Two gunmen on a motorbike have shot an American teacher working at a language institute dead in a central Yemeni city, the region's provincial governor said.

YEMEN President Ali Abdullah Saleh is out of intensive care in Saudi Arabia where he is being treated for bomb blast wounds, prompting celebratory gunfire that hurt dozens of people.

SHOCKWAVES from the ousting of presidents in Tunisia and Egypt continued to roll across north Africa and the Middle East yesterday, with peoples long subject to autocratic rule demanding to be heard.