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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends opening ceremony of the 1915 Canakkale Bridge over the Dardanelles, in Can 18, 2022. Presidential Press Office/Handout via REUTERS - 

President Tayyip Erdogan opened a massive suspension bridge across Turkey's Dardanelles Strait on Friday (Mar 18), the latest in a series of major infrastructure projects which he has prioritised during his two decades in power.

Connecting Turkey's European and Asian shores, the 1915 Canakkale Bridge was built by Turkish and South Korean firms with an investment of 2.5 billion euros (US$2.8 billion). It has the longest main span - the distance between the two towers - of any suspension bridge in the world.

Such mega projects have been central to Erdogan's achievements since his AK Party first came to power in 2002, including a new Istanbul airport, rail and road tunnels beneath Istanbul's Bosphorus strait, and a bridge over it.

"These works will continue to provide profit for the state for many years," Erdogan said at an opening ceremony on the anniversary of a 1915 Ottoman naval victory against French and British forces in the Dardanelles during World War One.

"These projects have a large share in putting our country ahead in investment, workforce and exports," he said.

Last year he launched what he previously called his "crazy project": a US$15 billion canal in Istanbul intended to relieve pressure on the busy Bosphorus Strait. However critics have questioned the project's viability given Turkey's economic woes, environmental risks and public opposition.

Ahead of national elections scheduled for 2023, opinion polls have shown a slide in the popularity of Erdogan and his AK Party, boosting the opposition's prospects of ousting him.

The main opposition CHP has criticised the potential cost of the bridge to the public purse, with media reports saying the build-operate-transfer agreement includes an annual payment guarantee of 380 million euros (US$420 million) to the operators or a total 6 billion euros over the duration of the accord.

Erdogan said the price for passenger vehicles to use the bridge would be 200 lira (US$13.50).

Work on the Dardanelles bridge project was launched in March 2017, with more than 5,000 workers involved in the construction.

The 2,023m length of its midspan is an allusion to the Turkish Republic's 100th anniversary in 2023.

It is the fourth bridge linking the European and Asian shores in Turkey, alongside the three built in Istanbul.

Its towers are 318m high and the total length of the bridge is 4.6 km (2.9 miles) including the approach viaducts.

Until now, vehicles travelling between Anatolia and the Gallipoli peninsula had to cross the Dardanelles in a one-hour ferry journey, which including waiting time amounted to as much as five hours. The journey will now take around six minutes//CNA

Wheat is seen in a field near the southern Ukranian city of Nikolaev, Jul 8, 2013. (File photo: Reuters/Vincent Mundy) - 

A World Food Programme (WFP) official said on Friday (Mar 18) that food supply chains in Ukraine were collapsing, with a portion of infrastructure destroyed and many grocery stores and warehouses empty.

"The country's food supply chain is falling apart. Movements of goods have slowed down due to insecurity and the reluctance of drivers," Jakob Kern, WFP Emergency Coordinator for the Ukraine crisis, told a Geneva press briefing by videolink from Poland.

He also expressed concern about the situation in "encircled cities" such as Mariupol, saying that food and water supplies were running out and that its convoys had been unable to enter the city.

WFP buys nearly half of its wheat supplies from Ukraine and Kern said that the crisis there since the Russian invasion on Feb 24 had pushed up food prices sharply.

"With global food prices at an all-time high, WFP is also concerned about the impact of the Ukraine crisis on food security globally, especially hunger hot spots," he said, warning of "collateral hunger" in other places.

The agency is paying US$71 million a month extra for food this year due to both inflation and the Ukraine crisis, he said, adding that such an amount would cover the food supplies for four million people. "We are changing suppliers now but that has an impact on prices," he said. "The further away you buy it, the more expensive it gets."//CNA

A Basilosaurus whale fossil dating back 36 million years is displayed at the Museum of Natural History after its discovery in the Ocucaje desert, in Lima, Peru Mar 17, 2022. (Photo: Reuters/Sebastian Castaneda) - 

Paleontologists have unearthed the skull of a ferocious marine predator, an ancient ancestor of modern-day whales, which once lived in a prehistoric ocean that covered part of what is now Peru, scientists announced on Thursday (Mar 17).

The roughly 36-million-year-old well-preserved skull was dug up intact last year from the bone-dry rocks of Peru's southern Ocucaje desert, with rows of long, pointy teeth, Rodolfo Salas, chief of paleontology at Peru's National University of San Marcos, told reporters at a news conference.

Scientists think the ancient mammal was a basilosaurus, part of the aquatic cetacean family, whose contemporary descendents include whales, dolphins and porpoises.

Basilosaurus means "king lizard," although the animal was not a reptile, though its long body might have moved like a giant snake.

The one-time top predator likely measured about 12m long, or about the height of a four-story building.

"It was a marine monster," said Salas, adding the skull, which has already been put on display at the university's museum, may belong to a new species of basilosaurus.

"When it was searching for its food, it surely did a lot of damage," added Salas.

Scientists believe the first cetaceans evolved from mammals that lived on land about 55 million years ago, about 10 million years after an asteroid struck just off what is now Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, wiping out most life on Earth, including the dinosaurs.

Salas explained that when the ancient basilosaurus died, its skull likely sunk to the bottom of the sea floor, where it was quickly buried and preserved.

"Back during this age, the conditions for fossilisation were very good in Ocucaje," he said//CNA

Rescue workers move the body of a person who was killed when a shell hit a residential building, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine Mar 18, 2022. (Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter) - 

Japan will impose sanctions on 15 Russian individuals and nine organisations, it said on Friday (Mar 18), among them defence officials and the state-owned arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.

The sanctions, which include the freezing of assets, are Japan's latest measures since Russia's invasion of Ukraine that began on Feb 24.

They now cover 76 individuals, seven banks and 12 other bodies in Russia, the finance ministry said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova and several makers of military equipment, such as United Aircraft, which manufactures fighter jets, are among those sanctioned in Friday's measures.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may deliver an online speech to Japan's parliament on Mar 22, broadcaster TV Asahi said, citing a ruling party lawmaker.

Russia calls its action in Ukraine a "special operation" that is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbour's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.

The US ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, who praised Japan's action as "hitting at the heart of Russia's war machine", has offered to host Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war in his residence until they find permanent housing in Japan.

Long refugee-shy, Japan is preparing to take in Ukrainian evacuees, with 47 having arrived since the outbreak of the war.

"We would like to do our part, too, by assisting the evacuees until they are able to move into more permanent housing," Ambassador Emanuel, the grandson of Ukrainian immigrants, said in a statement.

This week, a US Air Force cargo jet flew to Ukraine helmets and other non-lethal military equipment donated by Japan.

A main US security ally in Asia, Japan still has stakes in gas and oil projects in Russia's Sakhalin island, after energy majors, Shell and Exxon Mobil pulled out of them.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has given no clear indication of the fate of Japan's investment in the projects, underscoring both their importance for its energy security and his intention to keep step with G7 peers' sanctions against Russia.

The Russian ambassador to Japan has said it was logical to maintain "mutually beneficial" energy projects in Sakhalin.

Japan does also not intend to ban Russian seafood, the Jiji Press news agency said.

Seafood comprises 9 per cent of Japan's total imports from Russia, on which it relies heavily for items such as sea urchin and frozen crab, the non-profit think tank Japan Forum on International Relations says//CNA