Author: Tambiyan Samvel

ANCIENT COIN SHOWS CLEOPATRA WAS NO BEAUTY

CNN International
Feb 14 2007

LONDON, England (CNN) — Antony and Cleopatra — one of history’s
most romantic couples — were not the great beauties that Hollywood
would have us believe, according to British academics.

A study of a 2,000-year-old silver coin found the Egyptian queen,
famously portrayed by a sultry Elizabeth Taylor, had a shallow
forehead, pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose.

On the other side, her Roman lover, played in the 1963 movie by
Richard Burton, Taylor’s husband at the time, had bulging eyes,
a hook nose and a thick neck.

History has depicted Cleopatra as a great beauty, befitting a woman
who as Queen of Egypt seduced Julius Caesar, and then his rival
Mark Antony.

But the coin, which goes on show on Wednesday at Newcastle University
for Valentine’s Day, after years lying in a bank, is much less
flattering about both famous faces.

The 32BC artifact was in a collection belonging to the Society of
Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, which is being researched in
preparation for the opening of the new Great North Museum.

Clare Pickersgill, the university’s assistant director of
archaeological museums, said: "The popular image we have of Cleopatra
is that of a beautiful queen who was adored by Roman politicians
and generals.

Relationship romanticized "The relationship between Mark Antony
and Cleopatra has long been romanticized by writers, artists and
film-makers.

"Shakespeare wrote his tragedy Antony and Cleopatra in 1608, while
the Orientalist artists of the 19th century and the modern Hollywood
depictions, such as that of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the
1963 film, have added to the idea that Cleopatra was a great beauty.

"Recent research would seem to disagree with this portrayal, however."

The university’s director of archaeological museums, Lindsay
Allason-Jones, said: "The image on the coin is far from being that
of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

"Roman writers tell us that Cleopatra was intelligent and charismatic,
and that she had a seductive voice but, tellingly, they do not mention
her beauty.

"The image of Cleopatra as a beautiful seductress is a more recent
image."

The silver denarius coin would have been issued by the mint of
Mark Antony.

On one side is the head of Mark Antony, bearing the caption "Antoni
Armenia devicta" meaning "For Antony, Armenia having been vanquished."

Cleopatra appears on the reverse of the coin with the inscription
"Cleopatra Reginae regum filiorumque regum," meaning "For Cleopatra,
queen of kings and of the children of kings," or possibly "Queen of
kings and of her children who are kings."

Experts say the coin, on display in Newcastle University’s Shefton
Museum, is not particularly rare but is very collectable. The
collection has been owned by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle
upon Tyne since the 1920s.

ARMENIA TO HAND RAILWAYS TO CONCESSIONAL MANAGEMENT

Armenpress
Feb 13 2007

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 13, ARMENPRESS: Transport and communication minister
Andranik Manukian said today a tender for concessional management
of Armenian Railways will be announced in summer. He said ministry
experts have teamed up with World Bank experts to prepare the tender
package and a draft concessional agreement text.

Manukian said Russian, French, Ukrainian and Kazakh companies have
shown interest in Armenian Railways. He said World Bank experts suggest
that the winner transfer $10 million as concessional payment and pay
2 percent of its incomes to the government. He said railway tariffs
will be set by the Pubic Services Regulatory Commission. Manukian
said the Railway will remain under the government’s ownership.

"In a couple of years Armenian Railways will lose its carriages and
locomotives as they are in their last days. Armenia does not have
extra $170 million to repair the railroads and buy new carriages and
this is the main reason that prompts us to hand it to confessional
management,’ Manukian said.

ARMENIAN LOBBY: "TURKEY IS THREATENING THE U.S"

Sabah, Turkey
Feb 12 2007

Armenian lobby of the U.S Congress claimed that Turkey is threatening
Washington for the draft bill presented to the House of Representatives
about the so-called Armenian genocide.

Armenian members of the low wing of the Congress; the House of
Representatives Frank Pallone and Joe Knollenberg have written a
letter to the President of the Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Lantos
on this issue.

In the letter, both parliament members said: "As we understand, some
top level Turkish government officers are telling Washington not to
discuss the draft bill in the Congress and threatening Washington by
stating Turkey would stop its logistic support for American soldiers
in Iraq. Such threat, which clearly means interference in the military
operation of the U.S, is absolutely unacceptable.

The letter also said ‘Turkey is already feeling despair in its
campaign on denying the systematic death of 1, 5 million Armenians
which cause Turkish authorities to endanger the lives of American
soldiers in Iraq."

STATE THREATENS TO ABOLISH "AIR TAX" IN ARMENIA

Yerevan, February 12. ArmInfo. The so-called "air tax" or the state
duty of 10,000 drams, collected from each passenger leaving Armenia,
will be abolished, the Head of the Chief Department of Civil Aviation,
Artiom Movsisyan, told ArmInfo.

According to him, the collection of the state due just before the
flight in airports has proved its inefficiency. Moreover, some of
the "Zvartnots" airport’s employees were arraigned in receiving tens
thousands of US dollars as a result of fraudulent deals with checks
for the "air tax". The incident, Movsisyan noted, has induced the RA
President’s staff and the Finance Ministry to revise the expediency
of this kind of state due, a part of which did not reach the Armenian
state budget. "It is yet unknown, what will be the conclusions of
the country’s authorities: if the decision on abolishment of this
duty ill be final or it will be automatically added to the air
ticket’s cost. However, it will no more be called an "air tax" ",
A. Movsisyan said.

FILM ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE TO COMPETE FOR A "GOLDEN BEAR"

ArmRadio.am
12.02.2007 11:57

First screening of the "Lark farm" film of Vittorio and Paolo Taviani
brothers will take place February 14-15 at the Berlin International
Film Festival.

The film, which is a joint Italian-French-Spanish-Bulgarian production,
tells the story of a genocide survivor family. The world premiere of
the film will take place in the "Filpalast" of Berlin.

The film stars Canadian-Armenian actress Arsine Khanjian, Alechandro
Presiosi, Angela Molina and others.

The Berlin International Film Festival called also "Berlinale," is
one of the most popular film festivals in the world. It was founded in
1951. This time it is held February 8-18. the awards of the festival
are the golden and silver bears (the symbol of Berlin).

Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey
Feb 9 2007

`Armenian Claims’ tops Turkish FM Gul’s talks with US Congressmen
Print

Friday , 09 February 2007

In Washington for talks with senior US officials, Turkish Foreign
Minister Abdullah Gul met with John Murtha, the chairman of the
defense sub-committee of the House of Representatives Appropriations
Committee, and House majority leader Congressman Steny Hoyer.

During both meetings Mr. Gul said a resolution proposed to the US
House of Representatives constitutes a threat to relations between
the two countries.

Gul later had talks with Congressman Robert Wexler, co-chairman of
the Turkish- American Friendship Group, Tom Lantos, the chairman of
the House Committee on Foreign Relations, and Congressman Roy Blunt.

Lantos had supported Turkey’s position on the "Armenian genocide
claims" issue in the past, but after the Turkish Parliament’s refusal
on March 1, 2003 to allow the deployment of 62,000 US troops in
Turkish territory to launch a northern front in the war with Iraq,
Lantos said he would shift his position and back the resolution.

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Balman said Gul’s meetings
at the US Congress have been positive.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We understand
very clearly that this is a sensitive issue not only for the Turkish
people but also for the Armenian people."

McCormack also said that the State Department is working with the
Congress to pass Turkey’s concerns regarding the issue. However, he
said, "I think Gul and the Turkish government understand how our
government system work, and that the Congress is a separate body."

US President George Bush will have to persuade the new
Democratic-controlled congress, which does not need presidential
approval to pass such a resolution. Members behind the proposed bill
have said they expect a push by the administration and lobbyists
working for the Turkish government to keep the resolution from a full
vote by the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will decide whether to offer the bill
for a full vote if, as expected, it is approved by the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, has already expressed support.

Gul said they do not plan to meet with Pelosi because she is "too
engaged" in the issue but he will meet with her close aides and
friends to make sure Turkey’s views are heard.

Turkey rejects the "genocide" accusations and argues that only
300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in mutual civil
strife. The Ottoman Armenians rioted during the First World War and
the armed Armenian groups attacked the Turkish and Kurdish villages.
The Istanbul Government decided to re-settle about 800.000 Armenians
to Syria province of the State. The decision was similar to the
re-settlement campaign of the Japanese American people during the
Second World War.

