Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian will visit Switzerland on March 29 to participate in a high-level meeting dedicated to the support to Syrian refugees to be held in Geneva, Press Service of the Ministry of Defense reports.
On March 30 Minister Nalbandian will join the delegation headed by President Serzh Sargsyan to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.
The gas price for consumers will be reduced, Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan has assured.
“The issue has been discussed by the Presidents of Armenia and Russia, and the relevant structured have been instructed to continue talks on the cut of gas price,” PM Abrahamyan told reporters today.
As for the perspectives of transit of Iranian gas through Armenian territory, the Prime Minister said “the issue will be finally determined by the end of the year.”
Hovik Abrahamnyan said many issues will be clarified during his forthcoming visit to Iran.
There are five Armenians on 2016 World’s Billionaires list published by Forbes on March 1.
Founder and CEO of Magnit, Russia’s biggest supermarket chain and owner of football team Krasnodar (Arutyunyan) (219th) is the world’s richest Armenian with an estimated net worth of $$5.7 billion.
Other Armenians on the list include head of Taship Group (549th), Argentinean Armenian businessman (810th), and (1275th), CEO of Rosgosstrakh Insurance Company.
Volatile stock markets, cratering oil prices and a stronger dollar led to a dynamic reshuffling of wealth around the globe and a drop in ten-figure fortunes for the first time since 2009. For our 30th annual guide to the world’s richest, the Forbes found 1,810 billionaires, down from a record 1,826 a year ago. Their aggregate net worth was $6.48 trillion, $570 billion less than last year. It was also the first time since 2010 that the average net worth of a billionaire dropped – it is now $3.6 billion, $300 million less than last year.
remains the richest person in the world with a net worth of $75 billion, despite being $4.2 billion poorer than a year ago. He has been No. 1 one for 3 years in a row and topped the list 17 out of 22 years. Also holding steady is at No. 3. Zara ’s moves up to No. 2 for the first time, displacing Mexico’s Carlos Slim, who slips to No. 4. Slim’s fortune fell $27.1 billion to $50 billion in the past year, as shares of his telecom business América Móvil tumbled.
Facebook’s had the best year of all billionaires. The 31-year-old added $11.2 billion to his fortune and moved up to No. 6 from 16. He and Amazon’s both make their first appearance in the top ten of Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest.
On 15 February Permanent Representative of the Republic of Armenia to the United Nations, Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan delivered a statement during the Security Council Open Debate on “Respect for the Principles and Purposes of the Charter of the United Nations as a key element for the maintenance of international peace and security.”
In his statement, Ambassador Mnatsakanyan expressed appreciation to the Secretary General for his continued contribution to a comprehensive and consolidated approach to the trinity of peace, development and human rights. He noted that the history of humanity has indeed been marked by conflicts, conquests and wars; yet, the same history is overwhelmed with continued struggle of oppressed people for their freedom, self-determination and independence. Ambassador Mnatsakanyan furthermore reminded that the Charter is based on the reaffirmation of the faith in basic human rights and in the dignity and worth of the human person, and it is exactly due to these fundamental principles of the Charter that 193 free nations are gathered under the roof of the United Nations.
The Ambassador of Armenia referred to fundamental difficulties that often arise when the voice of the affected people is drowned in the justification and abuse of the principles of sovereignty, non-interference and territorial integrity, leading to political culture of repression, systematic violation of human rights and disregard of the rule of law. The people of Nagorno-Karabakh have effectively won their right to self-determination and freedom, yet, the continued cultivation of hatred and aggression, the entrenched culture of systematic violations of human rights in Azerbaijan, their continued war-mongering and effective refusal to achieve a swift and negotiated peace agreement, mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs, represent an actual physical threat to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, Ambassador Mnatsakanyan explained. He furthermore stressed that consolidated support of the international community to the negotiating process within the agreed format is of uttermost importance, “not least in order to deny the unwilling party the privilege of procrastination, deviation from agreed principles of the settlement and forum shopping.”
Referring to the principles of sovereignty, the Ambassador of Armenia noted that sovereignty entails responsibility, whereas irresponsible sovereignty represents a threat to international peace and security. Building peaceful and inclusive societies is, therefore, as much about responsibility of government, as it is about sovereignty. In this regard, Ambassador Mnatsakanyan emphasized that enhanced international co-operation to this end is, therefore, compelling, not least when viewed strictly through the prism of maintenance of international peace. “The function of prevention and elaboration of early warning mechanisms and capacity to channel early signs of deteriorating situations into the UN system remains a vital objective,” – suggested Ambassador Mnatsakanyan, recalling the Framework Analyses for Atrocity Crimes as an important tool in this regard.
The Open Debate was presided by H.E. Delcy Rodríguez, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Venezuela. Representatives of about seventy state members, including Deputy Foreign Ministers of Angola, Spain, Guyana, Argentina and El Salvador, as well as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon and a number of senior UN officials participated in the Open Debate.
Photo: Mikhail Sokolov/TASS
Three people were killed when a minivan carrying civilians was blown up by a landmine at a Ukrainian checkpoint near the contact line early on Wednesday, the speaker of the Donbass special operation, Andrey Zadubinny, has said, TASS reports.
“There were five people in the Volkswagen Transporter car (minivan) that struck a mine this morning at the Novomikhailovka checkpoint. Two were killed at the scene and another one died on the way to a hospital,” Zadubinny said.
The speaker said the minivan had arrived from the territory not controlled by Kiev. “It tried to bypass a line 600 meters from the checkpoint having ignored all the road signs and hit a mine,” he said.
Ukraine’s national police in the Donetsk region have confirmed the fact.
Pope Francis will hold a historic first meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russian Orthodox Church, in Cuba next week, the BBC reports.
The Russian Orthodox Church said the “persecution of Christians” would be the central theme of the meeting.
Pope Francis will stop over in Cuba on his way to Mexico.
It is the first meeting of its kind since a schism between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity emerged in the 11th Century.
The meeting is due to take place at Havana airport, where the two leaders will sign a joint declaration.
Patriarch Kirill is due in Cuba for an official visit at the same time as Pope Francis’ stopover in Havana.
In a joint statement, the two churches said the meeting would “mark an important stage in relations between the two churches”.
They invited ” all Christians to pray fervently for God to bless this meeting, that it may bear good fruits.”
Since becoming Pope in 2013, Pope Francis has called for better relations between the different branches of Christianity.
Photo: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
– Investigative reporter Dawn Anahid MacKeen’s latest story is one her mother always wanted her to tell. It’s about her grandfather and how he survived the 1915 Armenian genocide in which 1.5 million Armenians living in modern-day Turkey were killed. (Turkey doesn’t recognize the slaughter as a genocide, but says they were the result of widespread conflict across the region.) In journals that became the seeds of MacKeen’s new book, The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey, her grandfather told the story of how he escaped a forced march through the desert.
Before she read those journals, MacKeen’s knowledge of her grandfather was limited to what her mother had shared. She tells NPR’s Ari Shapiro, “They were very sad stories of this man who was struggling across a desert and was just fighting for his survival and was so thirsty he had to drink his own urine, which is a very strange thing to hear as a child and it just sounded really gross. And of course it was history that I couldn’t comprehend until I was in my 30s and I could finally read his first-hand testimony.”
Interview Highlights
On her decision to retrace her grandfather’s steps through Turkey and the Syrian desert
I had to see the land that he wrote about. You know, the desert that he was driven across with his caravans, it became a prison to him because it was inhospitable and there weren’t many people around. And as I traveled from west to east and the land grew more stark — it was a hard moment to see that, to think of my grandfather outside in the elements. You know, at one point when he was in a makeshift camp in what is now Western Syria, a thousand people died from disease in just one month. So this was the kind of thing he was up against and he really had to summon heroic strength inside to have the courage to continue each day.
On visiting the Syrian city of Raqqa before it was controlled by ISIS and decades after her grandfather was there
My experience in Raqqa … was the complete opposite of what you’re hearing now from there. It was, in a way, a haven for me just like it was for my grandfather. … When I arrived there, I met this Bedouin sheikh and he took me into his home and gave me his daughter’s room and that night hosted this dinner on the Euphrates. And there were Armenians there, there were Bedouins, Arabs — everyone was around a table enjoying each other’s company. There wasn’t this religious divide or hatred that you see. And it just breaks my heart seeing what’s happening to Raqqa and also that many people are learning of Raqqa for the first time through this message of hate.
On finding the clan that had saved her grandfather in Raqqa
This sheikh also, when I met him, I told him about what happened to my grandfather. And the people in this region know what happened to the Armenians. These stories have been handed down in their families of, you know, the mass graves that have been in that area or the Armenians that were taken in by the different clans. And when I told this Bedouin sheikh in Raqqa that I wanted to find the clan that saved my grandfather’s life and it was somewhere in the region, this sheikh all of the sudden called someone else and this person came over and all of the sudden had two phone lines and started calling all over the region to try and find this clan. And it was an incredible moment for me to watch this happen because it was really a pipe dream to try to find this clan and all of the sudden they narrowed it down and they said, “We found them. Can you go tomorrow?” And I said, “Yes! Please, please, take me to them.”
On how the war in Syria has put that clan in the same position her grandfather was in
I do keep in touch with the clan that saved my grandfather’s life. And now, since the war began, communication has become really difficult but one of them has left the region and became a refugee just like my grandfather. … He made it to Europe and was part of the sea of refugees, you know, going … from Turkey to Greece. … And he’s trying to start his life anew there, just like my grandfather did when he came to [the U.S.] many years ago. …
I could never have predicted this. First of all, finding them was one of the most wonderful moments of my life. But then when the war broke out and one of them told me — dealing with famine and seeing corpses in the street — he said, “We now know what your grandfather went through.” … And it just — I don’t even know what to say. It’s heartbreaking because I don’t want anyone else to ever have to go through what my grandfather went through. … We have to stop having history repeat itself.
On what her grandfather did after the genocide
He came to New York with my mother and my aunt in 1930 and he opened a candy store on 133rd [Street] and Amsterdam [Avenue] and he worked around the clock. And then during World War II, he moved to Los Angeles and they kind of steadily started investing. He bought a few apartment buildings, and by the time he was in his 80s he was still climbing onto the roof and fixing things. … He achieved his dream in the United States and was always so happy to be here, he would play God Bless America on his accordion.
Borussia Dortmund are the most attended football team on the planet, according to ‘Sports Venues 2016’, with 1.36 million people coming through the gates at Westfalenstadion last season, Goal.com reports.
The average attendance of 80,410 is only bettered in the sporting world by Dallas Cowboys with 90,069, though the NFL outfit trail the Bundesliga side with an overall figure of 720,558 due to hosting less home games at the AT&T Stadium.
And with Thomas Tuchel’s BVB going strong in the Bundesliga once again, it doesn’t look like the famous Yellow Wall at the Westfalenstadion will be shrinking any time soon.
Photo: US Air Force
The finance chief of so-called Islamic State has been killed in air strikes by the US-led coalition, a US military spokesman has said, the BBC reports.
Muwaffaq Mustafa Mohammed al-Karmoush, aka Abu Salah, and two other senior leaders were killed in the strikes which took place in “recent weeks”.
No details were immediately given.
The coalition has been carrying out air strikes against IS militants in Iraq and Syria for over a year. One recently also killed an IS leader in Libya.
US military spokesman Col Steve Warren confirmed the deaths in a video call from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
Abu Salah is the code name for Muwaffaq Mustafa Mohammed al-Karmoush.
Col Warren called Abu Salah “one of the most senior and experienced members” of the militant group’s financial network.
On Twitter, Brett McGurk, special US presidential envoy for the global coalition to counter IS, said the three were killed “as part of the coalition campaign to destroy Isil’s (Islamic State’s) financial infrastructure”.
On Monday, the Pentagon confirmed a US air strike had killed a senior leader of the Islamic State group in Libya.
Abu Nabil died after an F-15 jet targeted a compound in the eastern city of Derna on 13 November, it said.
A group of organizations aimed at preventing genocide have welcomed the United Nations General Assembly’s designation of December 9 as theInternational Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.
On September 11 of this year, UN member states unanimously voted to establish this commemorative day and chose December 9 as it is the anniversary of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
“Slaughtering people not for anything they do, but simply for who they are – their national, ethnic, racial, religious, or political identity – is morally as bad as it gets,” commented Professor Gareth Evans, President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group and former Australian Foreign Minister. “The Genocide Convention, adopted on December 9, 1948, should have been a circuit breaker. It wasn’t. This commemorative day presents a moment to take stock of how far we have come – and have yet to go – in translating into reality the moral aspiration expressed seven decades ago.”
To mark the occasion, 100 LIVES will publish a with leading humanitarian and human rights organizations calling on the world to remember the millions who have been affected by the crime of genocide. The statement is co-signed by fellow organizations Not On Our Watch, the Enough Project, United to End Genocide, Foundation Rwanda, Survivors Fund, International Association of Genocide Scholars, International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (a Division of the Zoryan Institute), Armenian Genocide Museum Institute, and Waging Peace.
Genocide is an issue that transcends the bounds of any one religion, ethnic group, geography or era and the effects of this crime throughout history are still felt by its victims and their descendants. This year alone, the world observed the Armenian Genocide Centennial, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, the 50th anniversary of the Indonesian massacres and the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide. 100 LIVES and its partners remember the victims of these and all atrocities, continue to demand that governments protect citizens, and use this commemoration to honor those who intervened to save lives— often at great personal risk.
“As a descendant of a genocide survivor myself, I am grateful to those that continue to dedicate themselves to saving lives,” states Ruben Vardanyan, 100 LIVES co-founder. “I hope that this occasion will focus attention on the collective responsibility of governments to safeguard human lives, uphold the universal right to live with dignity, and support humanitarian work.”
Chairman of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (IIGHRS), Professor Roger W. Smith, commented, “The human cost of genocide and its wider consequences – mass migration of refugees, societal collapse and economic disruption – is far greater than the cost of early prevention. To save lives, states must expand their concept of national interest and act on their responsibility to protect.” IIGHRS is a signatory of the joint statement.