Author: Tatoyan Vazgen

Thirteen migrants detained on Ukraine’s western border
UNIAN news agency
2 Aug 05
Kiev, 2 August: Servicemen of the State Border Service have detained 13
illegal migrants on the border stretch patrolled by the Chop detachment
[Transcarpathian Region].
The public relations department of the State Border Service said
that there were six Vietnamese nationals, six Russian citizens from
Chechnya and one Armenian among the detainees.
The Vietnamese migrants were stopped by a detail from the Stuzhytsya
checkpoint 2.5 kilometres from the state border. Later, border guards
of the Onokivtsi checkpoint detained the Armenian, who got as close as
800 metres to the border. The Chechens, who wanted to get to Slovakia,
were stopped 600 metres from the border.

World Peace Herald, DC
Jamestown Foundation
Aug 1 2005
Georgia accuses Russia of terrorism
By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published August 1, 2005
TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia’s Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili
has identified a Russian military intelligence agent behind a bombing
in Gori.
Three policemen were killed in the February 1 car bombing. The Georgian
daily Rezonansi said that Merabishvili named Anatolii Sysoev as a
member of Russia’s Main Intelligence Administration (GRU — Glavnoye
Razvedovatelnoye Upravlenie).
Merabishvili said that Georgian security officials in South
Ossetia arrested three other persons suspected in carrying out the
attack. “According to our information, a year and half ago colonel
of the Russia’s GRU Anatoly Sisoev set up a group of saboteurs which,
according to our information, was trained on the territory of Russia.
This group has carried out the terrorist act here in Gori,” he said.
Gia Valiev and Gia Zasiev were arrested in the Tskhinvali region.
Police also arrested Joseb Kochiev, who allegedly bought a car shortly
before the terrorist act in which an explosive was detonated.
Merabishvili met with the Russian Ambassador in Georgia on July 25
and gave him all the materials of the investigation.
Anatoly Sysoev was born in 1950 in Tbilisi and served in the
GRU military intelligence. In 1992 Sysoev officially resigned
from the GRU, departing for Azerbaijan where participated in the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1992-1995 as a head of field intelligence
of the Azerbaijani field artillery. In 1995 Sysoev was arrested by
Azerbaijan on treason charges.
Azerbaijani police charged Sysoev in an assassination attempt on
Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliev by blowing up his airplane with an
IGLA man-portable anti-aircraft missile. Sysoev received a 15-year
jail sentence, which was later reduced to 10 years. In 2001 he was
granted amnesty and left for Ukraine.
Sysoev returned to the region in 2002 as a military advisor to
South Ossetian president Eduard Kokoev. Merabishvili noted that the
three Goribomb blast suspects said that Sysoev was training a group
of approximately 120 saboteurs in South Ossetia and that his group
possessed at least four IGLA missiles. Russian Defense Minister Sergey
Ivanov labeled “depressingly stupid” media reports on the possible
participation of GRU agents in terrorist acts abroad, including the
one in Gori.

PanArmenian News Network
July 29 2005
HEAD OF ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH PROMISED TO PUSH ETHIOPIAN
GOVERNMENT TO RECOGNIZE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
29.07.2005 04:28
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The victims of the Armenian Genocide were
commemorated July 28 in the chapel of the Antilias Cathedral
(Lebanon). Cilician Catholicos Aram I and Patriarch of the Orthodox
Church of Ethiopia Paulos were present at the event. The religious
ceremony was held in the Armenian and Ethiopian languages. The
Patriarch wished the Armenian people the restoration of infringed
rights and fair settlement of the problems. By request of Cilician
Catholicos head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church promised to press
for recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Ethiopia, Yerkir Online
reported.

Four Armenian troops killed on Azeri border this year
Mediamax news agency
29 Jul 05
YEREVAN
Four Armenian servicemen were killed on Armenian-Azerbaijani contact
line in the first half of 2005, half the number killed in the same
period of 2004.
Armenian Military Prosecutor Gagik Dzhangiryan said this today in
Yerevan, speaking at a session of an extended board of the
Prosecutor-General’s Office, Mediamax reports.
Dzhangiryan said that 22 cases of attempt on the lives of Armenian
servicemen were registered in the first half of 2005.
In total, 24 casualties were registered in the Armenian armed forces
in January-June 2005. Thirty-nine servicemen died in the Armenian army
in the same period of 2004.

PanArmenian News Network
July 28 2005
FRENCH LEGION OF HONOR AWARDED TO ARA ABRAHAMYAN
28.07.2005 04:06
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ French President Jacques Chirac has signed a decree
on awarding well-known public figure, businessman, President of the
Union of Armenians of Russia and UNESCO Good Will Ambassador Ara
Abrahamyan with the highest decoration of the French Republic – the
Legion of Honor. `Ara Abrahamyan has done much to develop the
Russian-French relations,’ Russian Ambassador to France Aleksandr
Avdeyev said. `He co-chairs the Russian-French Dialogue
non-governmental association, sponsored by Presidents V. Putin and J.
Chirac,’ the Ambassador said. `Ara Abrahamyan has assisted in the
erection of the monument to the Soviet Soldier at Pere Lachaise
French Cemetery marking the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory. He
has organized productive bilateral business meetings, as well as a
Russian Film Festival in Onfler Norse city,’ Avdeyev remarked. `I
think Ara Abrahamyan has deserved the French awarding him the highest
decoration,’ he said. Napoleon has established the Legion of Honor in
1802. The decoration is awarded for outstanding services to France
and has 5 degrees, Itar-Tass reported.

PanArmenian News Network
July 28 2005
ARMENIA DAY HELD IN EGYPT
28.07.2005 07:41
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian Embassy in Egypt in cooperation with
Women’s International Peace Movement organization, led by Egyptian
First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, and cultural unions of Armenians of Egypt
has organized an event titled Armenia’s Day in Maadi library, Cairo,
reported the Armenian MFA Press Service. In the course of the event a
documentary on Armenia was screened, Armenian national dances were
performed, works of Armenian children titled Egypt as Armenian
Children See It were presented. Diplomats representing a number of
countries that are accredited in Cairo, Armenian community members,
as well as media representatives took part in the event. July 29
World and Children program aired by the first and satellite channels
of Egypt will be devoted to Armenia and the event.

ARKA News Agency
July 27 2005
ARMENIAN FM, IAEA DIRECTOR GENERAL DISCUSS PROBLEMS OF ENERGY SECTOR
OF ARMENIA
YEREVAN, July 28. /ARKA/. RA Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan and
Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Muhammad Al Baradey discussed the problems of Armenia in energy
sector and prospects of the sector’s future development,
press-service of the RA Foreign Ministry reports. During the meeting
they also discuss implementation of more effective work to provide
security of the Armenian Nuclear Power Plant, as well as use of other
sources of energy. Oskanyan and Baradey underlined importance of
Armenia’s cooperation with IAEA. A.A. -0–

PanArmenian News Network
July 26 2005
ALIYEV: MORE POINTS FITTING BAKU APPEARED IN TALKS
26.07.2005 03:15
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ «The mediators became more active lately, various
ideas appeared. More points fitting Azerbaijan appeared in the talks,
first of all the stepwise settlement. This is an approach accepted by
the international community,» Azeri President Ilham Aliyev stated
Monday. Addressing residents of a settlement, Aliyev noted the
unsettled state of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is of most concern
to the authorities. «For many years the Karabakh conflict has been
unresolved, the mediation mission, unfortunately, did not produce an
effect,» he said. Having mentioned the importance of diplomatic
efforts the President emphasized the opponent should know Azerbaijan
has strength and army. I. Aliyev said that to solve the NK problem
official Baku has mobilized all its economic and diplomatic potential
and simultaneous to it strengthening the army is highlighted. «To
enhance the military power of Azerbaijan the budgetary spending is
increased 70%. Azerbaijan will liberate its lands by all means,» the
Azeri President is sure, Azeri media reported.

PRESS RELEASE
Jennifer Karch Cannata
Press Secretary
Office of U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr.
420 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-4671 office
(202) 225-9665 fax
Contact: Jennifer Hing/Knollenberg
July 25, 2005
(202) 225-5802
Jennifer Cannata/Pallone
(202) 225-4671
Knollenberg, Pallone introduce BILL to deny U.S. support for ANY south
caucuses rail line designed to exclude Armenia
Washington, D.C. — Following recent reports that plans are underway to
build a new railroad system connecting Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey that
specifically exclude Armenia, U.S. Reps. Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) and Frank
Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), co-chairmen of the Congressional Caucus on Armenian
Issues, last week introduced legislation in the U.S. House of
Representatives that explicitly prohibits any U.S. assistance to the project
unless Armenia is included.
The proposed rail link would cost between $400 million and $800 million and
is designed to bypass a pre-existing rail line in Armenia that could be
brought online with a few minor updates and repairs. The Armenian rail line
is not currently in use because of the Turkish government’s blockade of
Armenia. The lawmakers expressed concern that the new line, which connects
the cities of Baku, Azerbaijan, Tbilisi, Georgia and Kars, Turkey, will
further reinforce Turkey’s illegal blockade.
Knollenberg and Pallone said that open and fully integrated transportation
routes are necessary to promote cooperation, support economic growth, and
help resolve regional conflicts, but that the new rail line will allow the
region to develop economically, without any benefit to Armenia.
The lawmakers also expressed concern that Azerbaijan’s leading role in the
development of the new railroad, combined with other similar attempts to
exclude Armenia from regional cooperative efforts, threatens to undermine a
solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and could potentially destabilize
the region.
“Instead of condoning economic isolation, the United States should stand
strong for its policy of promoting integration among the countries of the
South Caucasus. By urging the countries of the region to use the existing
rail line, we can help cool tensions and foster much needed cooperation,”
Knollenberg said.
“Armenia’s exclusion from this project directly undermines the United
States’ stated goal of fostering integration and cooperation among the
countries of the region,” Pallone said. “The United States should not
reinforce this type of economic isolationism, and we should not support this
plan until Armenia is included as a full partner in this project.”
-30-
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

