Mazen Mahdi / EPA

Traffic comes to a stop due to a blockade of burning tires on the outskirts of the Bahraini capital Manama on April 18, 2013.

Mazen Mahdi / EPA

A protester flashes the victory sign after setting tires on fire to block a road on the outskirts of the Bahraini capital Manama on April 18.

 By Reem Khalifa, The Associated Press

Organizers of Bahrain's Grand Prix said Thursday that sporadic protests against the race and violent unrest across the Gulf nation do not pose a threat to the premier international event in the kingdom.

Anti-government groups have stepped up protests against the race in attempts to embarrass authorities, but the demonstrations have been mostly isolated to areas that are hotbeds of opposition to the ruling royal family. Rights groups also are using the race to criticize Bahrain's arrests and other security crackdowns.

Bahrain has faced more than two years of violence between the Sunni-led government and majority Shiites seeking a greater political voice. 

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Mazen Mahdi / EPA

A bulldozer used by the police to clear the streets passes graffiti in memory of killed protesters that reads "Don't race on our blood," in Duraz village, north of the Bahraini capital Manama, on April 18.

Hasan Jamali / AP

A riot police officer jumps a fence to extinguish a tire fire set by Bahraini anti-government protesters in Sehla, Bahrain, on April 18.

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Mohammed Asad / AP

An injured security official is carried from a police officers club in an upscale Cairo neighborhood, after fires were set by protesters angry about death sentences imposed on soccer fans over a deadly riot.

Egyptian protesters torched buildings in Cairo and tried unsuccessfully to disrupt international shipping on the Suez Canal, as a court ruling on a deadly soccer riot stoked rage in a country beset by worsening security.

The ruling enraged residents of Port Said, at the northern entrance of the Suez Canal, by confirming death sentences imposed on 21 local soccer fans for their role in the riot last year when more than 70 people were killed.

But the court also angered rival fans in Cairo by acquitting a further 28 defendants that they wanted punished, including seven members of the police force which is reviled across society for its brutality under deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Security sources said one person had died in Cairo from the effects of tear gas and 65 people were injured, some by rubber bullets.

Saturday's protests and violence underlined how Islamist President Mohamed Mursi is struggling - two years after Mubarak's overthrow - to maintain law and order at a time of economic and political crisis.

On Thursday Egypt's election committee scrapped a timetable under which voting for the lower house of parliament should have begun next month, following a court ruling that threw the entire polling process into confusion.

The stadium riot took place last year at the end of a match in Port Said between local side Al-Masry and Cairo's Al-Ahly team. Spectators were crushed when panicked crowds tried to escape from the stadium after a pitch invasion by Al-Masry supporters. Others fell or were thrown from terraces.

Judge Sobhy Abdel Maguid, listing the names of the 21 Al-Masry fans, said the Cairo court had confirmed "the death penalty by hanging". He also sentenced five more people to life imprisonment while others out of a total of 73 defendants received shorter terms.

In Cairo, local Al-Ahly fans vented their rage at the acquittals, setting fire to a police social club, the nearby offices of the Egyptian soccer federation and a branch of a fast food chain, sending smoke rising over the capital.

A military helicopter scooped up water from the nearby Nile and dropped it on the burning buildings.

"Ultra" fans, the section of Al-Ahly supporters responsible for much of the violence, said they awaited retribution for those who had planned the Port Said "massacre".

"What is happening today in Cairo is the beginning of the anger. Wait for more if the remaining elements embroiled in this massacre are not revealed," the Ultras said in a statement.

PROTESTERS TARGET CANAL

Mohamed Muslemany / NBC News

A man rescues soccer trophies from the Egyptian Football Association after the building was torched by angry soccer fans.

In Port Said, where the army took over security in the city center from the police on Friday, about 2,000 residents who want the local fans spared from execution blockaded ferries crossing the Suez Canal. Witnesses said youths also untied moored speedboats used to supply shipping on the waterway, hoping the boats would drift into the path of passing vessels.

