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TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — Tunisia’s president on Wednesday named the country’s first female prime minister, appointing her to lead a transitional government after her predecessor was sacked and parliament suspended.

President Kais Saied named Raoudha Boudent Ramadhane, a 63-year-old professor at a prestigious engineering school, to the prime minister’s post in a surprise decision.

The president’s office said in a statement that Saied instructed the new prime minister to name a new Cabinet as soon as possible.

Tunisia has had no prime minister and has been in limbo since Saied froze the parliament and seized executive powers on July 25. The move notably sidelined the Islamist party that dominated parliament, and critics denounced it as a coup that threatens Tunisia’s young democracy. Saied said it was necessary to save the country from economic and social crisis.

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MADRID (AP) — Barcelona’s salary cap has been significantly reduced because of its financial struggles, becoming more than seven times smaller than that of rival Real Madrid, the Spanish league said Wednesday.

The league said Barcelona’s spending limit on salaries for the 2021-22 season has been set at 97 million euros ($113 million), about 285 million euros ($334 million) less than a year ago.

The reduction was part of the reason the Catalan club failed to give Lionel Messi a new contract and led to him joining Paris Saint-Germain.

Messi reportedly earned nearly 140 million euros ($163 million) per season, although he said he had agreed to cut his salary in half so he could stay with the club.

Each club has a different salary cap calculated based on a series of factors that include revenues, costs and debts. It is proportional to roughly 70% of a club’s revenues.

The adjustments are part of the Spanish league’s longstanding financial control measures to reduce clubs’ debts and keep them financially healthy.

Barcelona’s struggles had already forced the league to slash the club’s cap from a league-high 670 million euros (now $785 million) in 2019-20 to 385 million euros ($450 million) last season. In addition to losing Messi, Barcelona also sent Antoine Griezmann on loan to Atlético Madrid, and its only signings this offseason were free agents.

Six other clubs now have bigger spending limits than Barcelona’s.

Madrid’s cap is the highest, going from 470 million euros ($550 million) to 739 million euros ($863 million), which is 642 million euros ($750 million) more than Barcelona’s. Madrid benefited from better management and especially from not making big signings in recent transfer windows.

Sevilla followed with a cap of 200 million euros ($233 million), up from 185 million euros ($215 million) a season ago.

Atlético Madrid was third in the list after having its limit reduced to 171 million euros ($199 million).

Valencia, owned by Singaporean businessman Peter Lim, was last in the list of first-division clubs, with its salary cap being cut from about 100 million ($116 million) euros to only 30 million euros ($35 million).

The league’s total cap for top-tier clubs was at 2.27 billion euros ($2.64 billion), a figure 2% lower than it was last season.

Clubs are already benefiting from the financial boost generated by the league’s new multibillion-dollar deal with investment fund CVC.

The league said Spanish clubs spent 271 million euros ($316 million) in signings in the latest transfer window, the lowest among the top five European leagues.

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More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Tales Azzoni on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tazzoni

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LONDON (AP) — A prosecutor argued Wednesday that a serving London police officer handcuffed a woman on the pretext of breaking COVID-19 lockdown rules before he kidnapped and killed her.

Wayne Couzens, 48, appeared at London’s Central Criminal Court charged with the kidnap, rape and murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, who disappeared while walking home from visiting a friend in south London on March 3.

Couzens has pleaded guilty to the charges. He sat in court with his head bowed as members of Everard’s family listened to prosecutor Tom Little open his case.

Little said Couzens wore his police belt with handcuffs and used his police warrant card when he detained Everard “by fraud.” He also had booked a car rental, the prosecutor argued.

There was “no credible alternative explanation for his need to hire a car other than to use that car to kidnap and rape a lone woman,” Little said.

“His movements were consistent with the defendant looking for, or hunting, for a lone young female to kidnap and rape, which is precisely what he did,” the prosecutor argued.

As a Metropolitan Police office, Couzens worked on COVID-19 patrols and enforcing coronavirus regulations, Little said. Everard being out after going to a friend’s house for dinner while Britain remained under lockdown made her more vulnerable to the officer’s claim that she had breached pandemic rules, according to the prosecutor.

