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There is little evidence that the Shiite-led protests here have an Iranian sponsor or flavor. In fact, they are at least as much about demands for a democratic government as about sectarianism.

in the village of Sitra, a center of antimonarchy activism where the two men were killed, the mood was entirely different on Tuesday. Hundreds of young men, many armed with sticks, dominated the intersections and sought to confront dozens of policemen. Several truck drivers had placed their trucks in the middle of the main road to block the police who mostly stayed on the outskirts shooting tear gas canisters.

the day after your defense minister came here, the Saudi troops came in. What is the United States doing to end this situation?

After severely curbing news coverage of its crackdown on opposition groups by foreign reporters, Bahraini authorities have begun an assault on local journalists working for international news agencies — with arrests, beatings and, apparently in one instance, electric shock.

Besides ousting the editors of the only independent daily newspaper, Al Wasat, the authorities have arrested local reporters and photographers and expelled the only resident foreign reporter, who worked for the Reuters news agency. Most foreign news reporters, including this one, have been prevented from entering Bahrain.

The intimidation campaign appears to be focused on teachers, who report that as many as 30 elementary and secondary school teachers are taken from their classrooms at a time and driven to police stations where they are subjected to hours of verbal and physical abuse before being released.

Qatar's government communication office has filed a lawsuit in the United States against people who launched a social media campaign to spread false lies about the Gulf state to harm its interests. In its complaint before a court in the state of New York, the office said its defendants used social media accounts since October 2017 to spread fake information about Qatar and that it harbours "terrorism".

the adverts accusing Qatar of funding "terrorism" and mistreating foreign workers were paid for by "secretive campaign groups" - Qatar Exposed and Kick Qatar Out, neither of which own websites on the Internet. The two Twitter accounts were created within minutes of each other last October. According to analysts, the two campaigns are funded by groups linked to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – which, along with Bahrain and Egypt, have severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar.

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

In Morocco, Syria, Bahrain and Iran, pro-revolution users of the site have found themselves locked in a battle of the hashtags as Twitter accounts with a pro-government message are quickly created to counter the prevailing narrative

Another set of accounts, however, managed to inundate the #Syria tag. Using a Bahraini company, EGHNA, bots are sending messages – sometimes several a minute – using various Syria-related search terms.Under the heading "Success stories", the EGNHA website says:"LovelySyria is using EGHNA Media Server to promote interesting photography about Syria using their Twitter accounts. EGHNA Media Server helped LovelySyria get attention to the beauty of Syria, and build a community of people who love the country and admire its beauty. Some of their network members started translating photo descriptions and rebroadcasting them to give the Syrian beauty more exposure.LovelySyria is using their own installation of EGHNA Ad Center to generate the Twitter messages, their current schedule is two messages every five minutes."Other accounts, such as @SyriaBeauty, @DNNUpdates and @SyLeague, perform similar functions. Their messages are sometimes political, sometimes not, but all were created recently and all serve the purpose of diverting attention from the Syrian protests.

although Twitter shies away from moderating content and removing users, the search functionality favours users with a complete username, profile and photograph, and users who automate their tweets can be removed from search.

Social media connected these young Arabs to like-minded individuals, across the region, and beyond, but perhaps most importantly with the media -- highlighting the limitations of parachute journalism, which is as ineffective as it is costly. Instead, it offered them a new source for news-gathering, social-media

Despite social media's challenging of the state's intimidation and targeting of journalists, Bahrain, Syria, and Egypt and many others continue to crackdown on dissent. But through citizen reports and mobilization on social media, their stories could not be suppressed.

Twitter alone has changed the way we, as global citizens, communicate and the way wars are covered, especially when governments ban journalists from entry to the country. Twitter ultimately becomes the wires

statistics compiled by tireless groups such as Global Voices, Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists suggest 2011 to be among the worst years yet for online free expression, marred by the persecution of bloggers and social media users in a number of states

About half the political prisoners he met in jail told him police had tracked their communications and movements through their cell phones

Stockholm-based Ericsson AB, Creativity Software Ltd. of the U.K. and Dublin-based AdaptiveMobile Security Ltd. marketed or provided gear over the past two years that Iran’s law enforcement or state security agencies would have access to, according to more than 100 documents and interviews with more than two dozen technicians and managers who worked on the systems.

When Iranian security officers needed to locate a target one night in late 2009, one former Ericsson employee says he got an emergency call to come into the office to fix a glitch in an Ericsson positioning center.

A defence lawyer in Kuwait says a court has sentenced a man to ten years in prison for Twitter posts deemed insulting to Islam and to the rulers of Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Bahrain

Three Arab countries have banned the Hollywood film "Noah" on religious grounds even before its worldwide premiere and several others are expected to follow suit

Islam frowns upon representing holy figures in art and depictions of the Prophet Mohammad in European and North American media have repeatedly sparked deadly protests in Islamic countries over the last decade, fanning cultural tensions with the West. "Censors for Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE (United Arab Emirates) officially confirmed this week that the film will not release in their countries," a representative of Paramount Pictures, which produced the $125 million film starring Oscar-winners Russell Crowe and Anthony Hopkins, told Reuters

the studio expected a similar ban in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait