Several news outlets are reporting that Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak has resigned.
That came in a one-sentence statement from Vice President
Omar Suleiman and after over two weeks of protests that began on social media
and turned into a national showing of disapproval.
As of shortly after 11 a.m. ET when the news broke, CBS, ABC
and NBC were all live with the news, as were all the cable news networks.
The Egyptian government tried first to quell the protest by shutting down the Internet, cell phone service and some foreign news outlets. It then tried to blame the unrest in part on journalists that it branded as plotting to destabilize the government.
That led to what the Committee to Protect Journalists suggested was an unprecedented effort to attack/detain/harass journalists. But ultimately, the pressure for change from within and without the country trumped those efforts and led Friday to Mubarak's announcement.
New operations were already looking elsewhere in the Middle East for possible new flash points. "I expect there are a lot of nervous dictators out there," said CNN's Wolf Blitzer.
