Author: Toneyan Mark

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley said Wednesday the Archdiocese of Boston will hold its first commemoration of the Armenian genocide, the latest Catholic Church effort to acknowledge the events that killed 1.5 million a century ago, the reports.

O’Malley is set to preside over a 4 p.m. prayer service April 23 at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End.

In a statement, O’Malley referred to an acknowledgment last year by Pope Francis that the World War I-era deaths at the hands of Ottoman Turks were the first genocide of the 20th century, a statement that angered the Turkish government.

O’Malley also expressed solidarity with Christians who are suffering around the world.

“Pope Francis made clear that the church acknowledges the suffering of so many who lost their lives in witness to their faith and that, tragically, such witness continues through the persecution of Christians taking place throughout the world today,” O’Malley said.

“Building on our bond as Christians, the Archdiocese of Boston joins with our Armenian brothers and sisters to make this remembrance in common prayer to our Lord,” O’Malley added.

Local and regional Armenian religious leaders will attend the April event.

The Revs. Antranig Baljian and Arakel Aljalian of the Boston-area Armenian community lauded O’Malley for his “desire to continue building bridges of Christian unity.”

“Catholics and Armenians are standing together more strongly than ever,” they said in a statement released by the Catholic archdiocese. “The vitality and fidelity of the Armenian community which will be expressed April 23 is a demonstration of the victory of good over evil.”

A 2001 declaration by Pope John Paul II and Catholicos Karekin II, the Armenian Apostolic Church’s supreme patriarch, referred to the Armenian slaughter as a campaign of extermination “generally referred to as the first genocide of the 20th century.”

But the Vatican had largely avoided that term before Pope Francis’ statement last April.

Syria’s electricity network is down across the whole of the country for unknown reasons, state media say, the BBC reports.

They cited sources as saying power had been cut in all provinces and teams were trying to determine the cause.

In most parts of war-torn Syria, electricity is already available only two to four hours a day, if at all.

Violinist Vanessa-Mae has been awarded damages for defamation from the International Ski Federation (FIS), the BBC reports.

She was banned after the FIS claimed she qualified for the 2014 Winter Olympics at fixed races, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared her.

FIS apologised and has made “an appropriate” payment that the musician intends to donate to charity.

Vanessa-Mae, 37, was 67th and last in the giant slalom in Sochi competing for her father’s native Thailand.

Reacting to the news of her damages, she told BBC Sport: “The fact that the International Ski Federation has apologised to me says it all.”

British citizen Vanessa-Mae insists she will not allow the disruption to derail her bid to continue skiing and qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pheongchang, South Korea.

Pope Francis, who is usually calm and accommodating with his admirers, clearly lost his temper with a person who pulled on him so hard that he fell onto a child on a wheel chair, Reuters reports.

Video footage showed that while the pope was walking at the edge of a crowd in an stadium, he stopped to greet children who were sitting.

Two arms reached out to grab him and the person would not let go, even after the pope lost his balance and his chest was pressing on the child’s head.

Aides and security men stopped the pope from falling to the ground.

After he returned to an upright position, his face turned angry.

He looked at the person, raised his voice and said twice in Spanish: “Don’t be selfish!”

It was not clear if the person who pulled the pope was a man or a woman.

On February 12, within the framework of the Munich Security Conference Edward Nalbandian, Foreign Minister of Armenia, met Miroslav Lajčák, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic.

The Foreign Ministers attached importance to the regular high-level meetings in ensuring dynamic development of relations between the two friendly countries.

Within this context deepening of political dialogue, expansion of legal framework, strengthening of cooperation within international organizations, intensification of trade and economic relations were highlighted.

Edward Nalbandian and Miroslav Lajčák exchanged views on the Armenia-EU relations, as well as the ongoing cooperation within that format.

The sides touched upon pressing international and regional issues.

Edward Nalbandian presented to his counterpart the joint efforts exerted by Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs towards the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Photo/Getty Images

 

Actor George Clooney and his lawyer wife Amal have had a private meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the crisis in Syria and Europe’s efforts to help refugees, the Associated Press reports.

The actor, who is currently attending the Berlin Film Festival to showcase his new movie “Hail, Caesar,” was accompanied to the 40-minute meeting Friday by David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary who now heads the International Rescue Committee.

Miliband said afterward that they had discussed what countries around the world can do to solve “what is a global problem, not just a Syrian problem or a German issue.”

He praised Merkel for “showing very strong leadership and example not just to Europe but globally” during the refugee crisis.

Turkish aid workers have been setting up tents and distributing supplies for thousands of new Syrian refugees kept from entering Turkey at the border, the BBC reports.

Some 35,000 people fled a Syrian government offensive in the Aleppo area last week, trying to enter Turkey’s Kilis border region.

But Turkey has so far closed the border to most of them despite appeals by EU leaders to let them cross.

The country already shelters more than 2.5 million refugees from Syria’s war.

Many Syrians have gone on to seek asylum in the EU and made up the largest group among more than one million refugees and other migrants who entered illegally last year, mainly by sea from Turkey.

Turkey returned its ambassador to the Vatican on Thursday, nearly 10 months after withdrawing him in protest against Pope Francis’ description of the century-old massacres of Christian Armenians as genocide, Reuters reports. 

The pope sparked a row with Turkey when he said the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in World War One was “the first genocide of the 20th century”, just days before commemorations to mark the centennial of the massacres in April.

Muslim Turkey promptly recalled its envoy. In diplomatic terms, a 10-month absence for an ambassador is a very long time.

Tanju Bilgic, the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, said the decision came after the Vatican on Wednesday praised Turkey’s willingness to open its archives to historians and create a joint commission of scholars to explore past events.

The Vatican comment was within a statement about the pope having received a book by an Italian author about a naval battle between Turkey and the Venetian Republic in 1657.

Francis is given many books at his general audiences on Wednesdays but the Vatican rarely issues statements about them, so praise for Turkey in the context of the book was a sign that the Holy See way trying to find a solution to the impasse, a diplomatic source said.

Turkey routinely withdraws its representatives in countries that decide to recognise the killing of Armenians as genocide.

An overwhelming majority of Turks reject the accusation of genocide. The issue continues to thwart efforts to re-open diplomatic ties with neighbouring Armenia, and their 300-km (190-mile) border has been closed for two decades.

Photo: Getty Images

 

Social media giant Facebook said that profits more than doubled in the fourth quarter of 2015, the BBC reports.

Net profit for the three months to December rose to $1.56bn, up from $701m.

The company also said that 80% of its advertising revenue in that period came from mobile advertising, up from 69% a year earlier.

Shares jumped 8.7% in after-hours trading in New York on the better than expected results.

Revenue for the full year jumped 44% to $17.9bn, with net profit rising about $800m to $3.7bn.

The results mean that Facebook has now beaten analysts’ expectations for ten consecutive quarters.

 

Photo: Getty Images

 

US pop star Mariah Carey and Australian billionaire James Packer are engaged to be married, the reports..

The couple went public with their relationship last June after they were seen on holiday together in Italy.

Mr Packer, 47, is Australia’s fourth-richest person, according to Forbes, with a fortune estimated to exceed A$4.7bn.

Mariah Carey, 45, released her first album in 1990 and is one of the biggest selling artists of all time.

Mr Packer, who inherited an Australian media empire from his father Kerry Packer, and now operates casinos, split from his second wife model and singer Erica Baxter in 2013.

Ms Carey announced her break-up from “America’s Got Talent” host Nick Cannon in 2014.