BEIRUT: Organ donation in Lebanon is relying on individual initiatives, although the issue still generates controversy among the public.

Former Health Minister Mohamed Jawad Khalife told Arab News: “The recommendation to donate organs is still rare in Lebanon, and this is due to the prevailing culture that considered this work to be taboo, even though religions do not prohibit it.”

Khalife founded the National Organization for Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplant in Lebanon during his ministry in 2005.

AMMAN: Jordanian Investment Minister Kholoud Saqqaf met the Cypriot ambassador to his country, Michalis Ioannou, on Monday to discuss a memorandum of understanding that was signed by Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides during an official visit to Jordan at the start of August.

The agreement focuses on efforts to enhance investment cooperation and establish a regulatory framework that will strengthen Jordanian-Cypriot business ties.

AL-MUKALLA, Yemen: The Houthis have escalated their bombardment of villages in Yemen’s Marib, Lahj, Dhale and Taiz provinces over the past 48 hours while the Yemeni government has ordered the army to remain on high alert to repel Houthi attacks.

Local media reports and residents said that the Houthis discharged artillery shells at homes in the Malaa region of the province’s central region on Saturday evening.

Images shared on social media show flames pouring from the targeted homes, with no confirmed reports of casualties.

JAABAR, Syria: On a riverbank in war-ravaged Syria’s north, felling has reduced what was once a lush forest to dispersed trees and decimated trunks poking out from dry, crumbly soil.

Twelve years of conflict that led to a spike in illegal logging, along with the effects of climate change and other factors, have eroded Syria’s greenery.

The dwindling forest on the shores of the Euphrates River “is shrinking every year,” said Ahmed Al-Sheikh, 40, a supermarket owner in the village of Jaabar, in the Kurdish-held part of Syria’s Raqqa province.

CAIRO: A global aid official urged the international community Sunday to provide more funds to help Sudanese citizens trapped by a monthslong military conflict between rival generals in the African nation.
Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said his organizations have received only 7 percent of the $45 million they appealed for to help those inside Sudan. The war pits the military against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.