Military police recovered five speedboats and brought them back to shore, but two were still drifting, one witness said.

Authorities controlling the Canal, an artery for global trade and major income source for the Egyptian government, said through traffic had not been affected. "The canal ... is safe and open to all ships passing through it," Suez Canal Authority spokesman Tarek Hassanein told the MENA news agency.

The canal is a major employer in Port Said and, until now, protesters had declared it off-limits for the demonstrations apart from on one occasion when red balloons marked "SOS" were floated into the waterway.

In a separate security threat, the Interior Ministry ordered police in the Sinai peninsula to raise their state of emergency after receiving intelligence that jihadists might attack their forces there, MENA reported.

Officials have expressed growing worries about security in the desert region which borders Israel and is home to a number of tourist resorts. In August last year Islamist militant gunmen killed at least 15 Egyptian policemen in an assault on a police station on the border with Israel, before seizing two military vehicles and attempting to storm the frontier.

Last Thursday, Bedouin gunmen briefly held the head of U.S. oil major ExxonMobil in Egypt and his wife. The Britons, who had been heading for a Sinai resort, were released unharmed.

General unrest is rife as the Egypt's poor suffer badly from the economic crisis. Foreign currency reserves have slid to critically low levels and are now little more than a third of what they were in the last days of Mubarak.

The Egyptian pound has lost 14 percent against the dollar since the 2011 revolution and the budget deficit is soaring to unmanageable levels due to the huge cost of fuel and food subsidies. Egypt agreed a $4.8 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund last November, but Cairo requested a delay due to street violence the following month.

Analysts say the chances of an IMF deal are slim until the electoral chaos is sorted out, but question how much longer the government can hold out without international funding.

Unrest has plagued Port Said since the death sentences were first handed down to the Al-Masry supporters in January, with locals fighting pitched battles with police. At least eight people have been killed this week, including three policemen.

The Cairo court also jailed two senior police officers for 15 years on Saturday for their handling of the riot.

However, some fans in Cairo were happy with the confirmation of the death sentences. "This is a just verdict and has calmed us all down. Our martyrs have been vindicated," Said Sayyid, 21, told Reuters.

Related:

At least 30 die in clashes over Egypt soccer disaster verdict

'People are dying in front of us': Scores killed in riots after Egypt soccer match

This story was originally published on Sat Mar 9, 2013 4:12 AM EST

Health Protection Agency via AP

A British Health Protection Agency photo shows an electron microscope image of a coronavirus, part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. This one was first identified last year in the Middle East. A patient in Britain has died after being treated for the virus. So far 12 people have been diagnosed and six have perished.

LONDON -- A patient being treated for a mysterious SARS-like virus has died, a British hospital said Tuesday.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, said the coronavirus victim was also being treated for "a long-term, complex unrelated health problem" and already had a compromised immune system.

A total of 12 people worldwide have been diagnosed with the disease, six of whom have died.

The virus was first identified last year in the Middle East. Most of those infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan, but the person who just died is believed to have caught it from a relative in Britain, where there have been four confirmed cases.

The new coronavirus is part of a family of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. In 2003, a global outbreak of SARS killed about 800 people worldwide.

Health experts still aren't sure exactly how humans are being infected. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus and scientists are considering whether bats or other animals like goats or camels are a possible source of infection.

Britain's Health Protection Agency has said while it appears the virus can spread from person to person, "the risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low."

Officials at the World Health Organization said the new virus has probably already spread between humans in some instances. In Saudi Arabia last year, four members of the same family fell ill and two died. And in a cluster of about a dozen people in Jordan, the virus may have spread at a hospital's intensive care unit.

Related: 

New virus passed person-to-person in Britain, officials say

Majdi Mohammed / AP

Palestinians throw rocks during clashes with Israeli troops outside Ofer military prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday. At least 16 people were injured as Israeli forces fired into the air and used rubber bullets.

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli soldiers on Friday at a rally outside an Israeli prison in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian medical officials said two protesters were wounded by live gunfire in the demonstration, which was mounted as a show of solidarity with Palestinians being held in the nearby Ofer prison.

Mohammed Ballas / AP

Israeli security forces fire tear gas Friday north of the West Bank city of Jenin during a Palestinian rally in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails.

A crowd of about 300 Palestinians threw stones at troops, who used riot dispersal equipment to break up the protest, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

"The soldiers, feeling immediate danger, fired in the air," she said. "The incident is being reviewed."

Palestinian medical officials said tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets were fired into the crowd, and 14 people were injured by rubber bullets.

Nearly 5,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, many charged with involvement in attacks on Israelis.

Nir Elias / Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves the Likud-Yisrael Beitenu headquarters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday.

A badly weakened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scrambled Wednesday to keep his job by extending his hand to a new centrist party that advocates a more earnest push on peacemaking with the Palestinians after Israel's parliamentary election produced a stunning deadlock.

The results defied forecasts that Israel's next government would veer sharply to the right at a time when the country faces mounting international isolation, growing economic problems and regional turbulence. While that opens the door to unexpected movement on peace efforts, a coalition joining parties with dramatically divergent views on peacemaking, the economy and the military draft could just as easily be headed for gridlock — and perhaps a short life.

Israeli media said that with nearly all votes counted, each bloc had 60 of parliament's 120 seats. Commentators said Netanyahu, who called early elections three months ago expecting easy victory, would be tapped to form the next government because the rival camp drew 12 of its 60 seats from Arab parties that traditionally are excluded from coalition building.

Ammar Awad / Reuters

Yair Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party, addresses supporters at his party's headquarters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. The surprise star of Israel's election is a former television news anchor whose centrist party soared to second place in the balloting.

A surprising, strong showing by a political newcomer, the centrist Yesh Atid, or There is a Future, party, in Tuesday's vote turned pre-election forecasts on their heads and dealt a setback to Netanyahu. Yesh Atid's leader, Yair Lapid, has said he would join a government only if it were committed to sweeping economic changes and a serious push to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, which have languished throughout Netanyahu's four-year tenure.

The results were not official, and the final bloc breakdowns could shift before the central elections committee finishes its tally early Thursday. With the blocs so evenly divided, there remains a remote possibility that Netanyahu would not form the next government, even though both he and Lapid have called for the creation of a broad coalition.

How Israeli elections work
Under Israel's parliamentary system, voters cast ballots for parties, not individual candidates. Because no party throughout Israel's 64-year history has ever won an outright majority of parliamentary seats, the country has always been governed by coalitions.

Traditionally, the party that wins the largest number of seats is given the first chance to form a governing alliance in negotiations that center around promising Cabinet posts and policy concessions. If those negotiations are successful, the leader of that party becomes prime minister. If not, the task falls to a smaller faction. President Shimon Peres has until mid-February to set that process in motion.

Netanyahu's Likud-Yisrael Beitenu alliance polled strongest in Tuesday's election, winning 31 parliamentary seats. But that is 11 fewer than the 42 it held in the outgoing parliament and below the forecasts of 32 to 37 in recent polls. Yesh Atid had been projected to capture about a dozen seats but won 19, making it the second-largest in the legislature.

Addressing his supporters early Wednesday, when an earlier vote count gave his bloc a shaky, one-seat parliamentary margin, Netanyahu vowed to form as broad a coalition as possible. Lapid also called for the formation of a broad government.

The goal will not be an easy one, however, and will force Netanyahu to make some difficult decisions. In an interview last week with The Associated Press, Lapid said he would not be a "fig leaf" for a hard-line agenda on peacemaking.

That stance could force Netanyahu to promise overtures to get peace negotiations moving again.

But a harder line taken by traditional and future hawkish allies could present formidable obstacles to coalition building.

