Live blogging the Egypt uprising: Jan. 30

Events in Egypt are moving so fast, with so much information, speculation, and disinformation flying around, that I'm going to take another shot at live blogging. The key takeaway from today (Jan. 30) so far is that the military continues to tolerate protests, and protesters have not in any way been mollified by Hosni Mubarak's shuffling of his cabinet and appointment of his first-ever vice president, Omar Suleiman.

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Praying next to tank in central Cairo.

Dan Murphy

Staff writer

Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East. Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

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1:25 p.m. EST (8:25 p.m. Cairo) The Monitor's Cairo correspondent Kristen Chick just filed this piece over the phone from Tahrir Square. "In Tahrir Square, small groups chanted slogans against Mubarak while others walked along carrying their own signs, saying 'Get out, Mubarak' or 'No to Mubarak.' Someone stuck a sign into the burned-out hulk of a police car that said: 'It wasn't us who burned it. The police and the regime burned it.' Some held new signs Sunday denouncing Omar Suleiman, who Mubarak on Saturday appointed as vice president. This is the first time in three decades that Egypt has had a vice president, but Mr. Suleiman – the intelligence chief close to Mubarak – was not welcomed... Army tanks stood in front of the Interior Ministry where Saturday police clashed with the Army after police opened fire on the crowd. An Army officer said that many were killed there yesterday, but did not say how many. People picked up spent bullet casings from the ground and cursed the police." We hope to get more from Kristen soon but communications have been difficult.

1:20 p.m. EST (8:20 p.m. Cairo) A VERY COOL PICTURE of a little girl being swept into the air by a soldier standing on top of a tank in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The photographer reports that the girl was shouting "hurriya, hurriya" (freedom, freedom) while this was going on.

1:08 p.m. EST (8:08 p.m. Cairo) AL JAZEERA ENGLISH CORRESPONDENT from Alexandria reports no sign of the very large protests there petering out. She refers to the "massive barrier of fear" that average Egyptians have broken through, chants of "every tyrant has an end" (the Egyptian version of Sic semper tyrannis). The correspondent has been walking with protesters for four hours and says that the "popular committees" – the neighborhood watch groups that sprung up after the police withdrew from the streets early yesterday – are doing their best to keep order and that "the people and the army are one." There were F-16 flyovers of the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square and heavy tanks out on the streets, but so far there are no signs of the army being willing to – or being ordered to – use force to clear the streets and enforce the curfew in either Cairo or Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city.