ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a 30-km security corridor on Turkiye’s border with Syria in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Erdogan’s office said on Sunday.

Referring to Kurdish militants that Ankara considers terrorists, Erdogan reiterated the “importance and urgency” of creating the corridor in northern Syria in accordance with a 2019 agreement between Turkiye and Russia, the statement added.

CAIRO: Visitors from Russia remained an important part of Egypt’s tourism trade, Cairo’s envoy to Moscow has said.

And addressing representatives of major Russian tourism companies at a forum organized by the Egyptian Embassy in Russia, ambassador Nazih Al-Najari highlighted efforts to further increase traveller numbers.

Amr El-Kady, chief executive officer of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Board, joined the event via video call. Moscow-based representatives of national flag carrier EgyptAir were also among the audience.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A Tokyo company aimed for the moon with its own private lander Sunday, blasting off atop a SpaceX rocket with the United Arab Emirates’ first lunar rover and a toylike robot from Japan that’s designed to roll around up there in the gray dust.
It will take nearly five months for the lander and its experiments to reach the moon.

SANAA: Two troops from Yemen’s pro-government forces were killed in an armed ambush on a UN convoy in eastern Yemen, the UN said on Saturday.
According to a statement from the UN’s International Office of Migration spokeswoman, the two soldiers were killed while escorting a convoy traveling west from Seiyun to Marib. No IOM staff, who were on an unspecified humanitarian mission, were injured in the attack, it said. No further details about the Friday incident were given.

DUBAI: A senior UAE official said on Saturday it was encouraging to see greater European outreach to Gulf Arab states in the face of the Ukraine conflict and energy crunch, but that engagement should not be “transactional.”
A number of European officials have visited Gulf countries to secure energy supplies outside of former top provider Russia after the West imposed sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.