Turkey on Wednesday expressed "concern" over the latest reports of Assad regime forces escalating attacks on the Daraa al-Balad neighborhood in southwestern Syria.

"We are closely monitoring the developments in Daraa with concern," Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said in a written statement.

Citing Assad regime's intense attacks targeting civilians there, Bilgic said it is "unacceptable" that Daraa al-Balad neighborhood and its surroundings are besieged and civilians are forced to flee.

He also dismissed claims that Turkey had agreed to and would accept civilians coming from Syria during mediation attempts between the Assad regime and opposition groups.

Turkey expects the cease-fire agreement that went into effect on Sept. 6 to be "permanent" this time and the inhumane treatment of the people of Daraa to end, Bilgic added.

Daraa al-Balad was blockaded by regime forces on June 25 after residents, including former members of the Syrian opposition, resisted an order to surrender light weapons and allow regime forces to search houses in the area.

Daraa, known as the birthplace of the Syrian revolution, is home to 40,000 residents and was an opposition stronghold until 2018.

Syria has been ravaged by civil war since early 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protesters./aa

NASA announced Wednesday that it will launch the James Webb Space Telescope on Dec. 18, the start of a 10-year mission that will provide the most detailed look yet at the history of the cosmos.

The space agency said the mission will extend beyond the discoveries of NASA's Hubble Telescope mission, with longer wavelengths that will allow Webb to look much closer at the beginning of time and hunt for the unobserved formation of the first galaxies.

The Webb telescope recently passed its "rigorous testing regimen," which NASA considered a major turning point for the mission.

The Webb observatory is now sitting at Northrop Grumman facilities in southern California before it will be moved to French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America for launch from a French spaceport onboard an Ariane 5 rocket.

The mission is named for James Webb, who headed NASA during the early 1960s as the US was headed toward sending men to the moon for the first time.

The Webb mission is also partnered with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Webb's program director, Gregory L. Robinson, said: "Now that we have an observatory and a rocket ready for launch, I am looking forward to the big day and the amazing science to come."

NASA calls Webb's technology "revolutionary," with the ability to explore every phase of cosmic history "from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe, and everything in between."

"Webb will reveal new and unexpected discoveries," said NASA, "and help humankind understand the origins of the universe and our place in it."/agencies

The Taliban have painted a white flag on the abandoned US Embassy building in Afghanistan's capital Kabul.

Soon after the Taliban took control on Aug. 15, the US diplomatic staff was evacuated to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

Although no one was inside the building, two Taliban security guards were seen on Wednesday at the gate and another in front of the building at the Ahmad Shah Massoud crossroads.

One of the Taliban security guards said: "We have been instructed to remain at the building's security."

A person was also spotted selling the Taliban flag at the embassy's front entrance.

Taliban security guards can be noticed safeguarding important government and private buildings all around the city.

Over a hundred thieves and robbers have been caught since the Taliban took control of Kabul, while the Taliban have been posting video footage on social media.

Asmatullah Wazir, a roadside money-changer, told Anadolu Agency: "I am an ordinary man, and security is the most important to me. ... I used to return home with companions in the nighttime because of the worry of robbers. Now, the security situation has improved.”

On Tuesday evening, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, now the acting culture and information minister, announced the Taliban administration's interim setup, admitting in a news conference that security and the economy are the two major challenges the government will initially address./agencies

Officials in Virginia removed a statue honoring traitorous Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Wednesday, ending a long-standing controversy as a jubilant crowd lauded the end of its time in the state capital.

Onlookers chanted "Whose streets? Our streets," and erupted in choruses of "Hey, hey, hey goodbye" as a crane hoisted the 12-ton statue of Lee sitting augustly atop a horse from the base where it had sat since 1890.

The statue in Richmond was part of a wider effort known as the Lost Cause Movement that sought to rewrite history to frame the Confederacy as a noble cause, rather than what it was: a secessionist movement fighting to maintain the legal right to own Black people as slaves.

Monuments honoring Confederate figures, including the one of Lee in Richmond, have been a flashpoint of nationwide protests that erupted following the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. Floyd's death renewed protests against police brutality and racial inequities in how America polices its streets.

“After 133 years, the statue of Robert E. Lee has finally come down—the last Confederate statue on Monument Avenue, and the largest in the South," Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement.

"The public monuments reflect the story we choose to tell about who we are as a people. It is time to display history as history, and use the public memorials to honor the full and inclusive truth of who we are today and in the future," he added.

Northam announced plans to remove the statue in June 2020 but had been delayed by two lawsuits seeking to prevent the action. But Virginia's top court ruled last week that it could come down, opening the door for the removal./agencies

Syrian regime forces on Wednesday entered Daraa al-Balad neighborhood in southwestern Syria under a Russian-brokered cease-fire deal, according to local sources.

The sources said regime forces toured the neighborhood to locate the sites where military forces will be stationed to check on the identity of local residents.

According to the sources, regime forces have collected 130 firearms from local residents.

On Sept. 1, Syrian regime forces and the Daraa-based Reconciliation Center, which negotiated on behalf of the residents, reached a deal to surrender some of their light weapons to the regime forces and setting up a few number of checkpoints in the area.

Regime forces, however, violated the deal and insisted on collecting all light weapons and setting up nine checkpoints in return for lifting the siege on the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, local sources told Anadolu Agency that regime forces refused to allow the 8th Brigade -- a Russian-trained Syrian force -- to enter Daraa al-Balad and the surrounding areas under the deal.

Daraa al-Balad was blockaded by regime forces on June 25 after residents, including former members of the Syrian opposition, resisted an order to surrender light weapons and allow regime forces to search houses in the area.

Daraa, known as the birthplace of the Syrian revolution, is home to 40,000 residents and was an opposition stronghold until 2018.

Syria has been ravaged by civil war since early 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protesters./aa

The US has surpassed 40 million coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The Maryland-based school registered 40,096,188 cases and 649,438 deaths as of Tuesday.

The US has been of late grappling with the delta variant which accounts for most cases in recent weeks and now a new variant, mu, is spreading across the US.

The variant, first discovered in Colombia in January, has been detected in 49 US states, according to multiple outlets.

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was monitoring the new variant, which was added to the WHO’s list of variants "of interest" in late August.

According to the US' leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Antony Fauci, the mu variant shows mutations that "indicate that it might evade the protection from certain antibodies."

He said it was "not an immediate threat."

The White House announced that President Joe Biden will deliver a speech on Thursday about his plans to stop the spread of the delta variant and boost COVID-19 vaccinations.

So far, more than half of the US population or nearly 176 million people have received a COVID-19 vaccine as part of the effort to fight the virus./aa