Fearing the kind of unrest that toppled the government of Tunisia, security forces in Sudan on Tuesday arrested leading Islamist opposition leader Hassan Turabi after he threatened a popular revolt over rising prices on food and other goods.

Sudanese authorities accused Turabi, leader of the Popular Congress Party, of supporting the heavily armed Justice and Equality Movement, a rebel group battling government forces in the western region of Darfur. The arrest is another indication of the many pitfalls for President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir as he faces widening divisions within Africa’s largest nation. 

Sudan denied allegations Saturday by an international prosecutor that President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is wanted for crimes against humanity, has stolen about $9 billion from one of Africa’s poorest countries.

In a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, said if the breadth of Bashir’s wealth became known, it would “destroy his reputation” among the Sudanese, many of whom support the president’s defiance of the West.

“Ocampo suggested if Bashir’s stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at possible $9 billion), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a ‘crusader’ to that of a thief,” according to the March 2009 document outlining the prosecutor's meeting with American officials.

[Updated at 9:52 a.m.: Death toll revised and reference to Yemen media report report of alleged Al Qaeda responsibility added.]

A car bomb exploded along a procession of Shiite Muslims in northern Yemen, killing at least 17 people and raising concerns that Al Qaeda was seeking to exploit religious differences in a country engulfed in rebellion.

The blast occurred in a rugged province where the government and Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, are under a tense ceasefire in fighting that has killed hundreds and displaced thousands. No one claimed immediate responsibility but a tribal leader told Yemen media that Al Qaeda carried out the attack as retaliation against the Houthis for detaining five Al Qaeda operatives earlier this year.

Its members handcuffed and taken to prison cells, the Muslim Brotherhood is facing a sweeping police crackdown that appears certain to weaken the political standing of the nation's largest opposition group in Sunday's parliamentary elections.

More than 1,200 Brotherhood members and sympathizers, including eight candidates for parliament, have been arrested in recent weeks, the organization claims. Most were reportedly detained in the governorate of Sharkeya in the Nile Delta, an Islamist stronghold characterized by poverty and frequent tensions.

"The regime is sending a message that there will be no elections," Saad Katatni, a leading Brotherhood lawmaker, said in a press conference Monday condemning government attacks on opposition voices.

An Egyptian blogger whose case epitomized the struggle for freedom of expression in cyberspace has been freed after serving four years in prison on charges of insulting Islam and defaming President Hosni Mubarak.

Human rights organizations announced Wednesday that Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, the blogger known as Kareem Amer, had been released from prison. His ordeal has highlighted the Egyptian government’s concern over dissident voices arising on websites and social networks that are trickier to control than traditional opposition media outlets.

“We are deeply relieved and happy to know that Kareem’s nightmare is over and he is free at last,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement. “Nothing will be able to erase his four years of suffering as a result of a totally unjustified conviction, but at least he will no longer be the scapegoat of Egyptian government anger at criticism expressed by bloggers. We will closely monitor the behavior of the authorities towards Kareem in the coming months and we will be ready to report any attempt to intimidate him.”

Mohammed Mustapha, a waiter in a Cairo cafe, likes to smoke, but he's not fond of the pictures the Egyptian government stamps on each pack of cigarettes: teeth rotted from gum disease, a limp cigarette suggesting impotence or a man with emphysema tethered to an oxygen mask.

With graphic advertising, new bans and taxes on tobacco, the Egyptian government seems serious about curbing the nation's epidemic number of smokers. But, as with many things in this country of 80 million, contradictions undermine appearances. Most Egyptians smoke Cleopatra cigarettes, manufactured by a company controlled by the government.

Egypt leads the Arab world in tobacco consumption. In 2009, the World Health Organization reported that 38% of Egyptian males use tobacco of some sort and that 32% smoke cigarettes. Females admit to much less smoking -- below 1% -- because it is taboo in this patriarchal culture.

The call to prayer in Egypt can be lulling, but with voices of muezzins crackling from loudspeakers in thousands of minarets it can also be staccato and unnerving. The clamor is expected to soften for the upcoming holy month of Ramadan as the Egyptian government emphasizes harmony.  

 Al-Ahram Weekly reports the following:

For more than 13 decades, the call to prayer has begun five times a day via microphones attached to Egypt's mosques. Many of [the] muezzins [the person who recites the azan or calls to prayer] have imperfect voices thus creating a citywide cacophony while reciting the azan. Although each of the five prayers has a certain time at which the call to prayer should start, the calls are not usually synchronised. All this will soon come to an end after Minister of Endowment Hamdi Zaqzouq's decision to unify the azan and end the general state of dissonance.

“Zaqzouq declared a few weeks ago that the call to prayer in Cairo's 4,500 mosques would be unified by the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, which will start on 11 August. Alexandria will be the first to apply the new system after Cairo, along with other governorates that will work with the new system soon after its success is proven. "We have finished testing the new system, which will put an end to the war of the microphones and the current chaos," Zaqzouq stated.

Read the whole story here.

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: Muezzin calling into his microphone. Credit: Al-Ahram Weekly

A Sudanese court on Thursday sentenced three journalists from an opposition newspaper to prison on charges of spreading hatred against the country, spying, terrorism and false reporting.

The journalists work for Rai Alshab, the newspaper of the Popular Congress Party, headed by Hassan Turabi, the country’s leading Islamic opposition figure. Columnist Abuzar Alamin was sentenced five years in prison for criticizing President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and describing the national elections in April as rigged. Ashraf Abdul-Aziz and Tahir Abujawhara were each sentenced to two years in jail on similar charges.

The newspaper had investigated allegations of electoral fraud -- a charge widely alleged by international human rights groups -- and printed photographs of juveniles voting in different parts of the country. The three journalists were arrested in May by security forces in Khartoum. They were reportedly tortured before they stood trial. 

