Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Sunday denounced a violent clash in Washington last week involving Turkish security personnel and protesters, as the administration faced political pressure to respond.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Tillerson said the State Department had called in the ambassador of Turkey to discuss the incident and saying, "that this is simply unacceptable."
"There is an ongoing investigation," he said. "We'll wait and see what the outcome of that investigation is. But we have expressed our dismay at what occurred at the Turkish Embassy."
On May 17, a demonstration staged to protest Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s official visit to the United States turned bloody when a pro-Erdogan group attacked demonstrators at Sheridan Circle near the residence of the Turkish Ambassador to the U.S. Nine people were hurt and two arrests were made during an altercation.
Sen. John McCain has called for the Turkish ambassador to be expelled. The incident occurred last Tuesday during protests surrounding a visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Bahrain News Agency (BNA)
Sunday
Bahrain Ambassador to Kuwait receives Catholicos Aram I
Manama, May 21 (BNA): Ambassador of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the
State of Kuwait, Shaikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, received His
Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of the Cilicia of the Armenians, on the
occasion of his recent visit to Kuwait to inaugurate a new cathedral
and a prelacy for the Armenian community.
The Ambassador held a luncheon in honour of His Holiness Aram I, which
was attended by a number of ambassadors, dignitaries and religious
men.
The Catholicos commended Bahrain's support for the values of
coexistence and dialogue among civilizations, cultures, religions and
creeds.
He also praised the role of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
in instilling these values through his vision and keenness on hosting
conferences and forums and inviting to them senior scholars, religious
figures and intellectuals of different faiths.
Shaikh Khalifa extended thanks to Aram I the Catholicos for accepting
the invitation, saying that his response indicates the existence of a
spirit of co-existence between followers of divine religions and the
others and proves that there are thoughtful wise people in this world.
ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
Monday
Analyst: "Exchange of territories for peace" will not lead Karabakh
for a long peace
Yerevan May 22
David Stepanyan. The willingness to negotiate "around the exchange of
territories for peace" recently voiced by Elmar Mamedyarov is a
long-awaited interim solution for Azerbaijan. An independent analyst,
ex-head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nagorno-Karabakh Arman
Melikyan expressed such opinion to ArmInfo. The last week was
characterized by a significant increase in tension on the
Karabakh-Azerbaijan contact line. Azerbaijani snipers killed three
servicemen of the NKR Defense Army. After that by the guided missile
was damaged the anti-aircraft missile system "Osa" of the NKR.
After all this, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov said
that Baku is ready to negotiate "around the exchange of territories
for peace." In other words, the leadership of Azerbaijan promises not
to kill Armenian servicemen in response to the agreement to withdraw
troops from certain areas. However, in response to the alert, the
advanced units of the NKR DA resorted to punitive measures, as a
result of which several objects of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces were
destroyed.
The analyst stressed that representatives of Russian political and
expert circles voiced the formula for the "exchange of territories for
peace" for months before Mamadyarov. According to his estimates,
through its implementation, Azerbaijan will be able to snatch half of
the territory of Artsakh and gain new strategic positions without a
single casualty and special efforts.
"According to these absolutely false and unfounded speeches, it is
allegedly possible to establish a lasting peace and eradicate
hostility. After a while, however, Azerbaijan does not hesitate to use
any convenient moment to attack the above-mentioned Armenian cities
and will try to capture Artsakh and Syunik," the analyst summed up.
ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
Monday
"To be a doctor, to save people's lives and to help them is my credo,"
Tom Katena, 2017 Aurora Awards winner says.
Yerevan May 22
Ani Mshetsyan. On May 22 Doctor Tom Katena, the winner of Aurora Prize
2017, held an open lecture at Yerevan State Medical University after
Mkhitar Heratsi. He told about his experience at the hospital of
Mother of Mercy, located in Sudan mountains. Katena is a sole
physician at that hospital treating about 700 000 local habitants.
" It does not matter what conditions do we have, it is important what
we deal with. To be a doctor, to save people's lives and to help them
is my credo," Doctor Katena said.
"Yerevan State medical University awarded Ph.D. title to Tom Katena
for his service and humanitarian mission on saving human lives in
Sudan. The appropriate decision was taken by the Scientific Board of
Yerevan Medical University," rector Armen Mouradyanb stated.
Tom Katena could visit Yerevan due to the efforts of Aurora
Humanitarian Initiative and thanks to three Armenian physicians, who
left for Sudan to replace katena at the hospital of Mother of Mercy.
For the period of his stay in Armenia.
Candidates for Aurora prize 2017 will be awarded on may 28, 2017 in
Armenia, within the framework of Aurora Awards Ceremony, and one of
them will become the Winner. The Winner will receive a 100.000 USD
grant, which will give an option to continue the charity race and to
support the organizations which inspired him/her.
