Author: Ophelia Vardapetian

When Mark Moogalian saw the gunman on the train, he was the first to rush him and tried to wrest an assault rifle from his grip.

The two men struggled, and Moogalian was shot in the neck. The Armenian-American Professor collapsed to the floor, bleeding heavily.

He made eye contact with his wife.

“C’est fini,” Moogalian told her. “It’s over.”

“I really thought he was going to die,” his wife Isabelle Risacher Moogalian said in an interview with .

In an exclusive TV interview, Risacher Moogalian said her husband played dead to avoid getting shot again.

Moogalian was one of five passengers on the Amsterdam-to-Paris train to try to disarm the gunman, who wielded enough weaponry to kill everyone on board.

Moogalian, who’s currently recovering at a hospital in France, spoke exclusively to

Mark and his wife Isabelle were sitting in carriage 12 with their dog quietly sleeping under the table. They were playing cards to pass the time.

Half an hour after the train stop in Brussels, Mark noticed a man with strange behavior through the glass door.

“”I saw a young man arrived with a large suitcase with wheels. He entered the toilet with his luggage. It was odd, unusual. I waited for him to exit, but it dragged on. So I decided to go and see. I got up. I saw him coming out of the toilet.”

“I grabbed the gun. We fought. I do not know how, but I managed to tackle his Kalashnikov,” Moogalian said.

Photo from Paris Match

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan met with representatives of the Prosperous Armenia Party to discuss the constitutional amendments.

The interlocutors discussed the overall process of constitutional reforms. Reference was made to separate provisions of the draft Constitution worked out by the Professional Commission for Constitutional Amendments adjunct.

The parties stressed the importance of active and comprehensive discussions at the National Assembly.

 

 

 

Experts of the Venice Commission are in Armenia to discuss the text of constitutional amendments and present their suggestions. Yesterday they had a meeting with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan. The consultations continued today at the Yerevan State University with the participation of different political forces, NGO representatives and other interested parties. The impression is that despite some reservations, the draft amendments are generally acceptable to the Commission.

“We react, when the Constitution hinders democratic processes in any way. But we cannot say that about this draft,” Member of the Commission, Austrian Christoph Grabenwarter told reporters after the meeting.

Some provisions of the draft have been positively assessed by the Venice Commission, but there are ones that are subject to substantial changes.

The Commission will present the final conclusion on constitutional changed in late October. Before that another interim assessment will be issued in September.

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly said Vladimir Putin wants to grant him Russian citizenship and appoint him the country’s economic minister, Agence France-Presse reports.

“In Italy, I have been relegated to the sidelines, but Putin has told me he is willing to give me citizenship, and entrust me with running the economy ministry,” La Stampa newspaper quoted Mr Berlusconi as saying at a dinner party.

“My future? Becoming minister for my friend Putin,” the 78-year-old reportedly said.

Mr Putin and Mr Berlusconi are longstanding friends.

By Chris Seiple,  – A well-intentioned argument is developing among some Westerners, urging the evacuationof Christians from the Middle East. These Westerners reason that because no one will defend the Middle Eastern Christians, they should be resettled elsewhere.

Such an approach is naive at best, and complicit at worst, accomplishing the religious cleansing desired by ISIS. Here are five reasons why Christians should not be removed from the birthplace of their faith:

1. Evacuation would be based on bad logic

Western countries do not want Syrian and Iraqi refugees. As Hans Rosling explains: “Today the European Union does everything it can to stop more than 99 percent of the Syrian refugees to apply for the asylum that they are legally entitled to in EU countries.” Meanwhile, to date, the U.S. has taken in fewer than 900 Syrian refugees in four years.

Engaging the U.S. Congress and European parliaments to strike emigration deals and accept Christian-only refugees would require an enormous amount of time and money. Such an effort would ask these countries to discriminate against non-Christians — Muslims are the overwhelming majority of ISIS refugees — violating most international covenants and domestic laws.

2. Removal would be bad business

Let’s assume the resources are there to evacuate Christians to Western countries. These resources could attract the wrong people, who would not otherwise come. For example, during Sudan’s civil war, well-intentioned Christians bought slaves their freedom, inadvertently creating a market for more slaves and making the situation worse. And if evacuating Christians from their homes is the best option, why don’t Christians from northern Nigeria and North Korea get the same chance?

3. It would be bad geopolitics

Voltaire once said: “If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have 30 religions, they will dwell in peace.”

Indeed, as Brian Grim demonstrates, the more religious freedom there is, the more political stability, the more economic development and the more women’s empowerment. In other words, the more people on the island — despite the messiness of varying perspectives — the better.

In 1636, Roger Williams was forced to leave Massachusetts. So he went and founded Rhode Island — a place where Jew, Quaker, Indian and Protestant lived in peace. In Massachusetts, the Puritans hanged Quakers and put witches on trial because they deviated from the majority culture. There were no hangings or witch trials in Rhode Island; everyone was welcomed to stay, as long as there was mutual respect.

Removing Christians from the Middle East accelerates instability. It takes out the educated class of public servants and teachers so essential to a functioning society. It removes the buffer between Kurd and Arab, Sunni and Shiite. It provides propaganda for ISIS against those Christians who remain. It aids and abets ISIS, finishing its religious cleansing. And it leaves the Christian-majority West without a bridge of understanding to the Middle East.

4. Leaving would be bad theology

In his acclaimed book, “The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries,” Rodney Stark demonstrates that when crises came to the cities of the Mediterranean world, the Christians stayed. In contrast to the non-Christians who fled the crisis, the Christians loved, suffered and died with their neighbors amid war, famine and disease. The faith grew because it did not go.

5. Middle Eastern Christians don’t want to leave

I have been to northern Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan four times in the last eight months, traveling throughout these countries, meeting every kind of Christian, in every condition. I have cried with them, listening to their yearning to return — to worship again in their village church and to tend to their fields. The overwhelming majority want desperately to stay and to return to their homes.

It would be nice to consider emigration as a realistic option. But it is not. I would suggest pundits spend that same time and money fighting for a clear and concrete objective, declaring and defending a safe haven on the Nineveh Plain for Christians, Muslims and Yazidis.

Yes, there are some high-risk situations that demand emigration. But, in general, Western Christians should think hard about how not to be an accomplice to ISIS. Instead, they should be seeking new ways to shrewdly and innocently empower Christians to remain and flourish in the cradle of Christianity.

Actor Omar Sharif, best known for his roles in classic films Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, has died aged 83, the BBC reports.

Egypt-born Sharif won two Golden Globe awards and an Oscar nomination for his role as Sherif Ali in David Lean’s 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia.

He won a further Golden Globe three years later for Doctor Zhivago.

Earlier this year, his agent confirmed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Omar Sharif is best known to the Armenian audience for his role in Mayrig, a 1991 film written and directed by French-Armenian filmmaker Henri Verneuil.

The movie that also stars Claudia Cardinale is about the struggles of an Armenian family that emigrates to France from Turkey after the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

The leader of Armenian Catholics in Eastern Europe has described how the suffering inflicted by the 1915 genocide has echoed down the generations to today.

Armenian Catholic Archbishop Raphael François Minassian of Eastern Europe has praised the Pope’s recognition of the scale of the massacre carried out against Armenians by Ottoman forces during the First World War.

Speaking in April during a Mass at St Peter’s in Rome to mark the centenary of the massacre, the Pope used the word “genocide” in a reference to the killing of nearly 1.5 million Armenian Christians.

In an interview with , and other suffering Christians, Archbishop Minassian said: “We were certain that the Pope would remember the genocide, and his courage has changed the attitude of the entire world.”

The Archbishop gave his ACN interview during his visit to Rome for the plenary annual session of ROACO (Riunione delle Opere di Aiuto per le Chiese Orientali), an international symposium of aid agencies for the Oriental Churches.

Referring to the Pope’s statement during the Armenian Mass at St Peter’s, the archbishop stressed that Francis “had encouraged us to pursue reconciliation – an act of the highest educational, spiritual and human value, which helps us also to recover what we have lost.”

Archbishop Minassian, who is responsible for the Armenian community in Georgia, Armenia and the Russian Federation, described how even Armenians who did not directly witness the massacre of 1915 nevertheless still suffer the consequences.

He said: “Some psychological attitudes, such as the instinctive fear at the sight of an armed guard, have been passed down even to the second and third generations.”

Describing the situation in Armenia, Archbishop Minassian called cooperation with the Armenian Apostolic Church “perfect” despite a notable lack of suitable
infrastructure within the Church itself.

He said: “In the parishes there are no church halls or offices, everything has to be done inside the church itself,” he admitted, “Often the priests are obliged to celebrate the Sacred Liturgies in school halls, with the result that we risk being looked upon as a sect.”

Russia will contribute $6mln to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to help Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan develop agriculture, TASS reports.

An order published on the government website says that from 2015 to 2017, Russia will grant $2bn annually to finance technical issues of securing farm output and agriculture’s sustainable development.

Police in  Georgia say a tiger that broke loose after severe flooding at a zoo has killed one man and wounded another, the Associated Press reports.

The Tbilisi zoo had previously said all lions and tigers missing after the flooding had been found dead and only one jaguar remained unaccounted for.

The Interior Ministry says police killed the tiger, which was hiding at an abandoned factory turned into a construction market when he attacked the men Wednesday.

Zoo officials had said Tuesday that eight lions, all seven of the zoo’s tigers and at least two of its three jaguars were killed in the flooding in Georgia’s capital caused by heavy rains over the weekend.