Author: Anadolu Agency
The US State Department approved the possible sale of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles and related equipment to Japan, the Pentagon said Thursday. The estimated cost of the sale is $3.64 billion. “The proposed sale will improve Japan’s capability to meet current and future threats by defending its homeland and U.S. personnel stationed there. Japan will have no difficulty absorbing these articles and services into its armed forces,” it said in a statement. The principal contractor will be RTX Corporation, located in Tucson, Arizona. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of the possible sale on Thursday.
Some 200 giant footprints, belong to dinosaurs 166 million years ago have been found at a quarry in Oxfordshire, becoming the UK’s largest footprint site. Researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham have uncovered a huge expanse of quarry floor filled with hundreds of different dinosaur footprints, creating multiple enormous trackways, the University of Oxford announced on Thursday. The new discovery showed the footprints dating back to the Middle Jurassic Period –around 166 million years ago– the trackways form part of a huge “dinosaur highway” and include footprints from the nine meter ferocious predator Megalosaurus, and herbivorous dinosaurs up…
UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen urged the international community to support Syria’s complete restoration of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and unity, while also calling for an immediate halt to Israel’s aggression. “Syria’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and unity must be fully restored, and all acts of aggression, including those by Israel, must stop immediately to pave the way for a more secure and stable future for Syria and the region,” Pedersen told Anadolu. Pedersen emphasized that the war-torn country is undergoing profound and transformative changes, including shifts in governance, evolving military dynamics, the enormous task of reconstruction, and a crippling…
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Thursday condemned an attack early New Year’s Day that killed at least 15 people and injured dozens in the state of Louisiana. “We strongly denounce this crime, we stand in solidarity with the people of New Orleans, we encourage anyone with relevant information to come forward immediately, and we pray for a full recovery of those impacted by this crime,” CAIR said in a statement. The denunciation came after a man intentionally drove a pickup truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. The suspect was identified as…
Türkiye has vowed to protect all “aggrieved groups” in Syria, the country’s foreign minister said on Thursday. “Whether it’s a majority or minority in Syria, whoever it may be — Nusayris, Alevis, Yazidis, Christians, anyone — Türkiye is their protector and guardian as it is for all the others in this new period,” Hakan Fidan told a joint news conference with his Belgian counterpart Bernard Quintin in Ankara. He said that during the oppression of the Assad regime, millions of Sunni Arabs were displaced, including Turks, and had to seek refuge in other countries. Fidan emphasized that Türkiye did not…
At least five Palestinians, including a child, were killed and several others injured in fresh Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Thursday evening, a medical source said. Three people lost their lives, including a child, in a strike targeting a tent sheltering displaced civilians in the southern city of Khan Younis, the source said. Two more people were killed and others injured when Israeli forces shelled a group of civilians in Gaza City, he added. Gaza’s Civil Defense Service called the Israeli military escalation “clear insanity.” “We are no longer able to respond to all distress calls amid relentless…
Israeli warplanes launched an airstrike on Tel al-Shahem, southwest of the Syrian capital Damascus, on Thursday, local sources told Anadolu. The sources said the targeted site had been used as a military base by the Bashar al-Assad regime before its fall. Loud explosions were heard in Damascus during the strike, the sources added. Assad, Syria’s leader for nearly 25 years, fled to Russia after anti-regime groups took control of Damascus on Dec. 8, ending the Baath Party’s regime, which had been in power since 1963. The takeover came after Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters captured key cities in a lightning offensive…
Palestinian-American entrepreneur and art curator Faisal Saleh said after Israel decided to close its embassy in Dublin, he began efforts to lease the building and convert it into a Palestinian museum. “This will be a very powerful symbolic move where Palestinian art replaces the genocidal entity representation in Ireland,” Saleh told Anadolu. Saleh, the founder and director of the Palestine Museum US in Connecticut, spoke with Anadolu about his family’s forced displacement following the Nakba in 1948, the museum’s establishment in the US, and his initiative to convert Israel’s former embassy in Dublin into a museum. Born in 1951 in…
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) director-general on Thursday called on Israel to allow more medical evacuations from Gaza. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X that “the pace of evacuations remains excruciatingly slow.” He recalled that only “5,383 patients have been evacuated with support from WHO since October 2023, of which only 436 since the Rafah crossing was closed.” The WHO chief stressed that over “12,000 people still need medical evacuation.” “At this rate, it would take 5-10 years to evacuate all these critically ill patients, including thousands of children. In the meantime, their conditions get worse and some die,” he…
Spain set a new record for migrant arrivals in 2024, with 63,970 people entering Spanish territory irregularly by land or sea, according to Interior Ministry data released on Thursday. This marks the second consecutive year that Spain has broken its record for arrivals. In 2023, the total was 55,718 — almost double the number recorded in 2022. In 2024, the vast majority of irregular arrivals — 46,843 — made the treacherous journey by sea from northwest Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands. A report released in December by the NGO Caminando Fronteras estimated that an average of 30 people lost their…