Bahrain (and Beyond) Live: Protests Build Again Before Grand Prix

Police fear tear gas into a market in Sanabis on Thursday

See also Syria Live: Assessing the Insurgency
Saturday's Egypt (and Beyond) Live: Mubarak Retrial Opens

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1605 GMT: Iraq. Two more Sunni Muslim election candidates have been killed less than a week before local votes.

At least 13 candidates, most of them Sunni, have been slain.

Saturday's election to select provincial council members is seen as a measure pf strength of the largely-Shia national government before the Parliamentary elections in 2014.

No group claimed responsibility for the weekend attacks in Baiji town, 180 kilometres (112 miles) north of Baghdad.

Another Sunni candidate escaped a roadside bomb in Balad Ruz, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of the capital, on Sunday.

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Syria, Lebanon (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Will a Beirut Bomb Widen the War?

Activists and crew on the Estelle, the Gaza-bound ship of the Freedom Flotilla, which was boarded this morning by Israeli forces

See also Friday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: At Least 44 Dead in Airstrike on Ma'arat al-Numan
Israel-Palestine Live Blog (19 October): A Centre-Left Alternative to Netanyahu?

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1840 GMT: Egypt. France 24 TV says its correspondent in Cairo, Sonia Dridi, was "savagely attacked" near Tahrir Square on Friday night, shortly after a live news report.

The channel said Dridi was rescued by a colleague and other witnesses. The reporter and crew were safe "but extremely shocked".

France 24 said it would file a suit against unspecified assailants.

1720 GMT: Syria. US officials have put out the message, via The Washington Post, that they are stepping up intelligence co-operation and military consultations with Turkey over the Syrian conflict.

In particular, the officials confirmed that Washington was the source of intelligence for Ankara's grounding of a Syrian passenger jet, travelling from Moscow to Damascus, earlier this month. Turkish officials claimed the aircraft was carrying radar and electrical parts for Syria’s Russian-made anti-aircraft systems.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Fighting Reaches Aleppo

Sounds of fighting in the Saif al Dawleh section of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, this morning

See also Syria Snapshot: As Refugees Surge, Jordan Turns Some Away
Syria Analysis: Why the Regime Could Lose Aleppo
Syria Audio Feature: "Assad May Be Slipping from Power" --- Scott Lucas with the BBC
Saturday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Story is Beyond Damascus

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2020 GMT: Syria. Turkish police have fired tear gas on stone-throwing Syrian refugees, protesting at the lack of food and water in camps.

A Turkish official said demonstrations erupted at two of the 10 camps set up along the border sheltering more than 40,000 Syrians.

"We have had no food for three days," said a young Syrian boy standing outside the container city of Kilis, which is home to some 15,000 people.

1936 GMT: Iraq. Bombs in several towns have killed at least 17 people and injured dozens, in one of the most violent days in the past two weeks.

Two parked car bombs exploded near an entrance of a public market in Mahmodiya, a town 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of Baghdad, and another exploded close to the town's police station. Five people were killed and 28 wounded.

In Madaeen, 30 kilometres southeast of the Iraqi capital, three IEDs exploded inside a crowded al-Tameem market just before the evening meal for Ramadan, killing six people and wounding 13 others.

Car bombs planted near a public restraunt in Najaf, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Baghdad, killed five people and wounded 14, and a policeman was killed and 16 others were injured when a car bomb exploded in the Mosul district.

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Syria Feature: 20 Things You Need to Know (Whitaker)

Photo: AP9. Religion and the Alawites: The Alawites are a secretive religious sect usually regarded as an offshoot of Shia Islam. In Syria they are a tiny minority but, through the president's family and others in senior positions, they are dominant within the regime. About 74% of Syria's inhabitants are Sunni Muslims; Shia Muslims (including the Alawites and Ismailis) account for 13%, various Christian groups 10%, and Druze 3%. Jewish communities have existed in Syria for centuries but today their number is extremely small – probably no more than a few dozen people.

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Lebanon Latest: Talks Fail as Prime Minister Hariri Remains Defiant (Shadid)

Lebanon’s worst crisis in years escalated dangerously on Thursday as a last-ditch effort to negotiate a solution ended in failure and the American-backed caretaker prime minister struck a defiant note toward Hezbollah and its allies, which brought down his 14-month-old national unity government this month.

The events cast the crisis into an unpredictable moment, as each side became ever more entrenched in positions with little common ground over indictments expected to name members of Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militant movement, in the assassination of the prime minister’s father, Rafik Hariri.

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Lebanon Special: A Beginner's Guide to the Collapse of the Government (Emserrs)

The power-sharing Government was 14 months old and had taken five months to form. It consisted of 30 ministers, with the provision that the resignation of a third would bring it to a halt. Yesterday afternoon, 10 ministers allied to Hezbollah handed in their resignation after demanding that current Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri call a Cabinet meeting to discuss the tribunal or face the consequences.  Independent Shia MP Adnan Hussein followed suit shortly afterwards, dissolving Hariri’s government at around 17.00 Beirut time.

Premier Hariri was at the time in New York meeting President Obama.  It is likely that the resignations were timed to coincide with the meeting and cause optimum embarrassment to Hariri, leaving the most powerful man in the world in a meeting with an ex-Prime Minister.

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Lebanon Breaking: Government Collapses as All 10 Minister of "March 8 Movement" Resign

2125 GMT: Before he left Washington, Prime Minister Saad Hariri got his meeting with President Obama and Washington's supportive words.

Obama and Hariri urged all parties to refrain from causing further instability, and the White House said:

The efforts by the Hezbollah-led coalition to collapse the Lebanese government only demonstrate their own fear and determination to block the government's ability to conduct its business and advance the aspirations of all of the Lebanese people.

Obama also stressed the importance of the UN Special Tribunal on Lebanon "to help end the era of political assassinations with impunity" in the country.

1810 GMT: Prime Minister Hariri has cut short his trip to the US and is returning homes. There are reports that he will stop in Paris for a discussion with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

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Lebanon Special: Queries over the Special Tribunal, Hariri, and the Accusation against Hezbollah

Claudio Gallo writes for EA:

The search for truth about the Hariri case has once more sunk into a poisonous marsh threatening another Lebanese civil war. Hezbollah continues to maintain that there is Israeli hand behind the attack and that the Tribunal is politicised. In August, the Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah introduced TV footage, apparently stolen from an Israeli drone, which seemed to show surveillance by Israeli intelligence of the route of  Hariri’s car. The issue now is whether Hezbollah goes beyond accusation to launch a political move pressuring or even taking control of the Lebanese Government.

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Lebanon Special: Justice or A Death Blow for Beirut? (Narwani)

This Tribunal is no longer about justice. To weigh one man's death against the lives of four million Lebanese and countless other millions who could be caught up in a regional conflagration is sheer madness.

Imagine the trauma of this Levantine nation as the trial draws out, day after day, week after week, month after month - creating divisions, frictions, suspicions to the detriment of Lebanon's fledgling government which has made admirable strides in maintaining its equilibrium and learning the art of compromise this past year.

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Lebanon Special: The CBC Video and Article "Who Killed Rafik Hariri?"

Evidence gathered by Lebanese police and, much later, the UN, points overwhelmingly to the fact that the assassins were from Hezbollah, the militant Party of God that is largely sponsored by Syria and Iran. CBC News has obtained cellphone and other telecommunications evidence that is at the core of the case.

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