Author: Badalian Vardan

BOXER RATNAYAKE BEATEN, VIDANAGE FINISHES 16TH
Dinesh Weerawansa

Ceylon Daily News
13 August 2008
Sri Lanka

Boxer Anuruddha Ratnayake shattered Sri Lanak’s hopes when he went
down to Latin American silver medallist Robenilson Vieira in their
men’s 51kg flyweight category first round bout of the XX1X Olympic
Games here in Beijing today.

The Brazilian, making the full use of his height and long arms, took an
upper hand from the first round of the bout worked off at the Workers’
Gymnasium ring under lights. It was a blank point sheet during the
first minute of the round one before Robenilson came to the picture
with two calculated punches to lead 2-0 at the end of the first round.

Robenilson had a big advantage with his height in evading punches
from relatively small-made Sri Lankan.

The Brazilian kept his cool and boxed to his original strategy and
extended his lead to six points to one at the end of round two. Two
powerful left hooks by the Latin American Games fly weight silver
medallist saw Ratnayake trailing 2-9 at the end of round three.

It was a tall order if Ratnayake was to make any comeback in the fourth
round, which he opened with a seven-point deficit. Though the tussle
looked even during the first one minute of the fourth round, at least
three vital punches from Ratnayake went unnoticed. If the Lankan had
caught the attention of the judges during his most aggressive moments,
he would have got into a psychologically important position.

Nevertheless, the Brazilian was far superior and deserved to win on
points 13-3. Ratnayake was not at his brilliant best and looked off
colour. The Lankan did not get the ideal start he was expecting and
that put Robenilson in the driving seat from round two.

"It was sad that I could not play my normal game. I should have
done better. Unfortunately things did not go in the manner which I
expected," Ratnayake said after his first round debacle.

He said the height and long arms of the Brazilian gave his opponent
a distinct advantage.

"He made use of his height and arms to stretch fully and escape when
I was charging.

But that is no excuse. I did not box well," Ratnayake added.

But Ratnayake said his presence at the Olympic ring under the Lion
flag should open a new era in Sri Lankan boxing. "I think my journey to
the Olympic boxing ring should be an inspiration to all Lankan boxers
and all those who intend to take to the ring sport. I am ever thankful
to all Sri Lankans who wholeheartedly supported my journey," he added.

Young Ratnayake said the battle is not lost altogether. "This is a
good beginning and I will survive to fight for another day. I will
make use of this experience and plan my strategy to work towards the
2012 Olympic Games," a determined Ratnayake said.

Chef-de-Mission of the Sri Lanka contingent and ABASL President Dian
Gomes was a dejected man after Ratnayake’s defeat.

But a determined Gomes said Raynayake’s Olympic journey should open a
new era in Lankan boxing. "He did not play well today and was beaten
by a better opponent. We have no complaints. But this should be an
inspiration to all and I would like to see a few more Ratnayakes
making it to the 2012 Olympics," Gomes said.

Minister of Sports and Public Recreation and Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to
China Karunatillaka Amunugama were amongst the VVIPs at the Workers’
Gymnasium to see the Lankan boxer in action. Minister Lokuge is due
to return home tomorrow.

Vidanage finishes 16th There was a little bright spot for Sri Lanka in
the Olympic arena when star weightlifter Chinthana Vidanage finished
16th in the men’s 69kg category. Vidanage, who topped the Group C
with a total lift of 293kg yesterday, was overshadowed by 15 others
who competed under Group A and B in the men’s 69kg event today.

Having established three new Sri Lanka records to head Group C,
Vidanage was looking for a place within the top 20 lifters in
his weight category. Today, the Commonwealth Games gold medallist
fulfilled that dream when he secured the 16th place in the final
standings after the A and B group lifts.

China’s Hui Liao bagged the weightlifting gold of men’s 69kg event with
a total lift of 348kg, 55kg more than the Lankan lad from Polonnaruwa.

Last year’s World champion Liao had a snatch lift of 158kg and a clean
and jerk lift of 190kg. Vencelas Dabaya-Tientcheu of France (338kg)
and Itgran Gevorg Martirosyan of Armenia (338kg) bagged the silver
and bronze medals of this weight category.

"I felt very nervous at the very first attempt of both Snatch and Clean
and Jerk." said Liao, referring to his fail in these two attempts.

"There were unnecessary mistakes, fortunately I survived. Eventually
I got the gold medal,"

he said after his memorable feat. Favorite Lee Baeyoung of South
Korea, who took silver at Athens 2004, suffered cramps in both legs
in the Clean and Jerk and failed in all three attempts. China’s Shi
Zhiyong, defending champion in the Men’s 62kg Weightlifting category,
was another favorite who failed to make the podium.

Meanwhile, Russian Islam-Beka Albiev dominated Vitaliy Rahimov of
Azerbaijan in the final of the Men’s Greco-Roman 60kg wrestling event.

Albiev took the first period by 2-0. He then went on to win the
second period 4-0, leaving no room for Rahimov to respond. Albiev’s
best personal achievement in senior competition before this gold was
a bronze medal in the 2007 World Cup.

China’s Zhong Man claimed the gold medal in a 15-9 two-round bout in
the final of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Men’s Individual Sabre at
the Fencing Hall. Nicholas Lopez of France took home the silver. Thus,
Zhong became the first Chinese fencer in Olympic history to win
this event.

Hosts China continued to head the latest medals standings of the
Beijing Olympics. At the time of writing, China headed the latest
medals standings with 13 golds, three silver and four bronze medals.

USA is placed second with only seven gold, six silver and eight bronze
medals. In the third place is South Korea with five gold medals,
six silver and a bronze medal.

None of the Lankan Olympians will be seen in action on day five of
the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday.

But at the Water Cube on Thursday, Sri Lanka’s Daniel Lee will swim
in men’s 50m free style first round heats.

G. GHARIBDJANIAN: MILITARY EXPERTS DID NOT ARRIVE IN ARMENIA VIA AIRPLANES

Panorama.am
20:53 12/08/2008

According to rumors spread by the mass media an airplane with American
military experts arrived in "Zvartnots" airport, Armenia.

Gegham Gharibdjanian, the Deputy Foreign Minister, said to "Interfax"
news agency, "In these days a few special flights have been conducted
in the airports of Gyumri and Yerevan to transfer foreign citizens
from Georgia. Not a single airplane directed from Romania has made
a landing in Yerevan," said the Deputy Foreign Minister.

ARMROSGASPROM INVESTIGATING REASONS FOR RUSSIAN GAS SUPPLY REDUCTION IN ARMENIA

ARKA
Aug 12, 2008

YEREVAN, August 12. /ARKA/. ArmRosGasProm, subsidiary of the Russian
gas export monopoly Gazprom, is investigating the reasons for the
reduction of gas exports through the territory of Georgia to Armenia.

"We want to find out why the natural gas supplies to Armenia have
considerably reduced," ArmRosGasProm Press Secretary Shushan Sardaryan
said.

Russia daily supplies Armenia with 5mln cubic meters of natural
gas. "We do not know exactly how much gas is currently being exported
to Armenia," Sardaryan added.

She pointed out that the company has no information about the current
situation in the gas main.

Monopolist in Armenia’s gas supply market, the ArmRosgasprom CJSC
was established in 1997. The company’s capital amounts $580mln. Its
shareholders are the Gasprom OJCS (57.59% of shares), the RA Ministry
of Energy (34.7%) and the Itera Oil and Gas Company (7.71%).

TRAIN TO THE WESTERN WALL
Danny Adino Ababa

Ynetnews
Israel News
08.12.08, 12:17
Israel

Jerusalem Municipality holds secret meeting in which plans are unveiled
for extension of city’s light train to Dung Gate, just minute’s walk
from holy site; tunnel through Mt. Zion also proposed

Jerusalem’s new light train may reach the Western Wall, according to
a meeting held by the capital’s municipality, in the civil engineer’s
office. The meeting, which took place on June 25, was kept under
wraps for fear that its subject would enrage representatives of the
three faiths in the city.

