This five-minute clip has just emerged, showing the Syrian military's response to a demonstration as it moved into towns across the country last Thursday:
Syria 
1730 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Ali Malihi, a senior member of the alumni organisation Advar Tahkim-e Vahdat, has been released on bail after 14 months in prison.
1700 GMT: Ahmadinejad Watch. Another warning to the President, this time from the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari: "In defending the Islamic Revolution, Sepah [the Guards] will not wait for instructions".
"All of a sudden I became responsible for macaroni and onions," said Majdi Shibani, a telecommunications professor put in charge of food distribution — a daunting task in a sprawling city where all phone lines have been cut. His team oversees distribution of 400 tons of food per week from a room in the back of a hookah lounge, where customers smoke water pipes.
Donations of food have streamed in on boats from the Libyan diaspora, foreign countries and international organizations. There's little coordination, resulting in huge surpluses of, say, canned corn — which Shibani said Libyans hate.
In accepting this Prize which is in reality a recognition of all prisoners of opinion in my country and my imprisoned or exiled colleagues, I dedicate it to my family and in particular to my wife and children. In addition to the psychological pains of these two years, they have for the past ten years had to live with the dread of an expected "knock on the door." With every unexpected knock on the door, their fragile and innocent hearts were agitated.
I also dedicate this Prize to the mother of Sohrab Arabi [killed on 15 June 2009 by security forces] and all other heartbroken mothers whose sons never returned home. I dedicate it to all tearful mothers, sisters, daughters and the children who live with the pain of having their loved ones in prison.
On Tuesday, we wrote of the rapid mobilisation of Administration officials who did not want the death of Bin Laden to be any reason to pull American troops from Afghanistan in the near-future. As one "senior Administration official" primed The New York Times, "I hope people are going to feel, on a bipartisan basis, that when you move the ball this far it’s crazy to walk off the field.”
It did not take long for a counter-attack from those within the Administration --- read White House and State Department --- who want at least some fulfillment of President Obama's promise to begin withdrawal in July. They chose Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post as their broadcaster.:
“Bin Laden’s death is the beginning of the endgame in Afghanistan,” said a senior administration official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations. “It changes everything.”
Another senior official involved in Afghanistan policy said the killing “presents an opportunity for reconciliation that didn’t exist before.” Those officials and others have engaged in urgent discussions and strategy sessions over the past two days about how to leverage the death into a spark that ignites peace talks.
The officials put out the line that the killing of bin Laden will encourage the Afghan Taliban to talk, and they are putting forth an alternative that maintains the image of US strength while maintaining Obama's July pledge: "a strategic partnership agreement with the Afghan government that will endorse the long-term presence of a modest number of U.S. troops in the country to continue to train Afghan security forces and to conduct counterterrorism operations".
Another "senior official" summarised --- in words that could apply both to the Taliban and to his Administration opponents who want no talk of withdrawal --- “We know where we want to go, but getting there won’t be easy. There’s a long and complicated path ahead.”
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 21:30 | Scott Lucas in Afghanistan, EA Afghanistan-Pakistan, EA USA, India and Pakistan, US Foreign Policy 
Two appearances today on the BBC, both moving from the killing of Osama bin Laden to questions of how the US carried out the operation (was it a planned operation?) and pictures of the dead Al Qa'eda leader (should they be released?).
My wider point: the importance of the escalating questions does not lie in any conspiracy theory. Instead, they point to the tension in the US-Pakistani relationship and problems for the American position in the country. If these are not addressed soon, any US "victory" from the death of Bin Laden will soon be replaced by a "defeat" for the American position in Pakistan.
BBC Shropshire: Audio is at the 2:08.08 mark
BBC West Midlands: Audio is at the 1:08.00 mark
2010 GMT: Cabinet Watch. Back to today's confusing chapter in the crisis over the President and his attempted dismissal of the Minister of Intelligence....
The website 7 AM, close to Presidential aide Esfandiar Rahim-Mashai, offers an explanation for why Minister of Intelligence Heydar Moslehi was reportedly at the Cabinet meeting (see 1225 GMT) but did not appear in the photograph issued by the President's office (see 1610 GMT).
7 AM says "an informed source in the President's office (Rahim-Mashai?) denied" that "the President ordered the Minister of Information out of the Cabinet meeting". The source adds that going in and out of the Cabinet meeting "is not unusual".
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 12:30 | Scott Lucas in Africa, EA Global, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran 1915 GMT: Claimed footage of a demonstration by university students in Aleppo in Syria today:
Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 8:30 | Scott Lucas in Afghanistan, EA Afghanistan-Pakistan, India and Pakistan 
Obama Envoy Grossman & Pakistan PM GilaniTensions between the American and Pakistani governments intensified sharply on Tuesday as senior Obama administration officials demanded answers to how Osama bin Laden managed to hide in Pakistan, and the Pakistani government issued a defiant statement calling the raid that killed the Al Qaeda leader “an unauthorized unilateral action.”
;)
How does a nation still looking for justice almost ten years after the worst terrorist attack in its history react when the attack's mastermind is captured? With solemnity, celebration, and the sharing of funny pics.
