The government's orientations for the 2027 finance bill, presented to a restricted ministerial council on 4 August, rest on national resources, fiscal justice, and the gradual integration of the informal economy into the formal circuit. The wealth tax introduced by article 88 of the 2026 finance law is the instrument the argument has settled on. Two tax specialists say the administration cannot yet value what it proposes to tax, the UGTT says the burden is being placed on the wrong shoulders, and a columnist sets the budget's growth assumption of 1.9 percent against expected inflation of around 5 percent.
The National Institute of Statistics puts the annual inflation rate at 5.1 percent in July. Prices in the food and drink group rose 6.6 percent over the year, well above the headline rate. Underlying inflation, which excludes food and energy, edged down to 4.8 percent from 4.9 percent in June.
The former president of the Truth and Dignity Commission was questioned on Friday over several financial and tax files linked to her administrative and financial management while she headed the body, and was released afterwards. She is appealing a cumulative 25-year first-instance sentence in two cases concerning reconciliation agreements with the businessmen Slim Chiboub and Abdelmajid Bouden.
Libya's border guard, under the interior ministry of the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity, says it is building a surveillance system of optical and thermal cameras along roughly 200 kilometres of the country's western border with Tunisia, starting in the Al-Assa sector in the north. The stated aims are round-the-clock observation, early detection of threats, and operations against smuggling, irregular migration and cross-border crime. The project is supported by the European Union Border Assistance Mission in Libya, Eubam.
The Senate approved a punishing Russian sanctions package on Friday by 86 votes to 11, the result of a year-long campaign by Senator Lindsey Graham, who died on 11 July. The bill would penalise countries that keep buying Russian oil, gas and other exports, and allows the president to impose tariffs on the largest purchasers. Trump has given a nod to the package, which also carries his push for sanctions on Iran.
Right-wing lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, 48, took the presidential oath on Friday in Cali rather than the capital Bogotá, a city that has long borne the brunt of the state's conflict with armed groups. He said the option of dialogue was completely exhausted and pledged to relentlessly defeat narco-terrorism, a break with the negotiated peace pursued by Gustavo Petro, whom he beat in June's run-off. He also called for responsible and sustainable fracking and said he would strengthen the state oil company Ecopetrol.
Prosecutors filed an indictment on Thursday at a district court in southern Israel against a settler for the killing of Palestinian activist Awdah Al Hathaleen in the occupied West Bank last year. The rights group B'Tselem said it is the first time since 7 October 2023 that an Israeli has been indicted for killing a Palestinian in the West Bank.
The health ministry's latest situation report gives 4,053 Bundibugyo cases and 1,850 deaths since the outbreak was declared in mid-May, across 53 health zones in five provinces, with 87 percent of cases in Ituri. WHO vaccine experts recommended on Friday a full-scale human trial of Ervebo, licensed against the Zaire strain, to test whether it also protects against Bundibugyo, for which no vaccine exists. Only West Africa's 2014 to 2016 epidemic has been larger.
Spain will impose temporary checks on travellers arriving from Italy from midnight on Saturday until 7 September, after Rome imposed a month of checks on arrivals from Spain following the mass crossing into Ceuta on 30 and 31 July. Foreign minister José Manuel Albares called the Italian measure a torpedo fired at the hull of European unity and demanded that it be lifted. Giorgia Meloni's government replied that it had no intention of revising the decision before 15 August, citing Spanish expectations of a new wave of arrivals at Ceuta.
Zelenskyy arrived on Friday for his first official visit to Serbia, one of the few European countries that have kept friendly relations with Moscow, and said he would meet President Aleksandar Vučić and Prime Minister Đuro Macut. He named expanded economic ties, relations with the European Union and security issues as the agenda. Serbia has refused to join sanctions on Russia, relies almost entirely on Russia for energy, and its EU accession has stalled partly because of its policies toward Moscow.
The European Union's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Friday that the bloc had imposed sanctions on five individuals involved in Russia's military-industrial complex. The step follows recent Russian air strikes on Ukraine.
Momentum is building behind a third term for the European Parliament's conservative president Roberta Metsola, Euronews reports. That would cut across the informal rotation agreed among the centrist political forces and puts the Socialists and Democrats on the back foot.