Free Republic

Tunisia's Prime Minister Habib Essid held an emergency cabinet meeting Saturday, after authorities declared a nighttime curfew nationwide following the worst outbreak of social unrest since the 2011 revolution. Five years after the ouster of longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, street demonstrations against unemployment and poverty have again shaken the North African nation. Anger erupted over the death on January 16 of Ridha Yahyaoui, a 28-year-old unemployed man who was electrocuted when he climbed a power pole while protesting in the central town of Kasserine. The unrest spread around the country, including to Tunis where shops were burnt...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

<p>CAIRO — An unprecedented wave of anti-American violence swept across Africa, Asia and the Middle East on Friday as protesters, angered by an amateurish video that mocks the founder of Islam, stormed and scorched U.S. embassies in Tunisia and Sudan, ransacked a German embassy in Sudan, and set a fast-food restaurant ablaze in Lebanon.</p>