Detained Soumoud flotilla coordinator Wael Naouar suspended his hunger strike on Wednesday evening, citing a critical decline in his health and appeals from his defence committee and civil society groups. He asked fellow detainees Ghassen Henchiri, Ghassen Boghdiri and Nabil Chennoufi to do the same, saying the pause is not an abandonment of his demand to be freed.
The national committee defending detained Soumoud flotilla activists met at the UGTT headquarters on Wednesday and formed a crisis cell to track what it called an escalating crackdown, after further arrests and searches followed last Saturday's march for their release. Activist Samar Tlili was released the same day, while others remain in custody.
The two-day walkout by fuel-transport drivers, running from Wednesday midnight to 23:59 tonight, traces back to an allowance agreed in May 2019 that was never implemented. The industry and finance ministries raised distribution companies' profit margins on 1 September to help fund it, but a union official says the dispute has since shifted to employers' body Utica and the Social Affairs Ministry, which has yet to convene the conciliation meeting the union requested.
Unemployed-graduate activist Karim Teraa was arrested in Bizerte on 19 September and is being prosecuted under Decree-Law 54. When fellow campaigners Mohamed Fridhi, Hassouna Gafsi and Wajdi Houimel held a solidarity sit-in at the Kasbah on Tuesday, they too were detained, then released the same evening. The Union of Unemployed Graduates is demanding Teraa's release and the implementation of a 2025 law on hiring long-term unemployed graduates.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's latest Regional Economic Prospects report, published Thursday, projects Tunisia's economy to grow 2.4 percent in 2026 and 2.3 percent in 2027. The bank says Tunisia's energy import bill jumped 31.6 percent between January and July, a cost it expects to widen this year's budget deficit.
Donald Trump greeted Xi Jinping at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday, a rare protocol gesture, opening a three-day state visit built around trade, artificial intelligence and critical minerals. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides had agreed to extend their tariff truce to 10 January 2027, with Taiwan and the Iran war also expected on the agenda.
The US-backed Board of Peace presented a six-month, $2.45bn, 66-project blueprint in New York: about $1bn for infrastructure including shelters and rubble clearance, $885m for security, including a hardened base in Rafah for 5,000 international stabilisation troops, and the rest for governance and other programs. The unveiling came as Israeli strikes killed at least five Palestinians on Wednesday and the ceasefire remained fragile, with full reconstruction estimated at over $35bn.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu offered talks to Socialist deputies after unveiling a 54-billion-euro savings plan meant to cut France's deficit to 5 percent of GDP in 2027, from 5.4 percent this year. The Socialists called the plan untenable and the hard left threatened censure, while the CGT union has called a nationwide public-sector strike for 29 September.
A Russian Mi-8 helicopter crossed into Polish airspace near Braniewo for 42 seconds on 23 September, flying in from the Kaliningrad exclave. Poland scrambled fighter jets and put ground forces on standby; its military command called it a test of NATO air-defence readiness.
A day after EU ambassadors extended Russia sanctions to 22 September 2029 by agreeing to delist tycoons Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov, Ukraine's foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Moscow was celebrating: 'they got what they wanted, a sense of impunity, humiliation of the European Union, and division among Europeans'. France pushed to remove Usmanov and Luxembourg to remove Fridman, while roughly 2,600 other Russians and companies, including Vladimir Putin himself, remain sanctioned.