Tunisia
A boat carrying 15 migrants, 14 from Ben Guerdane and one from Zarzis, that left the coast on 19 August bound for Lampedusa sank on the night of 21 to 22 August. Tunisian broadcaster RTCI reported on 24 August at least 12 confirmed dead and two still missing, while La Presse the same day put the recovered toll as high as 19, with some bodies possibly belonging to a separate migrant vessel that sank around the same time; DNA identification is under way. The Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) is demanding an independent inquiry, while the government has not yet commented publicly.
UGTT's federation for public offices and institutions has filed notice of a three-day general strike at the Compagnie des Phosphates de Gafsa (CPG) for 1 to 3 September, unless demands for implementing earlier agreements and salary increases are met. Management and the supervising ministry have not responded to a request for a working meeting, the union says. A similar notice in December 2024 and January 2025 was withdrawn after a negotiated deal on 23 January 2025, a precedent that argues for caution rather than treating this strike as certain.
According to figures from the Central Bank of Tunisia (BCT), the amount of banknotes and coins in circulation has for the first time exceeded 30 billion Tunisian dinars, a level La Presse and Webdo describe as a sign of growing pressure on the banking system and the formal economy. The BCT has not yet published its own commentary on the figures.
Tunisia's National Institute of Meteorology (INM) has placed 19 of the country's 24 governorates on orange alert, eleven of them at the strictest tier, with sirocco winds and temperatures of 40 to 47 degrees Celsius that, with the heat index, could reach 49 to 51 degrees in coastal areas through the week. That is why "tomorrow's weather" was one of Tunisia's most-searched queries this week, tracked over 50,000 times on Google Trends: it is not idle curiosity, it is a warning people are actually planning their day around.
The Tunis public prosecutor's office ordered Nafas movement activist Seifeddine Arfaoui held in detention on 24 August, over social media posts deemed insulting to President Kais Saied. He is charged under article 86 of the Telecommunications Code and is due before the Tunis court's summer correctional chamber on 27 August, facing up to two years in prison if convicted. Arfaoui had taken part in a Nafas demonstration against the government on 20 August.
Geopolitics
The US State Department has formally removed Syria from the state sponsors of terrorism list, a designation it had carried since 1979, while also delisting Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, the group led by Syria's current president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. The move clears the way for US investment and financial transactions with Damascus and follows Trump's July meeting with al-Sharaa. Iran, Cuba and North Korea are now the only countries left on the list.
Washington has announced a sweeping new wave of sanctions on Iran and is warning Tehran's trading partners to sever financial ties or face secondary measures themselves. Iran's security chief has called other countries' support for the new sanctions "an act of war." The move is already rippling through global oil and commodity markets and threatens to push up consumer prices well beyond the Middle East.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to announce retaliatory tariffs on Tuesday, 25 August, after Trump threatened 50 percent tariffs on Canadian autos, auto parts and steel and told Ottawa to "fall in line." Carney is said to be dropping dollar-for-dollar matching in favour of more targeted measures, accusing Washington of trying to subordinate Canada's economy. The dispute is one of the clearest signs yet that Trump's tariff policy is now hitting even the closest US allies.
Europe
Nearly a month after roughly 72,000 people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez convened an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Council. Twenty-two EU states are criticising Spain's migration policy as a "pull factor," while former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has called the bloc's response "hysterical." The crisis has become a live test of both Spain's border control and the EU's ability to agree on migration policy.
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar, who ended Viktor Orbán's 16-year rule in April, has met roughly two-thirds of the reform "super-milestones" the European Commission set as the price for releasing a first, roughly €10 billion tranche from a larger €16.4 billion package agreed with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in May. The requirements are due to be met before the 31 August deadline. The outcome is a concrete test of whether the EU's rule-of-law conditionality actually works.
Source:
Euronews · Monday, 24 August 2026
Ukraine says it needs €134.6 billion for 2026 defence and, according to the European Commission's own figures, still faces a financing gap of roughly €23 billion despite the EU's Ukraine Support Loan and further disbursements on the way. President Volodymyr Zelensky is now asking the EU to bring forward disbursement of its 2027 loan to speed up Ukrainian drone and missile production. The numbers show the limits of Western financial commitments as the war continues.
Donald Trump's repeated statements about US ambitions in the Arctic and around Greenland are, according to campaign organisers, strengthening the case made by Iceland's pro-EU campaign ahead of the country's membership referendum. Yes-side campaigners point to EU membership as a way to bolster Iceland's security against great-power pressure in the North Atlantic, an unusual instance of American foreign policy reshaping the EU's own enlargement debate.