Photo: Reuters
A suicide bomber has killed four security officers and injured five others near one of Islam’s holiest sites in the Saudi city of Medina, according to the interior ministry, the BBC reports.
The bomber detonated his explosives after being stopped outside the Prophet’s Mosque, a statement said.
The mosque is the burial place of the Prophet Muhammad and Medina the second-holiest city in Islam after Mecca.
Suicide blasts also struck two other Saudi cities on Monday.
Photo: Getty Images
More than 180 people have been killed in flooding along the Yangtze River in China following torrential rain, officials say, the BBC reports.
Between 10cm and 50cm of rain has fallen in seven provinces, and storms stretching 1,600km are sweeping across central and southern China.
At least 45 people are missing and 33m have been affected, officials say.
The rain has also washed away railway lines and shut down road networks.
The dead included 23 people who were killed in a mudslide in Guizhou Province and eight who died in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province when a section of a wall collapsed, state media said.
Heavy rain is forecast to continue until Wednesday across parts of southern and western China, the South China Morning Post reported.
Artak Barseghyan
Public Radio of Armenia
“NATO views the countries of the South Caucasus as potential partners with Georgia being an aspirant for membership. I do not see NATO membership as realistic for Georgia any time soon, however. There is no consensus in the Alliance on Georgia’s membership,” Paul Stronski, Senior Associate at Carnegie Foundation, said in an internet press conference for Armenian media.
“On Armenia, as an ally of Russia, it is firmly in Russia’s security orbit. But, NATO will still continue to engage with Armenia and appreciates the partnership it has had with NATO throughout the past twenty years. I’d also note that Armenian military reform is generally modeled after NATO and the United States, so there are clear incentives on the Armenian side to keep good ties with NATO despite Yerevan’s security alliance with Moscow. However, I do not see the relationship between NATO and Armenia getting any closer in the immediate future,” he said.
“I do not see any prospects for NATO membership for Armenia or Azerbaijan. Neither country seems interested in membership. NATO says the door is always open, but many NATO members are not keen to enlarge the alliance any further east,” he added.
Is there a possibility for exclusion of Turkey from the Alliance, considering that Turkey is playing back-door games with ISIS and in light of deterioration of relations between Ankara and Brussels?
“I am neither an expert on Turkey nor ISIS, so I cannot really answer this question. I think many governments in the West are frustrated with Turkey right now given Erdogan’s increasing authoritarianism, and unpredictable foreign and domestic politics. But, Turkey is a long-standing and important member of the NATO alliance. The goal of the alliance is to increase the security of its members, and I still think that most NATO members believe that Turkish membership in NATO enhances their security. I do not see their exclusion from the alliance anytime soon,” the expert said.
Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian will visit Tehran June 5-6 at the invitation of Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Minister Nalbandian is scheduled to have meetings with Iranian leadership, Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports.
From June 13 to July 2, 2016, the entire Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art (ACCEA) in Yerevan will be subsumed with ethnographic photography and documentation touching upon the little known world of diaspora Armenians during their ‘great’ repatriation to Soviet Armenia after World War II to the early 1970s in an exhibition entitled, Stream of Light. Equally, viewers of the ACCEA will have an opportunity to learn about one of the oldest settlements of Armenians in the diaspora: Mexico from 1632 to 1950s, in a side exhibition entitled, Armenians of Mexico. The opening reception will be held on Friday, June 17 at 18:00, with a special film screening at 19:30.
Armenians of Mexico
While the numbers are not many, Armenians traveling or doing business in Colonial Mexico (New Spain) has a history of over three hundred years ago. By the nineteenth century, some Armenians became well known in Mexican society, such as Jacobo Harootian, who was the first Armenian to be given status as a General in the army. The vast majority of Armenians who settled in Mexico were not there to search for adventure, but were victims of persecution, stemming from the genocide.
Over the years, the Armenians in Mexico failed to create the necessary institutions to preserve their identity, but some members of community kept their dreams of returning to their homeland very much alive. They considered their displacement in Mexico to be temporary and maintained strong bonds to other Armenian communities, especially in the United States. Today, the assimilated Armenian community has re-started a connection with their past and their identity. This exhibition is part of their process to maintain their memory and reconstruct their connection to their Armenian identity.
Major sponsorship for Armenians of Mexico comes from the Chitjian Foundation, the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in Mexico, and CIESAS.
Stream of Light: Post-WWII Repatriation to Soviet Armenia
The post-WWII repatriation to Soviet Armenia indelibly changed the lives of those Armenians from the diaspora who entered the communist country in 1946 to 1949. As a young child I never fully understood my place within this anthropological phenomenon, born in Soviet Armenia to an American-Armenian father and a French-Armenian mother at the height of the cold war. This exhibition documents the historic and ethnographic path of Armenians in the Diaspora from the 1940s to the early 1970s with photographs from surviving repatriates and documents from national archives.