A passenger in a passing car witnessed the kidnapping but mistook it for an arrest by an undercover officer, he added.

Everard’s body was found in woodland in Ashford, Kent, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southeast of London, a week after she went missing.

Her disappearance led to one of the most widely publicized missing person investigations the U.K. has ever seen, Little said.

The case also sparked national outrage and triggered large-scale protests denouncing violence against women.

Ahead of the court hearing, the Metropolitan Police department said it was “sickened, angered and devastated by this man’s crimes, which betray everything we stand for.” The force said it would not further comment until the hearing is over.

A judge is expected to sentence Couzens on Thursday.

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PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — The head of the European Union’s executive branch on Wednesday called on Kosovo and Serbia to resolve their disputes through the dialogue and deescalate the recent tension over license plates.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, to meet with senior leaders as part of her regional tour before an EU-Western Balkans summit on Oct. 6.

“It is vital that Kosovo and Serbia normalize their relations,” she said at a news conference with Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti. “The EU-facilitated dialogue … is the only platform to resolve the current crisis.”

Representatives of the two countries were meeting Wednesday in Brussels, facilitated by the EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak.

Last week, Kosovo’s government deployed special police forces to the border crossings to impose a new rule of removing Serb license plates from cars coming into the country, saying that a 10-year-old deal had expired. Pristina said they were replicating what Serbia had done for the last 10 years.

Kosovo Serbs blocked the border with trucks and people could only pass it on foot. Serbian military jets and helicopters have been flying close to the border with Kosovo in an apparent show of force.

“We understand it’s not only a question of license plates,” von der Leyen said. “We all know that it’s more it’s a question how this region will move forward and whether we are going to be able to go together, the path toward integration and towards our European values here.”

Kurti has repeated the offer that both countries drop the temporary license plate rule as a solution.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has demanded that Kosovo first withdraws all special police at the border before launching the EU-mediated negotiations.

The EU, NATO and the U.S. have urged Kosovo and Serbia to exercise restraint and refrain from taking unilateral actions.

Von der Leyen is visiting the six Balkan countries to assure their future is in the EU.

The Western Balkan countries — Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia — are at different stages on the EU membership path. The bloc’s stalled interest in enlargement and years of diplomatic turmoil with Britain over Brexit are some factors delaying their progress.

“I am a staunch supporter of the process of enlargement. I want the Western Balkans by our side. That’s where you belong. We want you. We need you,” she said.

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Llazar Semini reported from Tirana, Albania.

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LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Slovenia on Wednesday suspended vaccinations with the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus jab while it probes the death of a 20-year-old woman, as thousands started gathering for a protest against vaccination in the small European Union nation.

The suspension will be in place until experts examine whether there is a link between the woman’s death from a stroke and the vaccine she had received two weeks earlier, said Health Minister Janez Poklukar.

The one-dose jabs have grown in popularity in recent weeks in Slovenia after authorities widely introduced COVID passes, including for going to work in all state-run firms. The government has approved the purchase of an additional 100,000 J&J doses from Hungary in response to the growing demand.

The woman’s death this week was the second serious case of adverse effects of the Johnson & Johnson jabs that have been administered to about 120,000 people in Slovenia, the official STA news agency reported.

However, “benefits continue to outweigh the risks,” Poklukar said.

Still, the announcement is likely to fuel Wednesday’s protests planned in the capital, Ljubljana, against vaccination and coronavirus measures.

Previous similar protests have drawn thousands, and demonstrators recently clashed with police. Ahead of Wednesday’s rally, police put up metal fences and urged participants to remain calm.

Like much of Central and Eastern Europe, Slovenia in recent weeks has seen a rise in infections. The country of some 2 million people has fully vaccinated nearly 48% of the population, which is lower than in many other EU states.

Slovenia has recommended Johnson & Johnson vaccines to all people over 18 years old, unlike some countries who have limited its use to older people.

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