hello everyone. i mfredric i mfredrickahere in the cnn newsroom. we begin in cairo, egypt. live pictures from tahrir square at nightfall. watching the crowd go by the hour all day long. demonstrators started gathering this morning right after an egyptian judge sentenced former president hosni mubarak to life in prison for his role in killing hundreds of anti-government protesters last year. let s bring in cnn s ben wedeman who joins us now from the balcony overlooking tahrir square. ben it is getting late there. however, it appears that the darkness isn t in any way disbursing that crowd. what is the objective here? [ no audio ] reporter: outside of cairo. hosni mubarak and his interior minister did get life sentences but cleared the corruption charges and the interior of ministry got off scot-free, that s krucrux of this and why people are so angry. remember, more than 800 egyptians were killed by government sources during this proet te protest and everybody responsibl
egypt with an iron fist for 30 years is now in a maximum security prison where he ll spend the rest of his life. earlier today an egyptian court found hosni mubarak guilty of making orders to shoot and kill civilians. the angry mubarak was taken by ambulance to the cairo police academy where the verdict and life sentence was handed down. he was wheeled in on a gurney under heavy guard. six of mubarak s former military men were acquitted. that sparked an uproar inside and outside the courtroom. [ chanting ] . furious protesters called it wrong and want to topple the regime. the security is very tight. 5,000 police have been deployed. our senior international correspondent ben wedeman joins us live from tahrir square. what s the scene like? reporter: well, we ve got more people coming in to tahrir square. just a short while ago we watched them bun posters of one of the presidential candidates. he was mubarak s prime minister. the anger seems to be going into the direction o
out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession. end quote. christine romans has been crunching the numbers in new york. it s a hard report to spin, christine. it really is. you can t spin it. 69,000 jobs created in the biggest economy in the world. that is really disappointing, half what they thought. 8.2% is the unemployment rate. it went up a little bit, because, keira, more people were getting into the labor market. they ve been discouraged in months past, trying to get back in to try to find a job and unsuccessful. when you look at the trend, you can t spin the trend, either. you have three months of more than 200,000 jobs created right there. and then this is the slow down. one, two, three. that is the slow down there that shows you, quite frankly, that things are not as rosie as they should be at this stage of an economic recovery. and it looks an awful lot like it did last year. one last thing i want to show you, keira. this is how many private sector j
economic and the political side for the country right now is not that good as well. reporter: you think shafiq is the guy to do it? yes definitely. reporter: egyptians won t up to the news that the campaign headquarters of shafiq were torched overnight. they got the back store storeroom where campaign materials are kept. there are two competing theories and one was inside job and tended to gain sympathy. this, number two is simply a sign to come in if the old regime gets voted in. we re less than three weeks from this runnoff election that will decide egypt s new president. jon, to give you a sense how much uncertainty there is is on the streets, how much fear there is not only about these three weeks but what happens next, since the runnoff results were announced, we know who the two candidates are the egyptian stock market has plunged 7%. back to you. jon: so much uncertainty in that very important country. leland vittert. thank you.
lot of anger, there is a lot of surprise on the streets of cairo. the newspapers here have it laid out pretty well. shafiq from the old mubarak regime and the one from the muslim brotherhood. doesn t show how many egyptians here in the middle are not happy with either of their two choices. angry? i m more than angry. reporter: are you going to stay in the square and keep protesting? of course i will. reporter: you think more people will come? yes. of course we want our freedom. we want freedom. [shouting] reporter: the crowd went absolutely wild here in tahrir square when one of the opposition candidates came in. activists say they will stay right here protesting until things change. however, the muslim brotherhood candidate and shafiq got a total of 50% of the vote. many egyptians hope next month s election will simply be the end of this revolution. safety and security, that is the main concern and the