Author: Albert Nalbandian

Prominent musician and political activist, Serj Tankian has composed a special track called “Aurora’s Dream.” The composition will be the theme music for the upcoming inaugural Aurora Prize ceremony to be held in Yerevan, Armenia on April 24, 2016. The Aurora Prize was born of the 100 LIVES initiative, which is rooted in the inspiring stories of courage and survival during the Armenian Genocide one hundred years ago.

Hundreds of people gathered at Dam square, Amsterdam to stand against Azeri aggression, to let theworld know that Nagorno Garabakh is a free country.

The rally was ortganized by ARF Garegin Njdeh Union of the Nederland.

The protesters shouted slogans like “Azerbaijan, shame on you” and “Karabakh is free.” One speaker called the Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev “a new Hitler”.

The large-scale offensive operations unleashed by ‪Azerbaijan‬ against Nagorno-‪‎Karabakh‬ in recent day not only violate the Ceasefire Agreement, signed by the latter in 1994, and the Trilateral Agreement on theconsolidation of ceasefire regime signed 1995, but are also accompanied with gross violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, the Armenian Foreign Ministry says.

On April 6-7, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan will conduct an official visit to the Federal Republic of Germany.

In the framework of the visit, the President of Armenia will meet with the highest leadership of Germany – President Joachim Gauck, Chancellor Angela Merkel, President of Bundestag Norbert Lammert, Minister of Foreign Affairs, OSCE Chairman-in-Office Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

An all-star tribute concert to David Bowie, announced shortly before he died, has been held in New York, the BBC reports.

The concert in Carnegie Hall was announced on 10 January as a retrospective of Bowie’s life.

But hours later, the singer’s family announced his death from cancer. The concert then quickly sold out.

Among the acts performing were the Flaming Lips, Pixies, Debbie Harry, Cyndi Lauper and former REM singer Michael Stipe.

Such was the demand, a second concert was added for Friday night at Radio City Music Hall that will be broadcast online.

The annual tribute concerts, that have previously focused on acts including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Joni Mitchell, were set up to raise money for charity.

Organisers were overwhelmed by requests by performers keen to take part after Bowie’s death.

“We felt kind of awkward because we are usually so humbly grateful to anyone who wants to participate in this,” producer Michael Dorf said.

One scheduled act, hip-hop band The Roots, pulled out of the shows on Thursday, after accusing another unnamed group of refusing to allow them to use their equipment.

Photo: EPA

A Taliban splinter group says it carried out a suicide attack on a park in Lahore, Pakistan, which killed more than 70 people, including children, the BBC reports.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said it had targeted Christians celebrating Easter, though police have said they are still investigating the claim.

There were scenes of carnage as parents searched for children amid the debris.

Pakistan’s president condemned the attack, and the regional government has announced three days of mourning.

At least 300 people were injured, with officials saying they expected the death toll to rise.

All major hospitals in the area were put on an emergency footing after the blast, early on Sunday evening.

The Minsk Group Co-Chairs held a closed-door meeting on Nagorno Karabakh last week, featuring Western diplomats and experts from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Artsakh.

President of the Helsinki Initiative/92 Nagorno-Karabakh Committee Karen Ohanjanyan was one of the experts attending the Tbilisi meeting. Speaking to , the expert said “Azerbaijanis seemed concerned.”

“We learnt a very important thing, we got to know the position of Azerbaijan. Aware that they do not benefit from the attacks and are unable to win through military means, they lay the emphasis on the continuation of the negotiation process, they want Artsakh to join the talks,” Ohanjanyan said.

Attaching important to the meetings on the level of experts, Spokesman for the NKR President David Babayan said “Artsakh should participate in the development of any document.”

Political scientist Sergey Minasyan, who participated in the closed-door meeting on behalf of Armenia, said the meeting was different from all others as it featured no representatives of the civil society, only experts, including ones from Western countries.

“It became clear from the meeting that there is no real threat of change in the OSCE Minsk Group format, something Baku and Ankara long for,” he said.