PanARMENIAN.Net

U.S. Congressmen outraged by Turkey’s threats
09.02.2007 17:29 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "We are outraged that the Turkish government would put the
lives of our troops abroad at risk in the pursuit of its increasingly
desperate campaign to deny the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million
Armenians," said Reps. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Joe Knollenberg (R-MI).

Congressional Armenian Caucus Co-Chairs Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Joe
Knollenberg (R-MI) expressed outrage at recent warnings by the Turkish
government that it will take actions threatening the security of U.S. troops
in Iraq should Congress even consider the Armenian Genocide Resolution,
reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). In a letter to
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA), Reps. Pallone
and Knollenberg noted that, "it is our understanding that senior Turkish
government officials have warned that, in response to Congress even
considering this resolution, they will close supply pipelines for our forces
serving in Iraq. This shameless threat to interfere in U.S. military
operations is absolutely unacceptable and deeply offensive."

"Sadly, the Turkish government is able to maintain its denial – against all
evidence and the tide of international opinion – in large part due to the
State Department’s efforts to silence those who speak with moral clarity
about the Armenian Genocide," said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.
"It is a testament to the hypocrisy of the Administration’s position that,
on the one hand, its senior officials remained almost entirely silent on
Article 301 prior to Hrant Dink’s murder, while on the other hand loudly and
repeatedly attacking even the consideration by the U.S. Congress of the
Armenian Genocide Resolution."

PEOPLE HOPE TO GET APARTMENTS

Azat Artsakh Daily – Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
08-02-2007

Last year, according to the Ministry of Urban Planning, a block of 13
apartments was built. Another building with 21 apartments is under
construction on Tigran Mets Street. Soon construction of the block
with 45 apartments on Tumanian Street will finish. According to the
City Hall, 1163 people are still waiting to get an apartment. In
addition, people have been registered since 1960s. Davit Tsaturian, a
senior City Hall official, says people still hope to get an
apartment. Another 30 people were registered in 2006. According to
him, over the past few years several people received apartments who
were included in the special program because a member of their family
was killed or became disabled in the war, the Azat Artsakh writes. The
190 families of killed azatamartiks and 208 families of the disabled
of the war in Artsakh are included in the special register. In 2006
another 65 families added. According to the City Hall, last year 10
received apartments. Yet another group includes residents of
dismantled blocks, who were not provided with apartments. Davit
Tsaturian says the government has launched a policy in 2005 on
providing parentless children aged 18 and down with apartments. 22
children will be provided with apartments. Last year 3 of them got
one-room apartments for ten years. The state of dormitories poor. The
media have reported on the grim picture of dormitories for a number of
times. We visited two dormitories where rats are running in the
corridors, the walls are humid and moldy, electric lines are damaged,
sanitation is poor. The dormitories have no gas supply considering all
these problems. The problems has been discussed at different levels,
and on every visit of the representatives of government the residents
think their problems will be solved soon. Davit Tsaturian said the
community has 7 dormitories, where privatization started from 2006. 15
families have already privatized their apartments. The department of
housing admits that the state of the residents of dormitories is poor
but they say the government should attend to this problem. Meanwhile,
the solution of this problem is not visible; there is no definite
policy, said the housing department.

SRBUHI VANIAN.
08-02-2007

AMBASSADOR OT TURKMENISTAN TO RA PAYS VISIT OF FAREWELL TO MOTHER SEE OF HOLY ETCHMIADZIN

Noyan Tapan
Feb 08 2007

ETCHMIADZIN, FEBRUARY 8, NOYAN TAPAN. On February 8, Catholicos
of All Armenians Karekin II received Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary of Turkmenistan to Armenia Khidir Saparliyev
who is completing his diplomatic mission in RA. According to the
report submitted to Noyan Tapan from the Information Services of
the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, at the meeting they spoke about
Armenian-Turkmen relations and cooperation between the two countries.

Mentioning that he is leaving Armenia with good impressions, the
Ambassador said: "Armenia is my second homeland."

