Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson

Ormany Makary's coffin teetered precariously as throngs of mourners carried the 25-year-old truck driver's body to the front of Abbasiya Cathedral, chanting "Raise up your head, you are Copts!"

But his fiancee, Saafa Gaber, couldn't.

Makary was among the 25 people killed in a night of clashes between mostly Coptic Christian protesters and Egyptian soldiers.

In Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah has the only vote that really counts, elections are still a novelty.

Municipal elections on Thursday marked just the third ballot in the kingdom's history. Only men could vote in polls to fill half the seats on some 300 municipal councils. The other half are appointed by the government.

Even before the polls closed, Saudi officials declared the election a success. But turnout appeared low at many voting stations, including in the capital, Riyadh.

Egypt's military rulers announced that a decades-old emergency law curtailing civil rights will continue until at least next June.

Ending the controversial law was a key demand of Egyptian protesters who forced former President Hosni Mubarak from power in February. But the military, which planned to lift the emergency law before parliamentary elections scheduled in November, said last week it had no choice but to employ the draconian measure after a mob attack on the Israeli Embassy earlier this month.

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STEVE INSKEEP, host: Meaningful qualification there, saying that most of those shots in other parts of Kabul seem to be wild shots that miss the embassy. We're also following the upheavals in Egypt, where last winter's revolution was only the beginning of change. The military - after Hosni Mubarak's fall - replaced civilian courts with courts of its own, and military justice has proved to be harsher. The military says it will end civilian trials in military courts, but many activists doubt that. Here's NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, host: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

In Egypt today, the trial of former President Hosni Mubarak resumed and, according to Egyptian officials, violence both outside and inside the courtroom left a dozen people injured. Witnesses testified for the first time during the daylong hearing. Today's focus: Who ordered police to fatally shoot about 850 protestors during the uprising against the former leader?

In Cairo, the trial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is scheduled to resume Monday. On the first day that testimony is expected, the judge has banned cameras from the courtroom. Mubarak is accused of ordering the killing of protesters during the uprising earlier this year. The 83-year-old denies the charges.

Libya's rebels say they have more than 10,000 fighters surrounding Moammar Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte and are waiting for the order to attack.

The rebel officials say that order will be given this Saturday. But over the next few days, they will try to negotiate the peaceful surrender of Sirte, the last major bastion of Gadhafi's forces.

Libyan rebels say they've secured most of Tripoli and taken a key border crossing to Tunisia. Members of the rebel council say they are moving from Benghazi to Tripoli, where they will set up an interim government to rule Libya into 2012. NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson brings us the latest from eastern Libya, where rebels are preparing an assault on one of the last strongholds of Moammar Gadhafi, his hometown of Sirte.

The difficulty Libyan rebels are having moving their leaders to Tripoli from their temporary capital in Benghazi pales in comparison to the daunting task they face trying to set up a new, post-Gadhafi government. Continued fighting in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya are hampering efforts to set up an interim government in the next two weeks as planned. There's in-fighting between key leaders whose unity is cracking now that Moammar Gadhafi is gone. Libyans also have to build from scratch many institutions that are key to creating any meaningful democracy.