US President Donald Trump has ordered a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. The escalation follows the US seizure of an oil tanker last week off Venezuela’s coast, and a build-up of US forces in the region.
Singapore has reported a rise in rogue tankers carrying sanctioned cargo through its shipping lanes. Authorities say the “shadow fleet” vessels disable tracking systems or use false identities, raising safety risks. Al Jazeera’s Patrick Fok reports from Singapore.
The Louvre management has said the landmark Paris museum was partially reopened on Wednesday amid an ongoing strike by workers in the wake of purportedly difficult conditions after the stunning jewel heist in October.
“The museum is open, but some areas are not accessible due to the industrial action,” a spokeswoman said.
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The world’s most visited museum also confirmed the partial reopening in the morning on social media, saying some rooms are closed due to strike action.
Hundreds of tourists lined up outside the Louvre on Wednesday as its opening was delayed while unions voted on continuing a strike over working conditions.
The museum had closed its doors to thousands of disappointed visitors on Monday after workers went on strike and protested outside the entrance. The museum is routinely closed on Tuesdays.
“We don’t know yet if we’ll open. You have to come back later,” security guards told visitors hoping to enter the museum early in the morning.
Union representatives of the 2,200-strong workforce have said they had warned for years before the daylight robbery in October about staff shortages and disrepair inside the place where world-famous works like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa are kept.
The vote by the employees on Monday to observe a strike, which was extended on Wednesday, came after the staff expressed their anger at the museum’s management and said conditions have deteriorated after the heist.
They have also found the measures proposed by Ministry of Culture officials, including cancelling planned cuts in 2026, to be insufficient to cancel the strike so far.
Louvre director Laurence des Cars has faced intense criticism since burglars made off with crown jewels worth 88 million euros ($103m). She is due to answer questions from the French Senate on Wednesday afternoon.
In what was seen as a sign of mounting pressure on Louvre leadership, the Culture Ministry announced emergency anti-intrusion measures last month and assigned Philippe Jost, who oversaw the Notre Dame restoration, to help reorganise the museum.
Defending the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) title has historically proven to be one of the tournament’s toughest challenges.
Since Egypt first lifted the trophy in 1959, many reigning champions have struggled to replicate their success at the next edition.
While a few teams managed deep runs, early exits and modest group-stage finishes have been far more common, underlining the competitiveness and unpredictability of African football.
READ ALSO: Coach Fae Under Fire As Côte d’Ivoire Seek Back-To-Back AFCON Titles
Only a handful of nations have successfully defended their crown. Ghana did so in 1965, while Cameroon (2002) and Egypt (2008 and 2010) stand out as the most dominant modern examples.
Egypt’s back-to-back titles in 2008 and 2010 remain a historic achievement, especially considering they failed to qualify for the 2012 tournament. Cameroon also enjoyed a strong spell, winning in 2002 before falling to the quarter-finals two years later. In contrast, several champions such as Zaire, Sudan, Congo Brazzaville, and Morocco (1978) exited at the group stage in their title defences.
Recent tournaments have followed the same pattern of difficulty for reigning champions. Ivory Coast (2017), Algeria (2022), and Senegal (2024) all failed to progress beyond the early knockout rounds or group stages, despite entering as favourites. Nigeria and Zambia also suffered disappointing campaigns, while Nigeria notably withdrew from the 1996 edition due to political tensions with hosts South Africa.
