Tunisia

25 May 2020; MEMO: Media outlets in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt have launched a systematic campaign against Rached Ghannouchi, the intellectual leader of Tunisia’s Ennahda Movement, to tarnish his image and provoke a storm in his country, Anadolu Agency reports.

The counter-revolution led by Sky News, Saudi-financed Al-Arabiya — both broadcasts from the UAE — and Egypt-based Youm7 newspaper, have published simultaneous deceitful news.

TUNIS, May 24 (Xinhua) -- Tunisian Prime Minister Elyes Fakhfakh said on Sunday that his country is preparing to exit the stage of COVID-19 outbreak with the slightest damage.

The official TAP news agency quoted the prime minister as saying that "Tunisia, which has succeeded in controlling COVID-19, is about to exit from the outbreak stage with the slightest damage after registering more than 1,000 cases and most them have recovered."

He also stressed the continuation of the national effort to fight against COVID-19 during the summer period.

13 May 2020; MEMO: A Tunisian court has sentenced former presidential candidate and businessman Yassine Channoufi to five years imprisonment on charges of corruption and money laundering, Anadolu Agency reported.

The head of the Media and Communication Unit at the Court of First Instance in Tunis, Mohsen Dali, told the news agency that the competent criminal court also fined Channoufi nine million Tunisian dinars ($3 million) and set his probation at five years after his release.

4 May 2020; MEMO: Tunisia is the Arab world’s best-performing country in terms of freedom of the press, the World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) revealed yesterday.

According to the report, released on World Press Freedom Day yesterday, Lebanon ranked 102nd, Iraq (162th), Algeria (146th), Egypt (166th), and Saudi Arabia (170th) globally. Meanwhile, Syria came in at 174th out of 180 countries for the second consecutive year.

1 May 2020; MEMO: The Tunisian Parliament postponed a plenary session scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday to deliberate a set of draft agreements, including two agreements with Turkey and Qatar, to a later date at the request of the government.

TUNIS, Apr 19 (NNN-TAP) – Tunisian Minister of Health, Abdellatif Mekki, said that, the number of COVID-19 cases in Tunisia remains moderate, which shows that the country has passed the danger stage.

“The situation would have been better if we were more engaged in general confinement,” Mekki assured, while speaking on regional radio station of Tatouine, a public radio broadcast from the province of Tataouine in southeastern Tunisia.

TUNIS, April 12 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced the approval of a 745-million-dollar loan to help Tunisia cope with the economic crisis arising from coronavirus pandemic.

According to the IMF, the North African country’s economy is expected to contract by 4.3 percent in 2020, in what is speculated to be the worst recession since the country’s independence in 1956.

This is the first IMF emergency financing to the Middle East and North Africa region.

TUNIS, April 4 (Xinhua) -- Tunisian security forces killed two terrorists in the western province of Kasserine, the Interior Ministry said Saturday.

This operation "is the result of intelligence work carried out by the national counterterrorism units as part of a preventive operation," the ministry said in a statement.

The security units succeeded in foiling a scheme of the terrorists who tried to infiltrate into civilian gatherings to obtain supplies, the statement said.