4.56pm: Here's a roundup of the latest developments.

Syria

• British foreign secretary William Hague says a ship that was believed to be carrying Russian-made attack helicopters to Syria appears to have turned back after its insurer withdrew coverage. Hague told parliament that the MV Alaed, which was last reported about 60 miles off the Scottish coast, has "turned back now apparently toward Russia".

• The UN security council is to consider the future of its suspended observer mission in Syria when the head of mission, Robert Mood, briefs the group later today.

• The activist group the Local Co-ordination Committees in Syria claims 18 people have been killed in the latest violence today. There have also been reports of renewed shelling in the rebel stronghold of Rastan, north of Homs.

• Adnan Sello, a leader of Syria's Chemical Warfare Division, has defected and is now in Turkey, according to an unconfirmed report by al-Jazeera. The report comes amid growing concern about Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons (10.02am).

• Barack Obama and Russia's president Vladimir Putin issued a joint call to end the violence in Syria, but the Russian president refused to support US efforts to persuade Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power.

Egypt

• The Muslim Brotherhood has called for a mass protest against the ruling military council's decision to dissolve parliament and award itself sweeping new powers.

• The Brotherhood has now released figures that show their candidate, Mohamed Morsi has won the presidential with 52% of the vote (13,238,298) against the military-backed Ahmed Shafiq, who has 48% (12,351,184). The Egypt Independent says the gap is much closer. It puts Morsi on 12,322,549 and Shafiq on 12,201,549. The official result is expected tomorrow.

• A court has postponed a decision on whether to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood as a political group. The case has been adjourned until September.

• The United States expressed alarm that its protégés in the Egyptian army were abusing hopes for democracy by ordering more military rule, Reuters reports.

4.07pm: Syria: Private sector imports of diesel into Lebanon in April were 106,000 tonnes – three times last year's level – and the imports in May were double last year's level, Reuters reports. The figures are not easily explained by Lebanon's domestic needs and Reuters suggests they are a sign that fuel is being smuggled into Syria.

"The latest figures show a huge jump in imports of diesel in Lebanon. Countries don't just double their imports overnight," said a Syrian oil industry employee, who asked not to be named to protect his family in Aleppo.

The source named Shia organisation Hezbollah which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ... as playing a major role, although analysts said smuggling involved various groups in Lebanon and did not just supply the government side.

A Hezbollah official denied the movement was sending fuel to Syria.

Lebanon's energy officials deny that imports have increased substantially, or that diesel is crossing the border to Syria.

"There is no smuggling to Syria, I do not know where do you get this information from but it is all false," said Sarkis Helais, director general of oil facilities in Lebanon.

3.50pm: Egypt: Ahmed Shafiq's people are still insisting that the former prime minister won the presidential election, AP reports.

Ahmed Sarhan has told a televised news conference that Shafiq won 51.5% of the vote. He said the claim of victory by Shafiq's rival Mohamed Morsi was "false."

"General Ahmed Shafiq is the next president of Egypt," said Sarhan, adding that the candidate won some 500,000 votes more than Morsi, of the fundamentalist Brotherhood.

The official result of the two-day, weekend vote will be announced on Thursday.

3.32pm: Egypt: The Carter Centre has declared the presidential election free of major voting irregularities but it has confirmed it concerns about the military council's decision to give itself sweeping new powers.

Speaking at a press conference on his grandfather's behalf, Jason Carter, said:

The clear question that remains is whether the democratic spirit of the Egyptian people will be transferred to the Egyptian government. This transition is uncertain at this time. Since we have arrived the parliament has been dissolved. There has been troubling announcements of new powers for the Scaf, with respect to civil liberties - their ability to detain and try civilians.

Then at the end of the election day even as the votes were being counted there was a new constitutional addendum that redefined the powers of the president. That affirmed that Scaf will continue to hold legislative power after the 1 July deadline [for handing over power] and injects Scaf into the constitution drafting process. These very troubling aspects of the transition process must be considered when considering the election.

The biggest concern is with respect to the unelected military body's role in the drafting of the constitution. We believe that an unelected military body should not interfere with that drafting process.

From what we were able to observe of the voting and the counting, that process was generally competitive. There were some irregularities. There did not appear to be any systematic irregularities, that would bestow an unfair advantage to one candidate or another.

3.25pm: Syria: British foreign secretary William Hague has announced that the ship said to be carrying attack helicopters to Syria (see 1.15pm) has turned round and is now heading back to Russia.

3.06pm: Syria: Jordan has toughened its screening procedures for Syrian refugees, refusing entry to dozens as the number of individuals submitting false asylum claims is on the rise, the Associated press reports citing government and UN officials.

Under the new procedures, individual Syrian males with residency permits elsewhere are barred entry, a government official said, insisting on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The interior ministry estimates some 125,000 Syrians have come to Jordan since the outbreak of violence in their country in March 2011.

Syrian dissidents say the Jordanian move was prompted by security concerns ...

"Many spies belonging to (Syrian President) Bashar Assad's regime are also believed to have entered Jordan in recent weeks," said a spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army in Jordan.

He said Jordan was also banning anyone who could be considered as a vocal critic of Assad's regime in order to protect its business ties with Syria ...

Syria is one of Jordan's largest Arab trade partners, with bilateral trade estimated at $470 million last year. Also, 60% of Jordanian exports of mainly fruits and vegetables are routed through Syria for onward shipping to Turkey overland or to Europe via Syria's Mediterranean coast.

2.43pm: Egypt: Jimmy Carter, whose election monitors have been overseeing the presidential poll, is reported to be "deeply troubled" by the military council's power grab.

Betsy Hiel, Cairo-based correspondent for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, tweets:

Statement of Carter Center " I am deeply troubled by the undemocratic turn that Egypt's transition has taken," Jimmy Carter said. #Egypt

— betsy hiel (@betsy_hiel) June 19, 2012

Carter Statement: the dissolution is the democratically-elected parliament and the return of elements if martial law #egyp

— betsy hiel (@betsy_hiel) June 19, 2012

Jimmy Carter statement: "An unelected military body should not interfere in the constitution drafting process." #egyconstitution

— betsy hiel (@betsy_hiel) June 19, 2012

2.26pm: Syria: Another Russian warship is to be sent to Syria, according to the Russian news agency Interfax, the BBC's Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg reports.

'Source' tells Interfax another Russian warship, the "Kalningrad", to be sent to Syria "in the coming days"

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) June 19, 2012

More from Interfax's 'source' on Russian warships to Syria; claims 'Black Beret' marines and special Marine assault battalion to sail.

— Steve Rosenberg (@BBCSteveR) June 19, 2012

Earlier, the Telegraph said Russia has confirmed that confirming it is preparing to send marines to its naval base in Syria. It said:

Classified US satellite images last week indicated that loading work had begun on two amphibious landing vessels, the Nikolai Filchenkov and the Caesar Kunikov, at the Crimean naval base of Sebastopol.

After initially remaining silent on the subject, a senior naval commander yesterday confirmed that both ships would shortly be heading to the Russian base at the Syrian port of Tartus, the Interfax news agency reported.

Meanwhile, the MV Alaed, the ship carrying refurbished attack helicopters to Syria, is being tracked by the shipping website Marine Traffic. It currently shows it 60 miles north-west off Scotland.

Here is a map showing its last reported location at 01.37 on Monday. There has been no further public satellite data since then.

Photograph: Hasan Jamali/AP

2.22pm: Bahrain: The Guardian has an interview with Ali Hasan (left), the 11-year-old boy who spent a month in detention and is due to face trial tomorrow accused of taking part in an illegal demonstration.

