TUNISIA

France acknowledges that it is growing impatient with the lack of progress on reaching a political solution to the crisis in Libya, but officials denied Paris is in talks with Gaddafi's government or could consider him not quitting power.

As the Libyan conflict is dragging on, headlines indicating that Gaddafi is preparing to leave Libya are emerging once again. Could the Lion of Africa really be on his way out, or is this just part of a desperate tactic aiming at retaining public support at a time when both the rebels and Nato are heavily criticised.

The drugs and gun running trial in absentia of Tunisia's ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has opened in the capital, Tunis. It was initially set to open on Friday but was pushed back following a Tunisian judges' strike.

Moroccans voted on Friday in a referendum on curbing the near absolute powers of King Mohammed VI, who has offered reforms following protests inspired by pro-democracy uprisings around the Arab world.

Last month, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization declared it would extend the campaign for 90 days, it became clear that an important part of NATO's strategy is based on the hope that Colonel Gaddafi will see the error of his ways and capitulate before his surroundings and his supporters are worn down by the bombings and turn against him.

Two years after Neda Agha-Soltan was killed governments in the Middle East are still using brutality, lies and live ammunition to suppress street protests.

A Tunisian court sentenced the country's ousted president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, to 35 years in prison and a fine of roughly $66 million after a trial in absentia for embezzlement and misuse of public funds, state news media said Monday night.

Tunisia's ousted president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali said he was tricked into leaving his country for Saudi Arabia, as Tunisia begins to try him in absentia in the first of what are expected to be multiple trials related to his years in power.

Three months into an airstrikes campaign that has mainly targeted Gaddafi's stronghold, Tripoli, and it seems that the military operation has started to take its toll on Nato and its members countries. .

With news of 35 alleged Anonymous members currently being detained by the authorities, many analysts have come to question just how long it will be until LulzSec finds itself in law enforcement agencies firing lines following its high-profile cyber attack on the U.S. Senate.

The hacker group LulzSec, which has claimed responsibility for several high-publicity attacks on Sony, Nintendo and even the NHS, yesterday posted a message on its website claiming responsibility for a new successful cyber attack on the U.S. Senate.

Could the situation in Libya become any more complicated? The conflict which opposes Col Gaddafi to the rebel fighters and Nato is now threatening to turn into a real legal quagmire as all parties are accused to trespassing the law in a way or another

With Spanish police having just arrested three suspected members of the loose-knit hacking collective Anonymous last week, Turkish authorities have reportedly detained a further 32 suspected members of the Anonymous group.

According to the BBC, Libyan rebels are now smuggling weapons through Tunisia to fight Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's forces in western Libya.

Just as leaders from Nato members countries maintain that following the operation in Libya, Gaddafi's days in power are numbered, and as Nato officials this week insisted the operation was a success, US defence secretary, Robert Gates, today delivered a blistering attack on European defence complacency, declaring that organisation has "become a "two-tiered" alliance of those willing to wage war and those only interested in "talking" and peacekeeping".

A spokesperson for the Local Coordinating Committees in Syria, an activist coalition that organizes protests and documents the government crackdown, announced on Friday morning that there was heavy gunfire in al-Sarmaneyah, a village located five miles from the town of Jisr al-Shoughour and added that people had fled from both towns and much of the surrounding countryside.

Al Quaeda's second in command yesterday issued a eulogy for Osama Bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid in Pakistan on May 2. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is tipped to become the terrorist organisation's next leader, had already been perceived by western powers to be Al Qaeda's real operational head for a long time.

As ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo yesterday announced that the ICC is investigating accusations that Gaddafi is using rape as a weapon in the conflict, Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance would continue its campaign in Libya for as long as it takes to defeat Col Gaddafi's forces.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has arrived in Saudi Arabia for urgent medical treatment, after he was injured in an attack on his compound on Friday, the Saudi royal court said in a statement early Sunday.

At least 200 people are missing after a boat carrying almost 700 Tunisian refugees capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, the Tunisian state news agency quoted local officials as saying.

The protests in Syria initially started after a group of 15 young boys, all under 18, were arrested in the city of Daraa, located in the southern part of Syria, after they were accused of writing graffiti slogans against the government on a wall. On March 18, on Friday prayer, thousands of protesters marched the streets demanding the release of the children, calling for greater political freedom and accusing the government and its institutions of corruption. The security forces originally respo...