عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

A Solidarity Fund to Save Lebanese Cultural Institutions

A Solidarity Fund to Save Lebanese Cultural Institutions
TT
TT

A Solidarity Fund to Save Lebanese Cultural Institutions

A Solidarity Fund to Save Lebanese Cultural Institutions

Arts are not prioritized anywhere in the Arab world, and this neglect poses an existential threat to many institutions, which may be forced to shut down, leaving their employees without jobs as a result of the coronavirus lockdown and the economic crises.

While the entire Arab world is struggling, Lebanon is in a dire situation because of the chain of events that began with the eruption of the October 17 revolution, followed by economic and financial collapse and then the total paralysis imposed by the epidemic.

In response to the threat facing the field of arts, donors have begun announcing various forms of support and funding in an attempt to curtail the crisis. The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) and the Cultural Resource Fund (CRF) launched a Solidarity Fund to support arts and culture in Lebanon, the first initiative on which the two collaborate.

Around 800,000 dollars have been allocated to the fund, and as many as 16 institutions may benefit from it, with contributions capped at 80,000 dollars per institution. Support for the Solidarity Fund comes from funders of AFAC and CRF, including Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation. The deadline for application submissions, to be made through the institutions' websites, ends on June 15.

This funding is an existential assistance for cultural institutions to help them rethink their resources, goals, activities, and structure, and perhaps reconsider their role, or the possibility of cooperation with other institutions, to survive on the long term.

In other words, it is meant to help them avoid collapse after years of fruitful work. Concerns about cultural work in Lebanon did not begin with the outbreak of the epidemic but with the start of anti-government protests.

Discussions among the artists themselves are ongoing, as are discussions between them and the remaining financiers, especially since some of those who had been funding cultural activities in the past are now out of the picture. Like banks, for example, which are in crisis.

Rima Mesmar, Executive Director of the Arab Fund for Culture and Arts (AFAC), explains that “applications for the fund’s grant will be examined by a neutral committee, composed of three people with knowledge of the cultural and artistic contexts and corporate management. This particular grant is special in that it is not linked to a project, and most importantly, it will quickly reach its recipients, given the pressing need for it.”

Executive Director of the CRF Helena Nassif believes the main problem is that “there is no cultural welfare in the Arab region, nor is there a tradition of the rich transferring part of their property for the public service.”

“This is one of the reasons for the deep crisis of cultural life in Arab countries in general following the pandemic, which compelled us to find a solution to this massive shortage.”

Lebanon is not the only country struggling. Both foundations will also assist other Arab countries. AFAC will help around 150 artists from across the Arab world as individuals, providing each artist with 3,000 dollars over three to six months to allow them to complete a project that had been halting or start a new project. Beneficiaries are not obliged to submit results, though this would be well received.

CRF, on the other hand, plans to provide up to 5,000 dollars per person to support artists who have no health insurance, have lost their work, or whose projects have stopped and could be completed through this grant.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

A Journey Through 28 Letters: Riyadh Exhibition Traces Story of Arabic from Ancient Inscriptions to Modern Technology

The exhibition features authentic rock specimens engraved with examples of ancient scripts (Academy). 
The exhibition features authentic rock specimens engraved with examples of ancient scripts (Academy). 
TT
TT

A Journey Through 28 Letters: Riyadh Exhibition Traces Story of Arabic from Ancient Inscriptions to Modern Technology

The exhibition features authentic rock specimens engraved with examples of ancient scripts (Academy). 
The exhibition features authentic rock specimens engraved with examples of ancient scripts (Academy). 

A historical and intellectual journey awaits visitors to “Arabic Language: Twenty-Eight Letters of Light,” an exhibition in Riyadh that tells the story of one of humanity’s oldest languages.

Through its galleries and interactive displays, the exhibition brings the story of the “language of ḍād” out of books and dictionaries into an innovative, technology-driven experience.

The exhibition has opened at the headquarters of the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language in Riyadh. Aimed at academics, researchers, teachers, students, and Arabic-language enthusiasts, it offers visitors a creative and contemporary way to explore the language.

Its interactive stations allow visitors to explore a range of linguistic topics, engage with modern educational platforms, and participate in specialized training sessions designed to enhance Arabic learners’ skills, improve teaching methods, and present Arabic as a dynamic language capable of keeping pace with advances in knowledge.

The exhibition also serves as a cultural landmark in Riyadh, reinforcing the status of Arabic while supporting the goals of Saudi Vision 2030 in the cultural, tourism, and heritage sectors. Technology-based exhibits trace the language’s history, authenticity, and standing among the world’s languages, highlighting its beauty, richness, and uniqueness.

One section explores the history of languages in the Arabian Peninsula, explaining how scholars have classified the world’s languages into major families and how different linguistic approaches have produced varying classifications. It outlines how many linguists place Arabic within the Hamito-Semitic language family, specifically among the Southwest Semitic languages, which include both Northern and Southern Arabic and the languages of the Arabian Peninsula.