Overall, AFCON history shows that defending the title is often harder than winning it, with form, pressure, and fierce continental competition frequently disrupting champions’ hopes of repeat glory
1959: Egypt – champions
1962: Egypt – runners-up
1963: Ethiopia – 4th
1965: Ghana – champions
1968: Ghana – runners-up
1970: Zaire – Gp B, 4th
1972: Sudan – Gp B, 4th
1974: Congo Brazzaville – 4th
1976: Zaire – Gp B, 4th
1878: Morocco – Gp B, 3rd
1980: Ghana – Gp B, 3rd
1982: Nigeria – Gp B, 3rd
1984: Ghana – Gp B, 3rd
1986: Cameroon – runners-up
1988: Egypt – Gp B, 3rd
1990: Cameroon – Gp B, 3rd
1992: Algeria – Gp C, 3rd
1994: Ivory Coast – 3rd
1996: Nigeria – withdrew after a political row with the hosts, South Africa
1998: South Africa – runners-up
2000: Egypt – quarter-finals
2002: Cameroon – champions
2004: Cameroon – quarter-finals
2006: Tunisia – quarter-finals
2008: Egypt – champions
2010: Egypt – champions
2012: Egypt – did not qualify
2013: Zambia – Gp C, 3rd
2015: Nigeria – did not qualify
2017: Ivory Coast – Gp C, 3rd
2019: Cameroon – Last 16
2022: Algeria – Gp E, 4th
2024: Senegal – Last 16
Joe Burns has been stripped of the Italy captaincy and left out of their plans for their debut appearance at the T20 World Cup next year.
Former Australia opener Burns, 36, led Italy through qualifying to secure a spot at the 20-team tournament in India and Sri Lanka, which starts on 7 February.
However, the Italian Cricket Federation (FCRI) has announced Derbyshire batter Wayne Madsen, 41, has now replaced Burns.
The FCRI added Burns will not be selected as part of Italy’s squad for the 2026 T20 World Cup.
The FCRI did not provide specific details as to why Burns had been stripped of the captaincy and will not be selected for the T20 World Cup.
However, it did state the decision had been taken to “ensure stability, harmony and continuity for the team” and was made “solely in the interest of the national team’s preparation and serenity ahead of this historic event”.
The statement added the FCRI “will not comment further on individual matters” though the organisation did also express its “sincere thanks” to Burns for his role in “an important chapter” in Italian cricket.
Burns, who played 23 Tests and six one-day internationals for Australia between 2014 and 2020, is eligible to represent Italy through his mother’s heritage.
He announced he would represent Italy as a tribute to his late brother in May 2024.
Burns played eight T20s for Italy, scoring an unbeaten century in the Europe Qualifier Group A final against Romania.
Italy then picked up two wins over Guernsey in the Europe Regional Final group, which proved enough to secure second place behind the Netherlands and a World Cup spot.
South Africa-born Madsen first played for Derbyshire in 2009 under an Italian passport, courtesy of his Italian grandmother.
Fifteen years ago, a Tunisian fruit seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, despairing at official corruption and police violence, walked to the centre of his hometown of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire, and changed the region forever.
Much of the hope triggered by that act lies in ruins. The revolutions that followed in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria have cost the lives of tens and thousands before, in some cases, giving way to chaos or the return of authoritarianism.
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Only Tunisia appeared to fulfil the promise of the “Arab Spring”, with voices from around the world championing its democratic success, ignoring economic and political failings through much of its post-revolutionary history that stirred discontent.
Today, many of Tunisia’s post-revolutionary gains have been cast aside in the wake of President Kais Saied’s dramatic power grab in July 2021. Labelled a coup by his opponents, it ushered in a new hardline rule in Tunisia.
Over the following years, as well as temporarily shuttering parliament – only reopening it in March 2023 – Saied has rewritten the constitution and overseen a relentless crackdown on critics and opponents.
“They essentially came for everyone; judges, civil society members, people from all political backgrounds, especially the ones that were talking about unifying an opposition against the coup regime,” Kaouther Ferjani, whose father, 71-year-old Ennahdha leader Said Ferjani, was arrested in February 2023.
In September, Saied said his measures were a continuation of the revolution triggered by Bouzazzi’s self-immolation. Painting himself a man of the people, he railed against nameless “lobbyists and their supporters” who thwart the people’s ambitions.
However, while many Tunisians have been cowed into silence by Saied’s crackdown, they have also refused to take part in elections, now little more than a procession for the president.
In 2014, during the country’s first post-revolution presidential election, about 61 percent of the country’s voters turned out to vote.
By last year’s election, turnout had halved.
“Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule has definitively buried the hopes and aspirations of the 2011 revolution by systematically crushing fundamental rights and freedoms and putting democratic institutions under his thumb,” Bassam Khawaja, deputy director at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera English.
