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ZURICH: Turkey and Armenia signed a landmark agreement Saturday to establish diplomatic relations and open their sealed border after a century of enmity, as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton helped the two sides clear a last-minute snag.The contentious issue of whether the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians during the final days of the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide is only hinted at in the agreement."There were several times when I said to all of the parties involved that this is too important," Clinton said. "This has to be seen through. We have come too far. All of the work that has gone into the protocols should not be walked away from."The Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed the accord in the Swiss city of Zurich after a dispute over the final statements they would make. In the end, the signing took place about three hours later than scheduled and there were no spoken statements.Clinton and mediators from Switzerland intervened t...

Friday, September 25, 2009 ANKARA: The death toll from floods triggered by torrential rains in a Black Sea coastal province in northeast Turkey rose to five, a local news agency reported. Turkish Environment and Forestry Minister Veysel Eroglu was quoted by the report as saying that the death toll increased to five. The news agency reported earlier in the day that floods killed four people after a building on a stream bed collapsed in the Borcka town of the Artvin province late Wednesday. "Four people were killed in flooding. One person went missing. We assume that person is dead too. So, we can say death toll rose to five," Eroglu was quoted as saying. On Thursday morning, search and rescue teams recovered two bodies from the rubble of the three-story house that was wrecked by a landslide caused by the rains and floods in Borcka. The bodies of a 54-year-old woman and a 17-year-old girl were recovered from the rubble of the three-story house, the report said. Two other peopl...

Thursday, September 24, 2009 ISTANBUL: Torrential rains and flooding killed a woman and injured several people in Turkey.According to media reports, torrential rains and flooding played havoc in Artvin province where floods destroyed property on large scale and damaged houses and roads. Mayor of Artvin said a woman was killed and several others wounded by floods as several people still trapped under the rubble. Rescue teams are busy in affected areas.

Sunday, August 02, 2009 ANKARA: Plan to demolish a building in Cankiri, central Turkey went badly wrong when the 25-metre high structure rolled over onto its roof. The building, a flour factory built in 1928 which had been idle since the 1980s, was scheduled to be demolished to make way for a shopping centre. None was reported to have been injured.