Egypt Crowds Swell to Record Numbers

They're back with new energy: Hundreds of thousands of people poured into Cairo’s Tahrir Square Tuesday for the largest protest yet in the two weeks since the revolution began. Unimpressed by a slew of new promises from embattled President Hosni Mubarak, who pledged to study proposed democratic reforms, protesters took to the streets to show their rejection of attempts to stall their momentum. The demonstrators were also inspired by an emotional television interview with Google executive Wael Ghonim, who revealed his role as the anonymous creator of a galvanizing Facebook page shortly after being freed from government detention. The Egyptian military originally tried to check the identity cards of protesters entering Tahrir Square but gave up because of the huge crowds. Al Jazeera adds that tens of thousands of people turned out in Alexandria as well.