Grudging Change News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Yesterday when i was at a protest where we had police, riot police and protesters square off it was going right by an army post and you had soldiers waving at them giving them the thumbs up definitely supporting them so it would definitely be a show, a test of their discipline. if they would have been ordered to shoot and if they would go through with that. >> okay, ian in tahrir square bringing us up to date with what's being described as the biggest demonstration so far and we have seen a lot of big demonstrations in the last 17 days. now, into our 18th. well, after the president, the vice p...

Are now playing out on the streets of cairo. >> reporter: the domodedovo have one basic demand. they are demanding the ouster of egyptian president hosni mubarak who has been in power since 1981. >> no hosni mubarak, no hosni mubarak. >> reporter: what we've seen in cairo today is that the streets were flooded with tens of thousands of angry people all demanding a change here in egypt. >> reporter: everyone here wants to speak to us. everyone -- sorry. everyone has an opinion and as you can see, some people would like to push to get their voices out and get on camera. despite that, it is quite...

Mubarak into grudging change. more freedom of expression, newspapers allowed to publish articles critical of the government. and economic reforms that brought strong economic growth. but this interview from 1981 may offer a hint at mubarak's cautious approach to change. >> look what happened in niger, in tunisia, they tried to make tough reforms. the people are human being. they didn't accept it. or they couldn't accept it. >> reporter: michael holmes, cnn. >> well, we've seen years of pent-up anger spill on to the streets. just ahead we take a look back at these historic protests as seen thro...

Change. >> and then he watched the speech on board air force one while playing back to washington from michigan and later issued a sternly worded statement which in part called for clarification. we therefore urge the egyptian government to move swiftly to explain the changes that have been made and to spell out in clear and unambiguous language the step-by-step process that will lead to democrat a and the representative government that the egyptian people seek. going forward it will be essential that the universal rights of the egyptian people be respected. for more on where all of this is go...

The alternative, the government hinted, was chaos and exwlipt's painful history of terror attacks meant little was left to the imagination. from luxor in 1997 when 60 people mostly tourists were slaughtered to the resort city in 2005 where 88 people were killed. like a cat, mubarak seems to have had nine lives, he survived multiple assassination attempts, including an attack by islamic extremists on his motorcade during a 1995 visit to ethiopia. still mubarak is now 82 and in recent years his health has appeared to falter. when mubarak came to power in 1981 he inherited a country torn apart by...