TOKYO: Japan and Jordan held their third foreign ministers’ strategic dialogue in Tokyo on March 13.

The two ministers agreed to develop their ties further on a wide range of bilateral, regional and East Asian issues, including security, economy, financial aid to Jordan and supporting refugees.

Hayashi Yoshimasa, Japan’s foreign minister, attended the meeting with Ayman Al-Safadi, Jordan’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs and expatriates of Jordan, who is visiting Japan.

TOKYO: Hayashi Katsuyoshi, special assistant to Japan’s foreign minister, held consultations in Oman last week on the situation in Yemen with “parties concerned to the Yemeni conflict,” the foreign ministry in Tokyo said on March 13.

Hayashi, former ambassador of Japan to the Republic of Yemen, met Mohammed Abdulsalam, spokesman for the Houthis, and Sheikh Khalifa bin Ali bin Issa Al Harthy, undersecretary for diplomatic affairs of Oman’s foreign ministry, between March 5-7.

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.