Jerusalem’s leaders fear that the close proximity of the train’s path
to the Old City and the cemetery nearby may destabilize the delicate
balance between the religions, and invoke a protest fueled by local
aggravation.

The proposal for the train’s new path was offered as a solution to the
Old City’s chronic traffic congestion, specifically near the Western
Wall. Jerusalem Municipality’s transportation department prepared a
plan for the limitation of traffic within the Old City, in addition
to a plan for the improvement of public transport in the area.

However it didn’t take long to rule out all options other than the
train, which would circle the city’s walls until reaching the Dung
Gate, which is just one minute’s walk from the Western Wall. Architects
have planned for the train to pass through Mt. Zion, and an underground
tunnel has been planned for this purpose.

Construction on the new plan, which is to extend the route of the
already approved tracks, may last two to three years, and some of the
residents living close to the route may have to evacuate the area in
return for compensation.

The meeting was kept secret, but participants planned to announce
its conclusions before the media once the plans had been completed
and approved, in a press conference with the participation of
representatives of the Old City’s four quarters – Jewish, Muslim,
Christian, and Armenian.

IRAN, ARMENIA TO HOLD GAS TALKS

press tv
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:59:16 GMT

Tehran and Yerevan are scheduled to hold talks in a bid to remove
obstacles in the way of natural gas exports from Iran to Armenia.

Head of the gas export operation office of the National Iranian Gas
Company (NIGC), Rasoul Salmani, said on Monday that the talks would
take place in Armenia on August 20, 2008.

Tehran and Yerevan are currently constructing a 140-km pipeline to
carry natural gas from gas-abundant Iran to Armenia.

Once completed, the 220-million-dollar pipeline would provide Armenia
with an alternative to the gas it now imports from Russia. For each
cubic meter of Iranian gas, Armenia will return 3 kilowatt hours of
electricity to Iran.

In June, Armenia’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Armen
Movsisyan, said that Russian energy giant Gazprom would invest more
than 200 million dollars in the construction of the pipeline.

BLESSING OF THE GRAPES IN THE VALLEY

CBS 47
Aug 11, 2008
CA

Valley farmers take to the fields for this year’s grape harvest. Hoping
the weather stays on their side; one local church looks above for help.

Saint Paul Armenian Church held its annual Blessing of the Grapes
Festival on Sunday in Fresno. The event takes place each year on the
grounds of the California Armenian Home.

Jeff Markarian with St. Paul Armenian Church said, "We bless the
grapes that are used in the Devine Linergy service and bless all the
crops of the news years harvest too. And as part of that, we have a
picnic and it’s a special social event- chance to share our culture
with the community as well."

Close to a thousand people were on hand for traditional Armenian food
and dance.

A similar blessing will be held next Sunday at the California Armenian
home. The Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church will be holding
its annual grape blessing service and picnic and it too is open to
the public.

Sun-Sentinel.com, FL

August 11, 2008

Errol Flynn was missing character in novel set in Jamaica

Chauncey Mabe | Book Editor August 10, 2008

Errol Flynn invited himself into Margaret Cezair-Thompson’s life.

The author of a well-regarded first novel, The True History of
Paradise (1999), Cezair-Thompson was in the process of planning her
second, set in Port Antonio on the northeastern coast of Jamaica, when
she remembered the golden-age movie star had lived there during the
1940s.

"I had the setting and several of the characters in mind, especially
Ida, the mother, and May, the daughter," Cezair-Thompson says by phone
from Massachusetts, where she teaches at Wellesley College. "Then
Errol Flynn popped into my head."

Taking a closer look at Flynn’s life in Jamaica, she read books,
including his autobiography. She talked with people in Jamaica who had
known him. "He began to loom larger and larger until he seemed the
right father for May," she says.