"On the day before I was arrested, there was some fighting in the streets near my house between the demonstrators and the police," Ali told the Guardian by phone from his home in the Bilad al-Qadeem suburb of Manama. "The demonstrators had blocked the street by setting fire to tyres and help from the containers which people use to dispose their rubbish.

"The day after this I went to the street with two of my friends to play. It was around 3pm. While we were playing there, some police forces came towards us which made us panic. My friends managed to run away … but I was so scared by the guns they were carrying that I couldn't move … and I was arrested."

2.16pm: Egypt: An interesting idea is floating around on Twitter and the Russia Today website (not the most reliable of sources). It's that Mohamed Morsi may swear the presidential oath – assuming Scaf eventually agrees that he has won – in Tahrir Square on Friday, in front of the Egyptian people.

The presidential oath was originally supposed to be sworn in front of parliament, but with parliament dissolved that has become impossible.

Mahmoud Salem, the blogger known as Sandmonkey, is claiming he originally suggested the Tahrir oath as a joke.

I was kidding about Morsy swearing on koran in tahrir and made it up, it was a real story? someone suggested it?

— Mahmoud Salem (@Sandmonkey) June 19, 2012

1.15pm: Syria: Moves are under way to halt the voyage of a ship said to be carrying refurbished Russian attack helicopters to Syria.

The suspect vessel, MV Alaed, has had its insurance withdrawn by the Standard Club in London, the BBC reports.

The insurer said it had sought more information on the boat's cargo.

Withdrawal of insurance prevents the MV Alaed from sailing until its owner can secure new cover.

It is thought that the vessel has stopped off the Western Isles [of Scotland].

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said it was unclear where the vessel would now go.

However, an article on the Maritime Bulletin website suggests the withdrawal of insurance may not be enough to deter the vessel from continuing its voyage:

British media presume vessel won't be able to continue the voyage without the insurance, withdrawn by Standard Club, but that's doubtful, because the powers behind that shipment wouldn't consider withdrawal of the insurance as serious enough problem to cancel the delivery.

To all my knowledge, if Alaed is loaded with what everybody now believes she's loaded, manager of the vessel doesn't control the situation and will do what he's ordered to do.

12.28pm: Here's a roundup of the main developments so far today.

Syria

• The UN security council is to consider the future of its suspended observer mission in Syria when the head of mission, Robert Mood, briefs the group later today. Britain's ambassador to the UN, Mark Lyall Grant said: "I think there will be a lot of member states of the council, including us, who will be questioning now what the future is for the mission and, therefore, by extension the Annan plan, in light of these recent developments on the ground."

• The activist group the Local Co-ordination Committees in Syria claims 18 people have been killed in the latest violence today. Several children were among the victims of an attack yesterday in the Damascus suburb of Douma (see 9.35am). There have also been reports of renewed shelling in the rebel stronghold of Rastan, north of Homs.

• Adnan Sello, a leader of Syria's Chemical Warfare Division, has defected and is now in Turkey, according to an unconfirmed report by al-Jazeera. The report comes amid growing concern about Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons (10.02am).

• Barack Obama and Russia's president Vladimir Putin issued a joint call to end the violence in Syria, but the Russian president refused to support US efforts to persuade Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power. A joint statement issued after a bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, said simply that the Syrian people should independently and democratically be allowed to decide their own future, but there was no joint call for Assad to stand down, as the White House has been urging.

Egypt

• The Muslim Brotherhood has called for a mass protest against the ruling military council's decision to dissolve parliament and award itself sweeping new powers. The April 6th movement has urged its supporters to join the rally which is due start in Tahrir Square and end at a heavily-secured Parliament building.

• The Brotherhood has now released figures that show their candidate, Mohamed Morsi has won the presidential with 52% of the vote (13,238,298) against the military-backed Ahmed Shafiq, who has 48% (12,351,184). The Egypt Independent says the gap is much closer. It puts Morsi on 12,322,549 and Shafiq on 12,201,549. The official result is expected tomorrow.

• A court has postponed a decision on whether to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood as a political group. The case has been adjourned until September.

