DUBAI: Dubai will host special Saudi National Day celebrations from Sep. 23-26, Dubai Media Office announced on Monday.

“With the close ties between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and with so many Saudi nationals living in and visiting Dubai, the city will host an extensive programme of special celebrations for the Kingdom and its people, including spectacular concerts and entertainment, unbeatable retail promotions, fun-filled activities, and amazing hotel deals,” the office said.

AL-MUKALLA: Yemeni military forces have retaken a major military facility and surrounding mountains from Al-Qaeda in the southern province of Abyan, consolidating gains made against the militants within their strongholds.

Mohammed Al-Naqeeb, a military spokesperson for the pro-independence Southern Transitional Council, told Arab News on Monday that their forces had fully taken control of a significant military base used by Al-Qaeda militants in the Omaran valley in Abyan.

JERUSALEM: Israeli archaeologists on Sunday announced the “once-in-a-lifetime” discovery of a burial cave from the time of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II, filled with dozens of pottery pieces and bronze artifacts.

The cave was uncovered on a beach recently, when a mechanical digger working at the Palmahim national park hit its roof, with archaeologists using a ladder to descend into the spacious, man-made square cave.

DJEBBA, Tunisia: High in the hills of northwestern Tunisia, farmers are tending thousands of fig trees with a unique system of terracing they hope will protect them from ever-harsher droughts.

But the “hanging gardens” of Djebba El-Olia have been put to the test this year as the North African country sweltered through its hottest July since the 1950s.

That has exacerbated a long drought that has left Tunisia’s reservoirs at just a third of their capacity.

The gardens are supplied with water from two springs high in the mountains.

RIYADH: The Houthis’ intransigence in the recent Amman talks on a Yemen peace had thwarted efforts to release all prisoners of war, according to the Coalition to Support Legitimacy in Yemen spokesman, Brigadier-General Turki Al-Maliki.

Al-Maliki stated that the Houthis give priority to issues of fuel shortage over the issue of humane treatment of prisoners of war, according to Saudi Press Agency.

Al-Maliki added that the coalition offered the chance for Houthis to visit their prisoners, but did not find them to show any seriousness or determination to do so.