Middle East

"No one knows for sure what happened to the ancient Hittite Empire. For nearly 500 years, its dominion extended across much of modern Turkey and into Syria and Lebanon. Its kings dwelled in massive stone palaces inside a gated capital city. Large-scale farming, sophisticated irrigation systems and far-reaching trade networks filled the imperial coffers. And then, just after 1200 B.C., it vanished."

"On Idit Silman’s first day as Israel’s new environmental protection minister, she handed out soft drinks in disposable plastic cups to hospital patients. The gesture held deep symbolic meaning in Israel, where soft drinks and single-use cups, plates and cutlery have become weapons in a culture war between the country’s secular Jewish majority and the smaller but politically powerful religious minority."

"After recovering from Saddam Hussein’s campaign to drain them, Iraq’s Mesopotamian Marshes are disappearing as a regional drought enters its fourth year and upstream dams cut off water flows. Marsh Arabs, resident for millennia, are leaving, and biodiversity is collapsing."

"Israel's new government will abandon the country's tax on single-use plastic plates and utensils, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday, despite environmental concerns."

"Next year, the water will come. The pipes have been laid to Ata Yigit’s sprawling farm in Turkey’s southeast connecting it to a dam on the Euphrates River. A dream, soon to become a reality, he says."

"The worst drought Abed Hameed al-Brahimi has ever seen has killed virtually everything around him: his rice farm, most of his livestock and chickens - and accelerated a rural exodus that is jeopardising Iraq's future stability."