Newly minted Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio partied so hard after his big win he reportedly left his Oscar at a bar.
He attended the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, followed by Ago restaurant in WeHo.
Long-time pal Tobey Maguire was there along with Leo’s mates Vincent Laresca, Lukas Haas and nightclub honcho, Richie Akiva.
captured the moment a man ran out after Leo’s car with his Oscar, as if he’d forgotten it.
On February 29, on the sidelines of the 31st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian met Philip Ruddock, Australia’s Special Envoy for Human Rights.
Edward Nalbandian and Philip Ruddock touched upon the issues of tightening of cooperation within international organizations.
During the meeting, joint steps towards the development of bilateral relations were discussed, importance attached to organization of high-level visits.
The sides commended the role of the Armenian community in Australia in the expansion of bilateral cooperation.
At the meeting, thoughts were exchanged on regional issues and ways to resolve them.
The photography exhibition “Sınırda” (On the Border), featuring a total of 49 black and white photographs by three young photographers from Koç University’s Photography Club (KUSHOT), will be on display at Istanbul Archeology Museum’s Assos Hall until March 20, reports.
Students Hüseyin Karabacak, Orhun Şener and Çağatay Gürbay, whose paths crossed “on the border,” explore the borders of life in the eastern part of Turkey, as well as people and their voices, faces and feelings from the eastern province of Kars to Armenia’s Yerevan and Gyumri provinces. Curated by academician Laleper Aytek of Koç University, the exhibition reveals the photographers’ journey to the unknown. “On the Border” displays various layers in the society, which were formed as an expression of collective memory.
Photo: Russian Emergency Situations Ministry
The Russian airliner that crashed in Sinai in October 2015 was downed by terrorists to harm Egypt’s tourism industry and ties with Russia, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Sisi said Wednesday, Sputnik News reports.
“Has terrorism ended? No it has not, but it will if we unite. Did the person behind the plane crash aim to hit just the [Egyptian] tourism industry? No, the intention was to harm relations with Russia, Italy and all other countries,” Sisi said in his opening remarks at a Cairo conference.
The statement was the first confirmation by Egyptian authorities, saying that the Russian-operated A321 had been brought down by terrorists.
On October 31, a Russian-operated airliner carrying 224 people crashed in the Sinai Peninsula en route from the seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg.
On 22 February NKR President Bako Sahakyan signed a decree, awarding writer and Armenian studies expert Kim Bakshi with the “Gratitude” medal for substantial contribution to the popularization of the Artsakh’s cultural heritage and in connection with the 85th birthday, Central Information Department of the Office of the Artsakh Republic President reports.
Photo: Reuters
US warplanes have carried out attacks on militants from the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Libya, killing at least 30 people, the BBC reports.
The strikes hit an IS training camp and “likely” killed a senior Tunisian extremist leader, US officials said.
Noureddine Chouchane is linked to two attacks in Tunisia last year, including an attack that killed 30 Britons.
The IS group has operated in Libya for about a year and the US estimates it has up to 6,000 fighters there.
Libya remains in chaos more than four years after the overthrow of former leader Muammar Gaddafi, and is being fought over by a number of groups, including the self-styled IS.
The mayor of Sabratha said that a building in the city, west of the capital Tripoli, had been hit.
He put the death toll at 41, and said the majority of those killed were Tunisians.
Meretz chairman MK Zehava Galon charged Wednesday that Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party is getting financial support from Azerbaijan government officials in return for advancing Baku’s political and financial interests in Israel, reports.
According to Galon, Yisrael Beiteinu is supporting the interests of the Azeri national fuel company and has been actively working to prevent Israel from officially recognizing the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I, because of Azerbaijan’s territorial feud with Armenia.
Galon said that she has filed a complaint on the matter to Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit, along with evidence of her claims. Party chairman Lieberman vehemently denied Galon’s allegations, saying “not a word of what Galon said is true.”
Galon made the statement in the Knesset Wednesday while condemning Yisrael Beiteinu’s support of the so-called “transparency bill,” which primarily targets left-wing NGOs that get funding from foreign governments. Galon charged that Lieberman’s own party benefited from Azeri government money.
“You are the foreign agents of the Azeris,” she said. “You are getting benefits from them; you have set up organizations through which you get money from them. You set up the organization called AZIZ, you are part of the management of AZIZ.
“Knesset colleagues, the AZIZ organization, the Israel-Azerbaijan International Association, serves as a financial and organization platform for Yisrael Beiteinu, and is funded by Azeri government officials. You are party of AZIZ’s management in a revolving door fashion; whoever isn’t an MK or a minister is part of AZIZ’s management.
“Avigdor Lieberman, when he was foreign minister, attended a conference funded by the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, the same company that a year before Lieberman helped get involved in oil and gas drilling off the Israeli coast. This company got a five percent share, and it’s funded by a foundation headed by the president of Azerbaijan,” said Galon.
She added that former Yisrael Beiteinu MK Faina Kirschenbaum “named a street in Israel after the father of Azerbaijan’s great dictator.” The Meretz leader also accused Lieberman and his party of “working to prevent the recognition of the Armenian genocide because you are envoys of the Azerbaijan government and because of Nagorno-Karabakh. You are getting millions from Azeri sources through the fund you’ve set up and you dare to speak of and demand transparency from civic society groups. You are a corrupt gang and now you are seeking to work against civic society organizations.”
Lieberman categorically denied Galon’s claims, saying, “In this case, as usual, there is not a word of truth in what Zehava Galon is saying. MK Galon, who was questioned for hours by the police [in 2001 on suspicion of financial irregularities in a peace center she ran] and whose case was closed for lack of evidence, has turned lies and libel into a way of life. Even Meretz doesn’t deserve such a shallow and deceitful leader like Zehava Galon. In any case, every lie by Zehava Galon against me and Yisrael Beiteinu is a big compliment.”
– When Armenian soccer club Ararat Yerevan FC kicks off Thursday night against the Fresno Fuego at Chukchansi Park, it’s not just another preseason exhibition.
For Ernest Hekimian, 69, it’s a heartwarming salute and reminder of his days with the Fresno Ararat Soccer Club.
The year was 1970 and Hekimian was a 24-year-old striker eager to play soccer.
But as a newcomer to the San Joaquin Valley, emigrating from Soviet Russia and eventually settling in Fresno, he was left searching for that missing piece of home.
“I was asking some Armenian guys if they had a soccer team,” Hekimian said. “They had a league, they said, but they didn’t have an Armenian soccer team.”
So Hekimian made one and named it after his favorite club from the motherland: Ararat Yerevan FC.
“I chose the name because (Ararat Yerevan) was a good team, a very good team. Other villages and cities had clubs but none stronger than them,” Hekimian said.
Fresno Ararat rose through the ranks of the San Joaquin Valley Soccer League’s senior division until the club’s end in 1989.
The team was mostly coached by the late Edward Baladjanian, a visionary for the city’s youth soccer programs alongside Harold Young.
“I loved him like an older brother,” Hekimian said. “He helped a lot. We had practices in the rain, and even though he was sick, he was always out there.”
Baladjanian died in 1995, but his legacy lives on in the name of the Fresno Ararat Soccer Club, which won SJVSL titles 1977-78, ’80-’81 and ’82-’83.
In 1974, the team made an impressive run for an amateur state title, reaching the championship of the Division II Northern California Soccer Football Association.
Ararat eventually fell to Juventus Soccer Club of the Peninsula League in San Francisco.
The Fresno side fielded just two American-born players in David Hollingsworth and Greg Brittan. The rest were from all over the globe, not just Armenia, according to a 1974 Fresno Bee article: Hekimian, who was known on the field by his middle name Massis, was born in France; Yussef Aibaseeri, Kuwait; Hagop Der Boghossian, Neshian Soghomonian, Hampig Kasparian and Kaled Skuate, all from Syria; Herman Murganyan, Turkey; Fayez Shahian, Palestine; Ahamed Shomroukh from Lebanon; and Mike Ross from Scotland.
It wasn’t always about results. It was about an atmosphere created every Sunday on the soccer fields in Fresno, Tulare, Hanford and other cities around the Valley.
Hekimian’s son, Alex, 42, remembers vividly those afternoons at Romain Playground, where he would order a pita bread sandwich from one of the many food trucks and sit on the grass to watch his father play.
“It was a Sunday thing like people go to church, we’d go to soccer,” Alex Hekimian said. “It’s no joke. There was nothing else to do. It was life. Soccer was life. That’s what came first in the family.”
Holmes and Romain playgrounds were the hot spots of amateur soccer in Fresno and the sidelines would fill with hundreds of spectators – mostly the friends and families of the coaches and players.
Each team – such as Fresno Oro, Mexico, Fresno Internationals, Académica from Hanford and more – had its own rich history.
Jaime Ramirez, the Fresno Pacific men’s soccer coach who also was the Fuego’s first coach from 2003-07, remembers playing with Fresno Ararat on Sundays and the impact it had on him as a 19-year-old freshly graduated from Clovis High.
He played five years with Ararat, at the same time as his playing career at Fresno Pacific.
“It helped me make the transition from high school youth into adult soccer that eventually propelled me into the kind of soccer player I became. It was very competitive,” Ramirez said.
But as much as the personal growth, he remembers the impact the SJVSL clubs had in the region.
“It laid a foundation of soccer in this community,” he said. “It was the golden era of soccer in the San Joaquin Valley. It was a beginning point that, in an amateur way, professionalized the sport in the area.”
It’s been more than 40 years since Ararat Yerevan FC last visited Fresno. In 1974, the club played an exhibition against Mexican side Jalisco in front of a sellout crowd at Ratcliffe Stadium. It was part of a three-stop California tour for Ararat Yerevan FC, which was celebrating its 1973 Soviet Cup championship.
“It was packed,” Ernest Hekimian recalled. “There was no place to walk.”
This week’s return visit by the team sparked fond memories of that visit, as Hekimian ruffled through old newspaper clips and photos from that day.
“It was very exciting. I was following them like a little kid,” he said.
But most of all, it was the the beautiful game and the joy it brought to him and his brothers on the soccer field.
“It was pleasure and happiness to bring the Armenian young men together, to do something together we did back home. We were all so happy.”
“Soccer,” Hekimian added, “it made Fresno home.”
Discussion of the situation in Armenia is impossible without a clear assessment of the influence of the external world, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said at a meeting with representatives of the legislative, executive and judiciary bodies.
“Armenia is part of the global economic system; therefore, it cannot avoid the impulses of the global market. It does not mean, however, that we have to put up with all this,” the President said.
“The concerns that we’ll not live well as long as the Karabakh issue remains unsolved and unless Turkey lifts the blockade, are unacceptable,” he added.
“All of us are aware of the position of the Turkish and Azerbaijani authorities. However, the fact is that their policy of the past 25 years has not produced the result they would like to see. They have tried to speak to us from the position of threat, imposition and force. Speaking to us that way will produce no results just as it has not produced any up until now,” the President noted.
“Negotiations on the settlement of the Karabakh issue continue. Our position is unchanged: the Artsakh issue should be solved through the self-determination of its people. All other questions are subordinate and will find their logical and just solution parallel to the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. No issue will be solved, unless the status of Artsakh is determined,” he added.
President Sargsyan said he sees no perspective for any advancement in the relations with Turkey.
“We are developing good-neighborly relations with two other neighbors –Georgia and Iran. Obviously, we face no problem here. The cooperation with these countries is important to us, and we’ll keep working with Tehran and Tbilisi in the same spirit,” he stated.
“Our foreign policy is predictable and has always been void of any adventurism. We have always stood for development of relations with everyone based on mutual respect, trust and interest,” the President said.
He added that it’s time to build upon that solid basis. “I have instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and all diplomatic missions to work with greater vigor to advance Armenia’s economic interests.”
The Al-Nusra Front has destroyed the churches in the Armenian populated village of Al-Ghanimeh to the north of Lattakia, reports, quoting the Lebanese Al-Manar TV.
Footage shows that the Armenian and Evangelical Churches in the village have been destroyed, the cemeteries have been desecrated.
“The roots of this evil come from Turkey, they have destroyed churches. The rebels follow the example of Turks, who have no religion,” says a man, who visited Al-Ghanimeh after the Syrian forces pushed the terrorists back from the village.