Author: Hagop Kamalian

Russian millionaire German Sterligov intends to sue Azerbaijan at the European Court of Human Rights, his lawyer Artur Ayrapetov has revealed to

He said the case will be taken to Strasbourg in the near future. “The matter is that German Sterligov was first named persona non grata and denied access to Baku. Then the Azeri authorities launched a criminal case against him,” Ayrapetov said.

The lawyer is confident Sterligov will win. “That’s nonsense from the point of view of international law. They first banned him from entering the country and then opened a criminal case, thus depriving him of the right to defend. Azerbaijan is a member of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and its behavior in the given situation is unacceptable,” the lawyer said. He added that the sum of the compensation would be revealed later.

According to earlier reports, Interpol removed German Sterligov’s name from its wanted list. The Russian businessman was accused by Azerbaijan of launching illegal activity in Nagorno Karabakh.

Pluto has mountains made of ice that are as high as those in the Rockies, images from the New Horizons probe reveal, the BBC reports.

They also show signs of geological activity on Pluto and its moon Charon.

On Wednesday, scientists presented the first pictures acquired by the New Horizons probe during its historic flyby of the dwarf planet.

The team has also named the prominent heart-shaped region on Pluto after the world’s discoverer Clyde Tombaugh.

The spacecraft sped past the dwarf planet on Tuesday, getting as close as 12,500km and grabbing a huge volume of data

A German court has convicted a 94-year-old former guard at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz of being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews, the BBC reports.

Oskar Groening, known as the “bookkeeper of Auschwitz”, was sentenced to four years in prison.

He was responsible for counting the belongings confiscated from prisoners and had admitted “moral guilt.”

His lawyers said he did not facilitate genocide, but prosecutors argued that he had helped the camp run smoothly.

Many observers have questioned whether Mr Groening will ultimately be sent to jail, given his advanced age. He is expected to be one of the last Nazis to face a courtroom.

The trial was held in the northern German city of Lueneburg, hearing testimony from several people who had survived the death camp.

The case revolved around the question of whether people who had played a minor role in the Nazi-ordered genocide but had not actively killed any Jews could still be guilty of a crime.

Mr Groening had publicly discussed his role at Auschwitz, making him unusual among former Nazis brought to trial. He said he was speaking out in order to silence those who deny the Holocaust took place.

The Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art in Cyprus will showcase a drawing exhibition by Arshak Sarkissian entitled Tera-Genesis as of tomorrow, July 1st, the reports.

Sarkissian’s art revolves around contemporary man, the complexities and controversies that surround him as well as his metaphysical peculiarities as refracted through the artist’s imagination. Convinced that the world is a pluralistic place that is not just limited to physical reality and in which many worlds – directly inspired by arts and literature – are just as factual, his world is informed by the Magic Realism of South America as well as Asiatic Shamanistic traditions.

Therefore Sarkissian illustrates the supernatural aspects of everyday life in his art. For him as an artist, the comprehension of multidimensional realities is fundamental in recognizing man’s own reality, and he is fascinated by exploring the extremes of human behavior and nature.

Sarkissian’s study of the human personality’s multitude of dimensions comes out in his drawings, which are peopled with self-conscious entities that seem to be in psychological experiments with themselves in a process of self-discovery and evolution. It is through such experiments that the personality gives way to the genesis of either a monstrous abnormality or a hybrid of fauna or flora, until human and inhuman ultimately become indistinguishable before the next stage of metamorphosis.

The drawings express the artist’s never-ending yearning for change and the novel. They are figurative as well as contemporary, and are greatly influenced by Renaissance art. His characters have an eccentric temperament and an exotic disposition, and his animal hybrids always reveal extra dimensions and expressions along the way. They emerge from an ancient world that was populated by half human, half animal prototypes, whose mythologies revealed complex worlds. The drawings, however, place these creatures in a post-modern, contemporary world where they still struggle with their daemons.

Sarkissian, from Armenia, studied at the National Aesthetic Centre of Art in Armenia and went on to participate in a residency under Stass Paraskos at Lemba Art School in Cyprus supported by the Pharos Arts Foundation.

The artist has had solo shows at the Albemarle Gallery in London, Gavriel Gallery in Bremen, Mildberry Gallery in Moscow, in Paris and New York, and participated in group exhibitions in the Centre for Contemporary Experimental Art and the Gyumri International Biennale in Armenia, the Charlie Smith Gallery in London, the Harvest Gallery in California and the Marie Pavgas Art Gallery in North Carolina.

He has been commissioned to create work for the passenger terminals at Zvartnots International Airport in Armenia. He has participated in numerous art projects, among others, as part of his residency in the OMI International Arts Centre in New York, in the “Stand Up For Your Rights” Design and Illustration Programme in Buntingford, UK, and the Andorran National Commission for the UNESCO International Art Camp in 2014. Sarkissian works and lives in Yerevan, Armenia. His works can be found in several important private collections.

The exhibition will run at the Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art until July 29 and can be viewed by appointment after the initial opening tomorrow.

The fifth round of informal ministerial dialogues of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) member states will take place in Minsk on 29 June, BelTA reports, quoting Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Belarus.

“Belarus will preside at the fifth round of informal ministerial dialogues of the EaP member states in Minsk on 29 June. The round will include a meeting of the ministers of environment and a meeting of the ministers of foreign affairs of the EaP member states,” the ministry said.

Partaking in the meeting of the EaP ministers of environment will be European Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Karmenu Vella and State Secretary of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of Latvia Guntis Pukitis.

Informal ministerial dialogues of the Eastern Partnership member states at the level of the ministers of foreign affairs and heads of other ministries have been held since 2012. The four previous rounds were held in Chisinau (June 2012), Tbilisi (February 2013, transport), Yerevan (September 2013, education) and Baku (September 2014, energy). The main objective of the informal ministerial dialogues is to provide a platform for a regular open exchange of opinions on the most important issues in the EaP activity and the issues of the international agenda. The adoption of final documents or statements is not envisaged.

A Taliban suicide bomber and gunmen attacked the Afghan parliament on Monday, shattering windows, wounding at least 19 people and sending a plume of black smoke across Kabul, as a second district in two days fell to the Islamist group in the north, Reuters reports.

Four women were among the 19 wounded, said Sayed Kabir Amiri, a health official who coordinates Kabul hospitals.

“A suicide bomber blew himself up just outside the parliament building and several fighters took positions in a building close to parliament,” said Ebadullah Karimi, spokesman for Kabul police.

Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said all lawmakers were safe and that fighting was ongoing. TV pictures showed leglislators calmly leaving the building which was engulfed with dust and smoke.

 

Mustafa Isciler, a history student at Boğaziçi University of Istanbul, will bike from Van to Yerevan, Ermenihaber.am reports, quoting the Turkish Birgun website.  According to the source, the student wants to write down the memories and stories of the people living in those regions.

Mustafa Isciler intends to conduct field research on Islamized Armenians, Genocide and Yezidis for his Master’s thesis.

The trip will kick off on August 12 and will continue for three weeks. The route includes the Akhtamar Island, the ancient Armenian villages, Mount Ararat, Bayazet, Igdir, Kars, Ani, etc., as well as Georgia and Armenia.

Isciler told Birgun that he will not be alone on the journey. A six-member group will start the trip from Istanbul; they will be joined by a six-member group of Armenians in Diyarbekir.

The researchers will write down people’s memories and stories in every village and will prepare a documentary.

The Public Radio of Armenia is 89.

May 7 is Radio Day, an invention that changed the world, in general, and the world of communication, in particular.

On August 27, 1926 the “Soviet Armenia” newspaper informed: “The construction of the radio station in Yerevan has been completed. The station will start operating in five days.”

The Voice of Yerevan was first heard on air in September, 1926. On April 6, 1927 the first radio schedule consisting of news and concerts was printed in the press.

The Day of Radio was first observed in Moscow on May 7, 1945. From that time on May 7 has been marked in Armenia as Radio Day.