The resulting novel, The Pirate’s Daughter ‘ Flynn played glamorous
pirates in Hollywood movies of the ’30s ‘ proved to be
Cezair-Thompson’s breakout book, reaching No. 3 on Amazon.com.uk after
being featured on Richard & Judy, a popular British afternoon talk
show. It didn’t sell quite so well in the United States, but it did
receive positive reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, Vogue, People magazine
and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, among others, when it first came
out last fall.

"I think the book has gone beyond people’s expectations," says
Cezair-Thompson, now touring in support of the softcover
edition. "It’s had an interesting journey. I can’t say enough about my
publisher, Unbridled Books. They’re a great group of people who have
great relationships with booksellers."

The story of May, the illegitimate child of the rakish (and sometimes
dastardly) Flynn and a teenage Jamaican beauty, The Pirate’s Daughter
is set against the historic changes that shook the island nation from
the late colonial times of the 1940s through independence in the 1960s
and into the social violence of the 1970s. May is abandoned first by
Flynn, who never acknowledges paternity, and then by her mother, who
leaves the island to seek fortune in New York.

Booksellers gave The Pirate’s Daughter a big boost, Cezair-Thompson
says, recommending it to their customers in this country. So did book
groups, who found the novel’s mix of literary and pop-fiction elements
appealing.

"I wanted to write something that people from all walks of life would
be able to enjoy," she says. "I never want to write a book that has to
be taught in the classroom to be understood."

Cezair-Thompson should know. At 51, she’s a well-established academic
who teaches those kinds of writers ‘ James Joyce, William Faulkner,
Virginia Woolf ‘ for a living.

Growing up in Jamaica, her ambitions lay with theater, not literature,
though she was an avid reader. At 19 she left for the United States,
where she studied drama until her senior year of college. Then she
came under the influence of Marjorie Housepian-Dobkin, an
Armenian-American novelist and historian who had best-selling books in
the 1950s.

"I took the class for fun," she says. "She thought I had something
original to say, and encouraged me. She was a great teacher in that
way teachers can sometimes be wonderful."

Turned down for graduate programs in both drama and creative writing,
Cezair-Thompson went instead for a master’s degree in literature ‘ a
choice she now says helped make her a better writer.

"I’m very happy I moved in an academic direction," she says. "It made
me a better reader, and a better writer. I have a confident sense of
what makes for good writing. You can start to see the flaws of even
great writers, and the challenges they faced. They’re not just figures
on pedestals. It’s very inspiring."

Readers often ask Cezair-Thompson if The Pirate’s Daughter is
autobiographical. She is of the same generation as May and lived
through the same Jamaican upheavals. But she says The True History of
Paradise is her autobiographical novel. In fact, she worked hard not
to repeat material from that book.

"In terms of the characters being completely made up, this book is not
at all autobiographical," Cezair-Thompson says. "But May wants to
write. She is growing up with all these literary interests she doesn’t
know what to do with. We didn’t have a lot of Caribbean literature on
the island. You grow up with the great English writers, and copy them
until you find your own voice. I drew on my own experience there."

Many readers, especially in book clubs, also demand to know why
Cezair-Thompson isn’t harder on Flynn, who, after all, was a notorious
libertine tried (and acquitted) for statutory rape after being accused
of seducing a 13-year-old girl. In some ways, Cezair-Thompson says,
she found it easier to sympathize with Flynn than with May.

"I was moved by the fact he really loved Jamaica," she says. "I felt
it was important to penetrate the tabloid bad-boy image, to show him
from [an] angle not seen before, to show an Errol Flynn who was tired,
fearful and troubled, and worried about aging. What came through my
research was a man not entirely happy with himself. I feel it’s up to
the reader to judge his actions."

Getting into the mind of a child proved a tougher challenge, says
Cezair-Thompson, the divorced single mother of a son.

"I have lots of close male friends," she says. "I wasn’t daunted by
writing in a male inner voice. But I can’t quite remember being a
little girl. And May is a boyish little girl. I studied the children
around me, especially my goddaughter, who was growing up as I wrote."

As a Jamaican-born novelist of rising stature, Cezair-Thompson says
she is always aware of her responsibility as a voice of her people.

"Really good fiction cannot be didactic, and I always try to stick to
the rules of good writing," she says. "I don’t want to offend
Jamaicans, but I also feel it’s important not to misrepresent the
country and its history. The violence of the ’70s, seeing Jamaicans
become fearful in their own country, is a hurtful memory for me. It’s
important to remember that and talk about it."

So far, she’s gotten little negative reaction.

"Jamaicans are a very vocal and down-to-earth people," Cezair-Thompson
says. "If I wrote things misrepresenting the country, they’d let me
know about it."

Chauncey Mabe can be reached at [email protected] or
954-356-4710.

IF YOU GO
Margaret Cezair-Thompson will read and discuss her novel of midcentury
Jamaica, The Pirate’s Daughter, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Books &
Books, Bal Harbour Shops, 9700 Collins Ave. Free; 305-864-4241 or
booksandbooks.com.

KAJARAN TO HOST THE FINAL STAGE OF SPORTING FESTIVAL

ARMENPRESS
Aug 7, 2008

YEREVAN, AUGUST 7, ARMENPRESS; On August 20-22 the town of Kajaran
in the southern province of Syunik will host the final stage of a
sporting festival dedicated to the 50-th anniversary of its foundation.

The press division of the Armenian Sports and Youth Issues Ministry
told Armenpress that teams from Yerevan, Kajaran and Nagorno-Karabakh
will participate in it.

The festival will feature 10 events – wrestling, weight lifting,
chess, jumping and others.

Some 2,587 people participated in the previous stages. The winners
will be awarded prizes and special certificates

ARMENIAN LANGUAGE RECEIVES STATE PROTECTION IN UKRAINE

PanARMENIAN.Net
07.08.2008 14:40 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Ukrainian Cabinet requested the Supreme Rada
for special state support for the Armenian and Gypsy languages,
reported Yerkramas.

Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Foreign AffairsVolodymyr Khandogiy said
that the government has approved a bill on introduction of amendments
in the law "On ratification of European charter of regional or minority
languages", which will be submitted to the Rada in the near future.

With the Rada’s ratification, 15 languages will be granted state
support.

ARMENIA DETERMINED TO BUILD RAILROAD TO IRAN

Interfax News Agency
Aug 1 2008
Russia

A railroad connecting Iran and Armenia will be constructed regardless
of whether the Abkhaz stretch of the Georgian railroad will be opened,
Armenian Transportation and Communications Minister Gurgen Sarkisian
said at a press conference on Friday.

"We are not going to wait for anyone and will start building,"
Sarkisian said.

Three optional projects for building the railroad to Iran are under
consideration now, and "there are no other problems but financing,"
Sarkisian said.

The cost of the construction will depend on the length of the railroad.

According to preliminary estimates, the most preferred option is the
construction of a railroad starting from the station of Gagarin and
passing through Gavar, Martuni, and Jermuk. In this case, its length
will be 397 kilometers. "This is the shortest and therefore the most
economically profitable direction," he said.

Eighty kilometers of this railroad should run through Iran.

Two other optional routes, the first one starting from the station
Yeraskh and the second from Vardenis, would be 443 and 449 kilometers
long respectively.

In any case, the project envisions the construction of an absolutely
new railroad, Sarkisian said.

Sarkisian had said earlier that the project was evaluated at $1.5
billion to $2 billion. In addition to Armenia, Iran and Russia also
expressed its desire to take part in the project.

Armenia currently has railroad services only with Georgia. The
commissioning of the Abkhaz stretch of the Georgian railroad should
help Armenia arrange cargo rail transportation to Russia. A railroad
connecting Armenia with Iran would turn Armenia into a transit country
in Iran’s trade with Russia and other countries.