Tensions with the United States, Israel's most important ally, also may have factored into the shift to Lapid. President Barack Obama was quoted last week as saying that Netanyahu was undermining Israel's own interests by continuing to build Jewish settlements on occupied lands the Palestinians want for a future state.

Related:

Charismatic ex-commando pressures Netanyahu from the right as Israel prepares to vote

Avast! Israel's Pirate Party angles for 2 percent of electoral booty

Israelis head to polls as shift to right is expected

Bulent Kilic / AFP - Getty Images

The city of Istanbul is covered with snow on Jan. 9, after a storm blanketed Turkey's commercial hub, a city of 15 million, paralyzing daily life, disrupting air traffic and land transport.

Ammar Awad / Reuters

Palestinians play with snow during a snow storm in the West Bank village of Halhul near Hebron on Jan. 9. At least 8 people have died due to a winter storm in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Meteorological agencies in Israel and Lebanon both called it the worst storm in 20 years.

Reuters

A man walks on snow after a heavy snowstorm in the desert near Tabuk, 932 miles from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Jan. 9.

By Barbara Surk, Jamal Halaby, The Associated Press -- The fiercest winter storm to hit the Mideast in years brought a rare foot of snow to Jordan on Wednesday, caused fatal accidents in Lebanon and the West Bank, and disrupted traffic on the Suez Canal in Egypt. At least eight people died across the region.

In Lebanon, the Red Cross said storm-related accidents killed six people over the past two days. Several drowned after slipping into rivers from flooded roads, one person froze to death and another died after his car went off a slippery road, according to George Kettaneh, Operations Director for the Lebanese Red Cross.

The unusual weather over the past few days hit vulnerable Syrian refugees living in tent camps very hard, particularly some 50,000 sheltering in the Zaatari camp in Jordan's northern desert. Torrential rains over four days have flooded some 200 tents and forced women and infants to evacuate in temperatures that dipped below freezing at night, whipping wind and lashing rain.

"It's been freezing cold and constant rain for the past four days," lamented Ahmad Tobara, 44, who evacuated his tent when its shafts submerged in flood water in Zaatari. A camp spokesman said that by Wednesday, some 1,500 refugees had been displaced within the camp and were now living in mobile homes normally used for schools.

Read the full story.

AFP - Getty Images

A visitor climbs the steps of Baalbek's Bachus temple as snow covers the Roman ruins of the historic town in eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley on Jan. 9, following a fierce storm which has whipped the region this week with temperatures dropping dramatically and snow falling on across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel.

Said Khatib / AFP - Getty Images

A Palestinian man uses his donkey cart to transport people across a flooded street in the Rafah refugee camp, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Jan. 9.

Afif Diab / Reuters

Syrian refugees play with snow outside their tents during a winter storm in al-Marj, in the Bekaa valley on Jan. 9. The worst winter storm in two decades has hit the eastern Mediterranean this week, bringing destruction and death to Syria and its neighbors who are already dealing with a refugee crisis from the country's civil war.

Bulent Kilic / AFP - Getty Images

A seagull stands on Galata Tower on Jan. 9. Heavy snowfall blanketed Turkey's commercial hub Istanbul, a city of 15 millions, paralyzing daily life, disrupting air traffic and land transport.

CAIRO -- Several Syrians have died after inhaling poisonous gas released by government forces in rebel-held districts of Homs, local eyewitnesses and activists claimed Monday.

Civilians were admitted to hospital with serious breathing problems after Sunday’s attack, according to doctors and groups who posted what they said was video of the aftermath to YouTube.

The gas is thought to have been a concentrated irritant, but not one of the deadly chemical weapons stockpiled by the regime of Syria president Bashar Assad.

Claims by either side in Syria’s bitter civil war are almost impossible to independently verify because journalists are rarely allowed access to the country.

Pesticide poisoning?
Mousab Azzawi, chairman of the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights and a doctor, told NBC News that his organization had received reports from three eyewitnesses on Sunday.

