Author: Ani Kharatian

Pope Francis and Angela Merkel are among the favourites to receive the Nobel Peace Prize when it is announced in Norway on Friday morning, the BBC reports.

The Pope’s opposition to nuclear weapons and role in a deal between the US and Cuba boosted his chances, said Norwegian state broadcaster NRK.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has been tipped for her stance on the refugee crisis unfolding in Europe.

But the prize committee’s decision is notoriously hard to predict.

Other contenders for the award include:

• Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean priest who founded a humanitarian organisation for refugees
• Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist from the Democratic Republic of Congo who has treated thousands of gang rape victims
• Clive Stafford-Smith, the veteran human rights campaigner and lawyer.

Among the more high profile nominees for the $1.1m prize are:

• Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked details of US surveillance programmes to the press
• John Kerry and Javad Zarif, the US and Iranian foreign ministers who brokered a historic nuclear deal
• The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, for its work on the West African Ebola outbreak.

On September 30, President Serzh Sargsyan had meetings in Washington with the executives of the Armenian Assembly of America and with the leadership of the Armenian National Committee of America and the ARF representatives of the U.S.A. East Coast. Armenia’s president welcomed and attached importance to the activities of the American-Armenian organizations which have always been engaged in dealing with issues of Pan-Armenian importance, discussed the current activities of the aforementioned organizations and also issues pertaining to their prospects, taking into account the new realities and challenges emerging in the rapidly changing world that require fresh, adequate approaches and actions.

Serzh Sargsyan presented the meetings he had had during his working visit to the U.S. and the main points of his address at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, touched upon the tensions at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and at the contact line with Nagorno-Karabakh caused especially by recent ceasefire violations of Azerbaijan, and also responded to questions from the participants.

During the aforementioned meetings, the parties reflected upon the situation in the Middle East. The representatives of the Armenian organizations thanked the Armenian president for showing a caring attitude towards the issues to support Syrian-Armenians, giving shelter to our compatriots in Armenia and also for trying his best to support Armenians in Syria.

On the evening of September 30, President Serzh Sargsyan will also meet with representatives of the American-Armenian community at the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in the U.S.A.

Businessman German Sterligov who was detained at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday has been released, his lawyer Artur Airapetov told TASS.

“Sterligov was released after talking to the law enforcers. He is fine,” the lawyer said.

Businessman German Sterligov was detained at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport upon his arrival from Yerevan, Armenia, on Monday evening. According to Airapetov, his client stayed at the airport all the time after the detention.

He said Sterligov had been detained due to the fact that Azerbaijan had initiated criminal proceedings against the businessman and had put his name on the CIS inter-state wanted list.

The airport’s border guards told TASS that Sterligov was detained when crossing the Russian state border.

Turkey has warned that adoption of a on its centennial anniversary  will have a deep impact on bilateral relations between the two countries.

With the resolution adopted on July 23, Turkey has once more been “unfairly indicted, historical facts have been distorted and law has been ignored,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement released on July 24.

The statement continued to say “the decision was part of a campaign aimed at defaming Turkish identity and history, which had started early in 2015, while recalling Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel’s recognition of the deaths of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces during World War I as genocide in remarks delivered in June.”

“The grave picture that has emerged with the July 23 decision of the Chamber of Deputies [was] met with regret by the Belgian Turkish community and has deeply impacted our bilateral relations,” the ministry said, questioning why Belgian deputies spared time on the issue instead of dealing with serious challenges Europe faces, including an economic crisis.

“It should be understood that this and similar decisions that have been made do not serve the Turkish-Armenian conciliation in any way,” the ministry said.

“We strongly condemn this decision unjustly accusing our history and ignoring historical facts and the memory of Turkish people,” the statement concluded.

Armenian Ambassador Arshak Poladyan had a meeting with the Chairman of Syria’s People’s Assembly Mohammad Jihad al-Laham.

The Ambassador hailed Mr. Jihad al-Laham’s participation in the events in Yerevan marking the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and handed him a letter of gratitude from Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.

The Ambassador added that Armenia values the efforts of the Chairman of the Syrian People’s Assembly towards the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

During the meeting Amb. Poladyan and Jihad al-Laham discussed issues on bilateral cooperation agenda and referred to regional questions.

Every two years the United Church of Christ (UCC) brings together thousands of faithful members for the General Synod.

The UCC has more than 5,100 churches and 1.1 million members across the United States. Many Armenian Evangelical Churches within the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America (AEUNA) are members of the UCC.

This year, General Synod held June 26-30th in Cleveland, OH —the birthplace of the United Church of Christ.  Dr. Peter Makari, Area Executive for Middle East/Europe of the UCC, announced that on June 29 the Synod adopted the resolution of witness submitted by Wider Church Ministries “Commemorating 100 Years Since the Armenian Genocide.”

During the General Synod, Rev. Dr. James Moos, Executive Minister of Wider Church Ministries, UCC, read the statements of Rev. L. Nishan Bakalian, Pastor of Armenian Martyrs’ Congregational Church, Havertown, PA and Rev. Michelle Torigian, Pastor of St. Paul United Church of Christ (UCC) in Cincinnati, OH.

At least four people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack on a Shia mosque in the Kuwaiti capital, the BBC reports.

Many people were injured, and unconfirmed reports put the death toll much higher.

The blast hit during Friday prayers at the Imam Sadiq Mosque in al-Sawaber, a busy area to the east of Kuwait City.

An Islamic State- (IS) affiliated group said it was behind the attack. IS has carried out similar recent attacks in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

 

Creative Space Beirut (CSB), Lebanon’s first free fashion school, was founded by Lebanese-Armenian fashion designer Sarah Hermez, reports.

The school is inconspicuously housed in a run-of-the-mill, weathered apartment building tucked in a corner of the raucous neighborhood of Mar Mikhael — the capital’s capital of cool, generously lined with characterful bars and eateries, home to many an engaging art and design studio. The ambitious CSB, founded in 2011, operates out of an average-sized flat, its spatial modesty belying the bountiful tutelage it offers.

A nonprofit, CSB runs a three-year program catering to students from underprivileged backgrounds. It relies primarily on the generosity of donors for sustainability and it admits only four new students a year, choosing to offer a compact cohort a fulfilling experience rather than overreaching and providing more students with less.

“Design education has become institutionalized, and more about how much money you have than talent,” said the initiative’s founder, 29-year-old Kuwait bred, Lebanese-Armenian fashion designer Sarah Hermez. “Back in the day, designers would go work under others and build their way up, but today without a degree it’s impossible to get a job. We’re trying to provide equal opportunities to people who don’t have access to the elitist world of design.”

A product of the unconventional academic coupling of fashion design and media/cultural studies at the New School’s Parsons School of Design and the New School’s Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts in New York, Hermez graduated wanting to do more than “fashion for fashion’s sake.”

Her desire to merge her zeal for social work with her love for fashion motivated her to move back to her native Lebanon. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said, “but I knew there was so much work to be done here.” She worked in the textile department of a boutique furniture store, taught preschool to Palestinian refugees and explored other opportunities within the very different worlds of NGO work and design, but nothing fit quite right.

Then, during a visit to New York, a conversation with her former professor, Lebanese-American designer Caroline Shlala-Simonelli, sparked what Hermez called “the American light bulb moment — that ‘aha’ moment Oprah talks about.” After listening to Hermez articulate the desire to marry her passions, and her frustration with not knowing how to do so, Simonelli suggested she start her own, free school. She even offered to help her do it.

Luckily, Hermez and her fledgling initiative were extended a number of supportive hands. A friend from Donna Karan in NY donated $100,000 worth of fabric for the future students to work with. “We had fabric and a professor but we needed a school,” she recalled. “It was my job to make that happen.”

Hermez hopes to eventually grow CSB into a school for all manners of design, not just fashion, believing that marginalized communities can greatly benefit from the problem-solving skills the discipline imparts.

On 17 June Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan sent a condolence letter to the family of Armenian National Hero Kirk Kirkoryan, the Central Information Department of the Office of the Artsakh Republic President reported.

The letter runs as follows:

“Artsakh and the whole Armenian people experienced severe pain having heard the grave news about the death of Kirk Kirkoryan.

Kirk Kirkoryan was an outstanding person. His life was full of hardship and difficulties, which he overcame due to his painstaking work, unshakeable will and optimism. He became world-famous of whom the Armenian nation is so proud.

Kirk Kirkoryan had a substantial input in developing and strengthening our independent statehood, solving issues of pan-Armenian significance. Numerous strategically important programs were implemented in Armenia and Artsakh with his immediate assistance, programs that have had a tangible impact on improving socioeconomic situation in the Motherland.

Kirk Kirkoryan’s patriotic activity was highly estimated by the Armenian people and he occupied his worthy place among the national philanthropists.

On behalf of the Artsakh people and authorities and on my own behalf, I express my condolences and support to the family of Kirk Kirkoryan, his relatives and friends in connection with this irretrievable loss. The memory of the nation’s deserved son will always remain bright in our hearts”.

In an interview with the Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian criticized Turkey over its angry responses to what he called the growing and “irreversible” trend of global acknowledgments that the killings of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago was a genocide.

The minister also expressed hope that President Obama, who had described those killings as a genocide before he was elected president, would use that terminology while still in office, which he has not yet done. “Of course if the president uses the G-word it would be a strong and important message,” Mr. Nalbandian said.

He spoke by telephone from Washington, where an official delegation led by Armenia’s president, Serzh Sargsyan, has been visiting to participate in centennial commemorations to remember victims of the genocide and honor groups and individuals who helped Armenians escape death.

An estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed and their property destroyed or confiscated during the period of 1915 to 1923 when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and many survivors and their descendants scattered into a diaspora that has placed Armenian enclaves in more than 100 countries. Some of the biggest Armenian communities are in the United States.

Turkey’s government has expressed condolences to Armenians but has denied that the killings constituted a genocide, arguing that many Ottoman Turks also were killed in that era of war and upheaval. It has responded angrily in recent weeks to declarations by Pope Francis, the European Parliament and others that Turkey should acknowledge the killings as a genocide. The word was invented in the 1940s by a Polish-Jewish jurist,Raphael Lemkin, who said he created it in part because of the Armenian killings.

The latest target of Turkey’s anger was Luxembourg, which on Wednesday adopted a resolution recognizing and condemning the Armenian genocide, becoming at least the 22nd country to do so. Turkey recalled its ambassador to Luxembourg in response, denouncing the resolution as a distortion of history.

Mr. Nalbandian, who has been deeply involved in the centennial events in Armenia and abroad, suggested that it was unlikely that a normalization of relations with Turkey would happen soon, partly because of the unresolved genocide legacy issue. The Turkish-Armenian border is closed, and there is virtually no trade between the countries.

“We are where we are,” he said. “Turkey is just continuing its policy of denial. They are criticizing, but the process of recognizing genocide is irreversible.”

Mr. Nalbandian said he was encouraged that an increasing number of Turks appeared to be questioning their government’s official policy of genocide denial. He also said a Turkey-Armenia reconciliation was necessary.

“We have no other alternative,” he said. “We have to live together, not with a policy of denials, but with joint efforts to turn the dark pages.”

Noubar Afeyan, a prominent American venture capitalist of Armenian descent who is chairman of the national committee that organized the centennial events in Washington, said many members of the post-genocide generation had moved beyond grief, embracing the tenacity of the Armenian diaspora, which now totals 10 million.

“As an Armenian who was born in Lebanon, grew up in Canada and lived in the United States for 35 years, I believe it’s the natural result that Armenians are maturing in relation to this tragedy,” Mr. Afeyan said in a telephone interview. “It’s extending to be not only about crimes and victims, but survivors and their saviors.”