Deutsche Presse-Agentur
July 23, 2004, Friday
FEATURE: Spiridon Louis delights Greece at the first Olympics
By John Bagratuni, dpa
Hamburg
When Spiridon Louis was taken from Athens to Marathon on April 9,
1896, he was a poor shepherd from the village of Maroussi near the
Greek capital. But a day later the 23-year-old was the biggest hero
of the first Olympics of the modern era – winning the marathon race
by more than seven minutes and with it a place in sports history. The
legend has it that he drank a glass of wine en route and that Greek
King George I. and Crown Prince Constantine accompanied him on the
final metres to the finish line in the Panathinaikon stadium. Apart
from the official prizes – a silver medal, olive branch and diploma –
Louis received a goat, a donkey cart, a pension and a small piece of
land for his heroics. The marathon race had its tradition in ancient
Greece, but was in fact never part of the ancient Olympics which were
outlawed in 393 A.D. by Roman Emperor Theodosius because he
considered them pagan. The idea to revive the Games came from French
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who later become president of the
International Olympic Committee, in the early 1890s. Originally due
to take place 1900 in Paris, the first edition was brought forward to
1986 in Athens (the ancient site of Olympia was remote and
undeveloped) due to huge support from Greece. Prince Constantine’s
organising committee raised the necessary funds through the sale of
souvenir stamps and a donation from a businessman allowed the
renovation of the Panathinaikon stadium to become the first Olympic
stadium. It was there on Easter Monday, April 6, 1896, that George I.
officially declared open the first modern era Olympics which brought
together 245 athletes (all men) from 14 countries in 43 events. James
Connolly of the U.S. became the first Olympic champion by winning the
triple jump – 1,527 years after Varasdates, Prince of Armenia, was
the last recorded Olympic winner in 369. Connolly, 27, left Harvard
University to compete at the Games and was thrown out of the elite
university for this move. He was not rehabilitated until 1949.
Compatriot Thomas Burke won the 100m and 400m races and American
brothers John and Sumner Paine finished first and second in the
revolver shooting event. German Carl Schuhmann was the most
successful athlete, winning three gymnastics events, the wrestling
competition, placing third in weightlifting and fourth in the shot
put. Rowing and yachting events had to be cancelled owing to bad
weather while the swimming took place in chilly Mediterranean Sea
water in Piraeus. The first modern era Olympics lasted 10 days and
set the stage for the Games’ huge success. They now return to Greece
for the first time in 108 years and run August 13-29. The marathon
will end in the Panathinaikon stadium again, but the real centre of
the Games including the Olympic stadium are in Maroussi – Louis’
former home which has for a long time become part of Athens.

US experts on visit to Nagornyy Karabakh
Mediamax news agency
23 Jul 04
YEREVAN
A group of influential US experts arrived in the Nagornyy Karabakh
Republic (NKR) today.
The experts represent the Project on Transitional Democracies and the
German Marshall Fund of the USA, Mediamax reports. These two
organizations implement the “Project on the Resolution of Europe’s
Frozen Conflicts”.
The president of the Project on Transitional Democracies, the head of
the US Committee on NATO, Bruce P. Jackson, the former deputy
assistant to US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Ronald
D. Asmus, the director of the Foreign Policy of the German Marshall
Fund of the USA, Daniel C. Twining, who held the post of Senator John
McCain’s adviser earlier, Orion Strategies company president Randy
Scheunemann, who held the post of adviser on national security of the
leader of the Republican majority in the Senate Bob Dole in the 1990s,
arrived in Nagornyy Karabakh.
During a one-day visit to Stepanakert, the US experts will meet NKR
President Arkadiy Gukasyan, Foreign Minister Ashot Gulyan, Minister of
Production Infrastructures Development Boris Alaverdyan,
representatives of the Defence Ministry and the republic’s civil
sector, foreign businessmen, who invest in the NKR’s economy.
Mediamax recalls that this is the second visit of Bruce Jackson to
Nagornyy Karabakh. He first visited the NKR last October.
On 22 July, the members of the joint mission of the Project on
Transitional Democracies and the German Marshall Fund of the USA met
Armenian President Robert Kocharyan and Foreign Minister Vardan
Oskanyan in Yerevan.

