The Arab League is hitting Syria with even harsher sanctions, including a ban on travel for Syrian officials and politicians and "a halt to all dealings with the Syrian central bank," because nothing else has worked at stopping the violence.

The Arab League, which would really rather not have another one of its autocratic member governments toppled, voted to suspend Syria in four days unless the Syrian government ends its brutal crackdown on protests. Good luck with that, guys.

The trial of former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak won't start until late December, after another court rules on replacing the current presiding judge. Mubarak, confined to a sick bed, is on trial for allegedly ordering the killing of protesters.

Now that basically everyone in Libya has seen the corpse former dictator Muammar Gaddafi in the mall freezer where he's been kept since his death last week, it's time to find a new spot to keep him. Like a "secret desert grave"!

Almost 70 percent of registered voters in Tunisia turned out for an election today—the country's first since its former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country in January. Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party (with a "commitment to democracy and women's rights") headed by ex-exile Rachid Ghannouchi, is expected to win, though it may be forced to form a coalition, while the secular Progressive Democratic Party will likely take second place. In Sidi Bouzid, the rural town where the self-immolation of fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi kicked off the weeks of protests that eventually ousted Ben Ali—and, arguably, the Egyptian and Libyan regimes—Tunisians crowded the polls:

Libyan news organization Freedom Group just posted this video of the moments directly after Libyan rebels captured former dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It's the clearest video yet of Gaddafi's arrest, and unsettling to watch; as in previous videos, there's no direct evidence that the dictator was summarily executed (as has been speculated), but the footage of a bloody, seemingly terrified Gaddafi being shoved and hit in the head doesn't inspire faith in the restraint of his captors. (Michael Van Poppel of Breaking News, working off this Global Post video of the same scene, thinks that Gaddafi was "sodomized" by one of his captors, apparently with a rifle.)

President of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh announced that he "will be leaving power in the coming days" following nine months of demonstrations against his government, reports Reuters. Of course, we said the same thing in April, and now look.

Israel evacuated its Cairo embassy early Saturday morning after groups of Egyptian protestors—breaking off from a peaceful demonstration in Tahrir Square—broke into the building. Two people died in the clashes and as many as 1,200 were injured.

Activists say 136 people were killed today in Syria, including 100 in the third-largest city, Hama—the subject of a "major assault" seemingly intended to "pre-empt" protests during Ramadan, which begins tomorrow. [AJE]

The Egyptian government is firing some 669 police officers (including 164 officers) "over the killing of protestors" during this year's successful revolution—a key concession to the new crop of protests that has sprung up this month. [BBC]

Here's a clip from China's "Jasmine Revolution" protests on Sunday in Beijing, where a smiling U.S. Ambassador (and possible presidential candidate) Jon Hunstman walks into the middle of the crowd! He tells the cameraman that he's just there "to look around," and he then leaves. The video (with its hilarious soundtrack) was posted on the Chinese nationalist site M4 along with this breathless warning about U.S. meddling: