MELBOURNE, Australia (Washington Post) — Protesters set fire to Australia’s Old Parliament House in Canberra on Thursday, officials said, damaging the entrance to the historic building, as demonstrators clashed with police and journalists. The circumstances surrounding the blaze were not fully clear. A group called People’s Treaty had gathered at Old Parliament House in recent days, organizing its activities in a Telegram channel seen by The Washington Post. Its users frequently referenced Indigenous concerns. The group’s website references the “deep state” and says it believes in dissolving all forms of government, and that it opposes mandatory vaccinations and coronavirus restrictions. The administrator of the channel and the website couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

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TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian security forces have detained a senior official from the biggest party in the suspended parliament for the first time since President Kais Saied seized governing powers in July, the party said. The moderate Islamist Ennahda, which accuses Saied of a coup for freezing the parliament and accumulating powers, said plainclothes agents seized Noureddine Bhairi on Friday morning and took him away. It called the arrest a dangerous precedent that may foreshadow a slide towards tyranny. The government and security services were not immediately available to comment. Saied has promised to uphold rights and freedoms won in Tunisia’s 2011 revolution that ushered in democracy and triggered the Arab Spring uprisings across the region.

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Medan, Indonesia (Al-Jazeera) – A standoff involving a boat carrying Rohingya refugees and the Indonesian navy has ended with a dramatic rescue that took 18 hours to complete due to heavy rains and high seas. The refugees – mostly women and children – were brought ashore at Lhokseumawe in Indonesia’s northwestern province of Aceh in the early hours of Friday. They were immediately screened by health department officials as part of the country’s protocol against COVID-19. “We are very relieved and extremely grateful to the Indonesian government for granting the Rohingya permission to disembark in Aceh on humanitarian grounds,” Lilianne Fan, the co-founder of Geutanyoe Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that supports refugees in Indonesia and Malaysia.

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LONDON (The Guardian) - The French government has suspended a new rule that prevented British nationals legally resident in other EU countries from travelling through France to reach their homes, a move that caused confusion for thousands of travellers. Border officials would “show tolerance” in order to “allow these nationals to transit through France to reach their residence in a country of the European Union after the Christmas and New Year period”, the interior ministry said in a statement. It came as Germany also relaxed rules for British visitors. Tighter Covid travel rules introduced last week appear to allow only Britons whose primary residence is in France into the country, although EU law experts have questioned their legality.

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WINFIELD, Ala. (AP) — Homes and buildings were damaged and trees were blown down as a line of intense thunderstorms rolled across several Southern states, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. In the west Alabama town of Winfield, the storms damaged buildings in the downtown area, authorities said. Building walls collapsed and roofs were lying in roads, Winfield Police Chief Brett Burleson told WBRC-TV. “Downtown Winfield is a dangerous area,” the Marion County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement on social media. “There are confirmed live power lines down.”