Author: Garo Vardanian

On 9 October Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan accompanied by the country’s high ranking officials visited the trade fair organized in the Stepanakert city in connection with the Day of Agricultural Worker, NKR President’s Press Office reported.

The President noted with satisfaction that Harvest festival had already become traditional in our republic underlining that good undertakings should be maintained and consistently developed.

Primate of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, chairman of the National Assembly Ashot Ghoulyan, premier Arayik Haroutyunyan and other officials partook in the event.

The Nagorno Karabakh issue may be touched upon on the sidelines of the meeting of CSTO Foreign Ministers in Yerevan scheduled for October 14, Spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova told a weekly briefing.

Referring to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement on the impossibility to solve the Karabakh conflict at this point, Zakharova said: “The settlement process benefits from practical work, not statements.”

Photo: Reuters

 

Portugal’s former Prime Minister Antonio Guterres is poised to become the next UN secretary general, UN diplomats say, the BBC reports.

Mr Guterres, 66, was the “clear favourite”, Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin announced on Wednesday.

A formal vote will take place in the UN Security Council on Thursday to confirm the choice of nominee.

Mr Guterres, who led the UN refugee agency for 10 years, will take over from Ban Ki-moon early next year.

The 15-member Security Council cast secret ballots for each of the 10 candidates on Wednesday and none were found to oppose Mr Guterres.

They were asked to select from a choice of encourage, discourage or no opinion for each candidate, with the former Portuguese prime minister receiving 13 encourage votes and two no opinion votes.

Thousands of people are expected to pay their final respects to former Israeli Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres, who died at the age of 93, the BBC reports.

His coffin will lie in state in front of the parliament building in Jerusalem throughout Thursday.

US President Barack Obama and some of the world’s most powerful figures will attend his funeral on Friday.

Mr Peres was one of the last of a generation of Israeli politicians present at the nation’s birth in 1948.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his role negotiating the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians a year earlier, a prize he shared with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Mr Peres had suffered a stroke two weeks ago and died on Wednesday in a hospital near Tel Aviv.

He will receive a state burial at a ceremony on Friday at Mount Herzel Cemetery in Jerusalem.

 

 

 

Yerevan will host Welcome to Armenia forum to mark World Tourism Day observed on September 27.

The forum to be held on September 28 will consist of two parts, program coordinator Vruyr Penesyan told reporters today. In the first half state agencies will present their views on the development of different directions of tourism, namely sports, health, cultural and eco-tourism.

In the second half the Mayors of resort towns will present the capacities of their cities.

“Armenia is especially popular for religious tourism and pilgrimage,” Mekhak Apresyan, Head of the Tourism Department of the Ministry of Economy, told Public Radio of Armenia.

The World Tourism Day is celebrated on September 27 every year. The idea of World Tourism Day was born in the 3rd session of the UNWTO General Assembly in 1979 and it has been celebrated since 1980. In 1997 the UNWTO General Assembly decided to choose a host country every year from various regions, which would collaborate with the organization in celebrating the World Tourism Day

The former Israeli President, Shimon Peres, has been rushed to hospital outside Tel Aviv after suffering a stroke, his office says, the BBC reports.

The 93 year old was fully conscious and in a stable condition at the Sheba Medical Centre in Tel HaShomer, a spokesperson told the Ynetnews website.

Mr Peres had already begun receiving treatment for the stroke, they added.

In January, he spent two nights at the same hospital under observation. Tests showed he had an irregular heartbeat

On 11 September Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan visited the Alashan site of the Martakert region and met there with Talish residents who had left their houses and settled there in the aftermath of the war launched by Azerbaijan from 2 to 5 April of the current year, NKR President’s Press Office reports.

Issues related to the course of programs directed to the improving social and living conditions of the Talish residents were discussed during the meeting.

The President gave corresponding instructions to the heads of the concerned bodies for proper realization of the activities.

Primate of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, NKR National Assembly Ashot Ghoulyan and other officials accompanied the President.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the parliamentary leader of her conservative party that she is not distancing herself from a Bundestag resolution on the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces that has strained ties with Turkey, according to sources briefed on the matter, Reuters reports.

Volker Kauder, the head of the Christian Democrats in parliament, told a meeting of party members that he had spoken with Merkel and she emphasized her position, said the sources, who attended the meeting.

Kauder said Merkel also noted that she had voted to support the resolution during a party meeting before the vote, although she was not present when the vote took place in June. Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier were also not present, the sources said.

The German news magazine “Der Spiegel” reported earlier today that recognizing the historic Ottoman slaughter of Armenians as genocide to appease Turkish government anger.

Photo: Getty Images

 

Ireland should recover up to €13bn (£11bn) from Apple in back taxes, the European Commission has ruled.

After a three-year investigation, it has concluded that the US firm’s tax benefits are illegal.

The Commission said Ireland enabled the company to pay substantially less than other businesses, in effect paying a corporate tax rate of no more than 1%.

Ireland and Apple both said they disagreed with the decision and would appeal against it.

“Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies – this is illegal under EU state aid rules,” said Commissioner Margarethe Vestager.

“The Commission’s investigation concluded that Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple, which enabled it to pay substantially less tax than other businesses over many years,” she added.

The standard rate of Irish corporate tax is 12.5%. The Commissions’s investigation concluded that Apple had effectively paid 1% tax on its European profits in 2003 and about 0.005% in 2014.

Ms Vestager said that the tax agreement reached between Ireland and Apple meant that the company’s taxable profits “did not correspond to economic reality”.

A Russian computer programmer was detained in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, on Friday for alleged money laundering and illegal transfer of military technology. Sergey Mironov’s arrest was made after a US government request, his lawyer told RT.

Mironov was arrested by Armenian security forces after arriving in Yerevan with his wife, Mironov’s lawyer in Russia, Karen Nersesyan, told RT. After the arrest, he was moved to solitary confinement in Yerevan.

Mironov works as a programmer in Moscow and doesn’t have access to any secret materials or technologies, the lawyer said.

menwhile, the Armenian police say Sergey Mironov, 30, has been wanted by US law-enforcement bodies since May 11, 2016.