ALULA: Jordan’s northern town of Umm Qais was honored at the UN World Tourism Organization’s Best Tourism Villages awards ceremony in AlUla on Sunday.

The BTV initiative is the flagship project of the UNWTO’s Tourism for Rural Development Program, which aims at reducing regional income and development disparities, and combating depopulation, as well as advancing gender equality, innovation, digitalization, and women’s and youth empowerment through tourism.

TUNIS: Tunisia on Monday inaugurated a new parliament largely stripped of its powers, after a vote that saw a paltry turnout amid boycotts following President Kais Saied’s July 2021 power grab.

The new assembly, elected in two rounds in December and January that saw a voter turnout of just over 11 percent, held its first session at the legislature’s traditional home in Bardo, a suburb of the capital Tunis.

ALEPPO: Mohammed Alaa Al-Jaleel, a 42-year-old ambulance driver known famously as the ‘cat man of Aleppo’, proves himself again as a superhero to his feline friends in northwest Syria.

This time, Al-Jaleel is taking in the cats that survived the Feb.6 Turkiye-Syria earthquake.

His town Jinderes – north of Aleppo – was one of the areas badly hit by the quake, and many of the cats were either separated from owners, abandoned, wounded or dead. The exact numbers remain unknown; however, 2 rescued by Al-Jaleel have died, and 3 were found with severe injuries.

AL-MUKALLA: Houthi representatives from Yemen, who were set to attend UN-mediated prisoner exchange talks in Switzerland, chewed narcotic qat on an aircraft heading from Sanaa to Amman, a source told Arab News.

The Houthis’ conduct annoyed the pilot, who issued a distress call to his employer, protesting about the delegation’s refusal to stop.

The source said that the problem began in Sanaa at the weekend when the Houthis attempted to get on the UN aircraft while ingesting qat, but the pilot refused to let them board.

BEIRUT: A Lebanese clergyman has expressed his support for a woman candidate for the presidency.

Beirut’s Metropolitan Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elias Aoude asked during his Sunday sermon: “What would the situation be like if a female candidate was chosen for the presidency?”

He added: “Since the establishment of the Lebanese state, we’ve been having only male presidents, who were powerful sometimes and impotent other times.”