Tunisia
Tunisia's Organisation of Young Doctors (OTJM) demanded on Saturday that the government immediately declare a health emergency, warning of an unchecked rise in hospitalisations and deaths linked to the heat wave and the strained power grid. Its head, Wajih Dhokkar, said people are dying in hospitals for lack of cooling and intensive-care beds. The health ministry responded the same day that it has recorded 633 heat-related interventions since 1 July but no deaths, a figure the doctors' union disputes since the authorities publish no death toll of their own.
Despite the army and the commerce ministry injecting millions of bottles of mineral water into the Greater Tunis area this week, the shortage keeps getting worse, according to a Kapitalis report on Saturday. The country's 31 bottling plants are said to be running at full capacity, around 520,000 bottles an hour, while demand has risen roughly 30 percent this summer. President Saied, visiting production facilities in Oueslatia, has blamed the shortage on speculators rather than supply, a claim the industry's chamber of non-alcoholic beverage producers rejects as economically irrational.
Tunisians living in France are gathering on 30 August at the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris to honour the fifteen migrants from Ben Guerdane who died when their boat sank off Zarzis in August, a search the National Guard closed on 27 August with one survivor recovered. The initiative, organised by the group Tunisiennes et Tunisiens contre le racisme (Tunisian women and men against racism) with no party affiliation, calls for safe and legal migration routes and shared responsibility between Tunisia and Europe.
A horse that broke loose from a carriage in central Nabeul killed one pedestrian and seriously injured four others on Friday, an accident that drove Tunisians to search the word calèche. Lawyer Nasser Chahloul, in a radio interview, called for the current, locally-set rules on horse-drawn carriages to be replaced with a single national framework requiring regular veterinary checks, pointing to child labour and the illegal subletting of permits as structural failures in the sector.
The local UGTT union in Ben Guerdane has called a march for Monday morning, protesting what it calls continued economic tightening, stalled development in the town and persistent difficulties for cross-border trade through the Ras Jedir crossing with Libya. The union's executive bureau took the decision on Saturday, after weeks of complaints from small traders about the trade route. Ben Guerdane is still absorbing last month's migrant boat sinking, in which fifteen people died and one survived, though organisers say the march is not presented as linked to it.
Source:
Webdo · Sunday, 30 August 2026
After online rumours claimed 80 percent of poultry stock had died in the Melloulèche delegation from extreme heat and repeated power cuts, the head of the regional agriculture union, Salah Charafeddine, told TAP on Sunday that no farm operating with a legal permit has recorded losses so far. Authorities checked the affected sites and found none had submitted documents proving legal status, which is required to unlock compensation from the agriculture ministry's disaster fund. Charafeddine said he could neither confirm nor deny the scale of the rumoured losses, since the legality of the sites concerned could not be verified.
Geopolitics
At least 676 people have died in Nepal and seven in Tibet after a collapsing glacier sent a torrent of ice, water and debris through Himalayan valleys on Wednesday, according to the US Geological Survey. Nearly 3,000 people remain missing on both sides of the border, including about 90 Americans and 41 Australians. Rescue efforts continue four days after the disaster.
Source:
NBC News · Saturday, 29 August 2026
President Trump announced on Friday a deal giving American companies access to develop 17 Venezuelan oil fields with an estimated potential of 65 billion barrels, negotiated by Secretary of State Rubio and Defense Secretary Hegseth with Venezuela's interim president, Delcy Rodríguez. The deal is expected to draw $100 billion in investment and yield over $209 billion in tax revenue for Caracas. It comes nine months after the US military captured Venezuela's then-president Nicolás Maduro and brought him to the United States to face narcotics-trafficking charges.
Source:
NPR · Friday, 28 August 2026
The US, South Korea and Japan announced on Friday that they will proceed with a trilateral drill, Freedom Edge, starting September 7 in waters off South Korea's Jeju Island and running five days. The exercise, launched in 2024, tests joint missile defence and anti-submarine warfare and comes as North Korea ramps up pressure on the United States. Pyongyang has previously called the drill a reckless show of force.
Source:
NPR · Friday, 28 August 2026
Europe
A Russian strike on the Bucha district just outside Kyiv killed at least 37 people and wounded more, one of the deadliest single attacks on Ukraine this year. The fire that followed damaged at least 50 residential buildings. The strike came on the third consecutive day of air-raid alerts across large parts of the country, as Ukraine's air defences shot down or suppressed 233 Russian drones overnight into Saturday.
King Harald V, Europe's oldest reigning monarch, died on Friday at Oslo University Hospital's Rikshospitalet at the age of 89, having been admitted there since 17 August. He is immediately succeeded by his son, who takes the name Haakon VIII and keeps the same motto chosen by his father, grandfather and great-grandfather: All for Norway. A state funeral at Oslo Cathedral is expected shortly.
Icelanders voted on Saturday on whether to resume negotiations on EU membership, more than a decade after Iceland withdrew its application in 2013. An early partial count of about 87,000 of the country's 270,000 eligible voters put the Yes side narrowly ahead at 51.2 percent to 48.8, in line with the tight pre-vote polling. The result is advisory, and no final call is expected until counting is complete.