BBC News with Sue Montgomery

The head of Egypt's ruling military council says the state of emergency that's been in place for most of the past 45 years will be partially lifted from Wednesday. Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi was speaking in an address to mark the first anniversary of the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. He said the state of emergency would still apply to what he called "

thugs

" without elaborating. From Cairo, our Middle East correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports.

The vast majority of Egyptians have lived all their lives under a state of emergency. It was first imposed in 1967 following the Six-day War against Israel and then again in 1981 after President Sadat's

assassination

. Following President Mubarak's overthrow last year, the military junta at first promised to lift it, but then did the opposite: widening its scope, banning strikes, traffic disruption and even the spreading of false information. Now finally it will be lifted. Just as the Islamists - the law was brought into crush - take control of Egypt's parliament.

Syria has agreed to extend the Arab League monitoring mission to Syria by another month. Jim Muir reports from neighboring Beirut.

According to a brief announcement by the official state news agency, Syria's agreement to extend the monitors' mission for a second month was signalled in a letter from Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem to the secretary general of the Arab League. It wasn't a surprise. In a news conference just a few hours earlier, the minister had drawn a distinction between the observer mission and the new Arab League peace plan announced on Sunday, which Damascus had rejected out of hand as