Protests spread in Yemen and Algeria

• YEMENI police armed with sticks and knives repelled thousands of chanting protesters marching through the capital in the third day of demonstrations calling for political reforms and the resignation of the country's US-allied president.
• The protests, inspired by the Tunisian uprising that overthrew president Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, have grown since the departure of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak at the weekend.
• Uniformed police used truncheons to stop protesters, many of them university students, from reaching the capital's central Hada Square. Witnesses said plainclothes police carrying knives and batons joined security forces in driving back protesters.
• Much is at stake in troubled Yemen if the pressure on the President further erodes stability. The US is most worried about an al-Qa'ida offshoot that has grown in Yemen's mountain areas in recent years, using the haven as a base to plot attacks beyond the country's borders, including the failed attempt to blow up a US-bound airliner in December 2009.
• Mr Saleh, who has been in power for three decades, is co-operating with the US in efforts to battle the al-Qa'ida group, but his government has limited control in the tribal areas beyond the capital. The country's security forces are already stretched on two other fronts -- since 2004, they have struggled to contain a serious rebellion in the north by members of the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam who complain of neglect and discrimination. At the same time, police and army forces are clashing with a secessionist movement in southern Yemen, which was a separate country until 1990.

• Meanwhile in Algeria, opposition leaders emboldened by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, yesterday announced a second protest march in the capital despite the longstanding ban on demonstrations there.
• The US and Germany called for restraint from the authorities, a day after a large security operation prevented 2000 protesters from marching in Algiers.
• The National Co-ordination for Change and Democracy, a coalition of opposition parties, rights groups and unofficial unions, wants the end of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's regime, citing the same problems of high unemployment, poor housing and soaring costs that inspired the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.