Semitic languages share common characteristics in their sounds, vocabulary, morphology, and grammar. Many scholars believe Arabic is the closest surviving Semitic language to the ancient Proto-Semitic tongue. As spoken and written forms gradually diverged, writing systems emerged across the Arabian Peninsula, enabling people to record languages that differed from their spoken dialects.

Among the exhibits are authentic rock specimens bearing ancient inscriptions, including Thamudic and Nabataean scripts, preserved over centuries in rocks and valley walls as enduring evidence of the evolution of writing and language across Arabia.

Another section traces the evolution of writing itself. Early civilizations wrote on stone, copper, wood, clay tablets, tree materials, camel shoulder blades and ribs, and leather. The exhibition explains how the Sumerians introduced the sharpened stylus in the early fourth millennium BC, using pointed wooden implements to inscribe soft clay tablets that were later dried in the sun. The stylus’s wedge-shaped impression gave rise to what became known as cuneiform writing.

Writing instruments continued to evolve, with different pens developed for specialized purposes. During the Umayyad period, the calligraphers Khalid ibn Abi al-Hayyaj and Qutbah al-Muharrir gained prominence, while the Abbasid era saw the rise of Ibn Muqlah, regarded as the master of Arabic calligraphy, and his student Ibn al-Bawwab.

Over the centuries, Arab scholars developed detailed rules for holding and cutting pens and produced books devoted to writing instruments. Papermaking flourished during the Abbasid era, and Muslims were the first to introduce paper to Spain, paving the way for its spread across Europe.

The exhibition also serves as an advanced knowledge platform, presenting Arabic in its cultural and scientific contexts while showcasing Saudi Arabia’s efforts to support the language, develop Arabic-language education, strengthen its presence in academic and scientific circles, and promote it globally. Through its interactive environment, visitors gain a deeper appreciation of Arabic’s long history, its evolution through the centuries, and its contributions to thought, science, and the arts.

Ali Al-Ahmad, a doctoral researcher in philology, stressed that the exhibition succeeds in transforming the history and development of Arabic “from the dry theoretical setting of lecture halls and dissertations into a living, interactive space that engages the senses.”

“For us as researchers,” he said, “the exhibition offers a different experience by integrating modern technology to tell the remarkable story of our language. Visitors almost feel that Arabic is a living organism, constantly evolving and responding to the changes in its environment.”

Seeing the roots of words, patterns of derivation, and semantic development presented through visual and interactive technological platforms, he added, “compresses years of traditional learning. The exhibition bridges the gap between the digital generation and the authenticity of the Arabic script, offering tangible proof that Arabic is fully capable of leading today’s knowledge landscape, not merely keeping pace with it.”

Varieties

When 'That Disease' Became Mine

A breast radiologist reviews ultrasound images and examination results. (Shutterstock)
A breast radiologist reviews ultrasound images and examination results. (Shutterstock)
TT
TT

When 'That Disease' Became Mine

A breast radiologist reviews ultrasound images and examination results. (Shutterstock)
A breast radiologist reviews ultrasound images and examination results. (Shutterstock)

No one prepares you for that moment. For that phone call. For the instant you feel the life you have built, with care, patience, and love, beginning to collapse. “I’m sorry... we found cancer cells.” How? Why?

All I could see were the faces of my two daughters. Had I failed them? Would I still be here to watch them grow? Would I still get to be their mother? No one prepares you for the fear that follows those words.

How could this happen? No one in my family has ever had breast cancer. I never skipped my annual checkups. In fact, I had undergone my routine mammogram just one month earlier. It showed nothing. No warning signs. No reason to worry.

So how? How? How? Then time seemed to stop.

A procession of faces flashed before me: my husband, my parents, my siblings, my family, my friends, my colleagues. One question overwhelmed every other thought: How was I going to tell them?

And then came the hardest question of all. How was I going to tell my daughters?

In that moment, I felt I had somehow let everyone down.

My own body, one I had spent years caring for, had betrayed me. It had pulled me into unfamiliar territory, a place I never imagined I would have to enter. I exercise with almost obsessive discipline. I pay close attention to what I eat. I rarely get sick. Even COVID somehow passed me by. So how had this happened?

Once the initial shock began to fade, another part of me took over: the journalist. Instead of asking only, Why me? I began asking the questions I have spent my career asking.

What do the facts say?

What do the numbers tell us?

What are the treatment options?

What are the chances of recovery?

The answers surprised me. Nearly 90 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have no inherited genetic mutation linked to the disease and no family history of it. That reality challenges one of the most common assumptions many of us carry: that breast cancer is primarily hereditary. It also made me question the countless medical forms we fill out, where family history often feels like the defining measure of our risk.

I learned something else I wish someone had told me years ago: an annual mammogram may not detect a tumor in its earliest stages, while an MRI can sometimes reveal what other imaging cannot. I knew none of this. I wish I had.

