Author: Ophelia Vardapetian

Photo: Reuters

US rapper Kanye West h
as been hospitalised following an emergency services call, media reports say,the reports.

A police spokesperson told the BBC they had received a “disturbance call” on Monday afternoon, but did not name the singer.

The disturbance was later deemed a medical incident, he said, and the fire department responded.

A spokesman for the LA Fire Department said an unnamed man had been taken to hospital for “further assessment”.

“At 13:20 pacific time, the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to an unspecified medical aid request,” a spokesperson for the service said.

“An adult male described as medically stable was taken to an area hospital for further assessment.”

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved $90.5 million in a loan and a technical assistance grant to improve infrastructure operation and sustainability in Armenia through reforms in the road, water, and power sectors.

“Aging public infrastructure, limited fiscal resources and the lack of adequate prioritization and management of scarce public resources, limit opportunities for inclusive growth in Armenia,” said Matthew Hodge, economist with ADB’s Central West Asia Regional Department. “Providing adequate infrastructure services is critical to supporting economic activity and income generation, especially outside of the capital city.”

Armenia faces economic challenges and a tight fiscal situation due to reduced remittance inflows from the Russian Federation and lowering export demand from its main trading partners. The government’s fiscal consolidation limits budget allocations for infrastructure investment, operation, and maintenance in the foreseeable future, emphasizing the need for improved cost recovery, generation of alternative revenues, and better management of fiscal resources.

The program will focus on improvements in infrastructure operations and sustainability through enhanced public financial management practices and utility regulation, increased maintenance expenditures, and improved contracting and maintenance practices in the road and water sectors. In addition, the program will also introduce competition in the power market which opens the opportunities for greater revenue generation especially from exporting surplus electricity.

This is the second phase of the Infrastructure Sustainability Support Program supported by ADB. The first phase of the program, approved in 2012 and already completed, focused on policy reforms in the water and road sectors and laid the platform for deeper engagement and expansion of the program in the second phase.

The program is in line with Armenia’s Development Strategy 2014–2025, which recognizes the need to improve the country’s management of public infrastructure to improve connectivity and utility services.

ADB, based in Manila, is dedicated to reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific through inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. Established in 1966, ADB in December 2016 will mark 50 years of development partnership in the region. It is owned by 67 members – 48 from the region. In 2015, ADB assistance totaled $27.2 billion, including cofinancing of $10.7 billion.

Photo: Viktor Drachev/TASS

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) plans to hold large-scale collective forces’ drills dubbed Combat Brotherhood on the territory of Armenia, Kazakhstan and Russia in October 2017, Chief of the CSTO Joint Staff Colonel-General Anatoly Sidorov said on Friday, TASS reports.

“This year, four CSTO exercises have been held on the territory of various states and at different time. Next year, we’re planning to unite the maneuvers and hold them under a single scenario simultaneously with all the components of the CSTO collective forces. So far, the name Combat Brotherhood has been proposed for the drills,” Sidorov said.

The CSTO’s unified drills will be held in October 2017. “That is, we won’t hold drills separately in April, August, September and October as was the case this year and in October 2017 we’ll practice joint measures within a short period of time on the territory of three states: Russia, Armenia and Kazakhstan. This will be more efficient to optimize the joint system of the CSTO collective forces’ control,” he said.

“The drills will approximately last for three weeks and a counter-terror operation will be devised under a single scenario: first reconnaissance, then the use of the rapid response collective forces with the support of aviation and then the post-conflict settlement with the employment of peace-keeping forces. This will be an experiment,” the colonel-general said.

The CSTO rapid response collective forces comprise over 17,000 servicemen from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. These troops allow adequately responding to all existing challenges and threats – to counter terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking. The CSTO peacekeeping forces comprise about 3,600 servicemen.

The first plane carrying humanitarian aid from Armenia to Syria has landed at Hmeinim airbase, the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs informs.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs  assisted in the transportation.

Armenia’s Consul General was at the site to receive the humanitarian aid.

“The U.S. supports a negotiated settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” Elizabeth Trudeau,Director of the State Department PressOffie, told a daily briefing.