At great cost, the collective cultural and economic contribution of the repatriates illuminated a country placed in darkness during the Stalin years. Based on research of survivors, including interviews, and the collection of documents and photographs, the exhibition aims to enlighten those unaware of the sacrifices made, the lives shortened, and the lies endured in what was essentially a life-altering decision to ‘go home’ and live at the foot of Mount Ararat. Major sponsorship for Stream of Light: Post WWII-Repatriation to Soviet Armenia comes from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
About Carlos Antaramían
After studying International Affairs at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), Carlos Antaramián got an M.A. (2001) and a PhD (2006) in Social Anthropology from El Colegio de Michoacán (México). His research interests focus on migration and transnational communities, genocides, Armenian communities and the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. He has published the book From Ararat to Popocatepetl. Armenians in Mexico (2011), and a documentary related to the settlement of Armenians in Mexico City after the genocide The Armenians in La Merced (2012). He was the curator of the Exhibition Armenia, an Open Wound in Museo Memoria and Tolerancia in Mexico City (2015) and at the Brand Library in Glendale (2016).
About Hazel Antaramian Hofman
With a background in both the sciences and arts, Hazel Antaramian Hofman has a M.Sc. in Environmental Policy and Planning (1994) and an M.A. in Art and Design (2011). She is an adjunct art instructor at Fresno City College, an independent scholar, and an artist with Fig Tree Gallery in Fresno, California. Her current independent project encompasses a six-year ethnographic project on the post-WWII repatriation to Soviet Armenia. She has presented her illustrated lectures on the topic nationally and internationally, and published work on the repatriation in the Paris publication, Nouvelles d’Arménie. Her latest article on the topic was published in a special edition of the Spanish publication, ISTOR, Armenia Una Historia.
More recently, Antaramian Hofman has been working with other visual artists as a videographer in documenting the making and philosophy of their art. She was a contributing art writer to the art catalogue, Body/Land: A 25-Year Retrospective of Anne Scheid (2016); the photograph catalogue of Saroyan: His Heart in the Highlands (2008), and the Fresno Art Museum art catalogue, Vostanik Adoian: aka Arshile Gorky (2006). She is a board member of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research and the College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State University.
German lawmakers’ planned vote on a resolution that recognises the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide, will test the “friendship” between Berlin and Ankara, Turkey said Thursday, reports.
The resolution “will amount to a real test of the friendship” between the two nations, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said.
“Some nations that we consider friends, when they are experiencing trouble in domestic policy attempt to divert attention from it,” he said at a meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AKP). “This resolution is an example of that.”
He stopped short of threatening Germany with political and economic retaliation, but added “3.5 million Turks live in Germany and actively contribute to the economy.”
German lawmakers are preparing to pass a resolution Thursday that recognises the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide, despite stark warnings from Turkey that the vote could hurt ties.
Put forward by the ruling left-right coalition and the opposition Greens, the resolution entitled “Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916” also carries the contentious word throughout the text.
Photo: AP
Two people are dead and the campus is on lockdown following a shooting at the University of California at Los Angeles, police say, the BBC reports.
The search continues for an “active shooter” and students and staff have been told to shelter in place.
The incident is said to have happened in one of the campus engineering buildings.
Police are at the scene and a city-wide alert has been issued so that emergency resources can be brought in.
“Some facts have been distorted in the “Stone Dreams” by Azerbaijani writer Akram Aylisli,” says historian Argam Ayvazyan, author of a number of works on Armenian monuments of Nakhijevan. According to him, five Armenian translations of the book have been published since 2013, but none has an analytical preface or necessary footnotes.
The book was released in Spanish on May 6 with Argam Ayvazyan’s preface included. The author points to the distortions he found in the book.
The book “Stone Dreams,” in which Aylisli speaks about Armenians with great warmth, refers to the events of 1990 in Baku and the 1919 barbarities against the Armenian population of Verin (Upper) Agulis, found a wide resonance in Armenia.
Aylisli pictures Azerbaijanis that left Armenia as the main perpetrators of the massacre, presenting their actions as a demonstration of revenge, while the atrocities of 1919 are ascribed to Ottoman Turks. Argam Ayvazyan says “Aylisli distorts the facts in both cases. There are proofs that the Armenians pogroms in Baku and Sumgait were organized by the local authorities and representatives of the Azerbaijani population. This was also the case with the 1905, 1918-1919 atrocities in Baku, Shushi and the cities of Nakhijevan, as well as the Armenian-Tatar confrontations and massacres.”
According to the historian, there are a number of mistakes related to historic facts, names of settlements and monuments. “Aylisli says Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet in Agulis, which is an obvious distortion of facts. “The author’s wish to restore friendship between the Armenian and Azerbaijani nations is a frank step, but it’s also necessary to present the history and historic facts exactly,” Ayvazyan said.
PHOTO: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The price of oil has gone above $50 a barrel for the first time in 2016 as supply disruptions and increased global demand continue to fuel a recovery, the BBC reports.
The benchmark Brent crude price hit $50.07 a barrel in Asian trade.
The rise followed US data on Thursday showing that oil inventories had fallen, largely due to supply disruptions following fires in Canada.
Brent crude has now risen 80% since it hit 13-year lows of below $28 a barrel at the start of the year.
Statement of the NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Azerbaijan’s fabricated accusations on the use of white phosphorus has been distributed in the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council, the Armenian Foreign Ministry informs on Twitter.