• The United States expressed alarm that its protégés in the Egyptian army were abusing hopes for democracy by ordering more military rule, Reuters reports. "We are deeply concerned about the new amendments to the constitutional declaration, including the timing of their announcement as polls were closing," a Pentagon spokesman said.

12.18pm: Syria: Homs has become city of warring Sunni and Alawite areas according to a detailed account by an unnamed visitor published by Reuters.

The heart of Syria's conflict is a chilling glimpse of what the worst case scenario may be: a bloody struggle that tears the country into a jigsaw of warring statelets ...

With Sunni areas pounded into a shambles, refugees too poor to leave Homs have few options.

Most end up in the Waar district, a jungle of concrete apartment blocks that housed the Sunni elite. Waar's affluent residents fled the city's chaos. Soon refugees broke in and took over their abandoned apartments.

All down the streets, shops have been seized by refugees. At a butcher shop, a family has hung blankets across the meat hooks outside to cover the glass storefront....

Meanwhile, Alawite areas like Farzat's Zahra district look more like army bases than residential neighbourhoods.

Artillery is no longer stored in army barracks on Homs's outskirts but in the middle of Alawite districts, and troops are at the ready to roll them out and fire at nearby rebel areas.

The army has secured the streets connecting Alawite neighborhoods. But its control of Homs is tenuous.

Soldiers dare not go into most Sunni areas, where somewhere unseen in rocket- and bullet-riddled buildings, hundreds of rebels hide, sporadically firing rocket propelled grenades

12.07pm: Libya: A group of armed gunmen stormed the Tunisian consulate in Benghazi yesterday to protest against an art exhibition in Tunisia which they said insulted Islam, Reuters reports citing a security guard who works inside the building.

Kamal al-Gehani said the group of about 20 young men carrying Kalashnikovs forced their way into the building and burned the Tunisian flag inside.

"They knocked on our gates and pushed into the building. It was a holiday so no one was working inside except security," he told Reuters.

Suleiman al-Gehani, an official with the foreign ministry who was called to help defuse the situation, said security officers had to negotiate with the group until they were convinced to leave. He said no shots were fired and no one was injured.

"We had to convince them this wasn't the civlised way to protest. They were very angry over the art work from Tunisia," he said.

Thousands of hardline Salafis rioted in Tunis last week over the exhibition which features a work that spells out the name of God using insects.

11.51am: Egypt: There is little sign yet that people have heeded the Muslim Brotherhood's call for a protest in Tahrir. But it's early and hot, as photojournalist Cliff Cheney notes.

Tahrir Square at 11:46am. Exactly zero people protesting. 32C. twitter.com/cliffcheney/st…

— Cliff Cheney (@cliffcheney) June 19, 2012

Dutch journalist Rena Netjes expects more people to gather after work.

This afternoon- after ppl return from work- demonstration from Tahrir to the Parliament

— Rena Netjes (@RenaNetjes) June 19, 2012

The April 6th Movement has called on its supporters to join the protest.

11.46am: Egypt: Some of the pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood has been lifted today – at least temporarily – with a decision by the High Administrative Court to postpone a lawsuit calling for the movement to be dissolved. The hearing has reportedly been adjourned until September.

Ahram Online explains the background to the case:

The plaintiff, Shehata Mohamed Shehata, claims the country's largest Islamist group has illegally carried out both political and social activities since the 1930's despite being an officially banned political organisation.

Moreover, Shehata says the Brotherhood has failed to abide by a 2002 law governing the functions of non-governmental organisations, which forbids such groups operating as religious-based political parties. The penalty for failing to abide by the law, claims Shehata, is dissolution of the group.

The Brotherhood has now released figures that show their candidate, Mohamed Morsi has won the presidential with 52% of the vote (13,238,298) against the military-backed Ahmed Shafik, who has 48% (12,351,184).

