BBC News with Marion Marshall
Syrian activists say their anti-government protests will continue,
dismiss
ing a renewed pledge by President Bashar al-Assad to set up a national dialogue. Just minutes after the speech, fresh demonstrations were reported in several cities. A spokesman for the activists said they were
no longer
just demanding reform but a change of government. Jim Muir reports from Beirut.
Within minutes of Mr Assad finishing his speech, protesters were out in the streets of Homs, the country's third biggest city. "This is the response to your speech," they chanted. "You and those around you are in the rubbish bin of history." As far as the protest movement is concerned, the speech contained nothing new, just a repeat of what they call the "empty promises" of reform and change that he's
laid out
before.
A court in Tunisia has sentenced the former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi to 35 years in prison. They were accused of corruption and drug trafficking and sentenced in
absentia
. In a BBC interview, Mr Ben Ali's lawyer Akram Azouri dismissed the verdict as politically
motivate
d.
"This is a joke. This is a continuation of the political judgment that has already been issued and executed. And I'm very happy now I think that no court of justice can recognise this judgment."
The Libyan authorities say an attack on a compound owned by one of Colonel Gaddafi's closest advisers has killed 15 people, three of them children. They accuse Nato of using eight rockets to carry out the attack, which