Federal News Service, Inc.
FNS DAYBOOK
July 23, 2004 Friday
EVENT: DISCUSSION – CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
(CSIS)
SUBJECT: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) holds
a discussion, “Armenia’s Opposition: The Next Steps.”
LOCATION: CSIS, B-1 Conference Level, 1800 K Street NW, Washington,
D.C. — July 23, 2004
PARTICIPANTS: Stepan Demirchian, Armenian People’s Party
CONTACT: Mark Schoeff Jr., 202-775-3242; e-mail, [email protected];
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AAP NEWSFEED
July 23, 2004, Friday 6:24 AM Eastern Time
Wgt: Gold may help red faces
By Glenn Cullen
SYDNEY, AAP – Even a gold medal at the Olympics can only be
considered a minor salvage job on the wreckage that is Australian
weightlifting.
Sergo Chakhoyan will head to Greece as the world No.1 rated lifter in
the 85kg class and is expected to vie with the host nation’s triple
gold medallist Pyrros Dimas for top honours in Athens.
Ultimately though anything Chakhoyan achieves will be undermined by
the drug scandals and selection debacle that has battered the sport
in the lead-up to the Games.
Weightlifting has long had more than its share of doping problems –
exemplified by the 11 positive tests at the 2003 World Championships
– but Australia had remained relatively clean.
Until 2004.
It started with two peripheral squad members, Seen Lee and Anthony
Martin, receiving two year bans for steroid use.
Much worse was to come as it was revealed Australia’s sole women’s
representative Caroline Pileggi refused to take a drugs test while
training in Fiji.
Pileggi too was given a two year-ban which she unsuccessfully
appealed and was replaced in the team by Deborah Lovely.
Meantime, questions had been raised about Chakhoyan – who’d already
served a two-year ban for steroid use in 2001 – after the Australian
Olympic Committee could not locate the lifter for three and a half
months while he was training in Armenia.
However, a doping test he underwent in Armenia three months before
the games came back negative.
And against the backdrop of the drugs controversy was a poor world
championship campaign and the debacle of the Oceania qualifiers where
Australian weightlifting officials sent an understrength team and
then lost a qualifying spot to the tiny island nation of Nauru.
Chakhoyan can’t turn things round for the sport but he can win gold.
Fifth at the Sydney Olympics, Chakhoyan won gold in the snatch
(non-Olympic) at last year’s world championships in Vancouver, and
bronze in the clean-and-jerk.
Australian officials said he was not 100 per cent fit at the time.
Dimas may still have an edge however, with partisan support and the
lure of an unprecedented fourth Olympic weightlifting gold for the
opening ceremony flagbearer, expected to work in his favour.
For Lovely it was a late call-up after Pileggi had edged out the
Queenslander in the selection trials.
The 21-year-old, a triple silver medallist at the Commonwealth Games
in Manchester, is unlikely to challenge for a medal but is hoping to
improve on her ninth place overall at the 2002 World Championships.
“To finish in the top six or to achieve my personal best is really
what I am aiming for,” she said.

ANSA Notiziario Generale in Italiano
July 22, 2004
FRANCIA-TURCHIA:PER ERDOGAN SI’ IN UE,CHIRAC VENDE 36 AIRBUS ;
POSITIVI PER ENTRAMBI I PAESI I 3 GIORNI DI COLLOQUI DIPLOMATICI
PARIGI
(ANSA) – PARIGI, 22 LUG – Si sono conclusi positivamente i
colloqui tra Francia e Turchia: i due paesi si stringono la mano
e portano a casa una vittoria a testa. Parigi promette il si
all’entrata turca nell’Unione europea e Ankara compra 36 Airbus
francesi.