On Twitter, Marc Lynch suggests the Brotherhood has made a shrewd move:

MB playing Egyptian #calvinball very well by releasing their own election figures + not waiting for official results is.gd/BecjGH

— Marc Lynch (@abuaardvark) June 19, 2012

... and Evan Hill points out that the gap is probably too large to be closed by the military council disqualifying some of the votes on the grounds of irregularities:

Morsi campaign saying large gap betw him and Shafiq means challenges to vote count cant make up diff.

— Evan Hill (@evanchill) June 19, 2012

However, the independent newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm has compiled its own count which says the gap is much narrower, with 12,322,549 votes for Morsi and 12,201,549 for Shafiq.

11.33am: Egypt: Britain's foreign secretary William Hague has expressed concern over the military council's attempts to grab power.

In a carefully-worded statement he calls for new parliamentary elections as soon as possible.

We were concerned by recent announcements of the dissolution of Parliament and the reintroduction of powers of arrest and detention for the military. The process of drafting a new, inclusive Constitution and the holding of new parliamentary elections should be taken forward as soon as possible.

The UK will continue to support the people of Egypt in their aspirations for greater economic opportunities, political participation, freedom and rights, and to that end work with the Egyptian leadership elected by the people.

11.29am: Syria: The rebel stronghold of Rastan, which has seen some of the heavy fighting between the rebel Free Syrian Army, and government troops, has come under renewed bombardment according to activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Activists from Rastan published this footage purporting to show burning flats in a residential area. They also uploaded footage showing water towers being targeted in the city.

Rastan has been under rebel control since February.

The UK-based Observatory said helicopters were used in an attack on the city today. A voice in this Bambuser footage also claimed helicopters were used, but they are not shown in the clip.

11.10am: Egypt: The Muslim Brotherhood has called for mass protests against the ruling military council today. While waiting to see if the council will confirm that its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, has won the presidential election, the movement is objecting to yesterday's constitutional declaration and to the dissolution of parliament where it held the largest block of seats.

There is speculation that MPs will attempt to hold a session of the dissolved parliament – either at the official parliament building or in another location.

Guardian journalist Jack Shenker reports from Cairo:

On Monday the parliamentary speaker, Saad el-Katatni, a Brotherhood veteran, said he did not recognise last week's decision by Mubarak-era judges in Egypt's supreme constitutional court to dissolve the legislature, a move widely viewed as highly politicised and designed to bolster the generals.

Katatni said MPs planned to attend parliament – which was surrounded by armed soldiers – as usual on Tuesday or convene in nearby Tahrir Square, setting the stage for a showdown between the generals who have held sway for six decades and the long-outlawed Islamist movement now on the brink of political control.

However, getting access to the parliament building could be difficult, as the BBC's Paul Danahar indicates in this tweet:

The scene at the entrance to #Egypt's parliament now. Gates are barred & riot police swelter in midday sun twitter.com/pdanahar/statu…

— Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) June 19, 2012

10.41am: Syria: Britain and other countries question the future of the UN observer mission in Syria, Britain's ambassador to the UN Mark Lyall Grant said ahead of today's security council briefing by the head of the mission, Robert Mood.

The Turkish daily Zaman quotes Lyall Grant saying:

I think there will be a lot of member states of the council, including us, who will be questioning now what the future is for the mission and, therefore, by extension the Annan plan, in light of these recent developments on the ground.

I think we are going to have to review it in the light of what has happened.

[Syria's] brutality against their own civilian population has led to the sort of spikes in violence that we've now seen.

10.34am: Syria: Russia's naval base in the port of Tartus has become a focus of international attention amid reports that Russian marines could shortly be deployed there. But the base itself is nothing to get excited about, according to a report in the New York Times which describes it as "tiny" and "frayed".

The site, at the port of Tartus, is little more than a pier, fuel tanks and some barracks. But it is the last Russian military base outside the former Soviet Union, and its only Mediterranean fueling spot, sparing Russia's warships the trip back to their Black Sea bases through straits in Turkey, a Nato member.

