UNESCO World Heritage Site

Turkey’s authoritarian Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, this week converted the historic Chora Church in Istanbul into a mosque, outraging Christian leaders and drawing a mild rebuke from the Biden State Department.

Activists broke into the world-famous Leaning Tower of Pisa on Friday to drape the Palestinian flag from the 14th-century structure.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced on Tuesday that it will provide assistance to preserve World Heritage sites in Turkey and Syria that were damaged by Monday’s devastating earthquakes.

Russian missiles struck an airport near Lviv on Friday – the far-western Ukrainian city where hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Russian invasion have sought shelter, and hundreds of foreign journalists are based. Lviv is less than 50 miles from the Polish border.

CAIRO — Archaeologists in Egypt stumbled upon a new discovery dating back to more than 2,500 years ago near Egypt’s famed pyramids at an ancient necropolis south of Cairo.

Egypt reopened on Saturday an ancient library which holds thousands of centuries-old religious and historical manuscripts at the famed St. Catherine Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in South Sinai.

TEL AVIV – An unnamed Arab ambassador to the UN’s cultural agency reportedly apologized in secret to his Israeli counterpart for having “no choice” but to vote in favor of a controversial resolution that listed the Old City of Hebron and the Tomb of the Patriarchs on a list of endangered sites under the “State of Palestine.”

TEL AVIV – Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni slammed UNESCO for repeatedly passing anti-Israel resolutions and called on the cultural agency to reject an upcoming vote pushed by the Palestinians designating the city of Hebron and the Tomb of the Patriarchs – one of Judaism’s holiest sites – as endangered sites under the “State of Palestine.”

TEL AVIV – Israel’s mission to the UN is petitioning the organization’s cultural agency UNESCO to conduct a secret ballot for the vote on whether to list Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs, a Jewish holy site, as an endangered world heritage site under the “State of Palestine.”

TEL AVIV – Israel on Friday banned a UNESCO fact-finding mission from entering to the West Bank city of Hebron ahead of a Palestinian-led effort to have the Tomb of the Patriarchs added to the list of endangered world heritage sites under the “State of Palestine.”

The Islamic State is back in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, and they have resumed their appalling acts of vandalism against its historic treasures, destroying part of a Roman amphitheater and almost completely destroying the Tetrapylon, a distinctive collection of pillars near the entrance to the city.

Residents of war-ravaged Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East, are facing yet another problem — the management of toxic trash that is posing a looming threat to the health of the people in the country’s ancient capital of Sanaa, home to a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Mitsubishi Materials has apologized for its use of forced labor by Chinese workers during World War II and has reached a settlement with victim groups.

TEL AVIV – After UNESCO’s executive board voted in favor of a resolution that entirely ignored any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and Western Wall area, Foreign Ministry director-general Dore Gold wrote a letter “registering Israel’s protest in the strongest terms.”

Archaeologists have offered a grim assessment of the damage wrought by Islamic State militants to a museum in the Syrian city of Palmyra, suggesting it is far more extensive than was first thought. The museum itself was destroyed and some

In a post urging to “go see them now, before it’s too late,” Jacopo Prisco at CNN catalogued 25 ancient and endangered locales in the modern world. Missing from the list is Palmyra, Syria, which is currently under destruction by the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL/IS) and other UNESCO Heritage Sites in the Middle East that remain in danger due to groups like ISIS.

A large rally in Istanbul demanded the government change the historic Hagia Sophia church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, into a mosque. The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH) led the rally through the Sultanahmet district.