Il primo Ministro, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dopo una visita di
tre giorni nella capitale d’oltralpe, rientra vittorioso in
patria: il presidente della Repubblica, Jacques Chirac, ha
dichiarato che “l’integrazione della Turchia nell’Ue e
auspicabile”.

L’incontro tra i due paesi si e’ rivelato positivo anche per
la Francia che guadagna una grossa vendita: la Turkish Airlines
ha comprato 36 Airbus per un valore superiore a due miliardi di
dollari.

La compagnia turca di bandiera, che verra’ presto
privatizzata, si sta preparando a una grande rinascita generale:
50 il numero di nuovi aerei in ordine per il rinnovamento della
flotta. Ma non e’ tutto, i turchi non si rivolgono solo al
costruttore europeo Airbus: presto un ordine di 15 Boeing
735/800 verra’ accordato con il rivale americano.

Erdogan, contento del suo soggiorno parigino, ringrazia la
Francia “per il suo evidente approccio costruttivo” e “il suo
atteggiamento positivo”.

In realta’ pero’ non tutti i partiti francesi si sono
dimostrati d’accordo con la disponibilita’ del presidente Chirac
ad accogliere a braccia aperte Ankara in Europa. Sia il centro
destra che il centro sinistra riconfermano la loro posizione di
diffidenza.

Francois Hollande, leader del partito socialista d’oltralpe,
in occasione dell’incontro con Erdogan, ha ribadito la
“necessita’ che la Turchia riconosca il genocidio armeno”.

“Questa richiesta non rientra nei criteri stabiliti per
l’adesione. La parola – chiude il discorso il presidente turco –
la lascio agli storici”. (ANSA).

