In the three short weeks since a poor, unlicensed Tunisian fruit-seller set himself on fire after police seized his wares, protests have ousted his country's longtime authoritarian ruler and confronted Egypt's octogenarian president with the greatest challenge of his 30 years in power. Thousands of Yemenis inspired by Mohamed Bouazizi's death in Tunisia demanded an end to their ruling strongman's 23-year reign Thursday, and political ferment has been growing in Jordan as well as energy-rich Algeria and Moammar Gadhafi's Libya, The Calgary Herald wrote on Sunday.

Yemen
Clashes erupt between supporters of the Yemeni president and anti-government demonstrators holding a rally near the Egyptian Embassy in the capital city of Sanaa to show support for the Egyptian uprising.
On Saturday, Yemeni anti-government protesters, most of them journalists and rights activists, also called on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to end his 33-year rule, Press TV reported.
A group of government backers along with security forces attacked and dispersed the crowd.
“The people want the regime to fall,” the protesters shouted, urging the Yemeni president to resign.
Confronting the crowd, Pro-government bystanders were shouting, “With our blood and souls we defend you, Ali.”
Yemen has been the scene of massive protests following the revolution in Tunisia that led to ouster of the Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The uprising also sent shockwaves across Arab and North African nations including Egypt, Yemen and Jordan.
Yemeni security forces also arrested a prominent human rights activist during the Saturday rally.
“The same people that surrounded us today, they are the same people that surrounded our protest on Wednesday and tried to hit some of the protesters. The only guarantee: they will not terrify us, and they will not scare us,” activist, Tawakul Karman, told Reuters.
Saturday's protest came two days after tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the capital city Sanaa and several other cities, calling for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
On Wednesday, at least five people were injured and dozens of protesters arrested during violent clashes between security forces in Yemen's southern province of Shabwa.
Jordan
Jordanian activists rallied outside government offices on Saturday as they tried to step up their campaign to force Prime Minister Samir Rifai to step down, Reuters reported.
Inspired by unrest in Tunisia and elsewhere in the region, about 200 Jordanians gathered outside the prime minister's office shouting “Our government is a bunch of thieves” and holding banners reading “No to poverty or hunger.”
“We've come from distant, rural areas to Amman to ask Rifai to leave,” said Mohammed Sunaid, a prominent labor activist.
“We call for the overthrow of this government that has destroyed the poor. This government should be for all Jordanians not just the rich.”
Jordan is struggling with its worst economic downturn in decades. The government has announced measures to cut prices of essentials, create jobs and raise salaries of civil servants.
Protesters say the moves do not go far enough and have staged rallies calling for the reversal of free-market reforms which many blame for a widening gap between rich and poor.
Protesters say the sale of state assets to foreign investors over the past decade has enriched the country's business and political elite but has done little to help the poor.
“We want a special court that will put on trial all those who sold the property of the Jordanian people ...,” Sunaid said.
Others have called for constitutional reforms to curb the extensive power of the king who appoints cabinets, approves legislation and can dissolve parliament.
Algeria
More than 10,000 protesters marched against authorities in Algeria's northeastern city of Bejaia on Saturday, organizers said, in the country's latest rally inspired by neighboring Tunisia.
Demonstrators marched peacefully in the city in Algeria's Berber-speaking Kabylie region, shouting Tunisia-inspired slogans such as: “For a radical change of the regime!,” a lawmaker with the opposition Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), Mohamed Ikhervane, told AFP.
“The protest gathered more than 10,000 people,” said RCD leader Said Sadi, whose group organized the rally.
Police were out in force around the city but protesters dispersed calmly, Ikhervane said.
Separately, pro-democracy group the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADDH) said it plans a new march in Algiers on February 12.
The group's leader, Mustapha Bouchachi, said the protest had been postponed from the original date of February 9 to enable workers and students to take part.
The LADDH forms part of a group calling itself the National Coordination for Change and Democracy, which was set up in the wake of riots in early January that left five dead and more than 800 injured.
The group demands the end of the government and its 19-year state of emergency.
Mounting grievances over spiraling costs and unemployment triggered the riots earlier this month, encouraged by public protests in Tunisia that forced its president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee.
Algiers responded swiftly by reducing the prices of oil, sugar and other basic necessities which had risen sharply, and assuring that subsidies on essential goods like flour would continue.
Unrest still simmers, however, and within the past two weeks eight people set themselves on fire in Algeria, although some cases were deemed to be linked to mental health issues