On Wednesday, Mr. Khalil canceled a higher-education conference that was to launch the new online publication because of concerns about academic freedom in the United Arab Emirates, where the event was to be held this weekend. That step came less than a week after a similar move by the London School of Economics and Political Science, which canceled a conference it had planned in Dubai after Emirati authorities requested that a presentation on Bahrain, which is facing political upheaval, be dropped from the program. A scholar on Arab politics from the London institution who was to speak at the event was briefly detained at the Dubai airport and barred from entering the country

"We can't talk about upholding academic freedom and launch in Dubai. I don't think it sends the right message."

Al Fanar will start as planned on March 3. It is the first major project of the Alexandria Trust, the charity Mr. Khalil founded in 2012 to improve education in the Middle East and North Africa

Yemen's ousted autocratic leader Ali Abdullah Saleh pleaded for "forgiveness of the past" on Wednesday amid warnings of U.N. sanctions and calls for prosecution of those responsible for the deaths of protesters during the 2011 uprising.

With Saleh pictures and flags, tens of thousands of Saleh supporters gathered near the presidential palace, chanting "the people want Ali Abdullah Saleh." Saleh arrived in an entourage similar to the presidential convoy while a top Saleh party politician, Sultan al-Barakani, addressed the crowd by saying, "welcome the brother, the leader."

Saleh, who stepped down in 2012 as part of power transfer deal that gave him immunity from prosecution in return, appeared to be attempting to show that he still has the support of the masses, after the United Nations Security Council threatened to impose sanctions on him for allegedly trying to impede the country's democratic transition.

The London School of Economics and Political Science abruptly canceled an academic conference on the Arab Spring it planned to hold over the weekend at the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, citing "restrictions imposed on the intellectual content of the event that threatened academic freedom."

cancellation took place after Emirati authorities requested that a presentation on the neighboring kingdom of Bahrain—where a protest movement was harshly repressed with the support of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates—be dropped from the program

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a scholar on Arab politics at the London School of Economics who was scheduled to give the presentation, was stopped and briefly detained on Friday at the Dubai airport's passport control. A security official told him he was on a blacklist and not allowed to enter the country

Extremely adverse labour market conditions lead many youth to give up the job search altogether or to decide to postpone it and continue their stay in the education system. According to the ILO's 'Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012', the crisis induced withdrawal from the labour force amounts to 6.4 million young people worldwide.

Adjusting the youth unemployment rate to account for reduced labour force participation can be obtained by comparing pre-crisis trends in youth labour force participation and the ILO’s estimates of the economically active population. In the figure below, such a comparison is made for each region in 2011, and separately for young men and women.