Egypt, Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) Live Coverage: So Who's in the Presidential Election?

See also Saturday's Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Protests Take Over<

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1840 GMT: An EA correspondent reports on a security crackdown tonight in Bahrain:

All Sitra entrances and exists are blocked by checkpoints, not allowing anyone out or in unless they been searched. The whole village is filled with police forces, some in their jeeps while others on foot. They blocked the road near the police station too, not allowing anyone to pass there.

I believe there will be houses raids, as in Bani Jamra a couple days ago.

1830 GMT: Bahraini activist Zainab Alkhawaja brings urgent news:

URGENT: activist @SAIDYOUSIF and two foreign activists from Human Rights Watch have been arrested now in Duraz village #bahrain

— angry arabiya (@angryarabiya) April 15, 2012

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Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Will the Regime Challenge the Protests?

Mass demonstration last night in Freedom Square in Deir Ez Zor, Syria

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1919 GMT: According to the Local Coordinating Committees of Syria, they have been able to confirm the deaths of 13 so far today:

3 martyrs were documented in Hama as a result of sporadic gunfire at the protesters, 2 martyrs in each of Daraa and Aleppo as a result of sporadic gunfire at protesters. Also, 2 martyrs were documented in Idlib and one of corpses was un-identified. 2 martyrs in Homs in a random shelling at some neighborhoods. 1 martyr in Daraya, Damascus suburbs, in a sporadic gunfire by security forces at the protesters and 1 martyr in Hasaka, a defected recruit who was executed.

Homs, and several surrounding towns, were heavily shelled once again today. In this video, a building burns as heavy gunfire fills the background in Qosour:

Ahmed Al Omran provides this video, a wider view of the Khalidiya district of Homs:

Video reportedly shows shelling on Homs today, sounds of intense gunfire youtube.com/watch?v=bo6qOx… #SYRIA

— Ahmed Al Omran (@ahmed) April 13, 2012

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Egypt Feature: The Muslim Brotherhood Comes to America (Bohn)

Sondos AsemSondos Asem has butterflies, formulating answers to questions she expects to be asked and practicing her diction with the devotion of a high school debate champion. The gentle 24-year-old graduate student at the American University in Cairo is in a hotel room in downtown New York, figuring out what to wear on national television. ("This blazer would look good, right?" "Should I wear more color?")

Like many young Egyptians, she's been tweeting the fallout after the 2011 uprising that brought down former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The stakes are higher than 140-character dispatches might suggest. Asem has emerged as an unlikely unofficial spokeswoman for the Muslim Brotherhood, helping to run its English-language Twitter feed, @Ikhwanweb, and in turn revamp the group's image in the West.

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Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 70+ Dead, 70+ Bodies Found as Homs Hospital "Liberated"

Claimed video of Syrian forces moving through the destruction in the Baba Amr section of Homs --- at the end of the clip, a soldier looks in on a family slain in their home

See also Saudi Arabia Feature: Assessing The Regime's Counter-Revolution
Bahrain Propaganda Special: Introducing the Regime's Best Friends in the US Congress
Syria Wired: The Latest from Social Media and EA's Readers
Monday's Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) Live Coverage: What Happens After the "Friends of Syria" Meeting?

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2001 GMT: A march towards Bahrain's Ministry of Interior tonight:

1851 GMT: In the Bahraini capital Manama, prominent activist Nabeel Rajab has been protesting at the roundabout by the Ministry of Interior, holding a photo of political prisoner and hunger striker Abdulhadi Alkhawaja.

Nearby, protesters chanted "Free free Khawaja" before they were attacked by police --- one woman kept shouting, "Free Khawaja", as they ran away:

Mary Lawlor of the Irish activist group Front Line Defenders sends the message:

Leaving demo for Release of#Abdulhadi .the pent up aggression of the police was very obvious. Brave participants

— Mary Lawlor (@MaryLawlorFL) April 3, 2012

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Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) Live Coverage: What Happens After the "Friends of Syria" Meeting?

See also War on Terror Feature: Don't Tell the US Border Police You Do Islamic Studies
Palestine Feature: What Happens When A Journalist Criticises the Palestinian Authority?
Syria 1st-Hand: Life in Damascus --- "Tell Me, How Do I Survive?"
Turkey Live Coverage (2 April): After the "Friends of Syria" Left....
Sunday's Bahrain, Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Gathering of the "Friends of Syria"

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2040 GMT: A mass demonstration in the Douma suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus:

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Bahrain Feature: In Deaths, The Kingdom Handily Beats Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia

Fadhel AlObaidi, killed March 2012Last week over a pleasant cup of coffee, a colleague asked me a strange question: "I don't get it. Only 80 or so Bahrainis have died in the uprising. Why are they so furious?"  