The European Parliament is not responsible for the visits of some parliamentarians to Nagorno-Karabakh that took place on their own initiatives, said David McAllister, MEP from Germany, Chair of the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee.
He made the remarks at a briefing held in Azerbaijan’s parliament on May 22, APA reported.
“Some MEPs paid visits to Nagorno-Karabakh on their own initiatives and the European Parliament is not responsible for it. As you know, the European Parliament didn’t recognize the “referendum” held in Nagorno-Karabakh on February 20 this year,” said McAllister, adding. “I would like to note that freedom of _expression_ is important for us. Everyone can express their opinions. Thus, we cannot interfere in the actions of these MEPs.”
ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
Monday
Concert of "Secrets of Armenia" project to take place in Moscow
Yerevan May 22
Alexander Avanesov. On May 3, on one of main stages of Russia - Big
Hall of Conservatory after Tchaykovski, will take place the main event
of the year in the sphere of Armenian classical music - concert of the
project "Secrets of Armenia", dedicated to Armenian composers A.
Khachaturyan, S. Barkhudaryan, A. Stepanyan. The concert will be timed
to 130th birthday of Sergey Barkhudaryan and 120th of Aro Stepanyan.
The organizers of the event are the project "Secrets of Armenia" of
Miqael Hayrapetyan and the Congress of Armenian Youth of Russia. The
concert is aimed at popularization of the Armenian classical music in
wide auditorium of the Russian capital. The program includes both
works of famous Armenian composers and less played ones. The works of
Komitas, Ekmalyan, Tigranian, Spendiarov, Barkhudaryan, Stepanyan,
Khachaturyan, Babadzhanyan, Abramyan, Baghdasaryan, Harutyunyan,
Avetisyan, Dolukhanyan, Amirkhanyan and other Armenian composers have
already been performed on the stage of the Big, Small and Rachmaninov
halls. The main part of the program will be the world premiere of the
collection of piano arrangements "Aram Khachaturyan." Selected pages
from the ballets "Gayane" and "Spartacus." Concert arrangement of
Honored Artist of the Republic of Armenia, Professor of Yerevan
Conservatory. Komitas, pianist Willy Sargsyan.
Soloists Vladimir Sergeev (violin), Hovhannes Ghazaryan (duduk),
Iskuhi Karapetyan (canon), Stanislav Davydov (bass), Mikael
Hayrapetyan (pianoforte), Dudukist Ensemble "Secrets of Armenia. "Art
should not be in oblivion" - this is the slogan of the International
Music Project of Miqael Hayrapetyan "Secrets of Armenia". Since 2012,
Miqael Hayrapetian regularly conducts a series of concerts of Armenian
classical music "Secrets of Armenia" at the Moscow State Conservatory
after Tchaikovsky.
The pop icon recently rocked the Billboard Music Awards with some of her greatest hits
By Rebecca Pinnington
22nd May 2017,1:43 pm
POP legend Cher has still got it even at 71 years old.
The star wowed the audience at the Billboard Music Awards with a crowd-pleasing performance of two huge hits, Believe and If I Could Turn Back Time, looking and sounding as amazing as ever, before receiving a prestigious Icon Award, recognising her epic career.
Getty Images
5
Iconic singer Cher performs at the Billboard Music Awards 2017
Here’s all you need to know about the living legend.
Cher is an enormously successful recording artist and icon of 1980’s and 1990’s pop-rock music. Her songs have hit no. 1 in over 20 countries and her music is still beloved by listeners old and young.
She was born Cherilyn Sarkisian in 1946 to an Armenian-American father, John, and model and actress mum Georgia Holt.
After her parents divorced, Cher moved to California with mum Georgia, who was playing small roles in TV series. Her mother managed to land the star some small roles, but Cher never thought she would be famous. She later said: “I couldn’t think of anything that I could do … I didn’t think I’d be a singer or dancer. I just thought, well, I’ll be famous. That was my goal.”
Fortunately, Cher did have her singing talent to make her famous, and was a staple of popular music for decades, switching between genres to make her music successful with a massive audience.
As well as an iconic singer, Cher is an acclaimed actress. She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 1984 film Silkwood, then in 1988 won Best Actress for her main role in Moonstruck.
She has two sons: Chaz, by first husband Sonny Bono, and Elijah Blue, by Gregg Allman.
Getty Images
5
Cher performs If I Could Turn Back Time at the Billboard Awards
Cher has sold over 100 million records over her 53 year career, and is best known for huge hits like Believe, If I Could Turn Back Time, Gypsies Tramps & Thieves, and the Shoop Shoop Song.
