9.45pm GMT: Algeria is another country with a nervous government, with a day of protest planned for Saturday. The government and security forces are leaving nothing to chance according to this AFP report from Algiers via Google:
Large numbers of police were deployed in central Algiers Friday ahead of a pro-democracy march planned by opposition groups in defiance of a government ban.
The head of the opposition Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD), Said Sadi, said the authorities had ringed the capital in a bid to prevent people joining Saturday's march from outside.
"Trains have been stopped and other public transport will be as well," he said.
Sadi claimed that 10,000 police were being drafted into the city, to reinforce the 20,000 who succeeded in blocking the last protest on January 22, when five people were killed and more than 800 hurt in clashes.
Meanwhile, an unemployed man who had set himself on fire in the town of El Oued, in the far east of Algeria, died today, bringing to four the number of suicides by self-immolation in the last month, apparently inspired by events in neigbouring Tunisia.
