Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Historic Aleppo Burns

See also US War on Terror Feature: The Death of a Guantanamo Bay Detainee
Saudi Arabia Feature: The Trial of the Political Dissidents
Saturday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Political Drift in New York, Military Confrontation in Aleppo

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1925 GMT: Yemen. The World Food Programme has said that almost 50% of Yemenis go hungry amid the world's third-highest rate of child malnutrition.

"Five million people, or 22 percent of the population, can't feed themselves or buy enough to feed themselves....These are mostly landless laborers, so they don't grow their own food, and with high food prices they can't buy it either," WFP spokesman Barry Came said. "In addition, there is another five million who are being really hard hit by high food prices and on the edge of being food insecure. So 10 million people in this country go to bed hungry every night."

The number of Yemenis receiving daily WFP food rations has risen from 1.2 million in January to more than 3.8 million, but poor infrastructure and fear of kidnappings have complicated the logistics of providing food aid.

Thirteen percent of Yemeni children are now acutely malnourished.

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Iran Snapshot: Why Was Top Military Commander Soleimani in Iraqi Kurdistan?

The Kurdish website has reported a surprising visit by the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, to Iraqi Kurdistan region. Soleimani met officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government, including Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, and top members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Soleimani has close ties to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who recently visited Talabani in Suleymaniyah after the Kurdish leader helped him survive a no-confidence vote.

Relations between Iran and the KDP have been tense, despite occasional meetings.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Regime "Fully Purges Aleppo District From Terrorists"....Again

Claimed footage of Libyans taking US Ambassador Chris Stevens --- unconscious or dead --- from a building in Benghazi on Tuesday night (see 0520 GMT)

See also Syria Feature: The Darayya "Massacre" and a Regime's "Slow, Steady Killing Strategy"
Syria Feature: "Insurgents Subjecting Detainees to Ill-Treatment, Torture, and Execution"
Iran Analysis: Tehran Hurts Itself With Muddled Messages on Syria
Sunday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Embassy Attacks Recede, While 164 Die Across Syria on Saturday

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2106 GMT: Lebanon. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, has told a rally of tens of thousands protesting the US movie denigrating the Prophet Mohammad, “America must understand that releasing the entire film will have dangerous, very dangerous repercussions around the world.

The rally was in the Dahiyeh district of south Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. Nasrallah said to the crowd that Western arguments over freedom of speech were “hypocrisy, deception, and double standards”. He called for “an international resolution criminalizing the defamation of heavenly religions".

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 7 Weeks Later, The Battles in Aleppo Continue

Saturday night's opposition rally in Bab Qibli in Hama Province

See also Bahrain 1st-Hand Special: Friday's Manama Protests and the "Overwhelming Humane Side of People"
Syria 1st-Hand: Darayya After the Mass Killing --- "The Stink of Death"
Syria Photo Feature: A Moment of Life and Death in Aleppo
Saturday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Fighting Escalates in Aleppo and Damascus

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1957 GMT: Bahrain. The Speaker of the Council of Representatives has called on ambassadors of "Western" states to condemn the "vandalism, sabotage, and targetting of the trade sector by the chaotic rallies" of the leading opposition society, Al Wefaq.

Authorities tried to prevent an Al Wefaq march on Friday by declaring it illegal and mobilising security forces around and in the capital Manama, but smaller demonstrations occurred throughout the city, with the police trying to disperse them with tear gas.

See Bahrain 1st-Hand Special: Friday's Manama Protests and the "Overwhelming Humane Side of People"

1951 GMT: Libya. The Prosecutor's Office has said that the trial of former leader Muammar Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islam will be delayed by five months to include any relevant testimony obtained from the interrogation of Libya's former head of intelligence.

Government officials said in August that Saif al-Islam's trial on charges of war crimes would begin this month, but the extradition of Abdullah al-Senussi from Mauritania on Wednesday led to the postponement.

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The Latest from Iran (5 September): Admission --- The Sanctions Hurt Both the People and the Regime

See also Iran Feature: Regime to Media "Print Only Hope and Joy About Sanctions"
The Latest from Iran (4 September): Back to Business?

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0015 GMT: Resistance Watch. Najmeh Bozorgmehr summarises today's International Conference and Festival of Islamic Resistance, with the emphasis of the Supreme Leader's advisor Ali Akbar Velayati on support for Syria as "the golden link of the resistance chain against Israel" (see 1025 GMT).

Bozorgmehr notes that, while the Syrian Ambassador to Iran warned that the "vicious plans" of the US and its allies in the region would lead from overthrow of President Assad to regime change in Tehran, "the Lebanese and Palestinian groups at the conference appeared less concerned with Syria or Iran than with their own struggles".

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: At Least 1600 Killed in the Deadliest Week

Al Jazeera English's report on how the Syrian conflict is affecting trade with Jordan

See also Egypt Feature: Mubarak-Era Officials "Retain Millions of Pounds" of Assets in Britain
Syria Opinion: "A Population Can Now Dismantle A Modern State on Its Own"
Sunday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: The Unavoidable Change on the Ground

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2033 GMT: Syria. Back from a break to find a video of fire and explosions in the Sukkari district of Aleppo because of regime shelling:

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Disputing a Car Bomb in Damascus

2045 GMT: Syria. Despite all the violence, there are still protests, and those protests offer a united front against the Syrian government. It is the protests that first drew the fire of the regime, and it was the protests that first gave credence to the slogan "the people want the execution of the President," and it was the protests that first gave the Free Syrian Army legitimacy in the first place. Because of the violence, protests are smaller and less frequent - but even after more than 22,000 deaths, they are never far away.

The LCC posts a video claiming to show a night protest in Harasta, a suburb of Damascus where bombs and shells have fallen for days (map):

2015 GMT: Afghanistan. Yet another "Green on Blue" attack, where Afghanistan forces fire on NATO soldiers:

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Iraq Feature: The Critical Issue of Succession in Kurdistan (Van Wilgenburg)

Jalal Talabani & Massoud BarzaniIf you wish to understand the future of Kurdish politics and its significant role in the evolution of democracy in Iraq and the Kurdistan region, then an introduction to the question of succession is essential.

This week's case? Jalal Talabani is both the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Iraqi President. According to Kurdistan Tribune, Talabani has been absent from Iraq when he left for a knee operation on 20 June, feeding speculation about his ill health.

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The Latest from Iran (19 August): The Regime Looks for a Boost

0800 GMT Supreme Leader Watch. Appearing at the Eid al-Fitr prayer today, Ayatollah Khamenei declaring the ascendancy of Islamic countries, “Issues of the Muslim world are unique. Developments of the Muslim World are strange and shocking and chart the course of Muslim nations in the future.”

The Supreme Leader described the US and Israel as enemies of the Islamic nations and cautioned against any “analytic blunders", as plots against Muslims are getting more and more complicated.

0525 GMT: Sanctions Watch. The US Government has stepped up pressure on its Iraqi counterpart over sanctions on Iran through an article in The New York Times:

Some current and former American and Iraqi officials, along with banking and oil experts, say that Iraqi government officials are turning a blind eye to the large financial flows, smuggling and other trade with Iran. In some cases, they say, government officials, including some close to [Iraqi Prime Minister] Maliki, are directly profiting from the activities.

“Maliki’s government is right in the middle of this,” said one former senior American intelligence official who now does business in Iraq.

In announcing that he was “cutting off” Elaf Islamic Bank [last month], Mr. Obama said it had “facilitated transactions worth millions of dollars on behalf of Iranian banks that are subject to sanctions for their links to Iran’s illicit proliferation activities.”

But the treatment the bank has received in Baghdad since it was named by Mr. Obama suggests that the Iraqi government is not only allowing companies and individuals to circumvent the sanctions but also not enforcing penalties for noncompliance.

Iraqi banking experts said last week that the bank was still allowed to participate in the Iraq Central Bank’s daily auction at which commercial banks can sell Iraqi dinars and buy United States dollars. These auctions are a crucial pathway for Iranian access to the international financial system. Western officials say that Iran seeks to bolster its reserves of dollars to stabilize its exchange rates and pay for imports.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Almost 25,000 Dead as the United Nations Departs

1902 GMT: Syria. The must-watch video of the day. Sometimes, videos coming from Syria have an almost meditative element to them, as if so much can be learned from a single video. This is one of those instances.

This is Saleh el Dine, an upper-middle class commercial district in Aleppo. This is the kind of neighborhood you'd find near a major university in London, or Boston, filled with over-priced apartments, upper-class residents, students, coffee shops... the kind of place that ranges from peaceful to bustling depending on the time of day.

In this video it is neither peaceful or bustling. The neighborhood is more like hauntingly deserted, with the distant echo of war faintly heard in the background. The silence is stunning. Periodic gunfire can be heard, then a helicopter which is later seen overhead.

Suddenly, however, a massive explosion, as a bomb or a shell lands too close to the camera.

But after the excitement, the haunting stillness returns. This is what Aleppo has become.

1838 GMT: Syria. We have hundreds of videos of protests, but we'll share a few more of the larger ones. In the first the cameraman says this is Darayya, and he says today's date. Darayya is southwest of Damascus (map), has been fought over for weeks, and is one of the areas that some analysts believe the Free Syrian Army will eventually try to take in order to strike from there at the capital:

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