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TUNIS — The European Union and Tunisia on Sunday signed a memorandum of understanding for a "strategic and comprehensive partnership" on irregular migration, economic development and renewable energy.

The deal, which includes financial assistance, came as Tunisia has been under fire over its treatment of migrants since February, after President Kais Saied accused "hordes" of migrants from sub-Saharan African countries of a "plot" to change the country's demographic makeup.

The cash-strapped North African country, a key route for migrants trying to make their way to Europe, has since seen a rise in racially motivated attacks.

Tensions came to a head after a Tunisian man was killed on July 3 in an clash between locals and migrants in the city of Sfax.

Since then, hundreds of migrants fled their homes in Tunisia or were forcibly evicted and driven to desert areas along the borders with Algeria and Libya, left to fend for themselves in searing heat.

Speaking at the Tunisian presidential palace, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday's accord aims to "invest in shared prosperity".

"We need an effective cooperation, more than ever" on migration, von der Leyen said, announcing greater cooperation against "networks of smugglers and traffickers" and in search and rescue operations.

She was accompanied by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte, who were all in Tunisia in June for talks on ways to curb irregular migration.

'Unlimited generosity' 

Tunisia lies about 130 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa, and has long been a departure point for migrants risking perilous sea journeys on makeshift boats in hopes of reaching Europe.

The International Organisation for Migration has said 2,406 migrants died or disappeared in the Mediterranean in 2022, while at least 1,166 deaths or disappearance were recorded in the first half of 2023.

Meloni on Sunday welcomed "a new and important step to deal with the migration crisis", and invited Saied to an international conference on migration on July 23.

Rutte said both the European Union and "the Tunisian people" stand to benefit from the agreement, noting that the EU is Tunisia's biggest trading partner.

The deal also covers financial aid to schools in Tunisia and renewable energy initiatives.

Saied meanwhile called for a "collective agreement on inhuman immigration and [forced] displacements of people by criminal networks".

He insisted that Tunisia "gave the migrants everything it can offer with unlimited generosity".

Hours before the announcement, AFP correspondents at the Tunisian-Libyan border saw dozens of exhausted and dehydrated migrants in a desert area, claiming they were taken there by Tunisian authorities.

In June, von der Leyen had offered Tunisia 105 million euros (around $115 million) to support measure to curb irregular migration and 150 million euros in immediate support, as well as a long-term loan of around 900 million euros.

IMF loan 'diktats'

But the long-term loan would be contingent on approval of the nearly $2 billion loan currently with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that has stalled over differences with Saied, who assumed near total governing powers since 2021.

Von der Leyen said the EU remains "ready to support Tunisia" and provide the funds "as soon as the necessary conditions are met".

But Saied has repeatedly rejected what he calls the "diktats" of the IMF before a loan is granted, even as the country struggles under crippling inflation and debt estimated at around 80 per cent of its gross domestic product.

On Sunday, Saied stood his ground saying he rejects IMF demands to lift subsidies on basic products and services, namely oil and electricity, as well as the restructuring of 100 state-owned firms.

"We must find ways to cooperate outside the framework of monetary institutions that were set up after the second world war," he said.

Stuck in the desert 

Earlier on Sunday, Libyan border agent Mohamad Abou Snenah told AFP near the Tunisian border that "the number of migrants [coming from Tunisian] keep rising every day", adding that his patrol had so far rescued 50 to 70 people.

Ibrahim, a Congolese migrant who used to live in the Tunisian city of Zarzis, told AFP he was stopped on the street on his way back from work.

"They dropped us in the desert," he said. "We've been in the desert for many days."

Tunisian rights groups said on Friday that between 100 and 150 migrants, including women and children, were still stuck on the border with Libya.

The Tunisian Red Crescent said it has provided shelter to more than 600 migrants who had been taken this month the militarised zone of Ras Jedir on the Mediterranean coast.

SIDON — Among meandering alleyways in the historic market of Lebanon's southern city of Sidon, cobblers and menders are doing brisk business, as an economic crisis revives demand for once-fading trades.

At Ahmed Al Bizri's shoe repair store, nestled among old stone arches and a crowded warren of shops and stalls, workers are busy adjusting a woman's sandals and replacing the worn-out sole of a man's shoe.

"Repairs are in high demand," said Bizri, 48, who learned the trade from his father.

People from all walks of life "come to us to repair their shoes: Rich, poor, average workers, public servants, soldiers," he added.

Since late 2019, Lebanon has been in a state of economic collapse that the World Bank says is one of the worst in modern times.

The Lebanese pound has lost around 98 per cent of its value against the US dollar, and most of the population has been plunged into poverty.

Bizri said his work "has increased 60 per cent" since the crisis began, adding that people now prefer to spend up to one million Lebanese pounds (around $11 on parallel markets) to fix old shoes rather than buy new ones.

"Even people who had shoes hidden away for 20 years are bringing them out for repair," he said with a smile, boots hanging from rusty hooks and coloured laces on the walls around him.

In a shop nearby in central Sidon, fellow cobbler Walid Al Suri, 58, works with an old manual sewing machine that clicks and clacks as he pumps the pedal with his foot.

He stitches up a hole in the side of a shoe and trims the thread, covering it with black polish to camouflage the repair.

"It's true that our work has increased," he said from his workshop, a tiny space with faded green walls filled with shoes of all kinds.

But "there are no profits because the price of all the materials has gone up, from glue to needles, thread and nails," he said.

'Suffocating'

In Lebanon, a country dependent on imports, inflation has soared. 

In 2022, inflation averaged 171 percent, according to the World Bank — one of the highest rates worldwide.

"We pay for everything in dollars, not in Lebanese pounds," said Suri, who repairs around 20 shoes a day.

For that, he said he earns about $11, hardly enough to cover the basic needs of his family of three.

Some people have asked him to repair shoes that were verging on unfixable because they had no money for new ones, he said.

Elsewhere in the coastal city, Mustafa Al Qadi, 67, is mending duvets under the soft light of a window during one of Lebanon's long power cuts.

The bankrupt state provides just a handful of hours of electricity a day.

Qadi uses thick thread and deftly sews stitches into a duvet spread out on the floor, other quilts folded and rolled up around him.

"Most people patch things up" even if they are made cheaply, said Qadi, who is also an upholsterer.

"The circumstances are extraordinary — unfortunately our currency has no value," he said, his glasses slipping down his nose as he worked.

Despite the crash, Lebanese officials have failed to enact reforms demanded by international donors that would unlock bail-out funds.

Unemployment reached more than 29 percent last year, according to the World Bank.

"We hope this situation will end because we're suffocating," Qadi said.

'Forced' to repair 

In a store bearing an old-fashioned hand-painted yellow "Repairs" sign, tailor Mohammed Muazzin, 67, works away, surrounded by spools of thread and clothes waiting for attention or ready for pickup.

A woman in hijab and long robe holds up a dress to inspect Muazzin's adjustments, while another in a tank top and flowing hair waits to ask about repairing a pair of torn jeans.

"People used to buy trousers, wear them a few times and then get rid of them. Today, they give them to their brother or another relative," said Muazzin, who has been a tailor for four decades.

Even though he has up to 70 clients a day, he said that before the crisis "our earnings were higher".

Areen, 24, an unemployed teacher who declined to provide her surname, is among those who have come to Muazzin for repairs.

"The tough circumstances have forced us" to go to tailors instead of buying new clothes, she said, wearing a soft-coloured headscarf.

"Before, we would throw away clothes, shoes and bags or give them to those in need," she said.

"Now we try to get the most out of them."

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and the war in Ukraine have pushed 165 million people into poverty since 2020, the United Nations said Thursday, calling for a pause in debt repayments for developing countries.

Because of these shocks, 75 million people will have fallen into extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $2.15 a day, between 2020 and the end of 2023 — and 90 million more will fall below the poverty line of $3.65 a day, according to a study published by the United Nations Development Programme.

"The poorest suffer the most and their incomes in 2023 are projected to remain below pre-pandemic levels," the report said. 