Minasyan added that Turkey’s interference is now impossible also because of the Russian-Turkish crisis. “This country has lost the levers of interference not only in Syria, but also the South Caucasus,” he said.

Photo: AFP/Getty

A survivor of the Auschwitz death camp is now the world’s oldest man, the Guinness World Records organisation says, the BBC reports.

Yisrael Kristal was born near Zarnow in Poland in 1903 and lived through two world wars before moving to the Israeli city of Haifa.

He was 112 years and 178 days old on 11 March, Guinness World Records says.

The previous oldest-recorded man, Yasutaro Koide of Japan, died in January aged 112 years and 312 days.

As he received his Guinness World Records certificate, Mr Kristal said he did not know the “secret for long life” and that he believed everything was “determined from above”.

“There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men then me who are no longer alive,” he added.

“All that is left for us to do is to keep on working as hard as we can and rebuild what is lost.”

The son of a religious scholar, Mr Kristal was separated from his parents during World War One. He later moved to Lodz to work in the family confectionery business.

After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939, Mr Kristal and his family were moved into the Lodz ghetto.

His two children died there and Mr Kristal and his wife Chaja Feige Frucht were sent to Auschwitz in 1944 after the ghetto was liquidated, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Mr Kristal’s wife was murdered in Auschwitz but he survived, performing slave labour in that and other camps. When he was found by the Allies in May 1945 he weighed just 37 kg (5 stones 11 lbs).

The sole survivor from his family, Mr Kristal emigrated to Israel in 1950 with his second wife and their son, where he continued to run his confectionery business until his retirement.

– Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) will file criminal complaints against Prime Minister Davutoglu, who has been criticized because of his “Armenian gangs” statement, and Askale Mayor Basaran who said “I gratefully commemorate our honorable ancestors who wiped the Armenians off.”

IHD Istanbul Branch Committee Against Racism and Discrimination declared that they will file criminal complaints against Prime Minister Davutoglu and Askale Mayor Basaran, “because they praised the Armenian Genocide and threatened Kurdish people with genocide”.

Here is the call for press statement made on March 8 in front of Caglayan Courthouse:

“In a time when crimes against humanity have been committed in the war against Kurds, Prime Minister, on February 27, said that ‘HDP is in cooperation with Russia like Armenian gangs’ and on March 3, Askale Mayor Enver Basaran ‘gratefully’ commemorated the Armenian Genocide during a ‘theatrical Armenian massacre’ that was played by children and we will file criminal complaints against them because they praised the Armenian Genocide and threatened Kurdish people with genocide.

On February 27, during a rally in Bingöl, Prime Minister Davutoğlu said, “HDP  is in cooperation with Russia like Armenian gangs; they open a representative agency in Moscow.” Davutoglu’s racist statements were brought to the parliament’s agenda by Garo Paylan. Moreover, Armenia also reacted to those statements and Armenian Minister of Interior Edward Nalbandyan criticized Davutoglu by saying “It is obvious that nothing changed in the mentality of the governing elite of Turkey in a century.”

In Askale province of Erzurum, a play was staged at the celebration ceremony of “the 98^th anniversary of Askale’s liberation.” In this play, Armenians portrayed as people who burn down mosques and locals killed the Armenians. Speaking after the ceremony, Askale Mayor Enver Başaran said: “I gratefully commemorate our honorable ancestors who wiped the Armenians off. History of Armenian people is full of blood and betrayal. The Armenian gangs are betrayal organizations and their hatred against this land and noble Turkish nation has no end. Now, these Armenian gangs have been performing separatist activities with PKK.”

Scientists believe they have discovered a way to “steer” the immune system to kill cancers, the BBC reports.

Researchers at University College, London have developed a way of finding unique markings within a tumour – its “Achilles heel” – allowing the body to target the disease.

But the personalised method, reported in Science journal, would be expensive and has not yet been tried in patients.

Experts said the idea made sense but could be more complicated in reality.

However, the researchers, whose work was funded by Cancer Research UK, believe their discovery could form the backbone of new treatments and hope to test it in patients within two years.

They believe by analysing the DNA, they’ll be able to develop bespoke treatment.