He said field doctors in Homs were seeing patients “losing consciousness, experiencing severe shortness of breath and vomiting.”

“To our understanding, this is similar to poisoning with pesticide,” he said, although he was not aware of any pesticide that could take the form of a gas.

Airstrike kills dozens of Syrians trying to buy bread, activists say

Azzawi added that they were “very concerned and deeply worried” that the attack might be a sign that Assad’s regime might use chemical weapons “on a very small scale.”

Walid Fares, spokesman for the Homs Revolutionary Council -- part of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the umbrella organization recognized by more than 100 countries including the United States -- issued a statement to NBC News on Monday.

It said “poisonous gases” came from shells fired by government tanks in the districts of Al Bayada and Al Khalideya.

In Syria's Aleppo, 'We're starving. I can bear it but what about my children?'

“The shells did not explode but rather emitted a cloud of white smoke and it landed in residential areas… where revolutionaries had gathered and which led to tens being injured,” the statement said.

It said symptoms included “complete absence of vision” as well as nausea, lost consciousness and severe breathing difficulty.

“The initial analysis of the doctors in the hospital confirmed that it is a poisonous gas that contains banned substances,” the statement added, citing videos that claimed to show patients being treated.

'This isn't the first time'
It said there were seven deaths as of early Monday - naming six of the victims - and close to 50 injured.

A third group, the Local Coordination Committees - a network of local opposition councils across Syria - told NBC News: "The LCC has not yet confirmed what the substance was, but doctors in Homs are confirming the use of toxic gases. This isn't the first time; residents of Homs and Zabadani were reporting the use (confirmed) of white phosphorus months ago.”

Two YouTube videos showed patients being treated in hospital for the symptoms of a gas attack. In one, a doctor says in Arabic that the gas is “definitely not Sarin” but is “definitely” poisonous.

US officials: Syria loads chemical weapons into bombs; military awaits Assad's order

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama warned Assad that the use of chemical weapons by his regime would be "totally unacceptable." "If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons there will be consequences and you will be held accountable," he said.

The alleged gas attack came hours after a senior Israeli defense official said he believed Syria's chemical weapons were still secure despite the civil war.

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Amos Gilad told Army Radio that the both sides had become deadlocked but there was no sign of Assad heeding international calls to step down, according to a Reuters report.

"Suppose he does leave, there could be chaos ... in the Middle East you never know who will come instead. We need to stay level-headed; the entire world is dealing with this. At the moment, chemical weapons are under control," Gilad said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Syrian rebels attend a training session in Maaret Ikhwan, near Idlib, Syria, Dec. 17, 2012.

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Syrian rebel fighter Ibrahim Iaaa, 20, a former construction worker, poses for a picture after a training session in Maaret Ikhwan, near Idlib, Syria, Dec. 17.

By Karin Laub
Associated Press

MAARET MISREEN, Syria -- The new Syrian rebel chief said he's been moving between safe houses since taking up command, even changing quarters twice in one night when he feared regime spies.

Grappling with largely untrained and at times undisciplined fighters, Salim Idris said in an interview that he is trying to turn local militias into a united force of some 120,000 men for a final push against President Bashar Assad.

The challenges keep him awake at night, said Idris, a former general who defected from the Syrian army five months ago and was chosen as rebel chief of staff in a meeting of several hundred field commanders this month in Turkey.

Idris is "very afraid" a cornered Assad might unleash chemical weapons on the fighters. He said old friends of his still in the regime have warned him that the military, which already fired several Scuds, is training more ready-to-fire missiles on rebel strongholds in Syria's northwest. Full story…

EDITOR'S NOTE: All images made available to NBC News on Dec. 19.

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Syrian rebels listen to their trainer on how to use a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in Maaret Ikhwan, near Idlib, Syria, Dec. 17.

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

A Syrian rebel prepares for a video interview at headquarters in Maaret Ikhwan, near Idlib, Syria, Dec. 12.

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