by arabnews.com -- NAJIA HOUSSARI -- BEIRUT: Young people fleeing Lebanon in flimsy boats and heading for Cyprus are adding to the refugee crisis in the eastern Mediterranean. Four vessels appeared off the eastern and southern coast of Cyprus in the past two days carrying 123 Lebanese and Syrian migrants, island police said on Sunday. Some have been allowed into Cyprus, but at least 20 migrants are adrift off the southeastern tip in a boat witha faulty engine. Three women and nine children were earlier taken off the boat and transferred to a Cypriot hospital as a precaution. More than 30 people on a boat that police intercepted on Saturday about 20km off the southern coast have boarded another vessel that Cypriot authorities chartered to take them back to Lebanon. Cyprus and Lebanon have an agreement to stop migrant boats from reaching the island.

More than 50 migrants from Lebanon were taken to a reception center on Saturday after their boat reached a rocky beach along the island’s eastern coastline inside the UN controlled buffer zone separating the main part of Cyprus from the unrecognized breakaway Turkish Cypriot north. UN peacekeepers transferred the 35 men, five women and 11 children to Cypriot custody. A court on Sunday ordered that four men remain in custody on suspicion that they were the boat’s crew. Another 20 Syrian migrants were taken to a reception center after being picked up on Sunday morning near the buffer zone 15km west of the capital, Nicosia. Cypriot Interior Minister Nicos Nouris said there would be an urgent meeting on Monday to assess the situation. The island’s migrant reception center was reaching its limits amid concerns over adherence to health protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19, he said. Lebanon hosts 1 million Syrian refugees and 250,000 Palestinian refugees. People smuggling has increased in the past few years, especially targeting young Lebanese disillusioned by the collapsing economy.

by Reuters -- BEIRUT — Lebanon's top Christian cleric said on Sunday a new government must deliver urgent economic and other reforms in the national interest, rather than returning to past corrupt ways that have plunged the Middle Eastern nation into an economic crisis. Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, leader of the Maronite church, has an influential role as religious leader of the biggest Christian community in Lebanon, where political power is divided between its main Christian, Muslim and Druze sects. Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib, a Sunni Muslim, is in talks to swiftly form a cabinet by mid September, under pressure from French President Emmanuel Macron. Picking ministers in the past has taken months of haggling. Macron has led international efforts to fix the country of about six million people that has been crushed by debt and which is reeling from a huge Aug. 4 port blast that shattered Beirut, exacerbating Lebanon's deepest crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war.

BEIRUT (AP) -- By SARAH EL DEEB -- — A month after Beirut’s devastating explosion, Ghassan Toubaji still sits under a gaping hole in his ceiling — he can look up through the dangling plaster, wires and metal struts and the broken brick roof and see a bit of sky. The 74-year-old survived the Aug. 4 blast with bruises, but his fall from its impact worsened his heart and blood circulation diseases. Between that and Lebanon’s crumbled economy, he can’t go back to work. He used the last of the dollars his wife had been hoarding — a precious commodity as the local currency’s value evaporates — to fix the windows shattered by the explosion.

Teams of volunteers, a symbol of the help-each-other spirit that’s grown up from the failures of Lebanon’s corrupt political class, came by his apartment and assessed the damage. They put plastic on the windows and promised glass for free eventually. Four weeks later they hadn’t come back. With a sweet patient smile, he said he appreciated how well meaning the young volunteers were. But he couldn’t wait — with humidity reaching 80% some days and the summer sun directed all day into his apartment, he had to do something. “Our house is hot as hell,” he said, sitting in baggy shorts and a tank top as he watched the news in the room with the hole overhead.

Lebanese families are still struggling with rebuilding in the wake of the massive explosion centered at Beirut’s port. Many, already unable to make ends meet because of the country’s economic meltdown, now can’t bear costs of making homes livable. Frustration is high, with the state almost nowhere to be seen and promised international help slow in coming. With winter and the rainy season only weeks away, aid groups are concerned they may not have time or resources for the mammoth job of repairing and rebuilding. Around 200,000 housing units, approximately 40,000 buildings, were damaged in the blast, 3,000 of them so severely they are currently uninhabitable, according to U.N. estimates.

by npr.org -- RUTH SHERLOCK -- Lebanon's capital, Beirut, remains devastated by the massive explosion at the city's port last month. The country is in the depths of an economic collapse, and the coronavirus is spreading. But as Lebanon reels from multiple tragedies, conservationists are pointing to one bright spot. They say a record number of endangered green sea turtles have come to nest on the country's shores. Loggerhead turtles have also come in large numbers. Seventy-two-year-old Mona Khalil has spent the last 20 years defending a small piece of shoreline, less than a mile long, from the factories and private beach clubs that now carpet almost all of Lebanon's coastline.

Al-Mansouri Beach is now one of Lebanon's most important breeding grounds for turtles. Every nesting season, Khalil and a team of volunteers count turtle's nests. They watch over them — protecting them from foxes and other animals and from humans — and then help the hatchlings on their journey back to the sea. The last time Khalil saw an increase in the number of green sea turtle nests was during another crisis in Lebanon — the war with Israel in 2006. Israeli gunboats floated just off shore of the beach. "The beach was deserted," she recalls. Even back then, she only counted nine green sea turtle nests. This year, she has counted 20. "It's amazing!" she says. "We haven't had this number in two decades. It's really something that is important for the world and not just for Lebanon." Khalil says this is also a good year for loggerhead turtles after years of decline. She has counted 16 nests.