Author: Talar Tumanian

Deputy Foreign Minister for Consular Affairs Hassan Ghashghavi has said on Tuesday that Armenia will release eight jailed Iranians on Wednesday,  reports. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has noted the high economic effect of Armenia’s integration with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), TASS reports.

“Armenia for us is a strategic partner in the Caucasus and we systematically build our relations of alliance along the most sensitive lines and in the international scene, the CIS space first and foremost,” Putin said during narrow format negotiations with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan on Wednesday.

“Incidentally, I was very pleased to see that and I would like to congratulate you. I’ve taken a look at last year’s statistics. Since Armenia joined the EAEU your GDP has grown 10%,” Putin said.

He believes this is a very positive sign. Putin voiced the hope that the positive trend will be preserved.

At the beginning of the meeting Sargsyan said that in the course of his working visit to Moscow he was going to discuss with Putin current interaction between the two countries and to exchange opinion of various issues on the regional agenda. Sargsyan said that in January-June 2016 Russian-Armenian trade was up 12% and commodity export to Russia reached a record-high. He attributed the growth to Armenia’s accession to the EAEU. Sargsyan said his country had no major problems in bilateral relations with Russia.

Armenia joined the EAEU in 2015.

Putin added that he will inform Serzh Sargsyan about the results of the talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement with Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev.

“I met with Azerbaijani President (Ilham) Aliyev in Baku just recently, and, of course, we could not overlook the issue you’ve just mentioned – the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement,” Putin said opening talks with the Armenian leader. “Of course, I will be glad to inform you about the results of our talks in Baku.”

The Russian and Azerbaijani presidents held talks in Baku on August 8.

Standoff at Armenian police station entrs fourth day. No incidents were reported overnight.

Photo: Getty Images

Argentina and Barcelona footballer Lionel Messi has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for tax fraud, the BBC reports.

His father, Jorge Messi, was also given a jail term for defrauding Spain of €4.1m ($4.5m) between 2007 and 2009.

They also face millions of euros in fines for using tax havens in Belize and Uruguay to conceal earnings from image rights.

However, neither man is expected to serve time in jail.

Under the Spanish system, prison terms of under two years can be served under probation.

The footballer and his father were found guilty of three counts of tax fraud in Wednesday’s ruling by the court in Barcelona.

As well as the jail terms, Messi was fined about €2m and his father €1.5m. They made a voluntary €5m “corrective payment”, equal to the alleged unpaid tax plus interest, in August 2013.

The sentence can be appealed through the Spanish supreme court.

Head of the Armenian Mission to the OSCE, Ambassador Arman Kirakosyan has expressed concern over the recent attacks of the Al-Nusra Front against the civilian population of Aleppo, which has left many killed.

Addressing the 1105th sitting of the OSCE Permanent Council, Ambassador Kirakosyan strongly condemned the planned and consistent shelling of the Christian-populated neighborhoods of Aleppo, which has led to dozens of casualties among the peaceful population and caused a serious damage to “Zvartnots” Armenian Catholic Church, the Armenian nursing home and other historical-cultural and scientific-educational buildings.

The Ambassador noted that “the Armenian mission has been consistently raising the issue of foreign militants in Syria and Iraq, the functioning of the Islamic State, Al Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda affilieated groups. He said that the religious minorities, including the Armenian community, are the primary target of those groups.

Ambassador Kirakosyan noted that the activity of the above-mentioned terrorist groups poses a serious threat to the security of the OSCE region. “Violent radicalism, extremism and terrorism target the ethnic and religious minorities, threaten their existence in the Middle East and further aggravate the migration crisis over the OSCE area. The Armenian community of Aleppo was established by Armenian genocide survivors, and 101 years later that community is struggling for its survival under the conditions of transboundary support for the terrorist groups,” he added.

Arman Kirakosyan called on the OSCE participating states to meet their commitments of fighting terrorism and urged Turkey to refrain from providing its territory for cross-border attacks against the civilian population, including the ethnic and religious minorities in Syria.

The Associated Press – You’ll soon see four new names on the periodic table of the elements, including three that honor Moscow, Japan and Tennessee.

