Manbij is a poor and rural town of some 200,000 people in north eastern Syria. The city is half an hour's drive from the border with Turkey and the vital Tishrin Dam. It sits in the agricultural hinterland of Aleppo with one of the largest mills in the region, grinding some 500 tonnes of flour a day. Control over Manbij is a strategic prize for the Syrian revolution.
The Arab Spring is far from over. In the wake of controversy over the Formula One race, Dominic Kavakeb looks at the movement in Bahrain, while Mirfat Sulaiman considers the ongoing uprising in Yemen
"Sumood" is a common word in Bahrain at the moment. Literally translated it means "resistance", although its meaning is closer to the idea of refusing to give in or persevering through great difficulty.
This word isn't just a reference to the physical action of the Bahraini people it is about a mentality. It encapsulates the mindset that keeps this extraordinary population coming out onto the streets day after day, night after night, to face down repression and demand freedom.
'The Al Qaida plot to poison Britain'. That was how the Times reported the raid on a north London flat in January 2003 that had supposedly revealed a massive conspiracy to use the toxic substance ricin to terrorise the country.
But the most dangerous plot, revived during this election campaign, has been to attack our civil liberties.
Within two days of the raid, David Blunkett, John Reid and Tony Blair had all made horrified statements. The discovery highlighted the perils of weapons of mass destruction, intoned Blair, and showed that 'this danger is present and real'.
Bin Laden's network has become a byword for 'evil'. Anne Ashford looks at the reality behind the hype.
In the beginning was the base. There is nothing mysterious about the name of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaida organisation. In Arabic, the word usually means a base, or military training camp. In its earliest form, Al Qaida was a network of bases for the foreign volunteers who joined the Afghan Mujahadeen in their holy war against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden's family firm, a Saudi construction company, provided engineers who built a huge tunnel complex for the fighters in Khost with US taxpayers' money. It was 1986, and the CIA was keen to raise the stakes in the global war on Communism.
