The last two surviving animals from Mosul's dilapidated zoo arrived this week at an animal shelter in Jordan, after months of malnutrition and a long journey out of Iraq that included being stuck at the border for 12 days.
At the British embassy to Jordan, a former rescue cat is settling into his new position as chief mouser - as a traditional well established in the ministries of London goes global.
In an underground room in Amman, a small group of Jordanians swing giant hammers at an old television, computer and printer, wrecking the machines, and then hit a car windscreen, shattering the glass into tiny pieces.
Every morning just after dawn, Saada Turkmani wakes up, puts on her bright yellow vest and green hard-hat and walks door-to-door in her Jordan valley village, picking up trash to be recycled.
A private museum in the United Arab Emirates unveiled on Saturday a Torah scroll that survived the Holocaust, the latest sign of what Israel and its new Arab allies describe as a new approach to understanding Jewish history in the Middle East.
On a studio set in Baghdad, a director watches the star of his TV series hold a knife against the neck of a fellow actor, in a dramatic revival of fortunes for Iraq's entertainment industry.
