Elaisha Stokes, VICE News

Syria's civil war has left 250,000 people dead, according to the latest UN count, and millions more are either displaced within the country's borders or have sought refuge abroad.

And, while the proximate causes were largely political — primarily grievances with President Bashar al Assad, new scientific research adds support to the argument that climate change helped to trigger Syria's descent into violence.

Researchers from NASA and the University of Arizona studied tree rings — a reliable proxy for measuring precipitation — going back several centuries and found that the recent Syrian drought was likely the worst in at least the past 900 years and almost definitely the worst in 500 years.

theguardian.com

Lebanon’s rubbish collection crisis, which caused thousands to protest on the streets last summer, is now in its eighth month with no resolution in sight. Though it has prompted political debates and occasional heated discussions, Lebanese medical professionals are increasingly alarmed by its effect on health.

At the emergency room at the Sacré-Coeur hospital outside Beirut, doctors say they are seeing a spike in severe respiratory diseases and believe it is tied to the ongoing trash disaster.

The crisis erupted last July after authorities closed the primary landfill for Beirut and the surrounding coastal governorate without providing an alternative.

Thousands took to the streets in demonstrations directed at the political class, which has walled itself off from popular opinion and failed to provide other basic services such as water, electricity and drainage.

Beirut (AFP) - A string of major drug busts in Syria and Lebanon has drawn new attention to the trade in captagon, an illegal substance that has flourished in the chaos of Syria's war.

Security forces in both countries have clamped down in recent months on exports of the psychostimulant, produced in swathes of Syrian and Lebanese territory where government oversight is lax or non-existent.

"When the Syrian crisis started, Lebanon and Syria were transformed into a gateway to smuggle captagon," a Lebanese security source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"The substance wasn't invented in the past five years -- but that's when smuggling operations flourished, so Lebanon became an exporting country," he said.

france24.com