Libya, Bahrain (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Confrontations

2213 GMT: AFP, from local sources, estimates at least 41 people have lost their lives in Libya in violence since Tuesday.

Oea, a newspaper linked to Muammar Gaddafi's son Seif Al Islam, says demonstrators hung two state security officers in Al-Bayda.

2210 GMT: Britain Foreign Office has announced that some arms export authorisations for Bahrain and Libya are being revoked out of concern the weapons could be used to suppress internal unrest.

The Foreign Office said it was still reviewing export licenses for Yemen.

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Bahrain (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Another Tahrir Square?

2055 GMT: EA sources report that Internet service in Bahrain has slowed to a crawl, making it difficult even to send e-mails.

2015 GMT: Reuters report three people were killed and about 30 wounded in Kut in southern Iraq as about 2000 protesters demanding better basic services fought with police and set government buildings on fire.

2010 GMT: Al Jazeera English reports that hundreds of protesters "torched" Libyan police outposts in the eastern city of Al-Bayda (see video at 1745 GMT), while chanting: "People want the end of the regime."

In the southern city of Zentan, 120 km (75 miles) south of Tripoli, hundreds of people marched through the streets and set fire to security headquarters and a police station, then set up tents in the heart of the town

Police reportedly fired tear gas and violently dispersed protesters, arresting 20, in Benghazi. Families of those arrested are reportedly planning to gather outside the city's security directorate to demand their release.

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Egypt (and Beyond) LiveBlog: One More Push

2115 GMT: Clashes between opposition members in Algeria, celebrating the fall of Egypt's President Mubarak, and police who surrounded the headquarters of Rally for Constitutional Democracy, have left an "unknown number" arrested and injured. 

2110 GMT: In a phone call with a former Israeli government minister yesterday, former President Mubarak called the US policy in Middle East misguided and said that Egyptians were not ready for democracy. He warned that the Middle East would fall to extremism and fundamentalist Islamism with his departure. 

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Sudan Special: Today's Referendum for Secession by the South (Ezell)

Photo: Associated PressToday voters in southern Sudan decide whether to secede from the north to form the world’s newest nation.

Assuring peace in Sudan this weekend will not be easy, but it is imperative to keep all parties satisfied. In an agenda including the great partition, power-sharing, and equal distribution of revenuesfrom natural resources, the hope is that both Khartoum and Juba have recognized that a bold, shrewd form of government-tribal reconciliation is essential to prevent an explosion of violence.

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