CAIRO: Protesters in a southern Egyptian city insisted Thursday their new Christian governor resign, stepping up a week-long challenge to his appointment by the country’s military rulers.

The army generals ruling Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster appointed Emad Mikhail, a Copt and a senior former officer in Egypt’s vilified police force, as governor of Qena province earlier this month.
But he has so far not taken up his post because thousands of demonstrators have contested the decision, resorting to the same people-power that ended Mubarak’s 30-year rule in February.

Protesters have blocked highways and railway tracks leading to Qena, a province with a large Coptic Christian population and whose previous governor was also a Christian.
They have also surrounded the governor’s office, vowing to prevent Mikhail from ever entering.
“Mikhail, Mikhail, you’re never coming here,” protesters chanted.

Ibrahim Saadani, one of the protesters, told Reuters: “We do not want someone from the previous regime and worst still from the police force as governor. The revolution came to change the previous regime but we are not seeing new faces.”
The protesters said they would hold a big rally Friday to force Mikhail’s resignation and would not negotiate with a government envoy sent from Cairo to resolve the matter.

“We’re not backing down until he is removed. He has got to go,” another protester said.
Local media had reported radical Islamists were spearheading the protests, raising fears they could descend into sectarian violence in a province where Muslims and Christians have often clashed in the past.
But witnesses said Coptic Christians had also joined the demonstrations because of Mikhail’s past.

The governor previously headed a criminal investigations department and reported to former Interior Minister Habib al-Adli, who is on trial for corruption and the security forces’ violent crackdown on the uprising.
“Some people don’t like the fact he’s Christian, others think that because he’s Christian like his predecessor he won’t be tough enough on security and there are a lot of people who also don’t trust him because he’s ex-police,” said Youssef Ragab, a journalist in Qena.

So far, the army and police have stayed on the sidelines of the demonstrations, a stance that was unthinkable before Mubarak was deposed.
The government has said it would allow the protests to continue, but would stop any “acts of lawlessness.”
Mikhail was one of two Christian governors appointed by the military rulers, who sought to bring new faces into the administration.

Separately, Egypt Thursday mulled sending Mubarak to jail or to a prison hospital as reports emerged the ousted president’s health is “unstable” and a court ruled that his name be removed from public places.
Egypt’s public prosecutor Abdel Magid Mahmud Mahmud has ordered a medical team to head to Sharm el-Sheikh where Mubarak is under arrest in hospital to “establish his latest health condition and the possibility of having him transferred to Tora prison or to the prison hospital,” his office said.

The prosecutor has also ordered that preparations be made at the hospital in Tora prison, in Cairo’s south.
The medical team will head to Tora prison hospital “to evaluate the facilities and equipment and make the necessary preparations to have former president Hosni Mubarak moved there based on his medical condition,” it said.

Meanwhile a Cairo court ruled Thursday that the name of Mubarak and that of his wife, Suzanne, be removed from all “public places, streets, libraries and other public institutions across the country,” MENA reported, quoting Judge Mohammed Hassan Omar.
Egypt’s Wael Ghonim on Time’s 100 most influential list
NEW YORK: Previously unknown newsmakers from Egypt and Japan joined pop stars and politicians on Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world released Thursday.

The list includes pop culture giants such as Justin Bieber and Oprah Winfrey plus the lesser known Wael Ghonim, an Egyptian Internet activist who helped topple President Hosni Mubarak, and Takeshi Kanno, a Japanese doctor who refused to leave behind victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
"We’ve always, always tried to tell stories through people. … We discovered it was a fantastic way to get people to think about what’s going on all over the world," said Time Deputy Managing Editor Michael Elliott. The list can be seen on http://www.time.com.

World leaders such as British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff populate the list for how they have wielded power.
Others include Gabrielle Giffords, the American congresswoman who survived a bullet wound to the head in Arizona, and Michele Bachmann, the Republican congresswoman from Minnesota who has energized the Tea Party movement.