It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilisation itself.

But today the Tigris is dying.

Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where -- with its twin river the Euphrates -- it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago.

Iraq may be oil-rich but the country is plagued by poverty after decades of war and by droughts and desertification.

In a war-scarred Beirut heritage house turned museum, archives of Lebanon's troubled past fuse with artistic depictions of its grim present to portray a country seemingly in perpetual turmoil.

Newspaper clippings, film negatives and diary entries from the years before Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war tell a story of government corruption, public sector strikes and student protests.

They are shown alongside contemporary pictures, video footage and art installations illustrating today's Lebanon, in the grip of political paralysis and its worst ever economic crisis.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged a fresh extension of a fragile truce in Yemen, saying it had improved lives in the war-ravaged nation.

Meeting ahead of the UN General Assembly with Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen's presidential leadership council, Blinken hailed the country's new leader for his "vital" role.

"I think it's fair to say that the truce, whose effects are being felt throughout Yemen, has made a profound difference in improving people's lives, and your own leadership in working to sustain that truce has made a huge difference," Blinken said.

Russia is set to face direct pressure Thursday at the United Nations over its invasion of Ukraine, whose leader Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to the world to punish Moscow.

As global leaders convened for the annual General Assembly, the Security Council will hold a special session among foreign ministers called by France on impunity for rights abuses in Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron will meet Tuesday with his Iranian counterpart as Paris warns the clerical state that it will not get a better proposal to revive a nuclear accord.

The Elysee Palace said Macron will meet President Ebrahim Raisi on Tuesday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York and with US President Joe Biden the next day.

"We'll see what this week brings," French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told reporters earlier Monday. "The window of opportunity seems ready to close again."

Cyprus and Israel agreed Monday to resolve speedily a long-running dispute on exploiting a natural gas reservoir that straddles the maritime boundaries of both countries, energy ministers said.

Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar held talks in Nicosia with her Cypriot counterpart, Natasa Pilides, to end a decade-long row over exploiting the reservoir in the eastern Mediterranean.

The Lebanese pound fell to a new low against the US dollar on the black market Monday as a severe economic downturn has sparked bank hold-ups by angry depositors and anti-government protests.

Recent weeks have seen a spate of incidents in which people armed with real or toy guns held up banks to demand access to their frozen savings, only to be celebrated as folk heroes.

Amid the turmoil, the pound plunged to 38,600 against the greenback on Monday, according to websites monitoring the exchange rate, a record low for the beleaguered currency.

Egypt unveiled Monday a sarcophagus of a senior royal official from over 3,200-years ago at the Saqqara archaeological site south of Cairo, the latest in a series of spectacular discoveries in the area.

A team of Egyptian archaeologists from Cairo University found the red granite sarcophagus of Ptah-em-uya, "a high-ranking official" under Rameses II, who ruled Egypt in the 13th century BC, the antiquities ministry said.

Fresh protests broke out Monday in Iran over the death of a young woman who had been arrested by the "morality police" that enforces a strict dress code, local media reported.

Public anger has grown since authorities on Friday announced the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in a hospital after three days in a coma, following her arrest by Tehran's morality police during a visit to the capital on September 13.

Demonstrations were held in Tehran, including in several universities, and the second city Mashhad, according to the Fars and Tasnim news agencies.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit Saudi Arabia and meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of a Gulf trip, his spokesman said Monday, as Germany rushes to secure energy supplies.

Scholz, whose two-day trip next weekend will also take him to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, becomes the latest Western leader to meet with the crown prince.

Bin Salman was until recently regarded as a pariah in the West due to his suspected role in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.