In the wake of the revolution, many across Tunisia became activists, seeking to involve themselves in forging what felt like a new national identity.
The number of civil society organisations exploded, with thousands forming to lobby against corruption or promote human rights, transitional justice, press freedom and women’s rights.
At the same time, political shows competed for space, debating the direction the country’s new identity would take.
“It was an amazing time,” a political analyst who witnessed the revolution and remains in Tunisia said, asking to remain anonymous. “Anybody with anything to say was saying it.
“Almost overnight, we had hundreds of political parties and thousands of civil society organisations. Many of the political parties shifted or merged… but Tunisia retained an active civil society, as well as retaining freedom of speech all the way up to 2022.”
Threatened by Saied’s Decree 54 of 2022, which criminalised any electronic communication deemed by the government as false, criticism of the ruling elite within the media and even on social networks has largely been muzzled.
“Freedom of speech was one of the few lasting benefits of the revolution,” the analyst continued.
“The economy failed to pick up, services didn’t really improve, but we had debate and freedom of speech. Now, with Decree 54, as well as commentators just being arrested for whatever reason, it’s gone.”
In 2025, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch slammed Tunisia’s crackdown on activists and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).
In a statement before the prosecution of six NGO workers and human rights defenders working for the Tunisian Council for Refugees in late November, Amnesty pointed to the 14 Tunisian and international NGOs that had their activities suspended by court order over the previous four months.
Included were the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, the Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights, the media platform Nawaat and the Tunis branch of the World Organisation against Torture.
Dozens of political figures from post-revolution governments have also been arrested, with little concern for party affiliation or ideology.
In April 2023, 84-year-old Rached Ghannouchi, leader of what had been Tunisia’s main political bloc, the Ennahdha Party, was arrested on charges of “plotting against state security”.
According to his daughter, Yusra, after a series of subsequent convictions, Ghannouchi currently faces a further 42 years in jail.
Later the same year, Ghannouchi’s principal critic, Abir Moussi, the leader of the Free Destourian Party, was jailed on a variety of charges.
Critics dismiss the charges, saying the criteria for arrest have been the person’s potential to rally opinion against Saied.
“This is not just the case for my father,” Yusra continued, referring to others, such as the leading post-coup opposition figure Jawhar Ben Mubarak.
“Other politicians, judges, journalists, and ordinary citizens … have been sentenced to very heavy sentences, without any evidence, without any respect for legal procedures, simply because Tunisia has now sadly been taken back to the very same dictatorship against which Tunisians had risen in 2010.”
Ghannouchi and Moussi, along with dozens of former elected lawmakers, remain in jail. The political parties that once vied for power in the country’s parliament are largely absent.
In their place, since Saied’s revised 2022 constitution weakened parliament, is a body that is no longer a threat to the president.
“The old parliament was incredibly fractious, and did itself few favours,” said Hatem Nafti, essayist and author of Our Friend Kais Saied, a book criticising Tunisia’s new regime. He was referring to the ammunition provided to its detractors by a chaotic and occasionally violent parliament.
“However, it was democratically elected and blocked legislation that its members felt would harm Tunisia.
“In the new parliament, members feel the need to talk tough and even be rude to ministers,” Nafti continued. “But it’s really just a performance… Nearly all the members are there because they agree with Kais Saied.”
Hopes that the justice system might act as a check on Saied have faltered. The president has continued to remodel the judiciary to a design of his own making, including by sacking 57 judges for not delivering verdicts he wanted in 2022.
By the 2024 elections, that effort appeared complete, with the judicial opposition to his rule that remained, in the shape of the administrative court, rendered subservient to his personally appointed electoral authority, and the most serious rivals for the presidency jailed.
“The judiciary is now almost entirely under the government’s control,“ Nafti continued. “Even under [deposed President Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali you had the CSM [Supreme Judicial Council], which oversaw judges’ appointments, promotions, and disciplinary matters.
“Now that only exists on paper, with the minister of justice able to determine precisely what judges go where and what judgements they’ll deliver.”
Citing what he said is the “shameful silence of the international community that once supported the country’s democratic transition”, Khawaja said: ”Saied has returned Tunisia to authoritarian rule.”
