CAIRO, Egypt — Thousands of protesters returned to the streets of Egypt on Friday, many of them battling with police in a call to overthrow President Mohamed Morsi.

The president, in a tweet Friday, said security forces will “deal firmly” with violence against state institutions, even as demonstrators tried to set his presidential palace aflame.

“The most intense clashes are outside the presidential palace, where protesters threw at least one Molotov cocktail that landed near or inside the palace grounds,” says GlobalPost’s Senior Correspondent in Egypt Erin Cunningham.

Egypt: Protesters take their fight to Morsi’s presidential palace

Photo by AFP/Getty Images

fotojournalismus:

A riot police officer uses his baton on an anti-government protester during clashes along Qasr Al Nil bridge, which leads to Tahrir Square in Cairo on Jan. 28, 2013.

[Credit : Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters]

GlobalPost Senior Correspondent Erin Cunningham said Egypt witnessed overnight Monday widespread defiance of Morsi’s curfew, indicating further erosion of his already shaky authority.

“Whether or not the state is near collapse is unclear, though the potential for continued unrest remains high and the moral jurisdiction of the state in certain areas is still under attack,” Cunningham said from Cairo.

Continue reading: Egypt: Army warns of state ‘collapse’

GlobalPost correspondent Erin Cunningham hit the streets of Cairo to mark the second anniversary of the Egyptian uprising. 

The protesters are chanting, “The revolution came back for change. In the name of your bloody, martyr, it’s a new revolution. They said legitimacy and they said sharia. And they killed our brothers at Ittihadiya [Ittihadiya is the presidential palace]. Down, down with the [Muslim Brotherhood] supreme guide’s dream. Secular, secular!”

Egypt protests mark revolution anniversary (PHOTOS)

Things are getting weird in Egypt

Thirty-four-year-old Sara Ebeid had never before participated in an anti-government protest.

She was a supporter of Egypt’s ousted dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and opposed the 2011 revolution.

But all that changed Tuesday night, when she joined tens of thousands of Egyptians outside the presidential palace to protest Mohamed Morsi’s new, wide-ranging powers.

Ebeid, who works for Nokia, stayed for the demonstration Wednesday night too. That protest turned violent. Clashes erupted between those for and against Morsi, leaving at least six people dead and 650 injured.

It was Egypt’s fiercest street battle since Morsi assumed office in June. On Thursday, Morsi sent in tanks to disperse the crowd.

“I never went down to Tahrir to protest with the revolutionaries because I’ve always been felool,” Ebeid said, using an Arabic word that has evolved into a derogatory term meaning “remnants” or supporters of the Mubarak regime. “But right now we have the same goal. I want Morsi out.”

Read the entire article on GlobalPost.

When Egypt election officials declared Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi the country’s new president, Cairo’s Tahrir Square erupted. The celebrations lasted all through the night and into the early morning, with supporters of former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik looking on with disbelief, heads in hands.

Need to know:
Egypt finally has a new president: Mohamed Morsi.

The victory that he and his Muslim Brotherhood party claimed days ago was officially confirmed yesterday. According to Egypt’s electoral commission, Morsi took 51.7 percent to Ahmed Shafiq’s 48.3 percent, defeating his rival by just under 900,000 votes.

“I stand here as first freely elected president of Egypt,” a triumphant Morsi told the nation. “I couldn’t be here without god’s blessing, and the sacrifices of others… Egypt needs to unite forces.”

As GlobalPost witnessed in Cairo, Morsi’s victory was greeted with fireworks and dancing in Tahrir Square, where supporters hailed it as a triumph of the revolution over the regime. Yet for all the jubilation, Egypt’s new president faces an uphill battle in the quest to govern free of military rule — and in a deeply polarized nation in the midst of profound, ongoing upheaval.

Want to know:
Several senior members of the Syrian military have defected to Turkey, Turkish media is reporting.

More than 30 servicemen, including a general, two colonels and two majors, are said to have crossed the border into southern Turkey last night. If so, they’re among more than 33,000 Syrians who have sought refuge in Turkey since the anti-government uprising began last spring.

The reported defections come as Turkey prepares to announce what action it will take after Syria shot down one of its jets. Ankara says the plane was in international airspace; Damascus claims it was trespassing. The Turkish cabinet meets today to discuss their response. NATO will hold an emergency summit the day after. 

Dull but important:
Indian police have arrested a man suspected of playing a key role in the 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

The man identified variously as Abu Hamza, Sayeed Zabi ud Deen and Abu Jindal was detained at Delhi airport as he arrived on a flight from the Gulf. An Indian national, he is accused of acting as the “handler” of the ten gunmen who stormed Mumbai’s main railway station and several hotels in late November 2008, killing 166 people and injuring 300.

While Jindal is thought to have been Pakistan during the 60-hour assault, police believe he gave the attackers instructions via telephone – and even taught them Hindi beforehand so they could blend in with the local population.

Just because:
When Brazil discovered massive offshore crude oil reserves in 2007, the president at the time said the find “proves God is Brazilian.”

The deepwater deposits – the America’s biggest oil find in three decades – have the potential to make Brazil one of the largest oil producers in the world, and a global energy power.

The target market: the United States, which hopes that a friendly, oil-rich neighbor like Brazil could be the solution to its unhealthy dependency on other, more volatile suppliers. Not to mention the profits that an oil boom could make for US companies.

In a new series, Crude Awakening, GlobalPost ask whether Brazil can meet its ambitious targets – and what stands to get in the way.

Strange but true:
Goodbye Lonesome George, the last of the Galapagos Islands’ Pinta tortoises.

The giant tortoise, the only known member of his subspecies, was found dead yesterday at the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador. He is thought to have been around 100 years old, which in tortoise terms made him a young adult.

Conservationists’ attempts to get George to reproduce were never successful. With his death, we lose not only a symbol of one of the world’s most unique habitats, but an entire subspecies.