Author: Adrine Hakobian

Armenian Human Rights Defender Karen Andreasyan has filed his resignation. Spokesperson for the Ombudsman Shushan Danielyan confirmed the news to Public Radio of Armenia.

In a post on the Facebook page of the Armenian Ombudsman, Karen Andreasyan expresses gratitude to all colleagues for joint work and voices hope that the defense of human rights will remain a priority for our state and society.

No further explanations are expected.

– In the Chinese city of Yiwu, Christmas comes 365 days a year.

Yiwu could be anywhere in workaday urban China. It is a smoggy, swarming, unremarkable place some 300km south of Shanghai.

Except for one thing – a series of vast halls that constitute what is claimed to be the world’s biggest wholesale market. That’s where Christmas happens every day, even if most Chinese people themselves do not really believe in it.

There’s nothing grand about it – but inside the utilitarian buildings there’s a dazzling cornucopia of festive stuff ready for the world’s consumers. There are hundreds of booths, with thousands of different glittering things to buy by dozen, or the hundreds, or the container load.

There are cascades of plastic flowers, and batteries of singing Santas, there are life-sized reindeers, and twinkling LED garlands in more colours than a rainbow.

There are dozens of cuddly soft toy stalls, with characters bearing a peculiar familiarity to well-known global trademarks.

There are ribbons and baubles, and lights everywhere. Dazzled, the eye does not know where to look, what to take in. You amble on, floor after floor of glittering stuff ready for the export market.

Each of the more than 60,000 booths seems to represent a separate business. Each of them specialises in a very particular product, often from far away factories.

It’s not just toys and baubles. There are hundreds of booths of festive gloves and hats, tools, car accessories, bicycles, and pots and pans. Most of the products are gaudy and low tech. They say that 1,700,000 different things are on show. I gave up counting them.

Effectively this mind-boggling place is the shop window for the great Chinese industrial revolution, the extraordinary rush to turn the country into the global manufacturing powerhouse that has transformed China’s cities over the past 30 years.

It’s one of those statistics which nobody can prove, but they say that more than half of all the world’s Christmas decorations are made in China. A huge proportion of them are on sale to global buyers in the endless booths of the Yiwu wholesale market.

Across the world, Christians have begun marking Christmas with services, with Pope Francis holding midnight mass at the Vatican, the BBC reported.

In the holy city of Bethlehem, the West Bank town where it is believed that Jesus was born, events have been overshadowed by recent violence between Palestinians and Israelis.

“There’s lights, there’s carols, but there’s an underlying sense of tension,” one pilgrim to Bethlehem, Briton Paul Haines, told Associated Press news agency.

Euronews has named the Tbilisi tree as one of the most unusual Christmas trees in the world.

An illumination resembling a Christmas tree set at the monument to St. George at the Freedom Square in the capital of Georgia is listed among world’s six unusual trees.

Christmas tree stands in Park Simon Bolivar in Bogota.

Cars on a street illuminated by Christmas lights in Tbilisi, Georgia.

A Christmas tree made of 121 old wooden-framed, coloured windows, put together by local carpentry students, is seen in Rakvere in Estonia.

A couple hug while standing near a Christmas tree made out of plastic bins and plastic hampers outside the Museum of History in Monterrey, Mexico.

A Christmas tree stands in Byblos, north of Beirut, Lebanon.

People enjoy the Christmas festivities amongst Supertrees structures at the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore.

Annual festive events for children on the occasion of New Year and Holly Christmas have started today at the Presidential Palace. Today, the Presidential Palace at Baghramian 26 hosted 300 kids from secondary schools who demonstrated excellent learning results. On the eve of New Year, traditional events organized in the Presidential Palace will gather over 1200 children aging 6-12 from Yerevan and regions of the Republic.

Events for kids at Baghramian 26 will be held also in next two days, on December 23 and 24. Tomorrow, the Palace will host children and grandchildren of the servicemen of the Armenian Armed Forces, members of Erkrapah volunteers union, of fallen and handicap freedom fighters, including those from the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, children of the RA Police and National Security employees. On December 24, children from a number of communities from border regions (Gegharkunik, Vayots Dzor, Ararat, Tavush), as well as children from Syria who found refuge in Armenia, children with disabilities and laureates of Olympiads (Kangaroo and Bee) will be the guests at the Presidential Palace.

Liz Ohanesian

There’s a moment in “Conan in Armenia” where late-night host Conan O’Brien and his assistant Sona Movsesian catch a glimpse of Mt. Ararat against the horizon. They didn’t know if they would see the mountain, the legendary final stop for Noah’s ark, and when they do, it’s a solemn moment. Mt. Ararat is a powerful symbol for the Armenian people and, while one might be able to see it on a clear day, it is just out of reach for Armenians, as it stands across the Turkish border. Conan explains that Mt. Ararat “used to be part of Armenia, now it’s not.” Sona is silent as she stares into the distance.

The whole situation is complicated, but that’s the case for Armenia in general. The modern nation has only existed since the fall of the Soviet Union, but the history of Armenia is ancient. That Sona proudly identifies as Armenian, but has never visited the country before this trip is understandable. Like Sona, I’m of Armenian descent, but have never traveled to the country and call Los Angeles home. For those of us who share this heritage, Armenia is a destination, maybe not to live, but definitely to visit. It is a physical homeland for a people who were nearly wiped off the earth during the 1915 Genocide.

For reasons I’ll never fully understand, the country is not a destination for people who aren’t part of the diaspora; travel hosts like Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern don’t have Armenia episodes, but reality star Kim Kardashian does. That Conan O’Brien chose to take Sona to Armenia is a big deal for those of us are Armenian, something my own family discussed over a San Fernando Valley Thanksgiving table while eating turkey and pilaf. But it also made for great television that could appeal to anyone.

“Conan in Armenia” essentially tells two, intertwined stories. There’s the story of Conan, who is entering both a culture and a place that is foreign to him, and the story of Sona, who has grown up with the culture, but hasn’t been to the place of its origins. Much of the episode plays out like a buddy comedy—Conan goofs off, Sona plays it straight, but gets a few deadpan zingers in here and there. They go on a series of very short adventures. Conan takes Sona to a matchmaker to find an Armenian husband. The two try to work as shepherds. They meet up with Armenian fans who were originally from Syria, but relocated because of the war. They drink vodka and learn how to make the thin, flat bread called lavash.

Throughout the episode, we get a wonderful glimpse of Armenia and, primarily, its capital Yerevan. We see the Yerevan Day celebrations, check out Conan on the set of an Armenian soap opera, and hear a lot of the language. Conan interacts with people young and old who are more than happy to get in on the gags with him. But, it all goes far beyond jokes about how Conan doesn’t understand the language and is a silly dancer. While Conan seems to struggle with simply greeting people in Armenian at the beginning of the episode, later on, he seems to be settling in fine. As Conan and Sona smoke a hookah, Conan remarks, “shad merci,” a slang-y way of saying “thanks a lot.” The premise of the episode is to help get Sona in touch with her roots, but it’s clear that Conan has a lot of love for Armenia too.

Near the end of the episode, Conan and Sona visit the Armenian Genocide memorial. Conan briefly explains the Genocide, which happened a century ago, before the camera follows Sona through the memorial. Sona tears up as she shares the story of her grandparents and finds the name of her family’s home village carved in stone. This segment is crucial for contextualizing the trip. It explains why there is a diaspora, and why a trip to Armenia is something of a pilgrimage for ethnic Armenians across the globe.

In the end, “Conan in Armenia” is more than just comedy abroad. It’s a story of friendship and empathy set in a country that gets very little exposure on American television.

France’s far-right National Front (FN) has failed to win a single region in the second round of municipal elections.

The party was beaten into third place, despite leading in six of 13 regions in the first round of voting on 6 December.

Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right Republicans finished ahead of the ruling Socialists.

Acknowledging defeat, FN leader Marine Le Pen pledged to keep fighting.

And she blamed the outcome on the mainstream parties which had colluded to keep the FN from power, telling her supporters they had been “disenfranchised in the most indecent of ways by a campaign of lies and disinformation”.

Marine Le Pen stood as a regional presidential candidate in the northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, while her niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen was the FN’s candidate in the race in Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, in the south.

After both led with more than 40% of the vote in the first round on 6 November, the Socialist candidates in those regions pulled out so their voters could support Republican candidates against the FN in the second round.

Marine Le Pen secured 42.2% of the vote in the second round in her region against the centre-right’s 57.8%.

Marion Marechal-Le Pen took 45.2%, compared with 54.8% for her Republican rival.

Armenians voted in a referendum Sunday on proposed Constitutional changes that would give more powers to the Prime Minister and Parliament at the expense of the President.

The polls opened at 8 a.m. and closed at 8 p.m.

1,005,333 people or 39.17 percent of the eligible voters participated in the referendum on as of 17:00. The final data on voter turnout will be released at 9 p.m.

An artist has created a life-size chocolate sculpture of Russian President Vladimir Putin set to become the most interesting exhibit at the Festival of Chocolate fair in St. Petersburg on Saturday, CBS reports.

Sculptors gathered information from open sources about the weight and height of President Putin.

With the sculpture near completion on Thursday, the St. Petersburg-based sculptors had already used more than 70 kilograms of chocolate.

The creators expect their creation to be a become a Guinness record. It was originally commissioned by the festival to make a bust of the President, sculptors went one step further and made him life-size.

A representation of his dog, Connie, and a briefcase was also added.

After the festival, the sculpture will be not eaten or sold and will return to the St. Petersburg workshop where it was crafted.