The base (at the northern end of the port in the satellite view above) was established during the Cold War, in 1971, as a supply and maintenance base to support the 5th Mediterranean Squadron, which no longer exists. It is now under the control of the Black Sea fleet which continues to staff it with naval personnel, although there are only occasional visits from Russian naval ships.

10.04am: Syria: The Syrian government claims to be trying to evacuate civilians from Homs, as activists broadcast more live footage of the bombardment of the city.

"Contacts have been made with the leadership of the international monitors, in cooperation with the local Syrian authorities in the city of Homs to bring out these Syrian citizens," Syria's foreign ministry said, according to the state news agency.

After a decision to suspend the UN monitoring mission, Robert Mood, head of the mission, appealed to all parties to allow trapped civilians to flee areas worst hit by the violence.

"The parties must reconsider their position and allow women, children, the elderly and the injured to leave conflict zones, without any preconditions and ensure their safety," Mood said.

10.02am: Syria: Amid continuing reports of defections from the Syrian military, al-Jazeera is reporting that Adnan Sello, a leader of Syria's Chemical Warfare Division, has defected and is now in Turkey. We are unable to confirm this at present but it could be an important development if true.

There has been growing concern about Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons – not because the regime is thought likely to use them but because of fears over what might happen to them should the regime fall.

The BBC quotes Leonard Spector, a nonproliferation expert based in Washington:

Syria has one of the world's largest chemical weapon arsenals, including traditional chemical agents, such as mustard, and more modern nerve agents, such as Sarin, and possibly persistent nerve agents, such as VX.

Syria is thought to have a number of major chemical weapon complexes, some in areas of current conflict, such as the Homs and Hama regions. The bases are said to be guarded by elite forces, but whether they would stay at their posts if the Assad regime collapses cannot be predicted.

Meanwhile, one of the latest unconfirmed defection videos (above), purports to show a number of high-ranking officers switching to the opposition in Homs.

9.35am: Syria: Activists in Douma, a suburb to the north-east of Damascus, claim that 29 people were killed by government forces on Monday.

The Revolutionary Command Council in Damascus Suburb said several children and military defectors were among the victims.

It posted disturbing videos claiming to show the bodies of the children who had died.

Another clip showed the physical destruction of the area.

Video has also emerged purporting to show a tank destroyed by the rebel Free Syrian Army in Douma.

8.43am: (all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live. Syria and Egypt remain the focal points.

The main item on today's agenda is a briefing to the UN security council and by Robert Mood, the head of the supervision mission to Syria.

The official presidential election results in Egypt are not expected until tomorrow, but the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate Mohammed Morsi is claiming victory.

Syria

• Barack Obama and Russia's president Vladimir Putin issued a joint call to end the violence in Syria, but the Russian president refused to support US efforts to persuade Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power. A joint statement issued after a bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, said simply that the Syrian people should independently and democratically be allowed to decide their own future, but there was no joint call for Assad to stand down, as the White House has been urging. It said:

In order to stop the bloodshed in Syria, we call for an immediate cessation of the violence and express full support for the efforts of the UN and Arab states joint special envoy Kofi Annan, including on moving forward on political transition to a democratic pluralist political system that would be implemented by the Syrians themselves in the framework of Syrian sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity.We are united in our belief that the Syrian people should have the opportunity to independently and democratically choose their own future.

• The "anodyne" statement is significant for what it does not mention, according to former US diplomat Daniel Serwer.

Neither the Russian arms shipments to the regime nor the Saudi and Qatari arms flowing to the opposition are mentioned. Ditto the suspended UN monitoring mission. There is no hint of intervention other than through the Annan plan and the UN Security Council. The Americans are essentially accepting the Russian emphasis on dialogue and peaceful means, while reiterating their hope for eventually democratic ends.

Hope is not a policy ... Anodyne is not a policy either, unless you want to convey how impotent the former superpowers have become.

• Robert Mood the head of the UN supervision mission in Syria is due to brief the security council after his mission was suspended over the weekend. The diplomatic blog Inner City Press says there is confusion over whether the mission activities are continuing.

• Russia has raised the stakes by confirming that it was preparing to send marines to its naval base in Syria, the Telegraph reports.

The planned deployment was designed to send a powerful signal thatRussia would not tolerate foreign military intervention in Syria, according to a Western defence source. It was apparently ordered after the Kremlin came to conclusion that Western powers were preparing to circumvent the United Nations Security Council – where Russia holds a veto – by unilaterally authorising Nato military action in Syria. The source said that Russia had "completely misunderstood" Western intentions.

• Up to 27 people were killed in the suburbs of Damascus on Monday as the security forces intensified a security campaign in the suburbs of the capital, according to activists. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 19 people died including two children. The activist group, the Syrian Revolution General Commission, said 27 people were killed in the area, including four children.

Egypt

• The Muslim Brotherhood has vowed to face down Egypt's ruling generals after declaring that its candidate had won the presidential election and would refuse to accept the junta's last-ditch attempts to engineer a constitutional coup, writes Jack Shenker and Abdel-Rahman Hussein in Cairo.

An 11th-hour constitutional declaration issued unilaterally by Scaf awarded the generals sweeping powers including the right to put forward legislation and an effective veto over clauses in the new constitution, and formalised the army's ability to detain civilians and sweep out of barracks at moments of "internal unrest".

Political analysts described the move as a constitutional obscenity and said it left the three major institutions of the post-Mubarak Egyptian state – the presidency (now curtailed), the parliament (now dissolved) and the constitutional assembly (now floundering in legal uncertainty) – all under the full or partial influence of the armed forces.

• If, as expected, Mohamed Morsi is declared winner of the presidential election, the Brotherhood's decision not to boycott the poll will have been vindicated, says a Guardian editorial. The Brotherhood's candidate benefited from a sympathy vote following last week's decision to dissolve parliament, it says.

The biggest miscalculation that Egypt's ruling military council, Scaf, made was to have its judges on the constitutional council declare the Islamist-dominated parliament invalid. Two days before the presidential poll, this may have tipped the balance in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohamed Morsi. If the Brotherhood squandered public sympathy by doing little with its time in parliament, and losing 5m votes as a result, the court restored the Brotherhood's image as a victim of military fiat.

Besides, it became clear for all to see what the plan of the generals had been all along: to usurp parliament by giving itself legislative power; to usurp the constitution by creating its own body of authors; and to seize the presidency.

• The United States expressed alarm that its protégés in the Egyptian army were abusing hopes for democracy by ordering more military rule, Reuters reports. "We are deeply concerned about the new amendments to the constitutional declaration, including the timing of their announcement as polls were closing," a Pentagon spokesman said.

State department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland added:

We call on Scaf to restore popular and international confidence in the democratic transition process by following through on their stated commitments to an inclusive, constitutional drafting process; the timely seating of a democratically elected parliament; and the swift, permanent transfer of power to a civilian government. There can be no going back on the democratic transition, and the United States stands with the Egyptian people in their aspiration to choose their own leaders.

• The Egyptian blogger Zeinobia expresses fears of violence if Ahmed Shafiq is declared winner of the election at an announcement tomorrow.

She writes:

I fear Algerian scenario for real this time. You can not charge people with hope and victory like that , then give them the shock of their lives.

She also posted these images of Muslim Brotherhood supporters celebrating what they think was the victory of their candidate Mohamed Morsi.

Saudi Arabia

• Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, 89, has appointed his brother Prince Salman, the defence minister, as crown prince and heir apparent, ensuring a smooth succession for the world's biggest oil exporting country. The appointment, reported on state television, was announced in a royal decree one day after the burial of Crown Prince Nayef, the interior minister, who died on Saturday.