By Tarek Amara

TUNIS, Feb 3 (Reuters) - A Tunisian appeal court on Tuesday upheld and increased lengthy prison sentences on high-profile politicians, including opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi and former security officials, as part of a crackdown on dissent.

Among those sentenced on charges of conspiring against the state in the mass trial were Nadia Akacha, the former chief of staff to President Kais Saied.

Akacha, who was sentenced in absentia after fleeing abroad, received a 35-year jail term, TAP state news agency said.

MADRID, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Spain will ban access to social media for minors under 16 and platforms will be required to implement age verification systems, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Tuesday at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

"Our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone... We will no longer accept that," Sanchez said. "We will protect them from the digital Wild West."

He added that his government would also introduce a new bill next week to hold social media executives accountable for illegal and hateful content.

DUBAI, Feb 3 (Reuters) - A large fire broke out in a shopping centre in the west of the Iranian capital, state media reported on Tuesday, adding that firefighting teams were at the scene to extinguish it.

(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Alison Williams)

A US fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that approached an American aircraft carrier in the Middle East on Tuesday, Washington said, as renewed tensions on the high seas overshadowed plans for nuclear talks.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that US envoy Steve Witkoff is still expected "to have conversations with the Iranians late this week," despite the incident.

Dubai, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The Middle East does not need another confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, and Tehran needs to reach a nuclear deal with Washington, Anwar Gargash, the diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, said at a World Governments Summit panel in Dubai.

"I think that the region has gone through variouscalamitous confrontations. I don't think we need another one, but I would like to see direct Iranian-American negotiations leading to understandings that we don't have these issues every other day," he said.

MOSCOW, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Russia is ready for the new reality of a world with no nuclear arms control limits after the New START treaty expires later this week, Russia's point man for arms control said on Tuesday.

Unless Moscow and Washington reach a last-minute bilateral understanding of some kind, the New START treaty, signed in 2010 by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, will expire on February 5.

DUBAI, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Talks with the U.S. should be pursued to secure national interests as long as "threats and unreasonable expectations" are avoided, President Masoud Pezeshkian posted on X on Tuesday.

"Taking into account demands from friendly regional countries to respond to the U.S. President's suggestion for talks, I instructed the foreign minister to prepare the ground for equitable and fair negotiations ... should an atmosphere free of threats and unreasonable expectations arise," Pezeshkian said.

(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Tom Hogue)

DAKAR, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo will send its first team to monitor a ceasefire between Congo’s government and the AFC/M23 rebel group in the coming days, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Monday after hosting talks in Doha.

Qatar said the team would be deployed to Uvira, a strategic city in eastern Congo that AFC/M23 fighters captured in December during a rapid offensive, and which Congolese forces and allied militias re‑entered last month, restoring government control after the rebels announced they would withdraw.

Feb 2 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that talks with Iran were ongoing amid high tensions.

"We have ships heading to Iran right now, big ones ... and we have talks going on with Iran," Trump told reporters at the White House. "We'll see how it works out."

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Writing by Christian Martinez, editing by Michelle Nichols)

By Alexander Dziadosz, Marine Delrue and Maria Paula Laguna

CAIRO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The deployment of a powerful model of Turkish combat drone to a remote airstrip on Egypt’s southwestern border signals a sharp escalation in Sudan’s civil war, suggesting one of its largest neighbours is being drawn deeper into the fray, more than a dozen officials and regional experts say.