The names are among four recommended Wednesday by an international scientific group. The fourth is named for a Russian scientist.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which rules on chemical element names, presented its proposal for public review. The names had been submitted by the element discoverers.

The four elements, known now by their numbers, completed the seventh row of the periodic table when the chemistry organization verified their discoveries last December.

Tennessee is the second U.S. state to be recognized with an element; California was the first. Element names can come from places, mythology, names of scientists or traits of the element. Other examples: americium, einsteinium and titanium.

Joining more familiar element names such as hydrogen, carbon and lead are:

– moscovium (mah-SKOH’-vee-um), symbol Mc, for element 115, and tennessine (TEH’-neh-seen), symbol Ts, for element 117. The discovery team is from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Vanderbilt physics professor Joseph Hamilton, who played a role in the discoveries, proposed naming an element for Tennessee. He had hoped to use the symbol Tn, but it had been used in the past and couldn’t be reassigned to the new element.

– oganesson (OH’-gah-NEH’-sun), symbol Og, for element 118. The name honors Russian Armenian physicist Yuri Oganessian.

– nihonium (nee-HOH’-nee-um), symbol Nh, for element 113. The element was discovered in Japan, and Nihon is one way to say the country’s name in Japanese. It’s the first element to be discovered in an Asian country.

An official at a Japanese institute involved in the discovery said the name was chosen to recognize government funding for the project. “We wanted to show our research has been supported by the Japanese people,” said Kosuke Morita, a research group director at the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-based Science.

The public comment period will end Nov. 8.

Photo: AFP

Chad’s ex-ruler Hissene Habre has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison at his war crimes trial in Senegal, the BBC reports.

The judge also convicted him of rape, sexual slavery and ordering killings.

It was the first time an African Union-backed court has tried a former ruler for human rights abuses.

The prosecutor at the court in Senegal’s capital Dakar requested a life sentence for Habre, who refused to recognise its legitimacy.

The ex-president denied accusations that he ordered the killing of 40,000 people during his rule from 1982 to 1990.

President Serzh Sargsyan’s Address to the participants of the Second Conference of the Armenian Political Parties

Esteemed Colleagues,

I cordially greet the participants and guests of the Second Conference of the Armenian Political Parties. I am glad that members of the political parties represented in the Parliaments of Armenia and Artsakh have responded to the initiative of the Republican Party of Armenia and gathered in the capital of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh – Stepanakert.

Consistent and coordinated efforts aimed at further democratization, enhanced efficiency of the state administration structures and full implementation of human rights, whose main implementers are the political parties, are critically important for the added empowerment of the two Armenian states.

I am aware that the invitation to participate at the Conference was accepted by the political forces and political figures which had in the past and have now different views and different positions on various issues. However they have expressed readiness to jointly outline approaches related to the activities of political parties within our society, information, civil society and foreign relations, issues pertinent to Nagorno Karabakh and other topics.

I am confident that this format will allow the political parties to forge united pan-national positions, based on their internally adopted policies. Moreover so since military activities, which took place at the Nagorno Karabakh borderline several weeks ago, revealed once again potential of the all-national unity and our nation’s resolve to live in freedom and defend that freedom. A strong state must have a strong army as well as modern political, social, and economic structures based on the national system of values.

I once again salute the representatives of the Armenian political parties and wish the Conference productive work.

An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo made two sharp turns before plunging into the Mediterranean Sea, Greece’s defence minister says, the BBC reports.

Panos Kammenos said the Airbus A320 had “turned 90 degrees left and a 360-degree turn to the right” and dropped more than 6,700m  before disappearing from radar.

Sixty-six people were on board, most of them from Egypt or France.

A major search is under way in seas south of the Greek island of Karpathos.

Greek and Egyptian armed forces are involved in the effort, and France has offered to send boats and planes.

Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi told a news conference it was too early to rule out either terrorism or a technical failure as the reason behind the plane’s disappearance.

He said search efforts were concentrating on an area of the Mediterranean near the Greek island of Karpathos, but no wreckage had yet been found.