Author: Chatinian Lara

WORK ON ARMENIAN CHURCH WINDING DOWN
By Emanuel Parker Staff Writer

Whittier Daily News, CA

July 23 2007

PASADENA – A flurry of activity and noise surrounds St. Gregory the
Illuminator Armenian Apostolic Church as dozens of workers scramble
to meet a September deadline to complete a massive renovation project.

Construction crews unloaded trucks stacked with marble floor tiles
Friday, while other workers hauled sacks of cement, fused metal parts
with torches and noisily hammered steel pieces into place.

Scheduled to be completed two years ago, the sanctuary is now on track
to be consecrated Sept. 8 and 9. On Oct. 1, His Holiness Karekin II,
Catholicos of All Armenians and head of the worldwide Armenian Church,
will visit St. Gregory, 2215 E. Colorado Blvd., to consecrate the
main altar.

The Rev. Baret Yeretzian, who was recently appointed to head the
church, is charged with making sure the sanctuary is finished on time.

"Well, management, of course, and the financial situation – things
like this have been the main reason for the delay," he said. "It
should have been finished almost two years ago. But it wasn’t, so I’m
the new pastor. I’m working very, very hard to make sure we (meet)
the new deadline."

Construction began in 2005 and was scheduled to be completed by year’s
end. The original budget was $2.2 million, but Yeretzian said the
final cost will be nearly $5 million.

But, he said, for Pasadena’s Armenian population of between 25,000
and 30,000 residents, it is worth it.

"The Armenian church is the fortress of our faith," he said. "Without
the Armenian church, the Armenian people would not survive. It’s
linked, intermingled together – the church and our people."

Designed by John Byram of Pasadena, St. Gregory’s will be the
largest Armenian church in Southern California once the renovation
is completed. Its dome will stand 94 feet high, second only in height
to the one atop City Hall. It will be crowned with a 7-foot-tall cross.

Original plans called for a 16,000-square-foot building, but Yeretzian
said the finished structure will be slightly smaller than that.

The church has been in Pasadena since 1948, first on Michigan Avenue
and then at the Colorado Boulevard location on the corner of Craig
Avenue.

St. Gregory has a core membership of several hundred worshippers, but
annual celebrations attract visitors from as far away as San Bernardino
and Fresno, swelling attendance to between 1,500 and 2,000 people.

BEA URGES DEEPER A320 CRASH PROBE

Flight International
July 17, 2007

More detailed study into the factors behind last year’s Armavia
Airlines Airbus A320 crash near Sochi, Russia is needed, according to
the French accident investigation agency the BEA in comments that it
has appended to the final report. The aircraft, inbound from Yerevan,
Armenia, crashed on 3 May 2006 during a go-around manoeuvre ordered
by the Sochi approach controller at night in bad weather. The BEA
comments suggest the pilots and the approach controller were working
according to different rulebooks, and the misunderstandings and
surprise generated by this was a major contributor to the accident,
in which all 113 people on board died.In March, investigators from the
CIS Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) concluded: "While performing
the climb with the autopilot disengaged, the captain, being in a
psycho-emotional stress condition, made nose-down control inputs due
to the loss of pitch and roll awareness."

Poor crew resource management also contributed, says the report,
because of the co-pilot’s failure to monitor the flight performance
parameters.The BEA is in broad agreement with the MAK report’s causal
and technical findings, but its ideas for further action differ. MAK
has taken a traditional approach, listing the mistakes made and
recommending specific fixes for each one. The BEA says the reasons
for the mistakes need to be better understood and suggests detailed
checks on training procedures and standard operating procedures as
practised by Armavia. When the controller told the crew to abandon the
approach because of the weather, he instructed the crew to carry out a
climbing turn to the right, but did not explain this nor use standard
terminology. The BEA believes the captain’s "psycho-emotional state"
was the result of the unexpected instruction to abort. It says the
crew did not expect any more disturbances after the aircraft had been
cleared to land. The order to stop the descent, which arrived 46s
later, "was thus completely unexpected and ran counter to the pilots’
mental representation of the situation. This destabilised the crew,
already annoyed [with] the controller, in particular the captain,
who reacted to this instruction rapidly and, it appears, without
developing any strategy."

FIRST EXPERT MEETING ON THE FEASIBILTY STUDY OF BUILDING OIL REFINERY
IN ARMENIA IS ENCOURAGING

YEREVAN, JULY 20, NOYAN TAPAN. The first meeting of expert groups
created to perform feasibility study of building an oil refinery in
Armenia is encouraging, Minister of Energy of the of Armenia Armen
Movisian said on July 20. He told the journalists that a concrete
working schedule has been worked out, according to which, the next
meeting of the groups will take place shortly.

A. Movsisian informed the reporters that on September 19-20 a
trilateral meeting of the representatives of the Ministry of Energy
of Armenia, Ministry of Oil and Gas of Iran and the Russian company
Gazprom will be held. During the meeting all the problems connected
with the construction of the oil refinery will be discussed.

IRAN FM IN YEREVAN TO ATTEND ECONOMIC SESSION

IranMania News, Iran
July 20 2007

LONDON, July 20 (IranMania) – Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki arrived in Yerevan, Armenia, on Friday and was welcomed by his
Armenian counterpart Wartan Oskanian and a number of other Armenian
officials, IRNA reported.

A member of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Reza
Talainik and a number of foreign ministry officials are accompanying
Mottaki in his one-day visit.

Mottaki would be the head of Iranian side to the seventh Tehran-
Yerevan Joint Economic Cooperation Commission session, that is going
to open shortly in Yerevan. Armenian energy minister Armen Movssisyan
would reportedly head the Armenian side in the session.

MILITARY HARDWARE FROM RUSSIA BASE IN BATUMI MOVED TO RUSSIA

ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
July 19, 2007 Thursday 07:29 AM EST

A train carrying 700 tons of military hardware and property from the
Russian military base in Batumi left on Thursday Batumi for Russia,
an officer from the Russian base command told Tass.

The train travels across the Georgian-Azerbaijani border. According
to the officer, this year this is the tenth train with hardware and
property from the Batumi base going to Russia. On July 26, another
train will go to Russia and in August four trains will withdraw
Russian military hardware to the Russian base in Gyumri (Armenia).

In line with Russian-Georgian agreements, the base in Batumi will be
shut down before October 1, 2008.

As for the Russian military base in Akhalkalaki, its facilities
were handed over to the Georgian Defence Ministry late in June. All
armaments and military hardware were moved in 2005-2007 to the Russian
military base in Gyumri and to Russia.

SAAKASHVILI SPEAKS OF S.OSSETIA

Daily Georgian Times, Georgia
Civil Georgia
July 18 2007

Georgia is engaged in a battle "to win the hearts and minds" of
the local population in South Ossetia, President Saakashvili told
government members on July 18.

Speaking at a government session, he asked the ministers to "take
into consideration that we have timeframes." "So we should work
round-the-clock," he said.

Saakashvili also underlined the political will to financially underpin
this "battle," particularly in terms of rehabilitation and social
projects in the region.

He characterized events in South Ossetia as a fight between "a rich,
but inflexible mechanism and the Georgian state, which constitutes
Georgians, Ossetians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and other ethnicities."

He noted that a governmental commission, chaired by PM Zurab Nogaideli,
would soon be established. Its purpose, he said, would be to explore
and elaborate, along with the head of the Tbilisi-loyal South Ossetian
provisional administration, Dimitri Sanakoev, the autonomous status
of the region within the Georgian state.

"These will be serious negotiations," the president said. "They
will not be just formal talks, because our partners [Sanakoev’s
administration] are serious people, serious leaders and serious
representatives of one part of the Georgian population – the majority
of ethnic Ossetians."

Tbilisi, he said, should "adopt a cautious, but at the same time a
bold approach."

State Minister for Conflict Resolution Issues Merab Antadze said on
July 18 that the commission would contain all cabinet members and
a group of Georgian lawmakers, plus representatives from Sanakoev’s
administration.

The commission would, according to the president, provide "an
opportunity to restore links between all the villages, all the
communities and people and between the Georgian state and an important
part of its population [the Ossetian people]."

In keeping with a common theme of his, the president once again
spoke out against what he considers inappropriate terminology. He
particularly dislikes the terms ‘the Georgian side’ and ‘the South
Ossetian side.’

"Everyone should erase these terms from their vocabularies," he said.

Saakashvili said that it wouldn’t be so bad if only television
stations were using these terms. The problem, however, he said,
was that "some government members even say ‘Ossetian villages’ and
‘Georgian village’."

In any case, he said, "even if ‘the Ossetian side’ existed, that
would be the provisional administration, which represents the local
population."

"What is erroneously termed as ‘the Ossetian side’ [referring to
the Tskhinvali-based secessionist authorities]," Saakashvili said,
"doesn’t truly represent the ethnic Ossetian population."

Alluding to the fact that some top-level secessionist officials are
Russian, he added, "we all know where those people are from."

His remarks reflect Tbilisi’s attempts to portray the conflict in
South Ossetia not as "an ethnic conflict," but rather as a conflict
involving "criminal elements" in Tskhinvali being manipulated by
"certain forces" in Russia.

Tbilisi’s active and on-going promotion of Sanakoev, an ethnic
Ossetian and former defense minister in the secessionist South Ossetian
government, is the most obvious manifestation of this view and policy.

President Saakashvili finished his address to his colleagues by
calling on them to re-energize conflict resolution efforts.

"I think conflict resolution efforts should become much more intensive
and efficient," he said. "The international community should be much
more involved in the process and the Georgian government should be
more pro-active."

"We have a success on the ground in the Tskhinvali region [referring
to South Ossetia]," he said, "but we need to emulate this in the other
conflict zone [Abkhazia]. There are many flaws and we have much work
to do."

COPYRIGHT PROTECTION TO PROMOTE DEVELOPMENT OF OPENSOURCE PROGRAMMING IN ARMENIA

Noyan Tapan
Jul 17 2007

YEREVAN, JULY 17, NOYAN TAPAN. Implementation of measures aimed at
protection of copyright to licensed computer programs in Armenia
will also promote development of opensource programming based on the
open code.

Hovhannes Avoyan, the Chairman of the Union of Armenian Information
Technologies Enterprises, the Director General of the Sorsio company,
said in his interview to Noyan Tapan correspondent.

He explained that in difference to programming done inside one
company or by order, when the initial code is kept secret, during the
opensource programming, programs’ codes are publicized, which gives
the possibility to involve a great number of specialists in programs’
elaboration, to test the created programs by them.

In H. Avoyan’s words, currently, under conditions of lack of copyright
protection to programs products, programs products copied without
authors’ permission are sold at very cheap prices, because of which
neither licensed nor opensource program products are sold. The latter,
being not low-quality, is comparatively cheap. And in case of formation
of systems of protection of the above mentioned rights in Armenia,
consumers will have the possibility to choose between licensed and
opensource programs.

It was mentioned that rather big information technologies firms
start using the opensource program products. In H. Avoyan’s words,
many companies in Armenia use the opensource programs for commercial
purposes, creating additional programs on their basis. In particular,
program products created on the basis of the opensource programs
prevail in program products worked out for export. Many companies and
even individual programmers create web sites, web systems, and other
exported program products on the basis of the opensource programs.

H. Avoyan said that currently 60-70% of the world’s web sites use
opensource programs, Linux, Apache, and other systems. However, there
are few opensource programs in the personal computer’s software, and
mainly licensed programs are used there. According to the Chairman of
the Union of Armenian Information Technologies Enterprises, in case
of creation of equal conditions opensource will be used there, too.

RA FOREIGN DEBT INCREASES BY 72.52M USD AND MAKES 718.43M USD WITHIN ONE YEAR

Noyan Tapan
Jul 17 2007

YEREVAN, JULY 17, NOYAN TAPAN. As of late March, 2007, the RA gross
foreign debt made 2b 86.22m USD, which as of late December, 2006
increased by 45.24m USD.

According to the data of the RA National Statistical Service, 49.85% of
RA gross foreign debt was formed in the state governance system, 17.62%
in the private sector, 8.87% in the monetary-credit regulation bodies,
9.66% in commercial banks, and 14% is direct foreign investments made
by organizations engaged in various sectors of economy, in the form
of inter-firm credits.

As of late March, 2007, RA gross foreign assets made 1b 367.79m USD and
during the first quarter of 2006 decreased by 27.28m USD. As a result,
RA net foreign debt increased by 72.52m USD and made 718.43m USD.

Agence France Presse — English
July 13, 2007 Friday 9:42 PM GMT

Boxing: Kirakoysan defends European super-featherweight title

BARNSLEY, England, July 13 2007

Armenia’s Leva Kirakosyan defended his European super-featherweight
title with a fourth-round stoppage of Britain’s Carl Johanesson here
Friday.

Johanesson hit the canvas three times before eventually succumbing to
a heavy right uppercut after one minute and 50 seconds of the fourth
round which knocked him out so heavily the referee stopped the
contest without the need for a count.

ARMENIA MOST LIKELY TO HONOR ALL COMMITMENTS TO COE TILL YEAREND

PanARMENIAN.Net
13.07.2007 14:33 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "To monitor the process of honoring commitments by
a CoE member state is the prerogative of the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe (PACE)," Armenian National Assembly Speaker
Tigran Torosian said in IA Regnum’s press office.

The results of the latest monitoring prove that Armenia will honor
all commitments to the CoE till the yearend, he said.

PACE monitoring in Armenia has been held for 7 years already, and
it’s time to complete it, according to Mr Torosian.

"PACE President, Mr Rene van der Linden said in Yerevan that the
monitoring should be continued.

However, decision to stop the process is taken by the whole
organization. We should highlight the post-monitoring period,"
he emphasized.