World Echo

Japan will inform the US next week that it intends to join the "Golden Dome" missile defence initiative and expects that Washington may seek its help with missile production due to the Middle East war and other conflicts, two sources said. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will announce the latest plan when she meets US President Donald Trump in Washington D.C. at a leaders' summit on March 19, the Japanese government sources said, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. Trump's Golden Dome project, announced last year with an ambitious 2028 timeline, envisions expanding existing ground‑based defences such as interceptor missiles with more experimental space‑based elements, meant to detect, track and potentially counter incoming threats from orbit. But the project has made little visible progress so far. Details of how Japan will participate also remain unclear. The Yomiuri newspaper, which first reported Japan's plans on Frida...

A senior military adviser to Iran's Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei insulted US President Donald Trump and vowed to destroy Israel in remarks to state television on Wednesday, as their countries wage a war that has engulfed the Middle East. "Trump is the most corrupt and stupid American president," Yahya Rahim Safavi said. "He is Satan himself." He also reiterated longstanding threats to eradicate Israel, which is fighting the Islamic republic alongside the United States. "In the Middle East region, Israel and Iran cannot be together. One of them must remain. The one that remains is Iran and the one that is destroyed is definitely the Zionist regime," he said. Read More: Iran denies special passage for Indian tankers through Strait of Hormuz Separately, Iran's powerful parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned that Tehran will "abandon all restraint" if the United States and Israel attack any of its islands in the Gulf. "Any aggr...

A foreign hacker compromised files relating to the FBI’s investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a break-in at the bureau’s New York Field Office three years ago, according to a source familiar with the matter and recently published Justice Department documents reviewed by Reuters. The details of who accessed a server at the FBI’s New York Field Office, including the allegation that a foreign hacker was involved, are being reported here for the first time. In a statement, the FBI said what it described as a "cyber incident" was "an isolated one." "The FBI restricted access to the malicious actor and rectified the network. The investigation remains ongoing, so we do not have further comments to provide at this time." Although the source said the intrusion appeared to have been carried out by a cybercriminal rather than a foreign government, the incident underscoresthe files' potential intelligence value, one academic said. The lega...

A resident of Tehran has described fear, pollution and a heavy security presence in the Iranian capital following weeks of US-Israeli strikes, saying the state’s “repression machine is still deployed” despite the ongoing bombardment. The testimony was shared with France 24 by a regime opponent identified as Vahid, whose identity has been concealed for security reasons. “On Saturday night (March 7), it started very violently, with terrifying sounds. The sky was completely lit up. The strikes hit oil depots. Living conditions are already bad, and this makes things even harder for us,” he said. Vahid described the aftermath the following morning as unlike anything he had seen before. Read More: US at fault in deadly strike on Iran school that killed dozens of girls, says inquiry “Everything was black on Sunday morning in Tehran. I had never seen anything like it in my life. The air was filthy. It was as if someone had poured oil on the ground; everything was covered in soot,” he said. He ...

The US may have pulled the trigger on the Iran war, but it is the oil-producing Gulf that will pay the price, Gulf sources and analysts say, signalling unease in ties between a region under Iranian attack and the superpower it relies on for protection. Behind the scenes, resentment is mounting ​in Gulf Arab capitals at being drawn into a war they neither initiated nor endorsed but are now paying for economically and militarily, with airports, hotels, ports and military and oil installations hit by Iranian strikes, said three ‌regional sources, who declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak publicly. "It is not our war. We did not want this conflict, yet we are paying the price in our security and our economy," Ebtesam Al-Ketbi, President of the Emirates Policy Center, told Reuters. That doesn't mean Iran is "innocent", she said. Gulf governments had assured Tehran they would not allow their territories or airspace to be used by...

The European Commission has threatened to withdraw funding from the Venice Biennale art exhibition if organisers proceed with plans to allow Russia to reopen its pavilion at this year's edition. Russia's pavilion at the art fair was closed after Moscow's full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which triggered the exclusion of Russian artists and institutions from major European cultural events. "Member States, institutions and organisations must act in line with EU sanctions and avoid giving a platform to individuals who have actively supported or justified the Kremlin's aggression against Ukraine," an EU statement said. It added it would examine further action "including the suspension or termination of an ongoing EU grant to the Biennale Foundation," which organises the contemporary visual arts event that runs from May to December in Venice's historic shipyards, known as the Arsenale. Biennale President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco described the fest...