RIYADH: The Gulf Cooperation Council and Japan signed on Sunday an agreement to resume negotiations on a free-trade deal between both sides. 
The signing took place on the sidelines of a meeting between GCC Secretary-General Jassem Mohamed Albudaiwi and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in Jeddah, Kuwait News Agency reported.
The two officials discussed relations between the GCC and Japan, and ways to enhance them in line with their common interests.

AL-ASSAH, Libya: Libyan border guards have rescued dozens of migrants who have been left in the desert by Tunisian authorities without water and food, and their numbers are “rising,” an officer said Sunday.
Hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan African countries were forcibly taken to desert and hostile areas bordering Libya and Algeria after racial unrest in early July in Sfax, Tunisia’s second-largest city.

DUBAI: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the premiers of two EU member states will travel to Tunisia on Sunday to finalize a deal worth more than €1 billion ($1.12 billion) that aims to combat people smuggling and human trafficking, and help boost the country’s ailing economy.
Citing unnamed sources, The Guardian newspaper reported on Friday that the prime ministers of Italy and the Netherlands will join the head of the commission to sign off on a memorandum of understanding with the Mediterranean country.

TUNIS: Undocumented sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia received 3 billion dinars (about $1 billion) in remittances from their countries during the first half
of 2023, an official from the national security council said in a meeting.
President Kais Saied, who chaired the meeting, said: “This figure is shocking and indicates that Tunisia is being targeted.”
Saied denounced this year undocumented sub-Saharan African immigration to his country, saying in comments criticized by rights groups that it was aimed at changing Tunisia’s demographic make-up.

AL-MUKALLA: People in Yemen’s southern city of Taiz staged a protest near a Houthi-manned checkpoint on Saturday to condemn the militia’s ongoing siege of the city. Yemenis have also organized an online campaign to mark 3,000 days since the Houthis’ siege began in the spring of 2015.

Dozens of Yemenis stood in a line near the Houthi-controlled eastern entrance to Taiz to protest the siege, which has lasted more than eight years, and to urge the world to intervene.