals, students, trade unionists and Islamists, with Mohamed El Baradei, a former head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, tentatively at its head.

It is the greatest drama to shake Egypt since the killing of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Huge nationwide protests have challenged the long rule of President Hosni Mubarak, threatening to dislodge him. As yet, the denouement remains unwritten. Will it match Tunisia, where a popular uprising sent another strongman president into exile, toppled his ruling party and opened the way to real democracy? Or will it look like Iran in 2009, where a hardline regime crushed a popular protest movement with iron-fisted resolve?

The protests have left hundreds dead, frozen Egypt's economy, forced a cabinet to resign, brought the army onto the streets and prompted Mubarak to promise reforms. Egypt's tough 82-year-old president, in charge for the past three decades, now says he will go-but only at the end of his term in September, with dignity and with a subtle threat that if he does not get his way, things could turn uglier still. While offering a bare minimum of concessions, he has driven a wedge between millions of protesters who demand change and millions of others who fear chaos and want a return to normal. By February 2 the two sides were battling each other." As reported in the New York Times: "The Arab world watched a moment that suggested it would never be the same again - and waited to see whether protest or crackdown would win the day. Words like "uprising" and "revolution" only hint at the scale of events in Egypt, which have already reverberated across Yemen, Jordan, Syria and even Saudi Arabia, offering a new template for change in a region that long reeled from its own sense of stagnation."

According to New York Times, President Obama has suggested that Mubarak's concession was not enough, declaring that an "orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now."The US president said he hoped "to see this moment of turmoil turned into a moment of opportunity".

It seems that the popular wave of mass demonstrations is sweeping through the Arab world and the impetus for the pro-democracy agitations began with the leaderless riots in Tunisia.

In a separate development Jordan's king Abdullah sacked his government and appointed a new prime minister. Opposition leaders, who want the king's powers curbed, said this was not enough.

Other world news

The major developments of the week include Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh's announcement that he would step down in 2013 responding to the demonstrations in Yemen. South Sudan people voted for secede from the North and Myanmar's dictator Than Shwe's decision to run for the post of President.

It was reported that, "Myanmar's dictator, Than Shwe, chose not to run for the post of president, who will be elected by the country's new sham parliament. Presumably he will continue to exercise power behind the scenes."

Cyclone Yasi hits Queensland

Yasi, a category five cyclone with wind speed at up to 185 miles per hour about midnight local time on Thursday slammed into the coast of the already storm-battered state of Queensland. The cyclone ran along the coast near Mission Beach in Queensland, midway between Innisfail and Cardwell, 1,500km north of Brisbane. Cyclone Yasi is the largest and most powerful cyclone to hit Queensland in living memory.

Yasi's fury has been felt hundreds of kilometres away, in Cairns to the north, and Townsville to the south, and all the towns in between Cairns and Townsville.

The storm caused limited damage in Cairns and Townsville, but small coastal villages and inland farming communities were isolated on Thursday morning by floodwaters, derbies and fallen trees.

According to The Australian, "More than 170,000 properties are without power across north Queensland, and more could be cut off as Cyclone Yasi continues to create havoc as it moves inland even though it has lost power."

The Australian reported Premier Blight saying: "We have significant power outages all the way down the coast"

Australia's northern and eastern areas have been affected by cyclones previously. Cyclone Tracy struck the northern capital of Darwin in the early hours of Christmas Day in 1974. The impact was huge as it killed 71 people.

The majority of buildings in the Northern Territory capital were destroyed and a mass exodus saw the population reduce from about 48,000 to 10,500.