By the grace of God, and because my cancer was caught early, I found myself facing a disease with a clear treatment plan and an excellent prognosis.

What I am going through is deeply personal, and something I would never wish on anyone. My first instinct was to keep it private. I thought that if I didn’t talk about it, perhaps I could pretend that the long road of treatment ahead wasn’t real. Perhaps silence would make it easier.

Instead, the opposite happened. The more I learned, the more I felt a responsibility to speak. I realized that staying silent would not change my reality. But it might deny another woman information that could change hers.

That is why I decided to write. Not because I am asking for sympathy. Not because I am seeking pity. I have been overwhelmed by the love, kindness, and support I have received, and I am deeply grateful for every message, every prayer, and every hand that has reached out to help me.

I am writing because I now understand that my story is not unusual. Thousands of women are living this same experience, quietly, and often alone.

Today, I find myself searching for women who have walked this path before me so I can learn from them. At the same time, I am choosing to make my own journey public in the hope that it may help someone else.

Perhaps another woman, somewhere far away, will read these words before finally scheduling the screening she has postponed for months. Perhaps she will ask for a second opinion. Perhaps she will insist on an MRI after a normal mammogram if something still doesn’t feel right.

Or perhaps she will simply find comfort in seeing me continue to write, continue to work, continue to appear on television, living my life while navigating treatment. I am not afraid of what lies ahead. Treatment will be difficult. There will be hard days. I know that.

But I also know this: I can endure pain. I will fight with everything I have, with my strength, my spirit, my body, and every ounce of determination I possess. I will fight for my daughters. For my husband. For my parents, my siblings, and my family. For my friends, who have become family in this life far from home.

I will fight. Perhaps it will defeat me. Perhaps I will defeat it. But I will never surrender.

To every woman who has fought, or is still fighting, this battle: I stand with you. I may grow tired. I may cry. I may have moments when I feel overwhelmed.

But I will never stop living. I will never stop loving. I will never stop finding joy. And I will never stop doing the work that gives my life purpose.

Breast cancer is now part of my story. But it will not be the ending of it. And I refuse to let it define who I am. I also hope to challenge a mindset that still exists in many of our communities: a fear so deep that people hesitate to even say the word *cancer* aloud, as though speaking its name somehow gives it power.

I believe the opposite is true. Naming it is the first step toward confronting it. Talking about it is the first step toward awareness. Awareness is the first step toward saving lives.

My name is Rana Abtar. I have breast cancer. It is part of my story. It is not my identity. And it will never define the life I choose to live. Because if this disease has entered my life, then I intend to confront it with the one thing it can never understand: A relentless love of life.

Varieties

Thousands Evacuated from Homes in Southwest France as Wildfire Burns

This photograph shows a wildfire burning in the Aspres region seen from Millas, in the Pyrenees-Orientales department, southern France on July 5, 2026. (AFP)
This photograph shows a wildfire burning in the Aspres region seen from Millas, in the Pyrenees-Orientales department, southern France on July 5, 2026. (AFP)
TT
TT

Thousands Evacuated from Homes in Southwest France as Wildfire Burns

This photograph shows a wildfire burning in the Aspres region seen from Millas, in the Pyrenees-Orientales department, southern France on July 5, 2026. (AFP)
This photograph shows a wildfire burning in the Aspres region seen from Millas, in the Pyrenees-Orientales department, southern France on July 5, 2026. (AFP)

‌A wildfire burning out of control in southwestern France has forced the evacuation of 10,000 people from two dozen small towns and villages near the Spanish border and officials said strong winds on Monday would further fan the blaze.

The fire has scorched some 4,600 hectares in the foothills of the French Pyrenees, local prefect Pierre Regnault de la Mothe said in a post on X.

"This morning ‌conditions are ‌deteriorating again," Interior Minister Laurent Nunez ‌warned ⁠on French TV ⁠station TF1. "Today the battle resumes."

Early summer heatwaves in France and across western Europe in May and June have scorched vast areas of land, making them particularly vulnerable to wildfires this year.

The Trevillach blaze is burning in the vicinity of the third stage ⁠of the Tour de France. Local ‌authorities have closed ‌the leg to the public to allow emergency services easy ‌access to the area. Although the race will ‌proceed, the motorcade of team vehicles that follows will now be kept to a minimum.

On the Spanish side of the border, the fire ravaged 2,200 hectares — 97% ‌of them in the protected natural area of Les Gavarres — but Catalan authorities ⁠said ⁠late on Saturday that it was stable and would be completely extinguished during the week.

Police have arrested an employee of a company contracted by Catalonia's regional government who is suspected of having sparked the wildfire by using an angle grinder at the side of a road.

South of Catalonia, in the eastern Castellon province, 500 people were evacuated after a wildfire entered the Sierra de Espadan national park, home to a significant cork oak forest.