Il Sole 24 Ore, Italia
July 22, 2004
Erdogan annuncia l’ordine di 36 aerei per ottenere l’appoggio
francese alla Ue;
Ankara gioca la carta Airbus
Vittorio Da Rold
La Turchia cerca un per l’avvio dei negoziati
DAL NOSTRO INVIATO
PARIGI *c Sul piatto delle difficili trattative per sedurre la
Francia e aprire la porta ai negoziati per l’adesione della Turchia
all’Unione europea il premier turco, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ha fatto
cadere un ordine di acquisto di 36 Airbus pari a 2 miliardi di euro.
Al termine della missione diplomatica di tre giorni del premier turco
in terra di Francia la Turkish Airlines ha reso noto, con raro
tempismo, che acquistera’ 36 Airbus del consorzio europeo
ispano-franco-tedesco e 15 della rivale americana Boeing per non
irritare troppo gli Stati Uniti, l’altro grande alleato di Ankara.
Se Noel Forgeard, chief executive di Airbus, getta acqua sul fuoco
delle polemiche e parla solo di ,
Thomas Pickering, vice presidente per le relazioni internazionali di
Boeing, e’ semplicemente furibondo e parla apertamente di e di un uso spregiudicato dell’.
Nei numeri della maxi-commessa turca (36 Airbus al consorzio europeo
e 15 Boeing per gli Stati Uniti) sono gia’ delineate, in percentuale,
le linee guida della politica estera della Turchia e l’enorme
importanza che il premier Erdogan, un islamico moderato che guida un
governo monocolore, pone nella possibilita’ di avere il via libera il
17 dicembre a Bruxelles, sotto la presidenza olandese, l’avvio dei
negoziati per l’ingresso nell’Unione europea.
Nella missione diplomatica effettuata a Parigi il premier turco ha
incassato all’Eliseo il personale sostegno del presidente della
Repubblica, Jacques Chirac, il beneplacito del primo ministro
Jean-Pierre Raffarin, il timido assenso dei socialisti di Frantois
Hollande (che pongono pero’ la condizione del riconoscimento del
genocidio degli armeni), e la netta opposizione dell’Ump e dell’Udf,
i due partiti del Centro-destra.
Frantois Bayrou, leader dell’Udf, il partito centrista alleato della
maggioranza a Parigi e della Margherita di Francesco Rutelli al
Parlamento di Strasburgo, ha riaffermato la sua contrarieta’
all’ingresso della Turchia senza mezzi termini: , ha affermato in un’intervista a Rtl.
Anche Alain Juppe’, ex presidente dell’Ump, il partito di maggioranza
relativa che sostiene il capo dello Stato Jacques Chirac, ha preso
posizione contro l’ingresso di Ankara. Ma e’ soprattutto l’opinione
pubblica a essere fortemente ostile nella sua maggioranza (60% degli
intervistati) all’ipotesi di iniziare i negoziati per l’adesione:
secondo gli ultimi sondaggi la Francia e’ il Paese europeo piu’
ostile all’allargamento dell’Unione alla Turchia.
La maggioranza dei francesi teme un’ondata di immigrazione da un
Paese musulmano che con i suoi 72 milioni di abitanti diventerebbe il
secondo, nella speciale graduatoria per popolazione, dell’Unione
europea dopo la Germania.
Temi molto delicati che si intrecciano con la decisione del
presidente Jacques Chirac di indire nella seconda parte del 2005 un
referendum sulla Costituzione europea dagli esiti molto incerti.
Secondo gli analisti politici sara’ molto difficile che Parigi possa
ad Ankara prima della consultazione popolare sulla Carta
europea prevista nella seconda parte del 2005 vista la contrarieta’
della maggioranza della popolazione e l’ostilita’ della forte
comunita’ armena (450mila persone). E allora al premier turco
Erdogan, dopo aver precisato con uno scatto d’orgoglio che la
questione armena non e’ contemplata nei criteri imposti dalla Ue per
l’accesso ai negoziati, non resta che far vedere la nuova faccia del
Paese della Mezzaluna in materia di rispetto dei diritti umani e
puntare sui progressi (riduzione dell’inflazione e ripresa della
crescita) in campo economico. Magari strizzando l’occhio al mondo
degli affari transalpino: un mercato composto da 72 milioni di
consumatori non puo’ essere lasciato a lungo fuori dalla porta.
VITTORIO DA ROLD

DRAWING OF FIRST CHAPTER OF NATIONAL ATLAS OF ARMENIA WILL BE COMPLETED
WITHIN 3-4 MONTHS
YEREVAN, JULY 23. ARMINFO. Works on drawing of the first chapter of
the National Atlas of Armenia will be completed within the coming 3-4
months, Head of the Governmental State Real Estate Registered Manuk
Vardanyan said at a press-conference today.
He said that simultanously with the first chapter, the second one is
prepared. 60% of the works are over, the remaining part will be
completed in 2005. Vardanyan said that the Register completed all the
works on cartography in the country’s communities within 3
months. Only 5 communities of the country have not been mapped, there
works there will be completed in 2-3 months. Besides, establishment of
a state geodesic network was of great importance for cartography,
which, in its turn, became possible due to the stations of satellite
orientation system. Due to this network, 35% of the country’s
territory was photographed. 50 pages of the maps have already been
drawn no space photos.

ARMENIAN GOVERNMENT EXPRESSES CONDOLENCE IN CONNECTION WITH DEATH OF
WELL-KNOWN PUBLIC AND POLITICAL FIGURE EDUARD HOVHANNESSYAN
YEREVAN, JULY 23, ARMINFO. The Armenian Government presents its deep
condolence in connection with death of the father of Armenian
Parliamentary Vice Speaker, the member of ARFD Bureau Vahan
Hovhannessyan, Eduard Hovhannessyan. The well-known public and
political figure Eduard Hovhannessyan died at the age of 73.