GROUP SEEKS END TO LAW AGAINST INSULTING TURKEY
By Sebnem Arsu

The New York Times
Feb 8 2007

ISTANBUL, Feb. 8 – A group of civic organizations today proposed
changes to Article 301, a controversial section of the Turkish penal
code that makes insulting Turkey or Turkishness a crime. The section
has been used against intellectuals, journalists and writers like the
Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and the newspaper editor Hrant Dink,
who was shot dead in an Istanbul street in January.

But critics said the new proposal uses archaic language that would be
just as vague and hard to interpret as the existing article, which
the government refuses to abolish, and would not solve the problems
with the current law.

Many Turks believe that Article 301 is primarily to blame for the
murder of Mr. Dink, an ethnic Armenian who was prosecuted under the
law for comments he made about the mass deaths of Armenians before
and during World War I. His conviction publicly labeled him as a
traitor against the state in the eyes of many Turkish nationalists.

The subject of the mass deaths of the 1910’s is, nearly a century
later, still among the sorest in Turkey. Many historians call the
episode genocide on the part of the Ottoman army, but the Turkish
government denies that and insists that both ethnic Turks and ethnic
Armenians suffered in those years of wartime hardship.

Turkish courts and nationalist groups tend to interpret any public
statements that contradict that official version of events as an
"insult against the Turkish state" and a crime under Article 301.

Mr. Dink’s death reinvigorated efforts to amend or repeal the law,
which has helped attract harsh criticism of the Turkish government by
the European Union for suppressing freedom of expression by prosecuting
writers and intellectuals.

The government has responded by allowing civic organizations from
across the political spectrum to take the lead in drafting proposed
amendments to the law, while insisting that it must be retained in
some form.

"Leading up to the general elections in November, the government
has escaped from political responsibility on a controversial issue
like Article 301 in fear of losing voters," said Gencay Gurun, the
general secretary of Turkish Chamber of Doctors, which dropped out
of the amendment-drafting effort and called instead for total repeal.

"Changes are only a facade, and can never prevent bitter consequences,
as we’ve witnessed with Mr. Dink’s murder."

The new proposal, signed by 10 major civic organizations, is meant to
draw a clearer distinction between criticism and insult, but critics
say it fails to do so. For example, in place of a crime of "insulting
Turkishness," the new draft outlaws "openly abasing and deriding"
the Turkish identity.

The spokesman for the group, Davut Okutcu of the Economic Development
Foundation, acknowledged that the amendments would make no difference
unless the mind set of the country’s judges also changed, toward
greater tolerance of free expression.

"We do not claim that this is the best version," Mr. Okutcu said in a
telephone interview. "We consider this draft as an encouragement to
support better application of law, which will ultimately be worded
by Turkey’s lawmakers."

Article 301 is not the only provision of Turkish law that has been
interpreted to support prosecution of speech and opinion. Perihan
Magden, a columnist for the newspaper Radikal, was charged under a law
that makes encouraging draft-age men from fulfilling their mandatory
military service a crime. That law was not addressed by the committee.

Ms. Magden, who was given police protection following Mr. Dink’s death,
said the proposed changes to Article 301 were too small to matter.

"The fact that I have to live in my own country under police
protection shows the government acknowledgment that something is
wrong," Ms. Magden said. "They can and they have to prevent this."

The government, on the other hand, says that the European Union
bears much of the responsibility for an underlying problem in Turkey,
rising nationalist feeling that manifests itself as intolerance of
criticism and resentment of demands from abroad for change.

Egemen Bagis, a spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development party,
noted that many Turks were angered when the union froze talks over
possible Turkish membership in 2006, after Turkey had worked for years
to overhaul its laws at the union’s request to qualify for membership.

The stated reason for the freeze was that Turkey had failed to open its
ports and airports to trade with the ethnic Greek part of Cyprus, whose
government is internationally recognized and belongs to the union (the
ethnic Turkish government in the northern part of the divided island
is recognized only by Turkey). But many here saw that as a pretext,
and that rising anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe was the real reason.

"We need the motivation by the E.U. in order to improve freedom of
expression alongside other democratic reforms in Turkey," Mr. Bagis
said. "The E.U.’s double standard in treating Turkey’s candidacy,
however, is the primary reason behind the growing nationalist
tendencies in Turkey, and we expect the E.U. to change this attitude
for a better future in Turkey."