“We continue to engage actively with the sides. We’re co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group. Our longstanding policy shared by the Minsk Group co-chairs is that a just settlement must be based on international law, which includes the Helsinki Final Act, the principle of non-use of force or the threat of force, territorial integrity, and self-determination,” she added.

“The responsibility for peace rests on the leaders of both countries, and we would reiterate their importance in finding a negotiated peace,” Elizabeth Trudeau said.

“After Genocide: From Trauma to Rebirth, A Gendered Perspective”, a conference organized by Women in War (France) in partnership with the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of Armenia, DVV International, and AGBU Armenia, will be held in Yerevan from September 17 to 19.

The conference will bring together over fifty speakers from all over the world to discuss the gendered nature of personal, political and social consequences after genocide.

Feminist thinkers and activists, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and lawyers will share differing perspectives. This project was made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Institute Internationale de la Francophonie, BMZ and other partners.

Armenia lost to the Czech Republic 3-0 in a warm-up game on Wednesday ahead of the 2018 World Cup qualifiers.

Ladislav Krejci netted four minutes into the game, Vaclav Kadlec doubled the lead 30 minutes later and Jan Kopic finished the scoring three minutes from time.

Today, the newly appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia to the Republic of Armenia Giorgi Saganelidze presented his credentials to President Serzh Sargsyan, President’s Press Office reports.

The President of Armenia congratulated the Ambassador on assuming the position and wished him success in his diplomatic mission in our country. Serzh Sargsyan expressed confidence that the newly appointed diplomat will make a significant contribution to the development of the bilateral ties in different areas and to the strengthening of the Armenian-Georgian friendly relations. Noting with satisfaction that in recent years high-level interstate contacts have intensified, the President said that in Armenia we are looking forward to the upcoming official visit of the Prime Minister of Georgia.

Ambassador Saganelidze assured that during his tenure he would do his best to deepen the existing close and good-neighborly relations between Armenia and Georgia and added that he was honored to work in a country whose centuries-long history and culture are well familiar to him.

The interlocutors underscored that the active interstate dialogue anchored in the historically traditional friendship and understanding of the two nations has become a strong base for the opening of new areas of cooperation.

President Serzh Sargsyan and Ambassador Giorgi Saganelidze concurred that along with the high-level political relations there also exist wide opportunities and still unused huge potential for the development of the trade and economic ties, expansion of cooperation in a number of promising areas such as tourism, agriculture, energy, culture, etc.

The President of Armenia and Ambassador of Georgia stressed the importance of the active work aimed at the strengthening of the interparliamentary ties.

Legendary artist, author and world-renowned singer Charles Aznavour calls for applications for the 2017 edition of the Aurora Prize.

Nominations are open to the public from until September 9, 2016.

Anyone can nominate a candidate they believe has overcome great personal challenges to make an exceptional impact on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes.

Every year, an Aurora Prize Laureate is honored with a US$100,000 grant, as well as a US$1,000,000 award to be donated to charitable organizations that inspired their work.

The first-ever Aurora Prize Laureate, Marguerite Barankitse of Maison Shalom, was honored in April for saving and caring for 30,000 children, orphans and refugees during Burundi’s civil war.

The second annual Aurora Prize will be presented on April 24, 2017, in Yerevan, Armenia.

The Presnensky District Court of Moscow has detained Aram Petrosyan charged with taking hostages in a branch of Citibank in Moscow, until October 24, reports.

Petrosyan’s defense asked the court to put him under house arrest, noting that the accused had admitted his guilt and was ready to cooperate with investigators.

According to investigators, on the evening of August 24 Petrosyan entered a branch of Citibank at Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street in central Moscow, where he took four people hostage. He threatened to trigger explosion of an object resembling a bomb. After several hours he released all hostages and surrendered. Bomb that he threatened to explode turned out to be a hoax.

The Investigative Committee stated that Petrosyan wanted to bring attention to his problem and did not want to kill anyone. Later he admitted his guilt in full and provided testimony against himself.

Before capture of hostages, a video has been released on the Internet, featuring a man resembling the one who took hostages. Video message was published under the name of Aram Petrosyan. In particular, he said that on August 24 he is going to commit “a violation of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation”. He said that he intends to commit a crime because of bankruptcy, which, according to him, turned into epidemic in Russia.

He demanded Russian authorities to create a body that would deal with the issue of bankruptcy.