Clashes between Bedouin tribesmen and Egyptian police have added fresh worries in the Sinai Peninsula, where security forces face rising crime, illegal migrants, terrorist threats and protecting oil and gas pipelines from attacks.

Police and Bedouins have skirmished frequently over the years. The latest outbreak of violence came after a tribal leader escaped prison in February and rallied a group of armed men. Authorities say the Bedouins run criminal gangs, but the tribesmen say their people have no jobs and have been marginalized for generations.

The Bedouins reportedly have threatened to sabotage oil and gas pipelines, including a natural-gas line that supplies Israel. Egyptian Interior Minister Habib Adli met with Bedouin elders on Tuesday to try to calm tensions.

"The meeting was a failure," Moussa Delhi, a Bedouin leader in Amro Valley in central Sinai, told Agence France-Presse. "Bedouins marched in protest from Amro Valley to other villages to demand improved treatment and the release of detainees. The elders who met the interior minister were appointed by the government and do not represent Bedouins."

Rights groups have blamed the government for years of oppression against the Bedouins. But police say the tribesmen are part of a smuggling network that tunnels supplies into the Gaza Strip and sneaks African migrants across the border into Israel. On Tuesday, Egyptian guards shot and killed an Eritrean woman near a border fence.

Egypt has had trouble keeping order in the Sinai, which is crucial to the nation’s tourism industry. In 2004, twin bombings at resorts in Taba and Ras al-Shitan killed at least 34 people. A year later, 88 people died in bomb attacks in Sharm el Sheikh, and in 2006 at least 23 people were killed in blasts in Dahab. Bedouins have been involved in a number of such attacks.

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: A Bedouin in the Sinai Peninsula. Credit: AFP / Getty Images

Beneath the flag-like fields of the Nile Delta, an ancient city lingers.

A team of Austrian archeologists using radar and satellite imaging has discovered what is believed to be an ancient city once controlled by the Hyksos, invaders from Asia who ruled Egypt from about 1664-1569 BC. 

"The pictures taken during radar [imaging] show an underground city complete with streets, houses and tombs, which gives a general overview of the urban planning of the city," said Zahi Hawass, director of Egypt's office of antiquities.   

The archeological find is a reminder of Egypt's deep historical layers. It is a nation with a glorious and raucous past underfoot, waiting to be unearthed, whether it be tombs, mummies, buried boats or walls of hieroglyphics. Each discovery also makes Egyptians more determined to regain what has been hauled away from digs throughout the centuries. 

The country has been trying for years to have the Rosetta Stone returned from the British Museum and for the Egyptian Museum in Berlin to give back the bust of Queen Nefertiti, which is believed to be about 3,400 years old.

"We are the country with the loudest voice on this issue and have so far had returned about 5,000 artifacts," Hawass said this year at a conference on stolen art. "We want to know how we can learn from each other; we need to cooperate to come up with one wish list and fight until we return those artifacts back."

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: Radar imaging of the site of an ancient city in the Nile Delta. Credit: Associated Press

From boat graves to sarcophaguses and from tomb robbers to the temple of a lion goddess, Egypt is a history of epochs tumbling into one another.

Defined by masterpieces such as the pyramids, and by lesser known treasures stretching from the Grecco-Roman period to Napoleonic times, the nation’s art and architecture speak to the distinctive powers and religions that have risen along the Nile for more than 6,000 years. 

Some of it may have been lost if not for nearly $15 million in restorations and excavations done by the American Research Center in Egypt and mostly funded by grants from the United States Agency for International Development. The work -- part cultural reclamation, part exploration of unexpected wonders – includes salvaging the temples at Karnak and Luxor and saving medieval paintings at the Church of St. Anthony. 

A new book, "Preserving Egypt’s Cultural Heritage," offers intriguing glimpses into dozens of projects. A collection of essays edited by Randi Danforth, the book, which includes before and after photographs, is a reminder of the passion and meticulousness that comes with conserving Egypt’s glorious and often troubled past.

The splendor is much diminished these days. The world’s first empire, which the book describes as once spanning “from the fourth cataract of the Nile in the south to the Euphrates River to the northeast,” disappeared centuries ago. Today’s Egypt is a poor, chaotic and dusty offspring, a nation still important but slipping in stature in a changing Middle East.

Oh, those lazy Iranians.

Say what?

A mid-ranking government official in Esfahan has riled the national psyche by proclaiming: “Iranians are lazier than the average people in the world.”

One wouldn’t think so given the steady buzz of news, including street protests, political battles over subsidy cuts and the perpetual brinkmanship and diplomacy with the international community over the country’s nuclear program. But Mohammad Reza Javadi Yegane believes his countrymen have become sloths since the days of the Islamic Revolution.

The semi-official news agency Tabnak cited Yegane, a member of the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, in reminding its readers that three years ago Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that “social laziness is the inner foe of Iranians.”

Some businessmen agree. Mostafa Bromandi, owner of a printing house, said: “My workers are lazy. Out of the eight hours I pay them, they only work two hours.... The more educated, the lazier. My accountant has a BA degree. He is the laziest white-collar worker.” 

A barber found such accusations a bit curious "On the one hand," he said, "the government complains that the holidays in Iran are the longest in the world. On the other hand .. when unrest was fomenting in Tehran in the postelection, the government announced more holidays." 

Maryam, a bookkeeper who wouldn’t give her last name, said: “Yes, Yegane is right. If we were not suffering from social laziness we should have toppled this incompetent and inefficient government.”

-- Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran

Photo: Iranians in the snow on Mount Tochal overlooking Tehran. Credit: Associated Press