The official website of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) informs that David Mojishashvili, vice-champion of Olympic Games 2012, freestyle wrestler, lost his silver medal, since the athlete’s doping inspection check confirmed the presence of banned material in his blood.
The Georgian sportsman should return the silver medal to IOC in the near future.
David Mojishashvili currently lives in Tashkent and plays for Uzbekistan. He is the Asian champion in 2018 in the 120kg category.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova
MOSCOW—The Russian Foreign Ministry has sent a note to the Azerbaijani Embassy in Moscow over instances of discrimination against and ill treatment of Russian citizens based on their ethnicity, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
The note follows verbal warnings presented by the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who as recently as Friday warned Baku to halt its discriminatory practices against Russian citizens, especially of Armenia origin, at its border and will not ban their entry into Azerbaijan.
A diplomatic sourced confirmed to RIA Novosti of the note to the Azerbaijani Embassy.
“During the last year we have been informed about at least 16 cases where Russian citizens were banned entry into Azerbaijan due to their ethnicity. Those citizens were forced to wait and later sent back to Russia without any explanation,” Zakharova told reporters on Friday.
The spokesperson added that deportation of Russian citizens from Azerbaijan due to their ethnic background was a gross violation of the rights of those individuals. “I have seen many reports about this, including in social media,” said Zakharova.
“A similar incident was also registered during the holidays, but we have also seen similar cases in the past. We have regularly raised this issue with the Azerbaijani leadership, and we have said that unfortunately such cases become a commonplace.”
She added that the Russian authorities have urged Azerbaijan several times to stop this behavior since it’s not acceptable from the viewpoint of Russian-Azerbaijani relations.
According to Georgy Avetisyan, head of the Food Safety Inspection Body, fish products, meat that are being sold in the streets can cause great problems.
“The meat that is stored in the refrigerator and is not sold is toxic to the person. It contains at least toxins of corpse in it. There are dust, car emissions on products sold outdoors.”
Head of the Food Safety Inspector urges you: “If you love your family, you should not buy food from the street.”
In 2018, over two and a half dozen violators of the Armenian-Turkish and Armenian-Iranian borders were detained.
According to the source, the statistics is much higher than in previous years.
Experts link these trends with processes in the Middle East and the flow of migrants towards Europe.
Advisor to the Chair of the Armenian Investigative Committee was robbed on Monday in Armenia’s Vanadzor, Shamshyan.com reported.
According to the source, a 54-year-old resident of Yerevan, Ashot Z., applied to police in Vanadzor at 1pm.
His car was broken into on Monday; Ashot Z. referred to a damage in the amount of AMD 500,000.
According to the source, Ashot Z. is an advisor to the chair of the Armenian Investigative Committee.
The Armenian State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition is tightening control over dominant commodity markets ahead of the New Year to prevent unreasonable price hikes and anticompetitive actions.
“Taking into account the fact that during the New Year holidays the demand of consumer goods grows multiple times due to a strong increase in economic activity, which is fraught with certain risks of abuses by unscrupulous business entities, the commission is switching to a daily monitoring regime instead of the previous three-day monitoring per week,” the commission said in a statement.
Meantime, the economic competition commission urges all the dominant businessmen to act conscientiously and avoid violations of the competition law.
The tightened control regime will run through the days following the New Year, including through the weekends.
The commission says it will take appropriate measures in case of detecting violations that could harm consumers or honest businessmen.
Spitak is the brilliant proof of what collective, progressive beautiful things humanity can do – Serj Tankian
18:59,
YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, ARMENPRESS. U.S.-Armenian rock singer, soloist of “System of a Down” group Serj Tankian gave an interview to “Rolling Stone” magazine. ARMENPRESS reports to the question of the journalist if he is somehow connected with the 1988 earthquake of Spitak, the singer answered that his wife is a survival of the earthquake.
“My wife actually lived through the earthquake. She was in school when it happened, and luckily their building didn’t collapse. They were pretty close to the epicenter.
The years after the earthquake were the darkest days that Armenia had seen for a long time, because they were without power through heavy, cold winters. She’s told me stories of how they lit fires at school just to stay warm. Right after the earthquake, there were a lot of robberies, so crime went up. She has all these horrific stories of living without water or using only one hour of water a day. People would go, “Oh, shit, we just found out we’re going to have water in 20 minutes. Everyone run home.” You had to learn how to connect batteries so you could watch something on TV, ’cause there’s no power. My wife’s generation is unique. They know how to do everything”, Tankian said.
According to him, he was in the USA at that time and remembers going around door-to-door trying to fund-raise to send money to Armenia.
“If you go to Armenia now and go to Spitak, the city where the epicenter of the earthquake in ’88 was, you’ll see it’s such a unique city because each block, each street has completely different architecture, because one is built by the U.S., one by the Swedes, one by the Italians and another by the Germans. It is such a beautiful scene in that way. It’s really, really very emotional seeing that because it shows you what collective, progressive beautiful things humanity can do”, Tankian said.
Speaking about his future plans the rock singer said that he has some pieces intended for films.
“We have a few other soundtracks we’re going to release for films that we did a while back but never put out soundtracks for, such as The Last Inhabitant and Midnight Star, which is a video game. But I am working on a number of things right now, including Kavat Coffee, and I’m executive-producing two documentaries.
One is a film, I Am Not Alone, about the Armenian revolution. I met with the prime minister now and said, “We have to make a film about this. No one is going to believe that in 40 days, a post-oligarchic, monopolistic, corrupt regime has been replaced by a modern, progressive, democratic, true society without one person dying. No one’s going to believe that.” I’m going to compose for it as well.
I also have a music documentary I’m doing that’s tentatively called Truth to Power, looking through my eyes at how message becomes reality through the arts. Instead of focusing on me as an artist, it asks, how does one’s message come to fruition? Can music change the world? We’re shopping that and looking for co-production partners. We’re hoping it will be done by next year as well”, he said.
Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan
Numerous staff members of the Ministry of Diaspora and Ministry of Culture are on strike, protesting the optimization plan of the government that envisages merging the culture ministry with the ministry of education and science, and the Diaspora ministry will become be downgraded to a department under the foreign ministry.
Diaspora ministry officials protesting outside the ministry building near Republic Square in Yerevan claim that the ministry is fulfilling all its functions duly. They argue that their functions are not the same as the foreign ministry’s functions. They also have fears of losing their jobs as a result of the ministry’s dissolution.
Staff of the culture ministry oppose merging with the education and science ministry. They say that culture is Armenia’s visiting card, and therefore the ministry of culture should be given broad authority and resources to preserve culture and to create a society developed on national system of values.
The protesting staff of the ministries walked towards the governmental headquarters in Republic Square and are planning to convey a letter to caretaker Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The protestors argue that dissolving or merging the ministries at once is wrong. They suggest examining and analyzing the functions of each staff member, make assessments, and then only make optimizations.
By Abdul Kerimkhanov
Although eight months have passed since transfer of 11,000 hectares under the complete control of the Azerbaijani units on the Nakhchivan-Armenian border, the story continues to shake the Armenian society.
Official circles of Armenia cannot be determined with a single position on this issue. A part refutes everything, another part acknowledges serious losses, and the public does not know who to believe.
Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, claims the Azerbaijani army advanced before his becoming prime minister. So, Pashinyan in fact acknowledged the advancement of Azerbaijani units but does not consider himself guilty.
Indeed, the Azerbaijani army liberated the positions in the area of Nakchivan in a gradual and correct way, and the process began before the April coup. However, when Pashinyan came to power neither he nor the Armenian army could in any way counteract the changes that occurred.
At the meeting with journalists Pashinyan put an end to speculations on another topic.
As is known, after the April defeat of the Armenian army, two meetings were held with the participation of the co-chairs of the Minsk Group and the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia – in Vienna and St. Petersburg. The goal of both meetings was to persuade Baku to reject attempts to return the territories occupied by Armenia through armed means and obtain its consent to legalize and strengthen the results of the occupation by introducing certain mechanisms. Of course, it was impossible to receive agreement with Baku on these items. In the subsequent period, Yerevan stubbornly and hysterically accused Azerbaijan of violating the alleged “agreements reached”.
“Gunnut operation” occurred in Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic from May 20 to 27, 2018. As a result of counter-terrorism operation of the Azerbaijani army Gunnut village of Sharur region, Agbulag highway, Gyzylgaya mountain and Garagaya mountain were liberated and Arpa village of Daralayaz region fall under Azerbaijani control. As a result of the battles, the total area of 11,000 hectares was liberated. The operation allowed the Azerbaijani Armed Forces to control the Yerevan-Yekhednadzor-Gorus-Lachin-Khankendi highway.
As many as 50 km of new roads have been constructed and 50 km of useless roads have been rehabilitated. New defensive positions have been set up in the dominant heights for the tactical security of the strategically important Arpachay River.
Gunnut operation should be a signal for all Armenians. If the Armenian side does not want to suffer a defeat, which will turn into a catastrophe for it, and lose its statehood, then it should listen to the words of the President of Azerbaijan, who calls upon the world to liberate all occupied Azerbaijani lands without bloodshed and allow Azerbaijani compatriots, the true owners of their land to return home.
ArmInfo. In the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, a fully renovated Children and Youth Creative Center N3 was opened. The opening ceremony of the center was attended by acting Minister of Nature Protection Erik Grigoryan, Mayor of Yerevan Hayk Marutyan, UN Resident Coordinator in Armenia Shombi Sharp and other officials.
According to the press service of the Ministry of Nature Protection of Armenia, a total of 400 million drams were invested in the project, of which 87.5% were invested by the Yerevan municipality and the rest by the Green Climate Fund. The center offers sports and art services for 800 pupils. The visitors engaged in 34 groups now have the opportunity to attend a renovated, safe, warm and bright building. Acting RA Minister of Nature Protection Erik Grigoryan, congratulating the pupils and teachers of the center, expressed confidence that even more children will be able to play sports and art in new, good conditions. He stressed that the project was made possible thanks to the effective cooperation of the ministry, the Yerevan Municipality and the UN Development Program, the efforts of which had implemented the program using the energy efficiency component. Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan in his speech noted that the municipality will continue to create opportunities for the formation of a healthy lifestyle and a festive mood for the younger generation.