UPDATE 1230 GMT: A photograph of the freed Iranians:
Turkey's State news agency Anatolia reports that Syria will release 2130 civilian prisoners, including "many Turkish nationals", in exchange for 48 Iranian men seized by the Syrian opposition last August.
A video from the Syrian frontline: a regime soldier defects in Armanaz in Idlib Province --- his surprised colleagues cannot attack him because of the presence of observers
1722 GMT:Syria. Human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni has said that a military court has released eight activists, including blogger Razan Ghazzawi, until their 29 May trial on charges of "possession of banned publications".
1720 GMT:Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah has dismissed a senior cleric, Sheikh Abdulmohsen al-Obeikan, who criticised a measure that allowed women to mix with unmarried men.
The firing of the royal advisor fits a pattern of recent years in which senior clerics who oppose limited reforms have been dismissed.
Earlier this year, the head of the religious police was replaced by a cleric who was seen to be more liberal, and in 2010 King Abdullah fired the judiciary head, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, for attacking a new university that was the centrepiece of government education reforms.
1818 GMT: The Local Co-ordination Committees of Syria claims that 45 people have died today, including three women and four children. Twenty-four of the deaths were in Homs, where several neighbourhoods are being shelled, and 13 in Idlib, where regime forces have moved into the Saraqeb district.
1641 GMT: Andrew Hammond of Reuters writes, amidst reports of widespread use of tear gas by Bahrain's security forces:
back after Sitra. all i can say is that was really insane. cld have been worse too if media hadnt been around
Wednesday, January 9, 2013 at 9:44 | 