Tunisia
President Kaïs Saïed's last known official activity was on July 8; after that Carthage received no one, announced no meetings and published nothing. In the gap, foreign outlets carried unconfirmed and mutually inconsistent claims about his health: Italy's Il Foglio wrote on July 17 of a heart attack and emergency admission to the Tunis military hospital, while others spoke of a stroke; the presidency has neither confirmed nor denied. He reappeared on the evening of Saturday, July 18, at Sonede's Ghdir El Golla water plant and then at Kalaât El Andalous, in a video released at around 2:30 a.m. That ten days of silence could open a succession debate at all is because the Constitutional Court, which the 2022 constitution designates to take over in a vacancy, has never been set up.
The joint Tunisian-Algerian customs commission met on July 16-17 at the customs directorate general in Tunis, chaired by the two countries' directors general of customs and attended by Algeria's ambassador. According to the Tunisian customs statement, the priorities are fighting smuggling, easing the movement of travellers and goods, digitising customs procedures and exchanging expertise; a twinning agreement was signed between the customs training schools of Tunis and Oran. Algeria is Tunisia's main land-trade neighbour and the informal border economy in the west is both a livelihood and a revenue leak, bilateral tracks like this are what now substitute for the long-frozen Arab Maghreb Union.
The national meteorology institute INM said on July 17 that the heatwave would continue with highs of 44 to 49C inland, amplified by the sirocco and running 8 to 13 degrees above seasonal norms. The next day the utility Steg warned of rotating cuts between noon and 4 p.m. across much of Greater Tunis, Cap Bon, Zaghouan and Bizerte, citing the surge in demand from air conditioning and the need to protect grid stability. A state utility rationing electricity at the very peak of summer demand is the kind of everyday failure that moves public anger faster than any political argument.
The Italian shipyard Cartubi of Trieste said three 20-metre search-and-rescue (SAR) units had been formally handed over after being towed to Tunis; they left Trieste on June 5 aboard the barge Susanna. The yard did not name the recipient, and the attribution to Tunisian authorities comes from the trade outlet Shipping Italy, which also links the delivery to EU-funded border-surveillance programmes; we could not confirm this with any Tunisian or Italian official body. If it holds, it is one more step in the externalisation of EU migration control to the Tunisian coastguard that has run since the 2023 memorandum with Italy.