San Francisco Chronicle, United States
July 25 2005
Ice ages linked to galactic position
Study finds Earth may be cooled by movement through Milky Way’s
stellar clouds
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
It might sound preposterous, like astrology, to suggest that galactic
events help determine when North America is or isn’t buried under
immense sheets of ice taller than skyscrapers. But new research
suggests the coming and going of major ice ages might result partly
from our solar system’s passage through immense, snakelike clouds of
exploding stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
Resembling the curved contrails of a whirling Fourth of July
pinwheel, the Milky Way’s spiral arms are clouds of stars rich in
supernovas, or exploding stars. Supernovas emit showers of charged
particles called cosmic rays.
Theorists have proposed that when our solar system passes through a
spiral arm, the cosmic rays fall to Earth and knock electrons off
atoms in the atmosphere, making them electrically charged, or
ionized. Since opposite electrical charges attract each other, the
positively charged ionized particles attract the negatively charged
portion of water vapor, thus forming large droplets in the form of
low-lying clouds.
In turn, the clouds cool the climate and trigger an ice age — or so
theorists suggest.
In that regard, researchers are finding correlations between the
timing of Earth’s ice ages and epochs when our solar system passed
through galactic spiral arms.
The latest evidence appears in the June 20 issue of Astrophysical
Journal. The article is the result of an unusual collaboration
between an astronomer, Professor Douglas Gies of Georgia State
University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy, and a
16-year-old student at Grady High School in Atlanta, John Helsel.
They report the results of their effort to determine how the sun has
moved through the galaxy over the last half-billion years.
Difficult to map
By making a variety of assumptions about the rate of solar motion and
the distribution of spiral arms in the galaxy — which are difficult
to map because galactic dust and foreground stars get in the way —
Gies and Helsel conclude that “the sun has traversed four spiral arms
at times that appear to correspond well with long-duration cold
periods on Earth.”
“This,” they continue, “supports the idea that extended exposure to
the higher cosmic-ray flux associated with spiral arms can lead to
increased cloud cover and long ice age epochs on Earth.”
Gies and Helsel’s article is the long-term result of a project that
Helsel began working on “as a science fair project,” Gies says. Gies,
50, is a neighbor of Helsel’s. Gies had previously “developed a
scheme to model the motion of some massive stars in the galaxy,” and
when Helsel approached him for guidance on the science fair project,
their “conversation quickly focused on studying the sun’s motion and
encounters with spiral arms in the galaxy.”
A veteran investigator of the galaxy-ice age hypothesis is
astrophysicist and assistant professor Nir Shaviv, 33, of Racah
Institute of Physics at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who was
previously a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of
Technology. He has reanalyzed other scientists’ previously published
data on meteorites, which contain mildly radioactive isotopes —
fragments of atoms that were altered by cosmic-ray bombardments over
millions of years while the meteorite was still hurtling through
space. Based on the ages of different isotopes, he concludes the
cosmic-ray bombardments were most intense during past epochs when
Earth is believed to have passed through known spiral arms.
Another hypothesis
An alternate but related hypothesis of ice ages suggests that Earth
occasionally passes through huge interstellar clouds of hydrogen gas.
Such clouds are common in the spiral arms. According to this
hypothesis, the interstellar clouds chemically soak up oxygen
molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, dramatically lowering the levels of
the gas ozone.
Because ozone normally heats the atmosphere by trapping infrared
radiation, a decline in ozone could cool Earth and “may trigger an
ice age of relatively long duration,” the astrophysicists Ararat
Yeghikyan of Armenia and Hans Fahr of Germany proposed last year in
the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Many other factors involved
Galaxy-ice age theorists caution that their findings are only
tentative and that many other factors also affect the timing of ice
ages.
Still, their research probably has long-term practical value. That’s
because it could eventually help scientists to better distinguish
between “normal” global climate change caused by Mother Nature’s
whims, such as the passage through a spiral arm, and climate change
caused by humans — such as drivers whose fossil-fuel-burning cars
contribute to global warming.
Various versions of the galaxy-ice age hypothesis have kicked around
the peripheries of the climatological and astronomical communities
since at least the 1970s. Until recently, though, such hypotheses
have received relatively scant scientific attention.
One reason for the neglect is that climate change is a dauntingly
complex topic, one in which causes of any event — even a simple rain
shower in downtown San Francisco — have innumerable short-term and
long-term causes.
Another likely reason is that climatologists and astronomers are two
scientific communities that rarely interact because their interests,
background, training and funding sources are so different. Like most
scientists, they hesitate to tread on unfamiliar intellectual turf
for fear of making naive mistakes.
But climatologists and galactic astronomers have at least one thing
in common: a grand sense of time. Both deal with events — such as
the comings and goings of ice ages and the slow spinning of the Milky
Way — that require them to use clocks timed in hundreds of thousands
or millions of years. This gives them a common language of discourse,
like a tourist to France who doesn’t speak French but can crudely
communicate with a chef via their common knowledge of French cuisine.
Relevant to ozone thesis
Although Yeghikyan and Fahr’s proposed ozone explanation for certain
ice ages differs from the cosmic-ray thesis, “I take the idea
presented by Gies and Helsel as absolutely serious” and relevant to
the ozone thesis, Fahr said in an e-mail. That’s because passage
through a spiral arm would increase Earth’s exposure to the dense
interstellar clouds, which are common within the arms, Fahr noted.
Other scientists view the galaxy-ice age hypothesis with cautious
interest.
On the one hand, astrophysicist Erik Leitch of Caltech says the Gies
and Helsel paper is “a suggestive result.” It “is not unreasonable”
to infer that the solar system, while passing through a spiral arm,
would experience more intense cosmic ray bombardment because “the
spiral arms seem to be the main sites of star formation in the
galaxy, and the massive stars which become supernovae don’t live long
enough to travel very far out of the arms before they explode.”
Therefore, Leitch said, “if you’re in a spiral arm, you’re much more
likely to be near a massive star about to explode than if you’re not”
— and hence, in turn, likelier to be exposed to intense bursts of
cosmic rays.
On the other hand, Leitch warns, just because Earth occasionally
passes through unusually intense showers of cosmic rays doesn’t mean
those showers will trigger ice ages. Regarding the Gies and Helsel
paper, the proposed connection between cosmic-ray surges and cooling
periods “seems more tenuous to me. … Cosmic rays may ‘seed’ more
cloud cover, but it’s not clear to me that increased cloud cover will
always lead to cooling.”
According to some computer models, he explained, clouds can act not
only like a sunshade but also like a blanket — that is, clouds not
only shield Earth from solar rays but also trap infrared heat
radiated by the ground. It’s anyone’s guess whether the net effect of
increased cloud cover would cool or warm the climate.
Shaviv disagrees: He is confident that low-altitude clouds “have a
clear cooling effect.”
Karen Aplin of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford, England,
who has studied links between atmospheric ionization and cloud
formation, observed: “The climate system is extremely complex, with
many feedbacks, and it is not at all straightforward to establish
that these (links between cosmic rays and clouds) exist.”
In a 2001 article co-written with R.G. Harrison, Aplin “showed that
ions formed by cosmic rays can make small particles, condensation
nuclei, in the atmosphere,” she said. There’s a catch, though: “These
particles are too small to act as cloud condensation nuclei. … To
trigger cloud formation, they would have to live for quite a while
and grow many times bigger.”
Whether they do so — and if so, how — remains an open question.
“The assumption that an increase in cosmic rays causes an atmospheric
response, which, in turn, causes ice ages is a large one, although
it’s not impossible,” her colleague Harrison told The Chronicle.
Blueprint of the Milky Way galaxy
A sketch of our disc-shaped galaxy as seen from above. The “spiral
arms” are vast, arc-shaped clouds of stars. As our sun orbits the
galaxy, it occasionally passes through a spiral arm. Inside a spiral
arm, some theorists believe, our solar system is exposed to unusually
intense showers of cosmic rays that trigger cloud formation and,
perhaps, ice ages on Earth. Our solar system is presently located in
a small “spur” of clouds called the Orion Arm, located between two
larger arms known as the Perseus and Carina-Sagittarius spiral arms.