More than 11,000 Palestine Refugees children in South Lebanon will not be able to join their peers at the beginning of the school year on 2 October. This is a quarter of refugee school children and is due to violence and clashes in the Ain el-Helweh camp, the largest in the country.
“UNRWA was forced to take this decision given all our eight schools inside the camp have been taken over by armed groups. They have sustained significant destruction and damage. Other schools – outside the camp- are currently being used by displaced families,” said Dorothée Klaus, Director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon.

Ambassador of the European Union to Lebanon Sandra De Waele on Monday opened the 28th edition of the European Film Festival in Lebanon at the Sursock Museum.
Below is the speech delivered by De Waele at the ceremony as received by Naharnet:
Pope Francis on Saturday labeled the weapons industry as being a key driver of the "martyrdom" of Ukraine's people in Russia's war, saying even the withholding of weapons now is going to continue their misery.
Francis appeared to refer to Poland's recent announcement that it is no longer sending arms to Ukraine when he was asked about the war during brief remarks to reporters while returning home from Marseille, France.

Ten years after Pope Francis made a landmark visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa to show solidarity with migrants, he is joining Catholic bishops from the Mediterranean this weekend in France to make the call more united.
The question is whether anyone in European corridors of power will listen, as they scramble to stem a new tide of would-be refugees setting off from Africa.

Tensions between Canada and India have escalated over the assassination of a Sikh independence advocate in June.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his country was investigating credible allegations that Indian government agents were connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, but India has rejected the allegations as absurd.

French President Emmanuel Macron is extending an olive branch to video gamers after previously linking computer games to rioting that rocked France earlier this year.
Posting on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, Macron backpedaled on remarks in June where he blamed video games for having "intoxicated" some young rioters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off a U.S. trip in California to talk to billionaire businessman Elon Musk about antisemitism on his social media platform X — while Musk asked him to address his judicial overhaul in Israel. The two also discussed artificial intelligence in a sparsely attended livestream event.
Netanyahu's high-profile visit to the San Francisco Bay Area comes at a time when Musk is facing accusations of tolerating antisemitic messages on his social media platform, while Netanyahu is confronting political opposition at home and abroad. Protesters gathered early Monday outside the Fremont, California, factory where Tesla makes its cars.

The U.N. General Assembly's yearly meeting of world leaders is here — and with it, an array of acronyms, abbreviations, titles and terms that can be confounding to observers. Here's some key vocabulary, decoded.
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Russia's new ambassador to the Vatican met Monday with Pope Francis for a protocol visit, as signs emerged that the Vatican's Ukraine peace envoy could soon be undertaking a second mission to Moscow.
The Vatican said Ambassador Ivan Soltanovsky was presenting his credentials to Francis, signaling the official start of his term. His motorcade was seen leaving the Russian embassy Monday morning, bound for the Vatican, and returning about two hours later.

A U.N. committee voted Sunday to list prehistoric ruins near the ancient West Bank city of Jericho as a World Heritage Site in Palestine, a decision that angered Israel, which controls the territory and does not recognize a Palestinian state.
Jericho is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on earth, and is in a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that is administered by the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. The listing refers to the Tell es-Sultan archaeological site nearby, which contains prehistoric ruins dating back to the ninth millennium B.C. and is outside the ancient city itself.
