Stephen Cook, a Middle East expert for the Council on Foreign Relations, returned to Washington from Cairo late Thursday.

STEPHEN COOK: "There have been demonstrations going on in Egypt regularly throughout the last five or six years."

But he says demonstrations held Tuesday on the Egyptian holiday of Police Day gained strength because of the revolution in Tunisia.

STEPHEN COOK: "And the Tunisian situation only gave those protests momentum and a sense among the protesters there was a real possibility that an Arab leader can be dislodged from office by people power."

Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on January fourteenth.

Other Arab countries facing protests include Jordan and Yemen, where President Abdullah Saleh has held power for more than thirty years.

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. For more news, go to voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Steve Ember.

Contributing: Robert Berger, David Gollust, Edward Yeranian and Paul Westpheling