Lebanon's economic meltdown has plunged most of the population into poverty. It's now also threatening the country's security. As the currency has plummeted to new lows in recent months, salaries too have fallen, as prices rise. To make ends meet, soldiers are being forced to take on second jobs, or even desert their ranks. Our Beirut correspondents went to meet two of them.
In Israel, visits to Eviatar have been officially banned by the military since it was evacuated by the previous government in 2021. But this week, several cabinet ministers led thousands on a march to the settlement outpost, signalling that Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right government is intent on speeding up settlement building on occupied lands, despite international opposition. The march came amid soaring tensions following last week's police raid on Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, and after Israeli air strikes targeted areas in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria, from where rockets had been launched by Palestinian militants.
In the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, tens of thousands of priceless artefacts were stolen from the Baghdad Museum – just one of many sites looted at the time. Two decades on, many of them have never been recovered and millions of euros worth of antiquities are still being smuggled out of Iraq, as our Baghdad correspondent Marie-Charlotte Roupie has been finding out.
Finally, for centuries, Egyptian archeological sites were also looted to feed the illegal trade in antiquities. Authorities there are working hard to safeguard their ancient treasures. As crowds here in Paris flock to a new exhibition on the pharaoh Ramses the Great, our Cairo correspondent has been visiting Karnak Temple, outside Luxor, to meet some of the country's most renowned Egyptologists.
