IT ISN'T ONLY LIBYA – AT 10:49 A.M. ET:  There is new, serious violence in Yemen, a country that hosts one of the most insidious of the Al Qaeda groups.  This could spiral upward and become another Libya.  From The New York Times:

SANA, Yemen — Security forces and government supporters opened fire on demonstrators on Friday, killing at least 30, as the largest protest so far in Yemen came under violent and sustained attack in the center of the capital, Sana.

The toll mounted rapidly through the afternoon, as some of the more than 100 people wounded by gunfire or rocks hurled by government supporters succumbed to their injuries, according to several doctors at a makeshift hospital near the protest site.

A heavy cloud of black smoke rose over a downtown commercial district at the southern end of the protest, which swelled to tens of thousands of people and stretched for a mile from its center at Sana University.

Government supporters in plain clothes fired down on the demonstration from rooftops and windows almost immediately after the protesters rose from their noon prayers, conducted en masse in the street on Friday.

The shooting dwarfed the level of violence in previous clashes between supporters of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and protesters, who have called for the president’s ouster in weeks of large protests in cities around Yemen. But a crowd of mostly tribal men from the outskirts of the capital appeared to stand firm in the face of the chaotic attack by the government supporters.

COMMENT:  And please don't forget that Saudi troops are now in Bahrain.  The Mideast is rumbling. 

Oh, did you know that President Obama is going to South America this weekend?  You'd think he'd delay the trip, if for no other reason than appearances, as both Japan and the Mideast are in crisis.  But he's going to Rio.  Look, seeing the world is important.  You want the man to know things.

Yuch.

March 18, 2011