Lima (AFP) – The Middle East needs grants, not loans, to deal with the millions of refugees who have fled conflicts in the region, a senior Lebanese official said Sunday.

Speaking a day after the UN and World Bank announced plans to increase lending to help the region deal with the catastrophic spillover of conflicts in Syria and beyond, the director general of the Lebanese finance ministry, Alain Bifani, said the aid should instead be interest-free.

"The support has to be through grants. It cannot be loans," Bifani told AFP on the sidelines of the World Bank and IMF annual meetings in Lima, Peru.

"As long as we can, we will turn down loans" for dealing with the refugee crisis, he said.

Although much recent attention has focused on Europe’s struggles to deal with the influx of uprooted Syrians, the war-torn country’s neighbors have taken in the bulk of the more than four million people who have fled the nearly five-year conflict, straining their economies.

By Melanie Gallant – huffingtonpost.ca

I have a lot to be thankful for. Good health, a loving family, a home and a gratifying job. But like many, I often take these blessings for granted. This year, however, is different.

Today I am thankful for having shared a cup of coffee with Syrian women refugees in Suwere, a small town in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley.

The small refugee settlement where I met these courageous women is nestled between the fertile mountains of Eastern Lebanon, not far from one of the countries world famous wineries. It only has 13 households, and most of the refugee families are from the Syrian City of Homs who were forced to flee to safety when the Syrian military conducted a crackdown against anti-government protesters.

Lebanese Examiner

(BEIRUT) — Former Lebanese MP Elias Joseph Skaff died in a Beirut hospital on Saturday after a long battle with an illness. He was 66.

The former Zahle minister was first elected in 1992 as head of the Popular Bloc following the death of his father Joseph Skaff. He was later re-elected in 1996, 2000 and 2005.

Skaff was appointed minister of industry in 2003 in the government of Rafik Hariri, and served as the minister of agriculture in 2004 and 2005 in the Omar Karami government.

He also participated in the sessions of National Dialogue as head of the parliamentary Popular Bloc in 2006. In July 2008, Skaff was appointed agriculture minister to the cabinet of then prime minister Fouad Siniora.

Lebanese Christian politician and founder of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) Michel Aoun (L) gestures as he is escorted by a bodyguard and an army soldier during a rally to show support for him and to mark the October 13 anniversary, near the presidential palace in Baabda, near Beirut, Lebanon October 11, 2015. Thousands of Lebanese rallied near the presidential palace on Sunday in a show of support for Christian politician Michel Aoun, pressing their demand for him to fill the vacant presidency. The rally was called to mark events in October 1990, near the end of the Lebanese civil war, when the Syrian army captured Baabda. Aoun – head of one of two rival administrations at the time – was forced out of the presidential palace and later into exile. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

Lebanese Christian leader and founder of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) Michel Aoun (L) arrives to addresses his supporters during a rally to show support for him and to mark the October 13 anniversary, near the presidential palace in Baabda

Lebanese Foreign Minister and newly elected head of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) Gibran Bassil (L) gestures while standing with supporters during a rally to show support for Christian politician and FPM founder Michel Aoun and to mark the October 13 anniversary, near the presidential palace in Baabda, near Beirut, Lebanon October 11, 2015

Supporters of Christian leader Michel Aoun hold Free Patriotic Movement and Lebanese flags and pictures of him during a rally near the empty presidential palace in the Beirut suburb of Baabda, Lebanon, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2015. (AP Photo//Hassan Ammar) 

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Thousands of Lebanese rallied at the presidential palace outside Beirut on Sunday in a show of support for Christian politician Michel Aoun, pressing their demand for him to fill the presidency vacant for over a year.

Waving the orange flag of Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), they packed streets in the Baabda district that houses the headquarters of the presidency.

The presidency is set aside for a Maronite Christian but has been unoccupied due to a political crisis stoked by regional conflicts including the war in neighboring Syria.

"The president of the republic shouldn’t be just any person who fills the post, as some people want him to be," Aoun told the crowd as h

Barbara Tasch

With such topics as hydrogen-powered cars and extinguishing fires with sound, the September issue of the BBC’s Science Focus magazine details "39 ideas about to change our world."

Here are six of the most impressive.

At least 86 people were killed and 186 wounded when twin explosions hit a rally of pro-Kurdish and leftist activists outside Ankara’s main train station on Saturday in what Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called a terrorist attack, weeks ahead of an election.

Craig Courtice, thenational.ae