"Countries that could invest in safety nets over the last three years have prevented a significant number of people from falling into poverty," UNDP chief Achim Steiner said in a statement. "In highly indebted countries, there is a correlation between high levels of debt, insufficient social spending, and an alarming increase in poverty rates."

The report called for a "debt-poverty pause" in economically struggling countries "to redirect debt repayment towards financing social expenditures and countering the effects of macroeconomic shocks".

"The solution is not out of reach for the multilateral system," the report said.

According to another UN report published on Wednesday, some 3.3 billion people, nearly half of humanity, live in countries that spend more on paying interest on debt than on education and health.

And developing countries, despite having lower levels of debt, are paying more interest, partly because of higher rates.

According to the report, the annual cost of lifting the 165 million newly poor people out of poverty would be over $14 billion, or 0.009 per cent of global output and a little less than 4 per cent of total public external debt service in 2022 for developing economies.

If the income losses among the already poor prior to the shocks are also included, the mitigation cost would reach some $107 billion, or 0.065 per cent of the world's GDP and around a fourth of total external public debt service, the report's authors estimated.

"There is a human cost of inaction in not restructuring developing countries' sovereign debt," Steiner said. "We need new mechanisms to anticipate and absorb shocks and make the financial architecture work for the most vulnerable."

Earlier this week Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who has been pushing for a reform of international financial institutions, denounced "our outdated global financial system, which reflects the colonial power dynamics of the era when it was created".

NEW YORK — ExxonMobil will acquire Denbury Inc., a specialist in enhanced oil recovery and carbon sequestration, for $4.9 billion as it builds out its low-carbon business, the oil giant announced Thursday.

The all-stock acquisition provides ExxonMobil with Denbury's carbon dioxide pipeline network in industrial-rich regions of the southern states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, where oil companies plan major carbon sequestration projects in response to climate change.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

"Acquiring Denbury reflects our determination to profitably grow our Low Carbon Solutions business by serving a range of hard-to-de-carbonise industries with a comprehensive carbon capture and sequestration offering," said ExxonMobil Chief Executive Darren Woods.

Oil companies have championed carbon sequestration as a major response to climate change. The process involves trapping carbon dioxide released in industrial production and shipping it through pipelines to sites where it is buried underground, removing the heat-trapping gases from the atmosphere.

Denbury also produces oil and natural gas through the process of enhanced oil recovery, which injects carbon dioxide gas into partially-produced petroleum reserves in order to coax out additional hydrocarbons.

In the first quarter of 2023, Denbury produced about 48,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a pittance next to ExxonMobil's 3.8 million barrels per day.

Denbury's oil and gas production is "not a strategic asset for us", Woods said in an interview CNBC. 

"The value of the deal... is really the assets and the experience of storing carbon dioxide, taking advantage of that pipeline and infrastructure system in this very industrial corridor... to store that carbon dioxide."

Shares of Denbury fell 0.3 per cent to $87.53 in early trading, while ExxonMobil dropped one per cent to $105.44.

BAGHDAD — Iraq will start paying for its Iranian gas imports with oil, to circumvent the complicated mechanism agreed with Washington in order not to contravene US sanctions, the prime minister said on Tuesday.

Iranian gas is crucial for Iraq's electricity generation, but US sanctions on Iranian oil and gas impose restrictions on how Baghdad can pay for the imports.

Iraq cannot directly hand over cash to Iran, but payments must be held in a bank account and be used by Tehran to fund imports of food and medicines.

The payment system has left Iraq in heavy arrears and prompted Iran to respond by periodically switching off the taps.

Ravaged by decades of conflict and international sanctions, oil-rich Iraq relies on Iranian gas imports for a third of its energy needs. It is also beset by rampant corruption, and suffers from dilapidated infrastructure.

Ten days ago Iran halved its supply of gas to Iraq because of unpaid bills of more than $12 billion, deposited in an Iraqi bank account but which Tehran cannot use, Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al Sudani said in a televised address on Tuesday.

