TUNIS: The Tunisian government has raised the price of drinking water by up to 23 percent, the official gazette said on Tuesday, as the country seeks to reduce subsidies to qualify for IMF help.

Tunisia, which has a shortage of water after years of drought, is under pressure from the International Monetary Fund to cut government subsidies, including of energy, food and water, to qualify for a recovery package the country needs to save public finances from collapse.

QAMISHLI, Syria: Baran Ramadan Mesko had been hiding with other migrants for weeks in the coastal Algerian city of Oran, awaiting a chance to take a boat across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
Days before the 38-year-old Syrian Kurd was to begin the journey, he received news that a smuggler boat carrying some of his friends had sunk soon after leaving the Algerian coast. Most of its passengers had drowned.
It came as a shock, after spending weeks to get to Algeria from Syria and then waiting for a month for a smuggler to put him on the boat.

BEIRUT: Lebanon is fast running out of medicines and infant formula, with deliveries at a standstill and supplies expected to run out within days, the head of the country’s pharmacists’ syndicate has warned.

Joe Salloum said that the exchange rate crisis has led to an almost complete cessation of medicine and infant formula deliveries to pharmacies.

TOKYO: Japan’s reputation as a neutral actor in the Middle East peace process continues to suffer as it tries to forge a close defense relationship with Israel. Diplomats say Tokyo is taking a visibly softer stance with regard to aggressive Israeli policies and the annexation of Arab lands by force.

AL-MUKALLA: Iranian interference in Yemen started immediately after exiled Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1979 return to Tehran, the Yemeni leader has revealed.
And Rashad Al-Alimi, president of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, told Al Arabiya TV on Monday that in 1983 Iran’s government gave its backing to an armed group commanded by Badder Addin Al-Houthi, the father of the Houthi movement’s leader.