ArmenPress, Armenia March 5 2018 From keyboard-less piano to 3D printed chess pieces – Armath lab students have their own production YEREVAN, MARCH 5, ARMENPRESS. The Armath engineering labs, which unite more than 5,000 school children from Armenia and Artsakh, have transformed from knowledge consumers to small manufacturers, sometimes even providing self-sustainability. ARMENPRESS presents the joint projects of coaches and students of Armath labs from Sevan, Vardenis, Talin and Devi schools. Pendants upon order: Designed by students, made by Armenia-made 3D printer Various themed pendants, such as car license plates or custom made ones, are made and sold in the Sevan Armath lab. The group which has more than 40 students design the pendants, which is later made by a 3D printer. The proceeds from the sales is used to acquire the printer’s filling material. “We also take into account the market demand, we take orders, we prepare the picture with the program and print it. We try to solve the self-sustainability issue, we use the sale proceeds to buy the filling material,” coach Hasmik Arakelyan says. Chess pieces and Christmas decorations with CNC device In Vardenis, Armath students created an Elephant-Puzzle, which is an intellectual game for children. Each puzzle piece depicts a letter from the English alphabet. “The design is entirely made by the children, and then the CNC device does the printing,” coach Mary Barseghyan says. The students of the lab also used the CNC device to make New Year’s decorations, and even chess pieces. Augmented reality app made by 14-year-old 14 year old Arman Barseghyan from Talin’s Armath lab founded the Zoomar AR app in collaboration with a friend, Vigen Khachatryan, also 14. The app is already available in Google Play and the iOS version will soon be available. “The essence of the program is that we add AR to the pages of children’s books, which includes interactive animated 3D models”, the children said. They already take orders from different organizations. “In the future we want to make reforms in education and include biology and physics book pages in our app and present it under AR. We plan to make a proposal to the education and science ministry”, the 14 year old said. Arman has decided to become a programmer and specialize in VR and AR. Armath and radio-engineering lab students come together over keyboardless piano idea Armath students of Vedi have joined forces with the students of the radio-engineering lab of the same city and created a piano without keyboards. It is a uniquely designed box, which plays from hand movements. It plays like a piano with assistance of infrared rays. Coach Orbel Khachatryan says the keyboardless piano is a genius invention, but the kids however think they’ve done a simple thing. English –translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
Author: Antranik Varosian
Sports: Mkhitaryan’s unfavorable rating in Arsenal, 4th defeat registered
MediaMax, Armenia
March 5 2018
Mkhitaryan’s unfavorable rating in Arsenal, 4th defeat registered
The starting lineup involved Henrikh Mkhitaryan. This was the 4th defeat of the team in Premier League.
According to British media, the Armenian midfielder registered only 5 defeats in 1,5 years in Manchester United.
So far Mkhitaryan was able to make 3 goal assists in the first home game of Arsenal.
ANCA Welcomes Australia’s NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to Washington
Australia’s NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian offering remarks at the ANCA welcoming reception hosted at The Aramian House
Hosts Leadership Meeting and Community Reception Honoring Visiting Premier
WASHINGTON—The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) rolled out an Armenian red carpet for New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklian during her visit to Washington, DC as part of Australia’s largest ever trade delegation to the United States.
During her official visit, Premier Berejiklian made time for a leadership meeting with the ANCA in their national headquarters, a community reception at The Aramian House, home to the ANCA’s youth training and career placement programs, and interviews with Voice of America and Armenian television stations.
In her remarks to a capacity crowd of ANCA supporters at The Aramian House, the Premier underscored that: “I am here in my capacity as the Premier of New South Wales, but I’m also here with you as someone who shares a common heritage of our Armenian culture and history. I want to thank you for the work you do on the ground here in Washington, DC, thank you for the warm reception you’ve given me this morning, and please know that communities like yours all around the world support your activities. We often look to DC and take great strength from what you’re doing to support Armenian communities around the world.” She closed with an invitation to the gathered youth to visit Australia, gain valuable international foreign policy experience as interns with her office, and maybe even volunteer for her re-election campaign.
“We were honored to host Premier Berejiklian, a great leader in both the Australian and Armenian traditions,” said ANCA Communications Director Elizabeth Chouldjian. “Her visit to the ANCA reminds us, in very powerful and personal ways, that – as Armenians, diverse and dispersed across the globe – we remain informed by our common history, inspired by our shared values, and united in our enduring devotion to the future of the Armenian nation.”
The grand-daughter of Armenian Genocide survivors, Berejiklian grew up an active member in Australia’s vibrant Armenian community, attending Hamazkaine’s Saturday School, participating in Homenetmen scouts and basketball, and later taking leadership roles in the Armenian Youth Federation and Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC-AU).
Berejiklian joined the Liberal Party in 1993 and was first elected to represent Willoughby in the NSW Parliament in 2003, becoming NSW Transport Minister in 2011, Treasurer in 2015 and ascending to the position of NSW Premier in 2017, only the second woman to hold that post.
Alongside her successes in each of these positions, Berejiklian has been instrumental in representing Australian Armenian community concerns, advocating for state and federal recognition of the Armenian Genocide, supporting Republic of Artsakh freedom, and expanding Australia-Armenia ties.
Vardan Mnatsakanyan’s body found in river
On February 23, at 10:50 pm, a call was received to the Mashtots Police Department that they were dead body in the river under the Kiev bridge in Yerevan.
The operative group, which had arrived, revealed that the dead body was Vardan Mnatsakanyan’s body, who was in search by Erebuni Division of the Police since January 30.
External examination did not reveal any traces of violence on the body.
A forensic medical examination was appointed.
An investigation is underway.
Turkish scholar details where Armenian Genocide began
Pan Armenian, Armenia
Feb 7 2018
February 7, 2018 – 15:49 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – During the spring lecture series Tuesday, February 6 night, Dr. Yektan Türkyılmaz presented his first lecture for the Armenian Studies Program in which he detailed the development and downfall of Van Vaspurakan Armenians leading to the Armenian Genocide, The Collegian says.
Türkyilmaz is a Turkish scholar of Kurdish origin associated with Duke University.
Türkyılmaz said he wanted to challenge the conventional understanding of history in regard to Van Vaspurakan Armenians. Instead of focusing solely on violence, he highlighted Van as a city full of art, architecture, heroism and resistance.
“I tried to offer an authentic interpretation to the history and memory of Van Vaspurakan in which Armenians are always active agents,” Türkyılmaz said.
Türkyılmaz’s lecture, “Van Vaspurakan Armenians: From Renaissance to Resistance and Genocide,” was his first lecture as part of the Henry S. Khanzadian Kazan visiting professor endowment. The endowment allows an internationally-recognized scholar in Armenian studies to teach a modern Armenian history course at Fresno State and present three lectures at the university.
“[Van] Vaspurakan was and has been a social, cultural, intellectual and economic network that connected three empires – Ottoman, Russian and Persian,” Türkyılmaz said.
The interconnectedness allowed the modernization of Van Vaspurakan in the 19th century, Türkyılmaz said, which included the arrival of missionaries and the construction of schools for boys and girls.
“The region prospered significantly thanks to leather and furnishing industries and their trade,” he said. “The same period also witnessed the in-pouring of social activists, such as missionaries and foreign consulates.”
Türkyılmaz said that the city of Van Vaspurakan was not a passive recipient of these new ideas, but rather inspired all major Armenian culture political centers and locations elsewhere.
This intellectual transformation would lead to early pioneering of Armenian nationalist organizations, including the Armenakan party and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, among others, Türkyılmaz said.
Growing tensions along the fault line of Russian southern caucasus and northern Iran to Istanbul to Van Vaspurakan were contributing factors to the genocide, according to Türkyılmaz.
“Van [Vaspurakan] is the first place in the empire that intercommunal coexistence entirely and violently collapsed,” he said. “Van [Vaspurakan] was the epicenter of the Armenian Genocide, the place where it incubated.”
Türkyılmaz describes the Armenians of Van Vaspurakan as “victims who rejected victimhood” and remained connected through tribal networks, revolutionary activism, smuggling and business despite borders and governmental terrorism.
“The Armenian defense of Van [Vaspurakan] in April 1915 serves as a rare [example] that a community under existential trek amalgamated and intra-communal diversity blurred,” Türkyılmaz said.
It is not a surprise for me. Hermine Naghdalyan will not be part of the PACE delegation
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The fact that I will not continue my activities in the PACE delegation was not a surprise to me, that agreement was there a long time ago. Hermine Naghdalyan, member of the National Assembly, former member of the Armenian delegation to the PACE, said this in a conversation with VERELQ.
It should be noted that at today’s meeting of the National Assembly, the question of replacing Hermine Naghdalyan with another member of the RPA, Karine Achemyan, as part of the Armenian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, was discussed.
“During the formation of the new parliament, a decision was made that I will lead the OSCE parliamentary delegation, but with the agreement and request of our leadership, I worked for one session in parallel as part of the PACE delegation. This was due to the fact that there were changes in the composition of the delegation, new people were also needed, and there was a need for people with long-term, high commitment, and a decision was made that for one session I will continue my work in parallel in both the PACE and OSCE delegations, until the new delegation is formed in January,” explained Hermine Naghdalyan.
Thus, he added, this is not a surprise decision, especially for him or made by the NA leadership.
“I don’t know for whom and how, but for me and for our management, the agreement was like that,” our interlocutor added.
It should be noted that Hermine Naghdalyan was part of the PACE delegation for many years. And on February 25, 2011, he was elected chairman of the PACE Economic and Development Committee.
Book: Armenian-Japanese center publishes book of Haiku
News.am, Armenia
Jan 3 2018
Armenian-Japanese center publishes book of Haiku Armenian-Japanese center publishes book of Haiku
11:34, 03.01.2018
YEREVAN. – Armenian-Japanese Scientific, Educational and Cultural Center Hikari has published the edition of the Japanese haiku. Altogether 36 Armenians and 35 Japanese participated in the creation of the collection, following Japanese delegation’s visit on August 6, head of the center Karine Piliposyan told Armenian News – NEWS.am.
“We are two nations who have a right to speak. It was decided to embody it in the form of a book, and we have succeeded,” Karine-san said.
Karine Piliposyan noted that every participant should receive a copy.
“If a 5-year-old from Hiroshima writes a haiku, sends it to us, and is waiting for a book, we have no right to deceive him,” said Karine.
“Of course, you can wrap books in a beautiful cover and send by mail,” said the head of the center, adding “But, the gifts from the heart should be passed from hand to hand, with the words: “This is a small gift from the heart.”
According to Karine-san, the project must continue. There are free pages at the end of the book, where everyone can add a haiku.
Among the authors are Japanese and Armenian ambassadors, Eiji Taguchi and Hrant Poghosyan.
Noose is tightening around Christian minority in Turkey
La Croix International, France
Thursday
Noose is tightening around Christian minority in Turkey
The Syrian Orthodox Church is condemning the Presidency of Religious Affairs in Turkey for seizing 50 churches and monasteries in the southeast of the country. This is happening in the context of a hardening of the policies of the ruling AKP party and is weakening, even more, the already fragile position of a Christian minority deprived of all legal rights.
The ancient Syrian Orthodox Monastery of Mor Gabriel has been subjected to constant and unfair legal attacks since 2008. It has now fallen under the control of the all-powerful Diyanet, which governs Islamic Turkey (99.8% of the population).
The Mor Gabriel Monastery was founded in 397 by the ascetic Mor Shmu’el (Samuel) on the Tur Abdin plateau, “the mountain of the servants of God”, in southeastern Turkey.
This sacred site of Eastern Christianity is one of the 50 churches and monasteries that have been seized by the Diyanet, according to Kuryakos Ergün, the Chairman of the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation.
“We are in the process of identifying the properties that have already been seized,” Ergün told the Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Argos. “We have so far filed lawsuits with regard to twenty property titles, and we’re going to do the same for thirty more.”
A legal marathon
This legal struggle goes back to 2008. In that year, an updating of the land registry requalified 250 hectares within the Monastery’s boundaries as “forests”, on the grounds that they were not “cultivated”.
What followed was a long series of lawsuits, each one lost because of false accusations: Christian proselytism, the supposed existence of a mosque under the monastery’s foundations – even though it was built well before the advent of Islam.
Now, it’s the administrative change of Mardin Province to a “metropolitan municipality” that is serving as the excuse for the seizing of property. The authorities set up a “Committee of Liquidation” in order to redistribute any property that no longer has a legal entity.
Initially transferred to the Treasury, the 50 churches and monasteries are now under the control of the Presidency of Religious Affairs.
The increasing harshness of the Islamic-Conservative authorities.
These developments are occurring in the context of an increasing hardening of the policies of the Islamic-Conservative President Erdogan and his AKP party, in power since 2002.
A law passed in 2002 supposedly opened the way for the recovery of about a hundred properties seized from minorities since the creation of modern Turkey by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923. This should have allowed the restitution of goods and properties confiscated by the State from non-Muslim minority foundations.
Since then, however, this has come to a dead end. Ever-decreasing Christian communities are increasingly oppressed by the State and by a society that is being re-Islamized.
In its 15 years in power, the AKP has thus ground away at the secular principles that were defended tooth and nail by the Kemalists, such as the prohibition of the veil in universities and government offices.
This year, just before Easter, the Turkish President even planned to pray with members of his Party and Islamic clerics at Saint-Sophia. This great Christian Basilica, built in 537, became a mosque under the Ottoman Empire’s rule. It was transformed into a museum by Ataturk in 1935.
Now, it is a symbol that is increasingly coveted by Erdogan’s Islamist government.
More recently, on Thursday 22 June, Mehmet Görmez, the President of the Diyanet, participated in a Muslim prayer service that was broadcast by State television.
Christians deprived of legal status
Most Christians in Turkey (0.1% of the population) do not have any legal status. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which gave rights to non-Muslim minorities, recognized only minority groups of Armenian, Greek Orthodox, and Jewish origin.
Syrian Orthodox Christians (whose numbers have fallen from 70,000 in the 1970s to about 2,000 today) and Roman Catholics (between 10,000 and 15,000) are therefore excluded. They can only battle the courts to try to keep or to recover property confiscated from them by the State.
Similarly, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople and spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians, has been fighting for the Greek-Orthodox Seminary of Halki to be re-opened, forty years after it was closed.
The collapse of Christianity’s presence in Turkey over the last century
At the beginning of the last century, Turkey itself was home to the largest Christian population in the Middle East: 20% of the population. Now, there are only 80,000 Christians (of all denominations).
The Armenian genocide of 1915 and departure of a huge number of Greek Orthodox Christians in the early 1920s largely account for the collapse of Christianity’s presence in Turkey.
Although the Christian minority in this country is not being subjected to the same degree of violence as in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, Christians and intellectuals have nonetheless been assassinated during the past few years.
Those killed include the Catholic priest, Andrea Santoro in 2006; the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007, and the Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, Mgr Luigi Padovese, in 2010.
Needless to say, investigations into these deaths are going nowhere.
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Armenian parliament’s vice-speaker invites Latvian MPs to visit his country
LETA, Latvia December 15, 2017 Friday Armenian parliament's vice-speaker invites Latvian MPs to visit his country RIGA, Dec 15 (LETA) - It is important to strengthen parliamentary cooperation between Latvia and Armenia, Latvian parliament vice-speaker Inese Libina-Egnere (Unity) told the Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia, Eduard Sharmazanov, during the meeting in Riga. Sharmazanov thanked the Latvian representatives for strengthening parliamentary relations and invited the Latvian lawmakers to visit Armenia, the Latvian parliament's press service said. This year Latvia and Armenia mark 25 years since establishment of diplomatic relations, therefore this is a good time to intensify parliamentary cooperation, Libina-Egnere said. The vice-speakers of both parliaments discussed the role of parliamentary contacts in promoting closer cooperation also in other areas. Latvian lawmakers welcomed signing of the EU-Armenia Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement on November 24. Sharmazanov said the agreement demonstrated Armenia's commitment to democracy and human rights and the institutional reforms it had implemented. Internal political developments in Latvia and Armenia as well as regional developments were also discussed during the meeting. The Armenian delegation also met with the members of the Latvian parliamentary committee on European affairs and the group of Latvian lawmakers for parliamentary cooperation with Armenia.
Axe murderer Ramil Safarov promoted to higher military rank
Category
Region
Ramil Safarov, the Azerbaijani serviceman infamous for the horrendous murder of Armenian serviceman Gurgen Margaryan while the latter was sleeping, has been promoted to a higher military rank.
According to Azerbaijani media reports, Safarov has been promoted to Lt. Colonel from Major.
During a NATO training seminar in Budapest in 2004, Safarov broke into Margaryan’s room at night and axed him to death while Margaryan was asleep.
After a long lasting court proceeding, the Azerbaijani officer was convicted to serve a life sentence, without the possibility of parole for 30 years. The Hungarian court numerously stated that Safarov’s extradition to Azerbaijan was impossible, but in 2012, Safarov was extradited. Upon arriving to Azerbaijan, President Aliyev immediately pardoned the murderer and promoted to a higher military rank. The murderer was even given eight years of back pay.
On the same day, Armenia severed diplomatic relations with Hungary.