12:49,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 24, ARMENPRESS. On the occasion of the International Mother Language Day, held annually on February 21, Microsoft has added nine new languages to its Microsoft Translator, including the Armenian language.
Microsoft Translator text translation is now available in 83 languages.
The company stated that nearly 7 million people around the world speak in Armenian.
Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoglu will pay an official visit to Azerbaijan on Feb. 18-19 to attend the ninth meeting of the trilateral mechanism between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia, the country's foreign ministry statement said Wednesday.
The meeting will be held between Çavuşoglu and his Azerbaijani and Georgian counterparts, Jeyhun Bayramov and David Zalkaliani. The three ministers will discuss bilateral and trilateral relations as well as regional issues to enhance strategic cooperation. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will also receive Çavuşoglu, the source added.
It is reminded that the three countries are a part of the trilateral mechanism that was initiated by the Trabzon declaration on June 8, 2012. Since that date, military chiefs and the foreign ministers of the three countries have been organizing regular meetings. The framework provides fertile ground for discussions on the consolidations of regional stability and security.
19:36,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 15, ARMENPRESS. The 9th point of the trilateral agreement signed between the leaders of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan on November 9, 2020 contains no provisions on creating any transport corridor. Any road or communication passing through the territory of Armenia has always been and will be exclusively under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of Armenia, Anna Naghdalyan, spokesperson of the MFA Armenia announced, answering the question of ARMENPRESS news agency.
11:07, 8 February, 2021
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 8, ARMENPRESS. Italy is denying Azeri media reports on having invited Azerbaijan to take part in the 2021 G20 Rome summit.
The Italian Embassy in Armenia told ARMENPRESS that the reports are “ungrounded”.
“The reports saying that Italy has invited Azerbaijan to be present at the G20 summit are ungrounded, and in no other way was this information spread or approved,” chargé d'affaires Giovanni Nicola Dionisi told ARMENPRESS in response to a written inquiry.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
A 4.7-magnitude earthquake shook the Armenian capital, Yerevan, on Feburary 13, prompting residents to flee buildings into the streets in fear of an aftershock.
Armenia's Ministry of Emergency Situations reported some destruction in Yerevan, and local news reports said items were knocked off shelves in stores.
The ministry has reported about 20 minor aftershocks.
One person was injured, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on his Facebook page.
The European Mediterranean Seismological Center said the quake's magnitude was 4.7 and its epicenter was 13 kilometers south of Yerevan.
With reporting by AP
Sponsored content: A climate education app for Armenian high school students is one example of innovation supported by the Adaptation Fund
Yerevan, Armenia’s capital city, with Mount Ararat in the distance (Photo: Ogannes/Flickr)
Armenia’s Ministry of Environment is aiming to create a digital climate education platform for over 30,000 high school students, as part of a wider effort to increase future resilience.
Led by the Environmental Project Implementation Unit (EPIU), the programme is still in its early stages, but has plans to influence young people in engaging with the climate adaptation space, through a number of participatory actions.
“The approach of designing interconnected sets of activity components is aimed at creating digital education modules for pupils of high schools with the purpose of nurturing an environmentally cultured generation of future change-makers,” said Lusine Hovhannisyan, International Projects Cooperation Manager at the EPIU.
“We think this generation will be capable of dramatically increasing in-country professional capacities and contribute towards climate-resilient policies, programmes, and projects,” Hovhannisyan added.
At the centre of the project is the development of a gamified learning app compatible with iOS and Android, as well as an online contest where winning students will be rewarded a financial prize and the opportunity to present their ideas to a wider audience of regional authorities, international organisations, and environmental donors.
The team also plans to establish a map of national climate adaptation “hot-spots” to understand where engagement in climate activities is lowest, so to be able to better assist specific regions going forward.
“Participation of communities in the process of debates on climate adaptation practices is extremely low in the Republic of Armenia,” Hovhannisyan said, adding that “critical learning and awareness-raising components contribute to the increased knowledge and participation of the whole population.”
The project has been funded through a set of new grants under the Adaptation Fund’s Innovation Facility, specifically tasked with developing a broad range of innovative projects through targeted financing.
As a major financing window, the Facility is a part of the Innovation Pillar, one of the three focal areas of the Fund’s work and which emerged from a 2018 Medium Term Strategy focusing on Action, Innovation and Learning and Sharing. It sits among a number of other innovative activities developed by the Fund including novel resource mobilisation elements and Direct Access, a tool that allows accredited national institutions to directly access climate financing and build country ownership in adaptation.
“One reason for focusing on innovation is that available overall adaptation finance is woefully inadequate globally, and while the volume of finance has to increase and is increasing, we also need to find new solutions that help build resilience in new and more efficient ways than the previous ones, to use limited resources for a greater impact,” said the Fund’s manager Mikko Ollikainen.
“The idea behind these new programmes is to take innovation a step further, to accelerate innovative adaption practices, technologies and tools on the ground, as well as create a knowledge base of what innovative solutions are effective and can be scaled up to contribute to addressing the urgency and enormity of climate change adaptation,” Ollikainen added.
The Facility offers three different types of grants for “promising, innovative projects” on a competitive basis and these differ in terms of grant amount, modality, and purpose. Available are two categories of smaller grants worth up to $250,000 each, which aim to accelerate new innovations and generate an evidence base of effective practices.
They can be accessed directly by the Fund’s National Implementing Entities (NIEs) under Direct Access, or through the Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator by a diverse range of stakeholders such as community groups, agencies, NGOs, young innovators and entrepreneurs.
The third type of grants are larger – up to $5 million each – and aimed at countries or regions that can roll out proven solutions to help with scale-up efforts. They are available to all the Fund’s accredited national, multilateral and regional implementing entities.
As well as the Armenia project, since late 2019, three other beneficiaries have been rewarded innovation grants including the Chilean International Cooperation Agency for Development (AGCID), which is tackling water shortages in the district of Valparaíso.
AGCID in Chile is innovating new approaches to water management, including establishing emergency water access stations during drought (Photo: Aton Chile)
The application came in response to a regional emergency announced that summer by the Chilean Government, which declared Valparaíso a “Drought Catastrophe Zone,” having experienced one of the driest seasons of the previous 50 years. AGCID plans to use the $230,000 grant to strengthen urban adaptation practices and improve water distribution across the district to mitigate the impacts of future droughts.
Other approved small NIE innovation grants to date include strengthening technological innovation in the Dominican Republic through development of a pilot thermo solar desalination technology, and improving water and food security in Antigua and Barbuda.
“Small grants allow for locally led adaptation technologies, techniques, practices and methods to be further brought out and accelerated,” said Saliha Dobardzic, Senior Climate Change Specialist at the Fund who coordinates the Innovation Facility.
“By targeting the most vulnerable communities and social groups, small grants empower and engage those on the ground, offering more freedom to innovate, as well as the opportunity to scale up proven adaptation via larger grants.”
This post was sponsored by the Adaptation Fund. See our editorial guidelines for what this means.
YEREVAN. – For three months, we have been proposing to set up a fact-finding group and examine the pre-war period, the war management process, the armament in the pre-war period, the course of negotiations, and present a relevant report to the people. Edmon Marukyan, chairman of the opposition Bright Armenia Party and head of its parliamentary faction, said this at Wednesday’s National Assembly (NA) question and answer session with the government.
He addressed Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan regarding this draft. And Pashinyan responded that, according to this draft, a parity committee would set up, which he had studied and seen that according to that draft, the committee would be formed by 70% from the political forces that have already given all the answers—from various tribunes—to those questions. "That is, if there is a need for an investigation for those forces, why have they already published the conclusions? Last time we also tried to invite you to a discussion on that topic, but you did not consider it necessary to come and for that discussion to take place. You say there is a collision, a criminal case is initiated. At the moment, there are more than a thousand criminal cases under investigation related to the war, which are being investigated. The political mechanism of the investigation is clearly set in the current legislation, and that mechanism is the NA inquiry committee, which can be formed in accordance with the relevant regulations of the legislation.”
And referring to the disclosure of the truth about the recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) war, PM Pashinyan said: "I believe at least the truth about the war has been discussed sufficiently, and I unequivocally agree with you that it must be clarified to the last detail. It is not that those criminal cases have given the answers to the necessary questions, but everything must be done to give the answers to those questions.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia informed Bulgaria with a note that Bulgarian citizens will be able to vote in the elections for MPs on April 4, 2021 at the Bulgarian Embassy in Yerevan.
The voting will be carried out in compliance with the anti-epidemic measures against the coronavirus, and will be monitored for the observance of the sanitary requirements for wearing medical masks, provision of disinfectants for the citizens, as well as for the premises.