Golden Horn

Some 35,000 Turks celebrated their birthday on Feb. 29, four years after their last birthday, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

An updated and modernized version of the Museum of Turkish Jews has opened at the Neve ?alom Synagogue in IstanbulThe Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews has opened at Istanbul's Neve ?alom Synagogue with updated content that makes the most of state-of-the-art technology.

Istanbul's only chamber music festival, the 5th International Opus Amadeus Chamber Music Festival, will be held between Feb. 11 and March 2, featuring selected works of baroque, classical, romantic and modern music. 

Istanbul has witnessed an epidemic of teahouse shootings over the past three days that have killed at least three people and injured several others, with two more people wounded in the latest gunfire at a teahouse in Istanbul's Sultangazi district on Feb. 3.

The Chief Ombudsman's Office of Turkey has given the green light to the Directorate General of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) to pay priests' salaries, upon an appeal by Nazaret Ozsahakyan, the head of Boyac?köy Surp Yerits Mangants Armenian Church Foundation.

A bitterly cold Jan. 6 morning saw the return of one of Istanbul's oldest - and most demanding - religious traditions, as dozens of GreekOrthodox Christians swam frantically to retrieve a cross thrown into the Golden Horn.

Heavy snowfall ahead of New Year's has paralyzed life across Turkey, as some flights and ferries were canceled, schools were closed and snow-covered roads inhibited access to thousands of villages in the eastern parts of the country. 

Turkish Airlines and low-cost Turkish carrier Pegasus canceled 221 flights scheduled for Dec. 31, 2015, and Jan. 1, 2016, due to the snow storm. 

A dead toddler whose body was recovered off the shore of Istanbul's European neighborhood of Ortaköy has been identified as a Syrian child who was reported missing on Dec. 16.

Istanbul Homicide Bureau launched an investigation on Dec. 29 in order to identify the dead child who was believed to be 3 or 4 years of age. 

Istanbul Bilgi University will organize a symposium titled "Food, Drink, Fine Clothes and the Good Things of Life: Consumption in the Ottoman Empire" on Dec. 19 and 20. 

The conference will approach the subject of Ottoman consumption during the early modern period (1450-1850) using two main avenues: Food and drink on the one hand, and clothes and jewelry on the other. 

Construction materials worth 300,000 Turkish Liras were stolen from the construction site of the third bridge over Istanbul?s Bosphorus by a thief, who did not know the real worth of the items and sold them for 600 liras to a junk dealer.