Jeremy Bowen of the BBC reports from "free" Zabadani in Syria
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Friday's Syria, Bahrain (and Beyond) Live Coverage: From Defection to Insurrection
2010 GMT: As anticipated, the final results of Egypt's elections confirm what many believed would be a landslide victory for Islamist parties. Reuters reports that the Muslim Brotherhood coalition has won 38% of the list seats while the salafist Nour Party 29%. This gives the Islamist parties a two-thirds majority in the party list-based vote. New Wafd and the Egyptian Coalition came third and fourth, respectively.
2000 GMT: Bahraini security forces harshly suppressed a protest held in A'ali was harshly suppressed today. The protest was held to demand the release of detainee Fadeela AlMubarak. An image of the procession before it was attacked:
1140 GMT: Earlier, we posted a video of 11-year-old Yaseen Alasfoor's body and his family mourning around him. Yaseen died yesterday of tear gas inhalation. Now, activist Zainab Alkhawaja tweets that the Ministry of Interior has not allowed the family to hold a public funeral for him and have instead asked them to bury him in silence, without a procession.
1120 GMT: NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin tweets from Syria:
Arab league monitors arrive in zabadani city. Meeting w Syrian army at city gates
AL monitors received orders to assess situation in zabadani after a tense week. They'll report findings to cairo ASAP.
BBC meanwhile managed to leave their army escorts behind and speak to residents of Deraa about the situation and protests. You can watch the full video here.
1110 GMT: The Yemeni parliament passed a law today, granting former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and many of his closest aides immunity from prosecution according to Al Jazeera. The report adds:
The transitional government of national unity, which is led by the parliamentary opposition, had submitted 11th-hour amendments on Friday sharply reducing the scope of the amnesty offered to Saleh's lieutenants following a public outcry.
Meanwhile Yemeni opposition figure and Nobel Peace Prize-laureate Tawakul Karman told Reuters yesterday that if the laws were passed, the parliament should place a ban on Saleh and his associate so they could never hold public office again.
The laws were part of the Gulf Cooperation Council agreement that helped remove Saleh from power.1010 GMT: A report of their own? Syrian opposition groups dissatisfied with the work of the Arab League observer mission might soon produce a counterpart to that report. Al Jazeera reports, citing anonymous sources, that opposition leaders are not happy with the observer mission's work and believe that not all of the atrocities committed by the Syrian regime have been documented well and might present their own findings of President Assad's oppression against the protesters to the Arab League.
1000 GMT: A video has been released of the family of Yaseen Alasfoor's family, paying their last respects to his body. Yaseen, an 11 year old boy, died of tear gas inhalation yesterday after police fired teargas indiscriminately throughout the kingdom to disperse protesters and punish civilians who hid protesters in their homes. The video is quite graphic in nature:
0950 GMT: Ammar Abdulhamid of the Syrian Revolution Digest claims the number of protests throughout Syria yesterday was over 200. The report was compiled by Abdulhamid using videos of protests submitted to YouTube by activists on the ground in Syria as well as other sources. The precise number according to Abdulhamid is a staggering 2016, which goes a long way to show how large the movement has become in the past year.
0635 GMT: On Friday, the leading Shia cleric in Bahrain, Sheikh Isa Qassim used his sermon to warn of a response if security forces continued to beat women.
Perhaps missing the point of Qassim's statement, the Bahraini Ministry of Interior replies, "Attempt to Tarnish Image of Police Rejected".
The Assistant Undersecretary of Legal Affairs strongly rejects Shaikh Qassim's allegations. The Undersecretary found it disturbing that Shaikh Qassim would engage in rumor and innuendo regarding such serious allegations. He said the role of religious leaders is to speak truth through God.
Instead of making scurrilous accusations against police officers, the Undersecretary said Shaikh Qassim would have been better served in discouraging females from engaging in illegal behavior. Some of the women's behavior included hurling Molotov cocktails at policemen and even stabbing them with sharp objects.
0630 GMT: Protests also continue in Egypt --- a Friday demonstration in Tahrir Square in Cairo:
0500 GMT: On Friday, amidst a day of massive anti-regime protests across Syria, the most striking footage may have come inside "liberated" Zabadani.
BBC reporter Jeremy Bowen got into the town --- exactly how is not clear --- to report on the celebrations of residents over the withdrawal of regime forces, who failed to break the opposition in a six-day assault, and to profile some of the insurgents.
If the video is exclusive, Bowen's story only confirms what EA's James Miller had written on Thursday and analysed yesterday morning about Zabadani less than 20 miles from the capital Damascus. Indeed, the BBC's conclusion echoes Miller's: "The opposition's victories of this week may be temporary, leaving an importance which is more symbolic than strategic. However, in an insurrection that is struggling to win the confidence of the international community and that requires more internal confidence to win more defectors to its cause, symbolism may be enough."
The tale is not just Zabadani. Beyond the BBC's cameras, a second town --- Kafar Souseh --- was "liberated" by regime withdrawal on Thursday, and there are always pockets of Syria which are effectively in the hands of the opposition and the insurgents. How far those pockets extend, and whether they join up to form a zone of not just resistance but an alternative Syria is the "exclusive" to watch.
And beyond the cameras --- at least those of the international broadcasters, if not those of witnesses --- are the developments in Bahrain. On Friday, many thousands turned out for a mass rally to challenge the regime. This time the security forces did not fire tear gas and wield batons to break up the gathering, although there were clashes in the evening as the security forces dispersed smaller marches in the capital Manama and the kingdom's village.