INVESTMENT PROGRAM OF ARMROSGAZPROM CJSC FOR 2004 FOR 6.76 BLN AMD APPROVED
YEREVAN, JULY 23. ARMINFO. The Commission for Regulation of Public
Service of Armenia approved today an investment program of
ArmRosgazprom CJSC for 2004. The program costs 6.76 bln AMD (VAT
exclusive).
Presenting the program, Chairman of the Board, General Director of
ArmRosgazprom CJSC Karen Karapetyan said that the main share of the
investments (5.1 bln AMD) is provided for extension of gas
distribution network and connection of new users. 462.4 mln AMD will
be directed to repair and modernization of the gas distribution
network and to reduction of losses in the network (350 mln AMD). 372.8
mln AMD will be allocated for repair and technical equipment of gas
transmission network and other expenses. Natural gas supply volumes
are planned to be increased by 100 mln cubic meters in 2004 as
compared with the indicators of 2003, and the loss will be reduced by
11 mln cubic meters. By July 1. 2004, 670 mln cubic meters of natural
gas were supplied to Armenia, the indicator will be increased to 1.3
bln cubic meters by the end of the year. At present, ArmRosgazprom
CJSC has 212,000 real and 400 potential gas users. By July 1, 2004,
under the investment program, 2 bln AMD were used exclusively from the
company’s incomes.
No rise in the gas tariff is planned for this and the next year. In
Dec, 2004, an investment program for 2005-2007 of the company is to be
submitted to the Commission for Regulation of Public
Service. According to preliminary estimations, the program will total
34.5 bln AMD, VAT exclusive.
The ArmRosgazprom CJSC was founded in 1998. By 45% of the company’s
shares belong to the Armenian Government and Gazprom OJSC, 10% to the
ITERA International Energy Corporation. It is for already one year,
Gazprom is the monopolist in the sphere of gas supply to Armenia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Drug Week
Medicine & Law Weekly
July 23, 2004
ALZHEIMER DISEASE;
Polypeptide protects brain neurons in aluminum neurotoxicosis
Hypothalamic proline-rich polypeptide protects brain neurons in
aluminum neurotoxicosis.
According to recent research from Armenia, “The damaging effect of
aluminum ions (Al) on the organism is widely investigated in clinics
and experiments that indicate its role as a participant in the
synthesis of precursors for amyloid proteins and as a potential agent
in the etiology of Alzheimer disease.
It has been shown that aluminum produces neurotoxic effects. We
established that AlCl produces degenerative changes in the
ultrastructure of Hasserian neurinoma cells in vitro and in L-929
fibroblast cells.”
“Proline-rich peptide-1 (PRP-1) isolated from neurosecretory granules
of bovine neurohypophysis is a potent antineurodegenerative agent
against spinal cord hemisection and crush syndrome-induced
neurodegeneration of brain and spinal cord neurons,” reported A. A.
Galoyan and colleagues at the M. Heratsi State Medical University in
Armenia and the Russian Academy of Sciences. “PRP-1 is one of the
neurotrophic brain factors. By electron microscopic study of the rat
hippocampus and other tissues, we succeeded in visualizing the
epithelioprotectory effect of PRP-1, contributing as a powerful agent
in removal of aluminum accumulation in different tissues in
experimental aluminum neurotoxicosis.”
Galoyan and associates published their study in Neurochemical
Research (Hypothalamic proline-rich polypeptide protects brain
neurons in aluminum neurotoxicosis. Neurochem Res,
2004;29(7):1349-1357).
For additional information, contact A. A. Galoyan, H. Buniatian
Institute of Biochemistry, Sevag Str, Yerevan 375014, Armenia.
E-mail: [email protected].
Publisher contact information for the journal Neurochemical Research
is: Kluwer Academic, Plenum Publishing, 233 Spring Street, New York,
NY 10013, USA.
The information in this article comes under the major subject areas
of Alzheimer Disease, Neurodegeneration, Neuroscience, Neurotoxin,
Neurology, and Proteomics.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress