Author: Raffi Khondkarian

A Russian manufacturer has designed an advanced new system protecting any channels of telephone communication against wiretapping, media reports said on Thursday, Sputnik News reports.

“This is a very interesting solution and we hope there will be a great demand for it on the market,” Interstate Corporation of Development general director Ivan Polyakov said.

He added that components for the new system were produced directly at the company’s enterprises in Russia.

The ICD was prompted to develop the system by the need to ensure its own security.

Established in 2011, the Interstate Corporation of Development is engaged in scientific, industrial and high-tech cooperation in countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization.

It is one of the main designers and producers of protected systems of communication and control in the former Soviet Union.

 

The bodies of the eight Armenians killed in a bus crash in Russia’s Tula region will be transported to Yerevan on a charter flight on November 5, the Ministry of Transport and Communication reports.

The plane is expected to take off from Moscow at 5 p.m. local time and land at Zvartnots Airport at 8 p.m. Yerevan time.

The plane will also transport the injured passengers, whose health condition is satisfactory. The names of the passengers that will fly to Yerevan will be published tomorrow.

Those, who are currently getting treatment at medical centers in Tula will remain there as long as needed.

Most Islamic State illegal oil exports are probably conducted through Turkey and Kurdish areas, and are facilitated by corrupt regional officials, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counterterrorism officer and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee senior investigator John Kiriakou told

A US Treasury Department spokesperson told Sputnik this week that the Islamic State has made about $40 million in one month of oil sales, making close to $500 million a year.

“I’ve always assumed someone on the Turkish side of the border is making enough money out of it. There are too many vested interests involved for it to stop,” Kiriakou said on Thursday. “They greased the right people. Someone’s making a lot of money out of this.”

Kiriakou noted that the current Islamic State illegal oil trade followed the same basic pattern that longtime Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used to defy international economic sanctions.

“[Selling and transporting oil] thorough Turkey was the way Saddam Hussein for years beat the sanctions regime imposed on him,” the expert said.

Turkey is an ally of the United States and has been a member of NATO for 60 years, but Kiriakou said the national government in Ankara could not prevent the corruption of local officials in outlying regions that enabled the secret oil trade.

“It’s not the official Turkish government. [It’s] probably corrupt elements of the Turkish military and officials in local and regional governments in southwest Turkey who are involved in this,” he explained.

The US government has the resources to seriously reduce and interdict this lucrative oil traffic, but so far has failed to focus on doing so, Kiriakou argued.

“It’s a question of priorities. They have never allocated enough resources to do so. Other goals and missions have been rated as having more urgent calls on intelligence and tactical resources,” he said.

However, Kiriakou told Sputnik that the Islamic State oil revenue lifeline could certainly be cut if Washington was determined to do so.

“I do believe that,” he insisted.

The richest oil fields that the Islamic State can access are south of Irbil in Iraq and the most obvious direction for the Islamic State to move the oil is westwards through Kurdish territory, Kiriakou explained.

In Saddam Hussein’s time, most of the oil secretly exported from Iraq to defeat the international sanctions regime was moved west through Kurdish territory, and that pattern is probably continuing now, he suggested.

Washington, he added, should be cooperating closely with Russia in cutting the Islamic State’s oil revenue flow.

“We should be working with the Russians to achieve a settlement of the conflict in Syria. We have basically the same aims that they do. Both of us agree that the Islamic State is a bad idea and we both want to get rid of it. But we’re not working with them on this,” Kiriakou said.

Iraq’s Oil Ministry told Sputnik that the Islamic State continues to sell hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day on the black market.

Rescue efforts are being stepped up to help those affected by the magnitude-7.5 earthquake which hit remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan on Monday, the BBC reports.

At least 300 people are known to have died, and about 2,000 were injured.

Rescue teams have been sent to remote mountainous areas where the effects of the quake are still unclear.

The quake’s focus was deep, reducing its impact. Victims included 12 Afghan schoolgirls killed in a stampede as they tried to leave their classes.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in a televised address, urged those living in affected areas to help the rescue effort.

The Taliban, which controls parts of the province, called on aid agencies “not to hold back” relief supplies and ordered its fighters to help the victims.

Once again, the Armenian community in Egypt added a new chapter to their rich history which thousands were recently proud to witness, according to . 

Last week 250 Armenian community leaders and members hit the road to Port Said, to take part in the inauguration ceremony of a memorial dedicated to the Armenian refugees who fled the genocide to settle in Port Fouad camps after the heroic battle of Musa Ler, or the Mountain of Moses, as translated from Armenian.

The memorial was built on a mass grave that was previously found in the city’s Orthodox cemetery where refugees who lived in the camps from 1915 to 1919 were also buried. Primate of the Armenian Orthodox Church in Egypt Bishop Ashod Mnatsaganian led the services dedicated to those who died.

In his spiritual address, Mnatsaganian highlighted the importance of organising and constructing such a memorial which proves how the Ottoman Turks failed to annihilate the Armenian nation, “since we still live, will live and multiply” he said.

Citing the example of the Battle of Musa Ler, Mnatsaganian explained how the people at the time had a purpose in life, not only to survive but had an eternal struggle for survival.

“For survival,we must fight ,this is what we aim for. We should educate the new generation so as to survive through them. We owe it to those who fell in the battle and to those who fled to Egypt seeking life. It is because of them that we are here today, to remember and memorise, to prove that we will continue our mission in life, on this land”.

On the occasion, 14 Lebanese-Armenians from the town of Ainjar came especially for the memorial opening. Their ancestors were among the refugees who settled in Port Said in 1915. On their behalf, Yessayi Havatian, head of Musa Ler Battle’s 100 anniversary committee, gave an expressive speech in which he considered the occasion the most important of all the commemorations this year “because we returned to the land where our ancestors settled”.

Havatian, whose grandfather was among the refugees and whose father was born in Port Said in 1919, said that French warships which transported the Armenian refugees first asked Cyprus to host them, but were refused. When Egypt was asked to do so, the Egyptian government immediately accepted the idea of hosting them for which they are still  grateful and touched.

Moses Mountain was the site of an Armenian resistance story in 1915 when the Turkish government conducted violent operations in the region.

Five thousand of the population climbed the mountain to revolt and escape the deportation; 250 of them took part in a battle that lasted 53 days.

French naval forces in the Mediterranean sighted the survivors as they prepared rescue banners for attention. On 15 September 1915 four French warships, including the Guichen and one British naval vessel, evacuated Musa Ler and transported 4,231 refugees to Port Fouad where they lived peacefully and securely until they were able to return to their homes in November 1919. Some of them resettled in Lebanon, in the town of Ainjar, located in the Bekaa Valley, and established a 100 per cent Armenian-populated town in 1939. Today Ainjar is inhabited by 5,000 people.

Born in Ainjar, Egyptian-Armenian jeweller Varouj Chilinguirian, a member of the Musa Ler Battle’s 100 anniversary committee, and coordinator of the group which visited Egypt, was relieved once he stood on the land where his maternal grandfather settled in 1915.

“I’ve been dreaming of this moment since 2008 but then the revolution came and I had to practise patience. We owe it to the community’s church committee who finally made such a memorial come true,” Chilinguirian told Al-Ahram Weekly. His grandfather, who later became a priest, was 17 when he arrived in Port Fouad Camp. In 1919 he left to Musa Ler then settled in Ainjar.

The memorial is designed by Egyptian-Armenian architect and archaeologist Nairy Hampikian. “It is a mixture of the Sartarabad Battle and the genocide memorials found in Armenia,” stated Hampikian. Construction work started in autumn 2014 and was completed in February this year. The memorial, sitting on a mass grave of the remains of around 400 refugees, is made of Italian black and white karara marble.

“I consider the memorial a revival of the remains of those refugees who settled in Port Fouad camps,” Hampikian told the Weekly.

Historical events in Musa Ler inspired Austrian Franz Werfel to write his novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh in 1933. A movie of the same name was released in 1982.

Head of the Armenian Catholic Church in Egypt Bishop Krikor- Okosdinos Coussa, Ambassador of Armenia Armen Melkonian, representatives of the Coptic Church in Port Said and Mayor of Ainjar Garabed Pamboukian attended the memorial’s opening.

Egypt received large waves of Armenian refugees from the Hamidian Massacres, the CUP (Committee of Union and Progress) Ottoman genocide and the Kemalist wars.

After the prayers and before leaving the cemetery, members of the community and ancestors of the Port Fouad Camp refugees laid red roses on the memorial in respect to their souls.

President Serzh Sargsyan received today the delegation headed by Eshaq Jahangiri, first vice-president of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), which has arrived in Armenia on an official visit. The president welcomed the guests and stressed that Armenia always uses every chance to talk about its warm ages-old relationship with friendly country of Iran which is of vital importance to Armenia and is conditioned by historical-cultural similarities, mutual economic interests, peculiarities of the geopolitical position, and by common approaches to a number of regional issues, President’s Press Office reported.

Serzh Sargsyan noted that our country is keen on further promoting high-level political dialogue and cooperation with the Iran in all possible spheres. The president expressed confidence that the time has come to broaden the bilateral agenda and elevate the level of Armenian-Iranian relations by one more degree. In that context, Armenia’s president attached great importance to the discussions and agreements made during Mr. Jahangiri’s visit to Armenia which, according to the president, could start a new phase of bilateral relations.

Iran’s First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri thanked the president for the invitation to visit Armenia and for the warm welcome and at the outset, conveyed Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani’s sincere greetings to the RA president. Iran’s first vice-president expressed satisfaction with the results of negotiations with the RA government, noted that the agenda of his visit is quite busy: a number of other meetings are expected to take place in Yerevan which, according to him, will further strengthen ties between Iran and Armenia, countries with good-neighborly relations. Eshaq Jahangiri stressed that Armenia, as a friendly and neighboring country, occupies a distinct place in Iran’s foreign relations. “Armenia has been our friend in tough times and continues to be as a friend with which Iran is ready to develop relations without any boundaries,” said the Iranian first vice-president, placing importance especially on the intensification of trade and economic ties.

The RA president and Eshaq Jahangiri discussed the status of ongoing large energy and transport programs which are of crucial importance to the Armenian-Iranian collaboration, as well as the prospects for implementation of new initiatives in other mutually beneficial spheres, taking into account the broadening economic cooperation opportunities afforded by Armenia’s membership in the EAEU.

At the meeting, the parties also reflected upon regional issues and challenges and the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, placing importance on the peaceful resolution of the conflict in accordance with the standards of international law.

The interlocutors exchanged views on the developments in the Middle East, including Syria. Both of them attached weight to the settlement of the Syrian crisis through peaceful negotiations.

President Serzh Sargsyan stressed the need to consolidate efforts in the fight against extremism, one of the most severe evils facing humanity, noting that Armenia is ready to make its modest contribution to that matter in an effort to promote regional stability and security.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, angered by Russian incursions into Turkish air space, has warned Russia there are other places Turkey could get natural gas and other countries that could build its first nuclear plant, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

“We can’t accept the current situation. Russia’s explanations on the air space violations are not convincing,” the Turkish daily Sabah and other media quoted Erdogan as telling reporters as he flew to Japan for an official visit.

Russia is Turkey’s largest natural gas supplier, with Ankara buying 28-30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of its 50 bcm of natural gas needs annually from Russia. Other major suppliers are Iran and Azerbaijan, with a small amount planned from Turkmenistan.

Turkey commissioned Russia’s state-owned Rosatom in 2013 to build four 1,200-megawatt reactors in a project worth $20 billion, although a start date for what will be Turkey’s first nuclear power plant has not yet been set.

Erdogan said he was resentful over the Russian intervention in Syria, which Turkey sees as its own backyard, but did not currently plan to speak to President Vladimir Putin.

“These are matters for Russia to think about. If the Russians don’t build the Akkuyu (nuclear plant) another will come and build it,” he was quoted as saying.

“We are Russia’s number one natural gas consumer. Losing Turkey would be a serious loss for Russia. If necessary, Turkey can get its natural gas from many different places.”

The Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine has been split two ways for groundbreaking work on parasitic diseases, the BBC reports.

William C Campbell and Satoshi Omura developed a new drug against infections caused by roundworm parasites.

Youyou Tu shares the prize for her discovery of a therapy against malaria.

The Nobel committee said the work had changed the lives of the hundreds of millions of people affected by these diseases.

The mosquito-borne disease malaria kills more than 450,000 people each year around the world, with billions more at risk of catching the infection.

Parasitic worms affect a third of the world’s population and cause a number of illnesses, including River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis.

Former French international, World Chmpion Yuri Djorkaeff has arrived in Armenia to participate in the Yerevan RunArm 2015 half-marathon.

The event will take place on October 3. It will commence from Yerevan’s central Republic Square. The Yerevan half-marathon will include four races – half-marathon (21,097 km), a half-marathon relay race (2 x 10,550 km), a 5 km running race, and a 2.5 km running race for teenagers.

The will be organized with the support of the Yerevan City Hall, the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs and the Armenian Athletic Federation.

More than 100 people were killed in South Sudan when an oil truck exploded as a crowd tried to gather fuel from the vehicle after it had veered off the road, a regional official said on Thursday, a day after the incident, Reuters reports.

In addition to those killed in Wednesday’s blast, Charles Kisagna, the minister of information in Western Equatoria, said about 50 people were seriously injured.

“We don’t have medical equipment and these people may not survive because we do not have the facilities to treat the highly burnt people,” he told Reuters, adding the truck had been travelling from the capital Juba to the Western Equatoria area.

Such incidents have happened before in the east African region where fuel tankers often have to travel long distances along potholed roads and pass through poor communities.