1998 hit Believe was a huge club smash, and was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Dance Recording, winning the latter.
But the pop diva actually HATES a lot of her best-known music. She revealed: “I’m not a Cher fan.
“I just don’t think my aesthetic taste lies in that direction.”
She branded 1998 smash Believe — No 1 in 23 countries — "a nightmare" and said she stormed out of the recording studio.
She dismissed 1995 album It's A Man's World — which included her hit Walking In Memphis — as "crap", adding: "I didn't like any of it."
Cher said she wanted to make songs like Joni Mitchell but since the 1970s had been given ones she didn’t like.
She once fought her label’s bid to make a dance album until chief Rob Dickins told her: "I'm going to send you some songs. When you like them, tell me."
She also blasted her hits Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves, Half-Breed and Dark Lady.
But Cher reckons 1989's If I Could Turn Back Time was "OK", adding: "By that time, I figured out I wasn’t going to be the Eagles."
Cher wowed audiences with her joyful performance at the Billboard Music Awards, wearing a silver dress that featured diamante bands which barely covered her breasts and her crotch.
Underneath the raunchy gown, she wore nipple pasties and fishnet tights to preserve her modesty.
She then delighted fans when she changed into a throwback black one-piece for If I Could Turn Back Time that looked just like the one she wore when the single was first released in 1989.
He said: "At what point do Cher's outfits become inappropriate? She's 70."
Co-host Susanna Reid said: "Oh yes because you have a cut off don't you? What is it… 59?"
Piers clarified it was 56, before highlighting Cher's silver outfit, which made it look like the singer was not wearing a bra. Piers said: "That one in particular, come on Cher for goodness sake love."
But Kate Garraway, who was sitting on the other side of the 52-year-old, replied: "She's on stage! It's not like she's in the supermarket, it's different rules surely?"
Never one to back down, Piers continued: "She's a grandmother, it's like for goodness sake put it away, grow old gracefully, put them away."
Cher is worth an estimated $320 million, equivalent to just under £250 million.
She is believed to earn roughly $28 million a year, and owns a $45 million Malibu mansion as well as other properties. Her old home in Venice Beach, California, recently sold for $1.8 million.
As one of the highest selling recording artists of all time, and as Oscar winning actress, it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that Cher is well-off.
Sonny and Cher were married from 1964-1975. After that marriage, Cher went on to marry Gregg Allman, a musician, but divorced him in 1979.
Sonny and Cher met in 1962, when she was 16 years old and he was 27 – 11 years her senior. Sonny was working for a record producer and brought Cher in as a backing singer before they started performing together.
Their marriage was reported in 1964, however in his biography Sonny says this was never an official legal marriage until their son Chaz was born in 1969.
After a string of hits like I Got You Babe and The Beat Goes On, they ended up doing a variety show together on US TV. However the show fell apart during their very public divorce in 1975.
The Nazis’ murder of 220,000 Roma, or Gypsies, has always been a historical anecdote overshadowed by the extermination of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
Mina Miller, president and artistic director of Music of Remembrance, wanted to focus on the persecution of Roma and decided it would be best told through the artwork and writings of Ceija Stojka, an Austrian Roma who survived internment at three concentration camps.
Miller was at a concert by the Kronos Quartet at UC Santa Barbara in December 2015 when she heard “Silent Cranes,” a multimedia work by composer Mary Kouyoumdjian commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide.
Mary Kouyoumdjian
Miller immediately knew she had found the right person to create a piece about the Roma, but at first Bay Area native Kouyoumdjian was reluctant to take on the commission. Once she discovered Stojka’s work, she changed her mind.
“I didn’t really feel comfortable writing a piece about the Roma in the Holocaust because that’s not the community that I’m from,” Kouyoumdjian, 34, said in an interview from her home in Brooklyn, New York. “But I was comfortable writing about another artist. I really connected with her writings, and especially her paintings.”
Kouyoumdjian’s composition, in a program titled “Mirror of Memory,” will be performed Wednesday, May 24, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music — three days after the world premiere in Seattle. The program includes San Francisco Opera mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook singing Yiddish songs written in the Vilna Ghetto.
Stojka, who survived the Auschwitz, Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen camps, went on to write three autobiographies that focused on Nazi persecution of Roma. She began painting at the age of 56, and her artwork was heavily based on depiction of the death camps, where her father and one of her five brothers were killed. She died in 2013.
Miller, who founded the Seattle-based nonprofit Music of Remembrance, said she felt it was time to focus on the plight of Gypsies, who like Jews were deemed racially inferior by the Nazis and targeted for extinction.
