Protesters pressured Tunisia’s new interim government to quit yesterday, as the Cabinet prepared a major shake-up and a top US envoy visited.
Hundreds of protesters from poor regions in the center of the country chanted anti-government slogans in front of Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi’s offices for a third day, saying they would not leave until the Cabinet resigns.
Many people are angry that officials from former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime, like Ghannouchi, remain in the Cabinet. Protesters also want Ben Ali’s Constitutional Democratic Rally party (RCD) disbanded.
Late on Monday, the interim government agreed to grant 260 million euros (US$355 million) to poor rural regions where an uprising against Ben Ali’s authoritarian rule began last month.
Tunisian Regional Development Minister Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, a former opposition leader, announced the decision on a talk show. He said the money would go toward public works projects, reimburse businesses that have suffered damage and compensate the families of dozens of “martyrs” killed in a bloody crackdown by Ben Ali’s security forces.
Earlier in the day, Army chief General Rachid Ammar had waded into the crowd of protesters outside the prime minister’s office and asked them to leave, warning a “power vacuum” could lead to dictatorship and promising the army would be a “guarantor” for the revolution.
Taieb Baccouch, a spokesman for the government and the education minister, said a Cabinet reshuffle involving at least six new ministers was under discussion and could be announced yesterday.
US Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman, the top-ranking US official on the Middle East, arrived in Tunis on Monday to press the caretaker government on democratic reforms and new elections. He is due to leave Tunis later today.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion