Renowned Lebanese lyrical author, composer, orchestra arranger and conductor Elias Rahbani passed away on Monday at the age of 82, his family said.

Rahbani was hospitalized last week suffering low oxygen after he contracted the coronavirus and succumbed to COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, on Monday.

Thousands of minority-owned small businesses were at the end of the line in the U.S. government's coronavirus relief program as many struggled to find banks that would accept their applications or were disadvantaged by the terms of the program.

Data from the Paycheck Protection Program released Dec. 1 and analyzed by The Associated Press show that many minority owners desperate for a relief loan didn't receive one until the PPP's last few weeks while many more white business owners were able to get loans earlier in the program

Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of the Catholic Archbishop of Minsk, the Vatican said on Sunday, after he spoke out against the Belarus government and violence against protestors. 

Rights groups on Tuesday demanded that Palestinian authorities free a woman disc jockey arrested after a dance event at a Muslim religious site near the West Bank city of Jericho.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday sentenced a former student to three years in prison for sexually harassing two young women, in a case that sparked outrage on social media under the #MeToo hashtag.

The RestART Beirut Fund, an ambitious international initiative launched by a group of young friends from five different countries under the aegis of the King Baudouin Foundation, is launching its first project – saving the badly damaged Sursock Palace in Beirut and helping open it to the public as a museum and cultural center.

A statue of Robert E. Lee, a commander for the pro-slavery South during the U.S. Civil War, was removed from the Capitol building early Monday, officials said, part of a reckoning with the country's history of racism.

Lebanon's parliament on Monday passed a landmark bill criminalizing sexual harassment and amended a controversial domestic violence law, in a move rights groups criticized as incomplete.

The new law "criminalizes sexual harassment, especially in the workplace," the official National News Agency reported.

Lebanese comedians are bringing relief and defying taboos with jokes about dating, partying during the pandemic -- and how even drug dealers are considering leaving the crisis-hit country.

Tunisia is struggling to protect North Africa's Jewish heritage, threatened by vandalism, looting and the smuggling of valuable artefacts bearing witness to the long history of the region's Jews.