His office said in a statement that Baghdad and Tehran had signed an agreement on Tuesday after several days of talks for "the import of Iranian gas to fuel Iraqi power plants, in exchange for Iraqi crude oil".

"The agreement aims to address the gas supply crisis for power plants, while tackling payment issues and complications arising from US sanctions," the statement said. 

Recent gas supply stoppages have only worsened the frequent power outages much of Iraq sees during the hot summer months, when temperatures regularly reach 50ºC.

In his televised address, Sudani said: "As the American side did not give the necessary permission for the transfer of funds... the supply of Iranian gas was stopped.

"Because of the transfer mechanism and its complexity, we were unable to obtain authorisation to transfer these outstanding payments so our Iranian neighbour could continue to supply us" with gas, he said.

Sudani called the payment mechanism "complex due to the severity of the sanctions and the complicated procedures of the US Treasury", but added that a recent payment to Iran of around $1.9 billion had been made.

Tuesday's agreement with Iran meant "we will be able to guarantee that the gas will continue to flow", Sudani said.

To reduce its dependence on Iranian gas, Baghdad has been exploring several possibilities including imports from Gulf countries such as Qatar, as well as recovering flared gas from oilfields.

PARIS — US tech titan Mark Zuckerberg has plunged into a high-stakes game of brinkmanship with the European Union by withholding his new Threads app from users in Europe, but analysts say he will struggle to win the fight.

Threads, billed as the killer of Twitter, a platform that has tumbled into chaos under the leadership of mercurial tycoon Elon Musk, has added more than 100 million users in its first week in app stores.

But Zuckerberg's firm Meta said it could not be released in Europe because of "regulatory uncertainty" around the Digital Markets Act, an antitrust regulation that will not come into force until next year.

"The reason they gave made me laugh," said Diego Naranjo, head of policy at campaign group European Digital Rights.

"The regulation is not uncertain, it's very certain, it's just that Meta doesn't like it."

His theory is that Meta will give Threads to the rest of the world and Europeans will become so vexed at missing out that they will pressure the EU to water down the DMA.

Naranjo, for one, thinks the ploy will fail.

But either way, the rest of the big tech platforms will be glued to their screens as this fight could shape the future regulatory landscape in Europe for all of them.

'Fatal' blow

Meta and the rest are already regularly in trouble with EU regulators over their data gathering and retention policies.

They struggle to keep to the terms of Europe's mammoth five-year-old data privacy regulation (GDPR).

When the DMA was announced, their reaction was muted as it seemed to be about business and competition, a simpler topic for them though not without pitfalls.

The DMA bans the biggest tech firms from favouring their own platforms, particularly problematic for the latest launch as Threads and Instagram accounts are linked.

But the DMA's Article 5.2 contained a bombshell: The firms will be banned from transferring user data across platforms unless they get consent.

Berin Szoka, president of the pro-business US think tank TechFreedom, said the DMA's rules would require Meta to ask for the consent of someone's Instagram contacts before their data could be transferred to Threads.

"In practice, this could prove fatal to Threads' rollout," he said, as the network effect would be dead on arrival.

"I don't really see a good way out here for Meta."

Naranjo has little sympathy for Meta, saying the European embargo was just a "political push" by the firm against the EU.

"We will see who loses more," he said. "My guess is that Meta will lose more from not having 450 million potential customers on their network."

'Question of time' 

The European Consumer Group (BEUC) said the Threads issue showed the DMA doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

"The DMA does not stand in the way of new products or innovation," said the group's competition specialist Vanessa Turner.

"It creates an environment for innovation from more competitors and at the same time protects consumers."

Meta has left the door open for a Threads launch in Europe and few expect it to maintain its embargo indefinitely.

European law expert Alexandre de Streel said big tech firms would probably be hammering out compliance issues with the EU over the coming months.

"I think it's more a question of time to understand the scope of the legislation and have a dialogue with the commission," he said. 

But Szoka suggested the EU might be about to get a dose of unintended consequences.

"It would be particularly sad if DMA shields Twitter from competition," he said.

Meta, he argued, had committed to making Threads compatible with its competitors, adding: "That's something Twitter has only talked about."