Tunisia assumed the rotating presidency of the Arab League's ministerial council at a session in Cairo on Monday, a term running to March 2027, with Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Nafti leading the delegation on President Kais Saied's instructions.
The Central Bank of Tunisia reported net foreign currency reserves of 25.274 billion dinars as of September 3, equal to 99 days of imports, up from 98 days on 19 August, according to its daily bulletin.
Tunisia has gone more than five years since its last completed Article IV consultation with the IMF, its longest gap since joining the Fund, placing it on what is nicknamed the "negative list", updated twice a year, of members without a recent review, alongside Venezuela, Belarus, Chad, Haiti and Myanmar. Tunisian economists say the listing is mainly procedural, but warn it could make external borrowing harder to arrange.
A judge on Tunisia's Economic and Financial Judicial Pole extended journalist Mohamed Yousfi's police custody by 48 hours on Monday, as the initial period was about to expire. Yousfi, editor of the website Al Qatiba, was detained on September 4 outside Express FM's studios and is under investigation for suspected illicit enrichment and money laundering. His lawyer, Bassem Trifi, said the case stems from a Facebook post that did not name Yousfi, and renewed calls for his release; Yousfi had emergency appendix surgery while in custody. The SNJT journalists' union and the International Federation of Journalists repeated their demand for his release.
STEG electricity workers held a one-hour work stoppage on Monday morning after Adel Amraoui, a team leader at the utility's Menzel Bourguiba agency, died of electrocution on Saturday while on duty. The General Federation of Electricity and Gas, part of the UGTT union, called the protest to demand better safety equipment, including insulating gloves, safety shoes and proper work clothes. Workers in Sousse and other regions also objected to being blamed for summer power cuts, which they say result from years of underinvestment in generating capacity rather than staff negligence.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard kept firing on US Navy vessels near the strait, while US forces struck more Iranian oil tankers near Kharg Island and the port of Jask, extending Friday's exchange in which US Central Command destroyed one Iranian tanker and disabled two others after Iranian missiles hit two US warships. Shipping tracker Kpler recorded as few as five to eleven vessels crossing the strait on some days this week, down from a ten-day average of 13, in a chokepoint that carried roughly 20 million barrels a day before the war; Brent crude has climbed to $96 a barrel from about $70.
A Manila court ordered Duterte's arrest on Friday over a 2024 broadcast in which she said she would have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife and a former House speaker killed if she herself were killed first. She posted 360,000 pesos ($5,740) bail on Saturday and denies making a real threat; a conviction on any of the three grave-threats counts could bar her from ever holding public office again, including a widely expected 2028 presidential run.
Exit polls put Alternative for Germany at 44.2% in Sunday's Saxony-Anhalt state election, more than double the 17.4% won by Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats and the party's strongest regional result yet. AfD still falls three seats short of the 42 needed for an outright majority, and every mainstream party maintains a "firewall" refusing to govern with it, but a win of this scale intensifies pressure on that policy ahead of national elections.
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for over three hours on Saturday, after which Putin ordered a 72-hour halt to strikes on Kyiv from midnight. The envoys then travelled overland to Kyiv, where they met President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday in their first visit to the Ukrainian capital since Donald Trump returned to office. Zelensky had said Ukraine would hold off hitting Moscow through Monday in return, but the envoys announced no breakthrough on a wider settlement.