Category: News

Phot: AFP

 

One of Pablo Picasso’s best-known portraits has been sold at auction in New York for $45m, the BBC reports.

Femme Assise, Robe Bleu (Seated Woman in Blue Dress) features one of his many lovers, Dora Maar.

During World War Two, the Nazis seized the painting but were intercepted on their way from Paris to Moravia by French Resistance fighters.

In 2015, Picasso’s Women of Algiers sold for $179m at Christie’s – a record for a picture sold at auction.

Seated Woman went to a US collector and six years ago it was sold for $26m.

Dora Maar and Picasso had an intense relationship for nine years. He painted Seated Woman in 1939, when he was 58 and she was 31.

The opposition Yelk bloc  has accepted the results of municipal elections held in Yerevan on Sunday, May 14.

In a statement released today the bloc thanked all citizens, who provided financial, organizational, political and moral support.

“Yelk bloc has a strong and stable army of supporters in the capital and considers itself the delegate of about 70 thousand residents of Yerevan in the City Council and will speak on their behalf,” the statement reads.

The bloc pointed to a number of cases of vote-buying and pledged to take measures both in the National Assembly and the City Council to ‘ensure proper investigation of all  illegal phenomena’ observed during the parliamentary and municipal elections.

The Azerbaijani forces used firearms of different calibers as it violated ceasefire about 60 times at the line of contact with the Artsakh forces on May 15 and the night of May 15.

The rival fired over 1,000 shots in the direction of the Armenian positions, Artsakh Defense Ministry reports.

The Ministry said the front divisions of the Defense Army keep the situation under full control and confidently continue with their military duty.

Turkey has prohibited several German members of parliament from visiting German soldiers stationed at Turkey’s Incirlik air base, people familiar with the matter told on Monday.

As a result, the German federal government is considering removing its soldiers from the base, according to information given to members of the Bundestag defence committee by the Defence Ministry.

Last year a delegation of lawmakers including members of a parliamentary defence committee were initially denied access to Incirlik, but were later allowed to carry out the trip.

Germany has about 260 soldiers stationed at Incirlik as part of the anti-Islamic State military coalition. The German deployment is a combat-support mission which includes reconnaissance and jet refuelling.

The dispute first arose after the German parliament voted he mto designate tass killing of Armenians at the hands of te Ohttomans a genocide.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to lobby Germany’s Turkish expatriate population to vote in favour of constitutional reform to extend his powers earlier this year caused new tensions between the two countries.

The sources said the latest decision from Turkish authorities had been taken in part as a response to Germany’s decision to grant political asylum to members of the Turkish army.

The Defence Ministry has already vetted alternative military bases for its soldiers in Jordan, Cyprus and Kuwait and a decision is expected in the coming weeks.

According to preliminary results, the Republican Party of Armenia claimed victory in the Yerevan City Council election.

With bulletins from 474 polling stations processed, the Republican Party has recieved71.25% of the votes, YelkBloc and Yerkir Tsirany Party  have collected 21% and 7.75% respectively.

345,226 citizens or 40.99% of eligible voters participated in the election.

The Supreme Religious Council will convene its regular meeting in Moscow at the invitation of Archbishop Yezras Nersisyan, Primate of New Nakhijevan and Russia Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The meeting will be held May 16-18 and will be dedicated to the 300^th anniversary of establishment of the Diocese.

His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, has left for Moscow to participate in the meeting.

The Azerbaijani side opened fire from a guided missile in the direction of the military objects of the Artsakh Defense Army at about 16:30 today.

One unit of military equipment has been partially damaged in the shelling, the Artsakh Defense Ministry said. No casualties are reported.

The Defense Army said in a statement “the provocation of the Azerbaijani armed forces will not go unpunished,” and added that “the military-political leadership of Azerbaijan will bear full responsibility for the consequences.”

The General Department of Civil Aviation of Armenia has given the AMC Airlines a permit to operate Hurgada-Yerevan- Hurgada, Sharm El Sheikh-Yerevan- Sharm El Sheikh and Hurgada-Yerevan-Sharm El Sheikh flights.

The Hurgada-Yerevan-Hurgada flights will be operated from June 18, 2018. The flights in Sharm El-Sheikh-Yerevan-Sharm El Sheikh direction are expected to start from September 24, 2017, while Hurgada-Yerevan-Sharm El Sheikh flights will be operated starting from September 17.

The Air Cairo Airline will also operate weekly flights from June 20 to October 28 in Hurgada-Yerevan-Hurgada direction.

The air company is also planning flights in Sharm El Sheikh-Yerevan-Sharm El Sheikh direction between June 22 and October 28.

The flights will be operated every Thursday.

– Uruguayan human rights lawyer, Oscar Lopez Goldaracena, denounced Azerbaijan for adding him to their so-called “blacklist,” after the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry forbade him and other deputies and authorities of Bolivia who had officiated as international observers during the constitutional referendum in the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Republic, from entering the country.

Goldaracena said that “I immediately made the complaint to the Chancellor of the Republic Rodolfo Nin and to the National Human Rights Institution” and explained that Nagorno-Karabakh is “a country of Armenian population, independent for 25 years by history and by decision of its people; A democratic, republican country, with an institutional framework in rights, with an Ombudsman and mechanisms of direct democracy that really work.”

“An example,” added the lawyer. “A country that is not recognized by any other country in the world but exists. It is Azerbaijan who attacks it.”

“The population is at risk and has been the victim of war crimes. Hundreds of international observers, among whom I find myself, have corroborated what I am writing, as a way of threatening and preventing its recognition as an independent state. I would like to express my hope that, for peace and freedom, Uruguay repudiates these practices of ‘black lists’ and recognizes the independence, as sovereign state, of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh,” said Goldaracena.

Bolivian Members of Parliament Alicia Canqui, Nelly Lenz, Mario Mita Daza, and the Coordinator of Multi-Sector Solidarity Fair in the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies, Sandra Quiroz Quilo, are some of the new names of the extensive list of “personae non grata” in Azerbaijan.

Photo: KCNA

 

North Korea has claimed that the missile it tested on Sunday was a new type of rocket capable of carrying a large nuclear warhead, the BBC reports.

The missile, launched at a steep angle, reached an altitude of 2,000km and travelled about 700km, landing in the sea west of Japan.

North Korea said on Monday it was a test of the abilities of a “newly developed ballistic rocket”.

South Korea’s military said it could not yet verify the North’s claims.

But it said the North’s missiles did appear to be able to leave and re-enter the atmosphere, which is crucial to developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the Yonhap news agency reported.

Repeated missile tests by the North this year – not all of them successful but all a breach of UN sanctions – have sparked international alarm and raised tensions with the US.

The US and Japan have called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday.