On Saturday 22 August Tunisia's prison authority denied that detainees' health was deteriorating, and released six months of hospital consultation figures to back that up. Over the previous month three rights groups had raised alarms about named prisoners held through the summer heat: a hunger strike over blocked treatment, breathing trouble in an exercise yard, a list of ageing political detainees. The figures stop at the end of June.
A boat carrying 15 young people, most from Ben Guerdane, sank off Zarzis five hours after leaving shore on Friday night; only ten aboard had life jackets. Two bodies have been recovered and one survivor rescued after swimming for over two days, while the National Guard and volunteer sailors continue searching for twelve still missing. The survivor blamed bad weather and an overloaded boat.
Seifeddine Arfaoui was taken into 48-hour custody after prosecutors moved on a Facebook post that reproduced slogans chanted at a Nafas movement protest on 20 August. The Nafas movement demanded his release, saying online posts should not be prosecuted. Lawyer and former minister Mohamed Abbou disputed the legal basis, arguing that words spoken on camera in the street cannot be treated as an offence committed on social media; it is the second Nafas member arrested this year, after journalist Zied El Heni in April.
Tunisia's olive oil exports rose 55.3% to 368,000 tonnes over the nine-month 2025/2026 campaign, earning 4.6 billion dinars, according to the national agriculture observatory Onagri. The EU took 57% of the volume, led by Spain and Italy, while exports to the United States and Canada made up nearly a quarter. Extra virgin oil accounted for most of the volume, and packaged oil exports rose 51%.
Tunisia's postal service said holders of the 'Graity' pension card, used by retirees drawing from the CNSS and CNRPS funds, could start withdrawing their payments from post office and bank cash machines on Saturday afternoon. The announcement was the day's top search in Tunisia, as retirees checked when and where they could access money that had been delayed.
National Guard spokesperson Houssem Eddine Jbabli told the state news agency TAP on Sunday that search teams recovered five more bodies overnight, raising the total to eight from a boat that sank off Zarzis carrying 15 people, 14 from Ben Guerdane and one from Zarzis. He said six people are still missing and that customs, coast guard, civil protection and navy units, backed by two helicopters, are continuing the search under the direct oversight of the President of the Republic. Earlier accounts of how many people were aboard the boat have varied.
President Donald Trump said his administration was preparing what he called the harshest economic campaign ever launched against a country, targeting Iran, with details due 24 August. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi dismissed the threat as a rerun of past US pressure campaigns that all failed, and said it was a diversion from America's own debt and interest costs. China, Iran's largest trading partner, said it opposed sanctions with no UN Security Council authorisation.
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Alexus Grynkewich, brought together defence officials from allied states this week to discuss how they could help keep the Strait of Hormuz open, without launching a NATO operation. France and Britain are leading a separate effort to assemble around a dozen countries for mine clearance and naval escorts once shipping through the strait can resume. The conflict between Iran, the US and Israel has kept the waterway closed for months.
The UN says more than 200,000 people have been newly displaced across Sudan's Kordofan region since late 2025, as drone strikes on El Obeid's power infrastructure have cut electricity needed for water pumps, hospitals and phone lines. Since the war began in 2023, El Obeid's population has swollen from 750,000 to an estimated 3.4 million as families flee the fighting. "The warning signs are impossible to ignore," said Amy Pope, director general of the UN migration agency IOM.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia's response to Ukraine's drone campaign against Russian oil and economic targets would become "significantly more noticeable and destructive," after a Russian strike on a Kryvyi Rih shopping centre killed at least 15 people last week. He dismissed Ukrainian peace proposals relayed through intermediaries as "exotic" and said Moscow would only negotiate on the basis of "realities on the ground."
President Emmanuel Macron told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that France would speed up delivery of SAMP/T air defence systems and license Kyiv to build its own interceptor missiles, after strikes pushed Ukrainian civilian deaths to their highest since the war's first months. Macron said he would also press allies holding US-made Patriot interceptors to share them with Ukraine.
Germany's defence ministry is pushing a nearly €12 billion programme to build long-range missiles capable of striking command centres and supply hubs hundreds or thousands of kilometres away, internal documents show. The plan combines cheaper mass-produced missiles, US-made Tomahawks on German soil by the end of the decade, and a joint UK-German system due in the mid-2030s. Berlin treats the programme as a NATO priority as European states accelerate rearmament against what they see as a growing Russian threat.