News from the Arab Spring (via the Daily Telegraph):

At the Cannes Film Festival this month, Nouri Bouzid, the celebrated director and opponent of Islamist extremism, received the Legion d’Honneur, the highest award France can bestow. A few weeks before that, in his native Tunisia, came a rather different form of recognition: he was stabbed in the head.
“The attack might have been triggered by an angry reaction to my pro-secular stands and rejection of [extremist Islamic] culture,” said Bouzid, who appeared on Tunisian television at the time with a large bloodied gash above his left ear.
“This could be the start of [their] campaign against signs of creativity in our country that don’t agree with their ideas.”
Bouzid is careful not to blame any group or party for the attack. But just a week later, the source of some of the hostility to him became clearer.
At an April 17 rally organised by Ennahda, Tunisia’s largest Islamist party, a speaker called for Bouzid to be “shot with a Kalashnikov”.
The audience, which included a senior Ennahda leader, responded with cries of “Allahu Akbar”.
Distracted by the dramas of Libya, Syria and Yemen, the world appears to have forgotten the place where it all started. It was Tunisians, on January 14, who kicked out their dictator and began the Arab Spring. Now, though, there is growing concern here that the birthplace of the democratic revolt will also be the first country to see Islamists take significant political power.

As for Yemen, there’s this:

Hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda gunmen have captured the southern Yemeni city of Zinjibar after heavy fighting with security forces. Government officials said that the provincial capital was under the control of militants after fighting that began on Friday and had claimed 16 lives, including civilians.
The fighters “were able to gain control of the city of Zinjibar … and took over all government facilities” a security official told AFP. Only the headquarters of the the 25th mechanised brigade was holding out, he added, but it was besieged by the gunmen.
A local resident said: “About 300 Islamic millitants and al-Qaeda men came into Zinjibar and took over everything on Friday.”
Zinjibar is the capital of Abyan province in south central Yemen. The impoverished state, which was the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, has been wracked by violence amid protests to end President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s near 33-year rule.
Washington considers al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – the Yemen-based al-Qaeda franchise – to be the world’s most active terrorist cell.