s disaster , the Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat told journalists in the island's capital, Valletta, that 27 people – including at least three children – had been pulled from the water following the capsizing about 60 miles south-east of Lampedusa. Although near the Sicilian island, the boat was in international waters where Malta is responsible for search and rescue operations. Earlier, Italian...
A video shows a group of suspected asylum-seekers pleading with Italian authorities in August 2009. The footage was filmed by Paola Totaro, who wrote about it here ...
Ahmed Ben Ahmed, who performed an anti-police song in August, jailed for six months, while co-singer remains in hiding A Tunisian court has sentenced a rapper to six months in prison for singing excerpts of an anti-police song at a concert, his lawyer said on Thursday. Ghazi Mrabet said he would appeal against the conviction of Ahmed Ben Ahmed, known as Klay BBJ. When Ahmed was led out of court and...
s president. And Zied al-Heni has been summoned to appear in court because he criticised the arrest of a cameraman whose "offence" was to film a man throwing an egg at the country...
s to downgrade Tunisia 's debt rating from B to BB- is a setback too. "The Tunisian economy is dying," warned Wided Bouchamaoui, head of the Tunisian Union for Industry, Commerce and Handicrafts (Utica), in an interview with Nessma TV last month. He blamed the government for being too passive. "Since the end of 2012 we have been calling for a state of economic emergency to be declared, in order...
s overthrow An Egyptian judicial panel has recommended the legal dissolution of Mohamed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood , the latest setback for the Islamist group that was Egypt's most powerful civil organisation until Morsi was overthrown in July, and which has since been driven all but underground by an army-led crackdown. The group is in its worst crisis since a similar attempt to suppress it in the...