Kyiv Post, Ukraine
Nov 14 2018
People stand in front of the headquarters of Gazprom during the the annual general meeting of the company's shareholders in Moscow on June 30, 2017.
Author: Maral Chavushian
166 pro-Armenian candidates win election to the US Senate and House
Panorama, Armenia
Nov 7 2018
According to early election results, over 165 Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) endorsed candidates – roughly 92% of the 180 formally backed by the pro-Armenian advocacy organization – won election to the U.S. Senate and House Tuesday, capping off months of sustained effort – spearheaded by the ANCA Eastern and Western regions – registering voters, signing up volunteers, organizing communities, and raising funds for supportive candidates from both parties and around the country, ANCA reported.
Armenian American candidate Anthony Brindisi (D-NY), great-grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors, defeated an incumbent legislator in upstate New York. He will join Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Jackie Speier (D-CA) as the third American of Armenian heritage serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), a leading Senate champion of Armenian American priorities convincingly beat back a challenge, and will return to the Senate as the Ranking Democrat on the influential Foreign Relations Committee. Armenian American Danny Tarkanian (R) ran a spirited campaign, but fell short in his race for a U.S. House seat in Nevada.
Five Congressional Armenian Caucus leaders, including Co-Chairs Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Jackie Speier (D-CA), and David Valadao (R-CA) and Vice-Chairs Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) were re-elected. Co-Chair Dave Trott (R-MI) is retiring at the end of the term. Turkish Caucus Co-Chairman, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), a perennial obstacle to Congressional commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, was defeated.
“Today was a good day for pro-Armenian Congressional candidates,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “The ANCA is proud to have helped empower pro-Armenian voters across America with reliable legislative information about the hundreds of Congressional candidates who sought our electoral support. Americans of Armenian heritage went to the polls in record numbers, strengthening our national standing as an engaged electoral constituency – one that expects results, demands respect, and rewards friends.”
168: No Armenians among passengers, crew of crashed Indonesian Lion Air flight JT610 – preliminary information
Category
Society
According to preliminary reports there were no Armenians – neither citizens nor ethnic – among the passengers or crew of the Indonesian plane that crashed shortly after takeoff in Jakarta on October 29, foreign ministry spokesperson Anna Naghdalyan told ARMENPRESS.
An aircraft with 189 people on board has crashed into the sea off Indonesia’s island of Java on Monday, shortly after takeoff from the capital on its way to the country’s tin-mining hub, Reuters reported citing local officials.
A spokesman for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said the Lion Air flight, JT610, lost contact 13 minutes after takeoff, adding that a tug boat leaving the capital’s port had seen the craft falling.
“It has been confirmed that it has crashed,” the spokesman, Yusuf Latif, said by text message, when asked about the fate of the plane, which air tracking service Flightradar 24 identified as a Boeing 737 MAX 8.
Its pilot and co-pilot had together amassed 11,000 hours of flying time, Lion Air said in a statement.
Manufacturer Boeing is aware of the airplane accident reports and is “closely monitoring” the situation, its spokesman told Reuters.
27-year-old Armenian dies in unfortunate accident in Lebanon (photos)
Category
Region
27-year-old Lebanese-Armenian Harut Husikyan has died in an unfortunate accident in Lebanon, Azdag daily reported.
The boy died after falling down from the window of the 9th floor of a building due to a heavy storm.
The incident occurred in an Armenian-populated Bourj Hammoud town.
The storm in Lebanon was accompanied by precipitation which led to floods. The Armenian districts and church of Anjar town have been filled with water as a result of floods.
256 citizens receive free pass certificates
In January-September, 2018, the RA Ministry of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies received 30860 applications and letters, of which 1139 were citizens’ applications. 1565 applications have been received by e-mail.
127 inquiries were received from mass media, citizens and legal entities via e-mail or official website. Another 19 petition was received from the RA National Assembly deputies.
All inquiries, applications, and notes have been processed in the manner and timeframe established by the legislation.
With the “One Window” principle, 570 license for carriage of passengers by a single passenger-taxi, and included 19 licenses for the organization of passenger carriage by private entrepreneurs and organizations and 704 inserts, 1 tab of postal communication activity, radioelectronic and (or) high frequency of civilian use, including built-in or other commodities 342 licenses starting with 1 license and 1 inset technical inspection of vehicles.
During the same period, 256 passengers were granted with free passage.
News service of RA Ministry of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies:
Azerbaijani Press: Committee "Karabakh" is looking forward to democratic revolution
Turan Information Agency, Azerbaijani Opposition Press
Wednesday
Committee "Karabakh" is looking forward to democratic revolutio
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan resigned, and remained to serve as prime minister. In the status of the head of the party, he intends to participate in December in early parliamentary elections in order to win them and return to the same post as the elected, legitimate head of the Armenian government.
"If on the eve of the elections, during the elections and immediately after, there is not be a coup in Armenia, and the parliamentary elections are successful for Pashinyan, then the sympathies of the international community in the Karabakh problem will shift towards the Armenians. Armenia will become a country of "democratic mentality", "anti-corruption", "pursuing an anti-Russian foreign policy", "striving for civilizational values", "an island of civilizational values in Eurasia and the South Caucasus". Azerbaijan will remain a country "authoritarian, despotic, corrupt, alien to Western democratic values and the main conductor of Putin"s dangerous Eurasian geopolitical model. In the conditions of narrowing the field of influence of Russia and its readiness to compromise with the West, what is happening can become a legal recognition of the occupation of Karabakh," former Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Panah Huseyn said about the opinion of the analytical group.
It is possible to prevent and compensate the scenario extremely undesirable for Azerbaijan by attempting a democratic revolution starting from the bottom or top, with fundamental democratic reforms, if only by imitating such a process. This is expected, believe the analysts of the Karabakh Committee, assuming that recent rumors indicate a possible decision by the authorities to go to extraordinary parliamentary elections, the formation of a "parliament with the participation of the opposition."
Analyzing the events taking place, analysts should pay attention to the fact that under Pashinyan, and prior to the legitimization of his power through the December elections, a new Armenian policy was launched to disrupt negotiations with Azerbaijan and radicalize the Karabakh demands. New Armenia intends to build a third road from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia in the occupied Azerbaijani areas bordering Iran. Consequently, the return of these regions to Azerbaijan is not in the plans of Pashinyan.
The former US ambassador to this country, Richard Mills, who completed the diplomatic mission in Armenia, made a sensational statement that Yerevan is not even discussing the return of part of the occupied regions to Azerbaijan in order to achieve peace.
In an interview with the EVN Report, Mills stated that resolving the Karabakh problem without "returning certain occupied territories" is impossible.
"I was surprised when I first came here and found out that the majority of Armenians I met were against the return of the occupied territories as part of the negotiation process. I am surprised by the fact that there is practically no discussion in Armenia regarding acceptable solutions and compromises. For many years, in the views of my government, these territories were seized in order to be used later according to the formula "status in exchange for territories". I was really amazed that this option no longer enjoys support," said Richard Mills.
He said he understood that the April 2016 war exacerbated these perceptions. "But the cruel reality is that settlement is impossible without the return of certain occupied territories," said the US ambassador, who is completing his mandate.
In Yerevan"s Lragir website, close to Pashinyan, the ex-ambassador"s statement was cited with displeasure, leaving the alarming message of the diplomat aside, the editorial board issued a statement to Mills as an American statement that it was impossible to return any territories to Azerbaijan. Part of this publication, dangerous for Baku, was the mention of Trump"s policy, expressed in the "keep it as it is" formula, according to which the West, according to the Pashinyan media, is ready to recognize Armenia"s right to occupy Azerbaijani territories.
Considering the analysis of the "Karabakh" committee in this perspective, it becomes clear that the analysts' warning was overdue. Armenia launched the process of legitimizing territorial seizure, not waiting for Pashinyan"s victory in the elections, and Baku is not going to oppose anything to it. Judging by the new arrests of objectionable politicians (Nemat Panahli, Azad Hasanov) there are no signs of an offensive in the country, even if there is no preparation for a real or imitative democratic revolution.
Family’s grief for missing son
The Sun Herald (Sydney, Australia)
Sunday
Family's grief for missing son
Sally Rawsthorne | Crime reporter
One October evening in 2014, Sevak Simonian headed out for a bushwalk in the Kanangra-Boyd National Park, which is part of the Blue Mountains.
The 21-year-old hasn't been seen since. Mr Simonian was a keen and experienced bushwalker and his plans for a solo hike in the unforgiving terrain did not raise alarm for his close-knit Armenian family when he left their home in Belrose, on Sydney's northern beaches, about 8pm.
But the following day when he failed to turn up for his shift at Bunnings in Narrabeen, his parents and brothers started to worry.
Panic set in when a friend of Mr Simonian led them to his car in a remote corner of the national park two days later. The friend is now deceased.
"He took us to the end of this dirt road. This friend said my brother mentioned he wanted to do this particular walk, so he drove out there," Mr Simonian's older brother Sasoon told The Sun-Herald. Lasting 21 days and covering seven square kilometres of dense bushland, the search that ensued was the largest in the region's history.
"We didn't even find a single clue," Sasoon Simonian said.
Entrepreneur and adventurer Dick Smith spent hours hovering above the search zone in his helicopter, and encouraged experienced bushwalkers to get involved with the hunt.
Police at the time said they believed Mr Simonian had entered the national park with just a day pack and had become lost.
In the intervening four years, competing theories have developed. They will be presented to the State Coroner when Mr Simonian's case is referred to his office next year.
One source familiar with the investigation told The Sun Herald they believed that Mr Simonian had entered the park to cultivate marijuana. "That's what I believe, I think he'd found a spot out there for it and had been growing it.
"I don't think he'd been bushwalking at all."
Investigators have also looked at the possibility of suicide, which his brother says the family have discounted.
"Even though he wasn't really himself in the day or two prior – he was a little bit timid or a bit preoccupied – we still think that he wasn't in that mental state," Sasoon said.
Another source close to the family said they thought suicide was unlikely.
"He just wouldn't do that to his mother. There's just no way," the source said.
Investigators have also looked into the possibility of foul play, which the family consider a strong possibility. "It explains everything," Sasoon said.
As to why anyone would want to harm his brother, the family remain unsure.
Getting lost remains the dominant theory.
Mr Simonian's Bunnings colleague Barry Washington said at the time that the day's weather could have impacted his plans.
The day Mr Simonian went to the mountains was a "miserable day with low cloud cover", he said.
"He would have gone out there for an adventure, I reckon, and the fog cover's gone too low."
Any answer was better than none, Sasoon said.
"My parents hold guilt, it's what they have inside them. At the beginning they were crying all the time," he said.
"They're very emotional still; it doesn't get easier. People have this idea that it gets easier but with [uncertainty] you're in this middle ground where you're not comfortable, it's always there."
Sports: Gibraltar football team wins 1-0 over Armenia in UEFA Nations League
Devdiscourse
Oct 14 2018
Devdiscourse News Desk yerevan (armenia) Last Updated at 14 Oct 2018, 17:10 IST Gibraltar
Gibraltar's national football team won 1-0 over host Armenia in a UEFA Nations League clash, earning its first competitive victory in its history.
Defender Joseph Luis Chipolina, 30, netted the lone goal for Gibraltar in the 50th minute, successfully converting a penalty kick on Saturday night.
Before Saturday's victory, Gibraltar, whose football association was accepted as a full UEFA member in May 2013, had only two friendly wins over Latvia and Malta, reports Efe news.
Officials from Vazgen Sargsyan Republican Stadium, in the Armenian capital Yerevan, made a serious gaffe during Saturday's match when they played the Liechtenstein national anthem instead of Gibraltar's.
Immediately after the incident, the General Secretary of the Gibraltar Football Association, Dennis Beiso, expressed his disappointment for what happened on social media, and his words were re-tweeted by the Information Service office of Gibraltar's Government in Spain.
"Extremely disappointed that the wrong national anthem was played before the game tonight. We have sought, and been given, an apology by the Armenian FA and an official announcement has been made to that effect at the stadium here in Yerevan," Beiso's tweet said.
Author to Discuss New Book on Talaat Pasha and the Armenian Genocide
Ramapo College, NJ
Friday 5:48 AM EST
Author to Discuss New Book on Talaat Pasha and the Armenian Genocide
MAHWAH, New Jersey
Dr. Hans-Lukas Kieser, associate professor in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle in Australia and adjunct professor of history at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, will discuss his recently published book, Talaat Pasha: Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide, on Tuesday, November 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the Trustees Pavilion at Ramapo College. The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Armenian National Committee of New Jersey are sponsoring the event. It is free and open to the public.
Talaat Pasha (1874-1921) led the triumvirate that ruled the late Ottoman Empire during World War I and is arguably the father of modern Turkey. He also was the architect of the Armenian Genocide, which would result in the systematic extermination of more than a million people, and which set the stage for a century that would witness atrocities on a scale never imagined. Here is the first biography in English of the revolutionary figure who not only prepared the way for Ataturk and the founding of the republic in 1923, but who shaped the modern world as well.
In this explosive book, Kieser provides a mesmerizing portrait of a man who maintained power through a potent blend of the new Turkish ethno-nationalism, the political Islam of former Sultan Abdulhamid II, and a readiness to employ radical "solutions" and violence. From Talaat's role in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 to his exile from Turkey and assassination-a sensation in Weimar Germany–Kieser restores the Ottoman drama to the heart of world events. He shows how Talaat wielded far more power than previously realized, making him the de facto ruler of the empire. He brings wartime Istanbul vividly to life as a thriving diplomatic hub, and reveals how Talaat's cataclysmic actions would reverberate across the twentieth century.
In this major work of scholarship, Kieser tells the story of the brilliant and merciless politician who stood at the twilight of empire and the dawn of the age of genocide.
A historian and Australian Research Council Future Fellow with the University of New Castle's Centre for the History of Violence, Professor Kieser's research focuses on the demise of the Ottoman Empire, marked by the First World War. He is an author of books and articles in several languages.
He has held guest professorships at Stanford University, University of Michigan, and in universities of Germany, France and Turkey. He received fellowships and awards from academic institutions in Basel, Zurich and Freiburg, and from the Swiss National Science Foundation.
For information or to request disability-related accommodations for this event, please contact or call 201-684-7409.
https://www.ramapo.edu/news/press-releases/author-to-discuss-new-book-on-talaat-pasha-and-the-armenian-genocide/
Service dog of Artsakh army wounded in Azerbaijani military sniper fire (photos)
Categories
Artsakh
Region
Azerbaijani military has opened sniper fire at an army position of Artsakh, Arshavir Gharamyan – presidential special envoy of Artsakh – said on Facebook.
He said that the Azerbaijani sharpshooters opened more than 40 shots in one hour.
“This is how Heydar’s son is keeping the agreement on the ceasefire…More than 40 shots in one hour from sniper rifles, in the direction of the dog which has climbed up the trench from fury,” he said.
He posted a photo of the wounded dog (pictured above).