Last year, Miller, the daughter of Holocaust refugees who lost all their family members, commissioned an opera by Jake Heggie that was based on the writings of a Polish dissident and a gay man. “When you think about the victims of the Holocaust — the 6 million Jews, the gays, the Gypsies, political dissidents, journalists — it’s been the goal of Music of Remembrance from the beginning to illuminate not just the tragedy of the Jews but others as well,” she said. Kouyoumdjian, an Armenian American who grew up in Pleasant Hill and now is working toward her doctorate in music composition at Columbia University, is a big fan of Roma music and said it’s similar to Armenian tunes.
Her 26-minute piece based on Stojka’s artwork, “to open myself, to scream,” is scored for violin, cello, bass, clarinet and trumpet. It includes live music and an electronic track recorded by the musicians, the latter symbolizing a survivor’s reflections on the past.
With Stojka, “There’s this constant burden of a horrific past. She’s sort of exploring these horrific things that make no sense,” Kouyoumdjian said. “A lot of people who have gone through genocide feel this too; they create artwork to express their feelings.”
The music is complemented with a film by Syrian Armenian projection artist Kevork Mourad, who animated Stojka’s artwork and synched it to the music.
Miller said this year’s focus on Roma will be followed in 2018, Music of Remembrance’s 20th anniversary, by pieces focusing on the World War II experiences of Japanese and Japanese Americans. One work will be about internment in the U.S. and two pieces will be based on texts from victims of the atomic bombings.
For 2019, she plans to commission a work focusing on the current refugee crisis “because that mirrors what Jews experienced during the Holocaust.”
“We’re extending our focus beyond the Holocaust itself,” Miller said.“It’s really important today that Music of Remembrance is not just an organization for Jews talking to Jews, it’s about moral lessons.”
Kouyoumdjian supports such a change. “We still have genocide happening today, so this is a conversation that continues. Anything that gives listeners a connection to history is incredibly important.”
video of one of Kouyoumdjian's compositions can be watched at http://www.jweekly.com/2017/05/21/exploring-roma-persecution-in-shoah-remembrance-concert/
The European Parliament is not responsible for the visits of some parliamentarians to Nagorno-Karabakh that took place on their own initiatives, said David McAllister, MEP from Germany, Chair of the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee.
He made the remarks at a briefing held in Azerbaijan’s parliament on May 22, APA reported.
“Some MEPs paid visits to Nagorno-Karabakh on their own initiatives and the European Parliament is not responsible for it. As you know, the European Parliament didn’t recognize the “referendum” held in Nagorno-Karabakh on February 20 this year,” said McAllister, adding. “I would like to note that freedom of _expression_ is important for us. Everyone can express their opinions. Thus, we cannot interfere in the actions of these MEPs.”
ARMINFO News Agency, Armenia
Monday
Concert of "Secrets of Armenia" project to take place in Moscow
Yerevan May 22
Alexander Avanesov. On May 3, on one of main stages of Russia - Big
Hall of Conservatory after Tchaykovski, will take place the main event
of the year in the sphere of Armenian classical music - concert of the
project "Secrets of Armenia", dedicated to Armenian composers A.
Khachaturyan, S. Barkhudaryan, A. Stepanyan. The concert will be timed
to 130th birthday of Sergey Barkhudaryan and 120th of Aro Stepanyan.
The organizers of the event are the project "Secrets of Armenia" of
Miqael Hayrapetyan and the Congress of Armenian Youth of Russia. The
concert is aimed at popularization of the Armenian classical music in
wide auditorium of the Russian capital. The program includes both
works of famous Armenian composers and less played ones. The works of
Komitas, Ekmalyan, Tigranian, Spendiarov, Barkhudaryan, Stepanyan,
Khachaturyan, Babadzhanyan, Abramyan, Baghdasaryan, Harutyunyan,
Avetisyan, Dolukhanyan, Amirkhanyan and other Armenian composers have
already been performed on the stage of the Big, Small and Rachmaninov
halls. The main part of the program will be the world premiere of the
collection of piano arrangements "Aram Khachaturyan." Selected pages
from the ballets "Gayane" and "Spartacus." Concert arrangement of
Honored Artist of the Republic of Armenia, Professor of Yerevan
Conservatory. Komitas, pianist Willy Sargsyan.
Soloists Vladimir Sergeev (violin), Hovhannes Ghazaryan (duduk),
Iskuhi Karapetyan (canon), Stanislav Davydov (bass), Mikael
Hayrapetyan (pianoforte), Dudukist Ensemble "Secrets of Armenia. "Art
should not be in oblivion" - this is the slogan of the International
Music Project of Miqael Hayrapetyan "Secrets of Armenia". Since 2012,
Miqael Hayrapetian regularly conducts a series of concerts of Armenian
classical music "Secrets of Armenia" at the Moscow State Conservatory
after Tchaikovsky.