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of a firebrand cleric rallied in the streets of the Pakistani capital Tuesday for a second day despite early morning clashes with police who launched tear gas and fired shots into the air to push back stone-throwing demonstrators.
• The protest called by Tahir-ul-Qadri, who has rocketed to national prominence

after his return from Canada late last year, has galvanized many Pakistanis who say the current government has brought them only misery. But critics fear that Qadri and his demands for election reforms may derail the country's upcoming democratic elections, possibly at the behest of the country's powerful military.
• During an early morning speech, Qadri called for the government to resign and called on his followers to stay in the streets of the capital until their demands are met. Many had brought blankets to ward off the cold and slept there overnight.
• "I give you time ... to dissolve the national and all four provincial assemblies otherwise the nation will dissolve them on their own," he said. He vowed to address his followers again Tuesday.

• Qadri has issued numerous vague demands for electoral reforms, such as vetting political candidates to make sure they're honest and restructuring the system so that the common people have more opportunity to take part in politics.
• ___

• SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Facebook's mystery "press event" on Tuesday could reveal a more robust search feature that would intensify the competition between the social networking giant and its rival Google Inc.
• Facebook is holding the event at 10 a.m. (1 p.m. EST) at its Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters. The company has not said what it plans to announce. Last week, it invited bloggers and journalists to "come see what we're building."
• The company probably won't be showing off a new office building --unless it decided to make its invitation very literal.
• It's also unlikely to be unveiling a much-rumored "Facebook phone" --unless CEO Mark Zuckerberg has changed his mind recently. Last fall, as he'd done on numerous occasions, he publicly shot down speculation that Facebook was building its own smartphone.
• "It is so clearly the wrong strategy for us," Zuckerberg said at a September technology conference in his first public interview after Facebook's May initial public offering. "It doesn't move the needle for us."

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