Citing the number of people killed in the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen --- not to mention civil wars in Libya and Syria --- she said that by the umbers, Bahrain was at the bottom of the list. The anger and frustration expressed by Bahraini protesters was lost on her since "King Hamad really hasn't been as bad as Saleh, Ben Ali, and Mubarak."

I was a bit puzzled by this assertion. So I looked up the figures.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: A Peace Plan Accepted?

A demonstration in front of the Grand Mosque in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Tuesday night

See also Middle East and Iran Videos: 4 Activists on Women's Rights After the "Arab Spring"
Tuesday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 65 Dead Amidst Manoeuvres for Talks

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2110 GMT: Kuwaiti authorities arrested a man late on Tuesday for allegedly insulting the Prophet Mohammed on his Twitter account.

The man, whose name was not disclosed, defamed the Islamic faith and slandered the Prophet Mohammed, his companions and his wife, the Ministry of Interior said in a statement issued on state-run news agency KUNA. He is being interrogated ahead of court proceedings.

The ministry saiid that it “regretted the abusing of social networks by some individuals to offend basic Islamic and spiritual values, vowing to show zero tolerance in combating such serious offences”.

In September a Kuwaiti court convicted a man for insulting Gulf rulers and posting inflammatory sectarian comments on social media, but he was released immediately because of time already served while awaiting trial.

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Middle East and Iran Videos: 4 Activists on Women's Rights After the "Arab Spring"

VisionOnTV posts four interviews around last week's "Half a Revolution" event, held by Amnesty International, in London. Those interviewed are Dalia Abdelhammed Ali Ibraheem (Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights), Yara Sallam (Nazra for Feminist Studies), Layla El Wafa (Women for Libya), and Sussan Tahmasebi, a Washington-based Iranian activist.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 65 Dead Amidst Manoeuvres for Talks

A video illustrating that, despite reports of juveniles tried in military courts (see 0847 GMT), all Egyptian children love the ruling armed forces

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2040 GMT: According to the Locall Co-ordinating Committees of Syria, the Assad military has begun an assault on the town of Saraqeb in Idlib Province:

Idlib:Saraqeb: The regime's army continues to encircle the city amid a widespread deployment of tanks in the southern part, where continuous gunfire and explosions were reported. The regime's army has also surrounded hospitals to deny entry to the wounded; this led residents to treat the wounded in field hospitals along the city's perimeter. Electricity is still cut off for the fourth consecutive day.

The regime's arrest campaigns are still ongoing as well, and the number of detainees is now in the hundreds. Moreover, residents cannot bury the martyrs who fell during the days-long regime siege on Saraqeb because of the continuous shelling and bombardment. The random shelling has also damaged the Information Office, which therefore cannot post any videos that document the harsh reality in the area

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Will the US Aid the Opposition?

2002 GMT: A late-afternoon surprise from the State Department. While we could have guessed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be traveling to Turkey for the "Friends of Syria" meeting, we were not aware that she would be traveling to Saudi Arabia to discuss Syria first:

ecretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from March 30-31, 2012. While in Riyadh, she will meet King Abdullah and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. She will also attend the First Ministerial Meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council-U.S. Strategic Cooperation Forum. In her conversations, she will discuss the full range of bilateral and regional issues, including ongoing security cooperation in the region, as well as the international community’s continuing efforts to stop the bloodshed in Syria.

Secretary Clinton will then travel to Istanbul, Turkey from March 31-April 1 to attend the second meeting of the “Friends of the Syrian People.” This meeting will build upon steps that our friends, allies, and the Syrian opposition continue to take in an attempt to halt the slaughter of the Syrian people and pursue a transition to democracy in Syria. While in Istanbul, Secretary Clinton will also conduct bilateral meetings with Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu and other foreign leaders.

What does this mean? We could read a lot into a short statement, but it certainly means that Clinton is seeking regional unity on Syria. Remember that Saudi Arabia walked out of the last "Friends of Syria" meeting because of a lack of perceived progress in ending the crisis. Whatever the FoS decides, they will look weak and illegitimate without the backing of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the other major regional players.

1957 GMT: The Syrian government has banned all male citizens under the age of 42 from traveling internationally:

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