Two men aged 50 and 41 died of swine flu today after ten days of struggle, Press Service of the Armenian Ministry of Health reports.
The Ministry yesterday reported decrease in the number of patients diagnosed with swine flu. Three deaths have been confirmed after the statement.
Dortmund CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke has suggested there is a chance Mats Hummels, Henrikh Mkhitaryanand Ilkay Gundogan will leave Borussia Dortmund, but is adamant they will not all be sold at once, reports.
The trio all have contracts with BVB until June 2017, leaving the club potentially contemplating cashing in on them in the summer or risk losing the influential threesome at the end of next season.
Dortmund previously lost Robert Lewandowski to Bayern Munich on a free transfer, but Watzke is not too worried about the prospect of potentially losing another star for free.
“I can rule out that three players of their calibre will all leave at once,” Watzke told Bild.
“It should be our goal to bring in a player of the same level if someone leaves us on a free transfer in 2017. We will make that happen.”
Both Hummels and Gundogan have been linked with a move to the Premier League in the past, but Watzke does not think England is the preferred destination for top players any longer.
“The absolute star players do not necessarily go to England,” he added.
“They have not been able to celebrate a World Cup for 50 years and that will not change any time soon.
Young Armenian pianist Hayk Melikyan will begin a tour of Iran with a performance in the southern city of Bushehr tonight, reports.
He will perform a selection of his “1900+”, a world piano music concert series of the 20th century, during his tour.
The series, which was launched in 2009, includes works composed after the year 1900 by different composers from all over the world including works by Iranian composers Shahin Farhat, Hormoz Farhat and Fuzieh Majd.
“I am very happy to have been invited to give concerts in Iran and perform compositions by Iranian musicians,” the pianist told the Persian service of Honaronline on Tuesday.
“This is quite exciting to meet Iranian people and become familiar with their culture,” he said.
“We have many musicians who have many things in common with Iranian composers. These commonalities are mostly seen in works composed by Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978),” he added.
“Iranian musicians have composed very valuable works, which I believe need to be performed and introduced in today’s digital world in order to be better preserved,” he added.
Tehran’s Rudaki Hall will be the stop for Melikyan’s concerts on January 15 and 16.
He will perform in Yazd on January 17, next in Ahvaz on January 19, and then in Shiraz on January 20.
The massacre of Armenians started on this day 26 years ago and continued for a week. Those guilty for the events of 1990 have not been punished; the exact number of the victims is still unknown. What’s obvious, however, is that the real number considerably exceeds the official data.
The events in Baku 26 years ago were real genocide against the Armenian population. Tens of Armenians were killed in Baku between January 13 and 20. They were robbed of their property and exiled.
“More than a quarter of century after the massacre, the events have not been properly assessed,” President of the Assembly of Azerbaijani Armenians Grigory Ayvazyan told reporters today.
“The neighboring country glorifies the organizers and perpetrators of the crime. Even today killing an Armenia is not seen as a crime in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan brings up generations on the example of cutthroats and murderers,” he said.
“The massacre of Armenians is a serious counterargument for all those, who try to imagine Artsakh under Azerbaijani jurisdiction. In this case the reoccurrence of ethnic cleansings will be unavoidable. Remembering Baku and Sumgaint, we’ll not allow the same in Artsakh,” sociologist Aharon Adibekyan said.
According to him, the book titled “Armenophobia in Azerbaijan” will soon be released. The book, which has been translated into English, tells about the Armenian massacres in Baku and Sumgaint and their consequences. Adibekyan said “we must make it clear to the world who we have to deal with in the face of Azerbaijan.”
World football’s governing body FIFA has dismissed secretary general Jerome Valcke, the BBC reports.
The Frenchman, 55, is currently suspended from all football activities for his alleged involvement in a scheme to profit from World Cup ticket sales.
FIFA has recommended that he should be banned from football for nine years.
Valcke, who was appointed in 2007, also faces bribery allegations, but denies any wrongdoing.
“The FIFA emergency committee decided, on 9 January 2016, to dismiss Jerome Valcke from the position of Fifa secretary general with immediate effect,” said a FIFA statement.
FIFA’s ethics committee said on 7 January it had decided to open “formal adjudicatory proceedings” against Valcke after studying a report submitted by its investigatory chamber.
Valcke, effectively the number two behind president Sepp Blatter, has been accused of being party to a potential $10m bribe paid to Jack Warner, the former head of the North and Central America football governing body Concacaf, in return for his vote and backing to South Africa’s successful bid to host the 2010 World Cup.
Blatter, the outgoing president of world football’s governing body, and vice-president Michel Platini were both suspended for eight years in December following a FIFA ethics investigation.
The Armenian National Archive will publish archive documents related to the Armenian Genocide and World War II this year, Director of the National Archive Amatuni Virabyan told a press conference today.
He said the copies of original Ottoman documents and their translations will also be made public. Most of the documents refer to the properties of the Armenian Church.
Virabyan said the Archive has undertaken the digitalization of the documents. The digital copies will also be kept at the National Archive.
Amatuni Virabyn said thanks to cooperation with national archives of other countries they acquire the copies of all Armenia-related documents.
“The Syrian pro-government forces have taken control of Salma,” the army announced Tuesday afternoon.
The Syrian fighter jets and the country’s artillery units stormed heavily the militant groups’ positions in different sides of Salma for several hours in the morning.
Then the Syrian army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) pushed back the militant groups from the Southern countryside of Salma and advanced towards the town from two directions in the morning.
Then the army announced at around midday that “Salma’s Southern countryside is now under the full control of the Syrian government forces”.
It added that the army and popular forces were advancing against the militants from the Southern and Eastern sides of Salma town.
“The Syrian army’s commandoes have entered Salma and have engaged in heavy clashes with the militants in the town,” the army said at noon.
In the meantime, the pro-government forces took full control over the famous Fort of Kafr Dulbeh in Tal al-Khazan and Tal al-Harmiyah in the Northern part of Salma and inflicted heavy losses on the militant groups in the mountainous battlefields.
The government forces then advanced rapidly in different sides of the town, mainly in the South and the East. The engineering units of the army defused bombs, mines and other explosive devices planted by the militants across the entrances of the town.
Georgia is taking measures for the sake of safeguarding the country’s natural gas supply, reports.
Today Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili and Energy Minister Kakha Kaladze met the Director General of SOCAR Energy Georgia, Mahir Mammedov, in Tbilisi to discuss the possible ways for avoiding natural gas supply deficit.
After the meeting Kaladze told journalists that this year Azerbaijan could not fill the gas supply deficit in Georgia. Kaladze warned the supplies of Azerbaijan’s natural gas will soon be insufficient to cover Georgia’s needs.
In order to solve the gas supply deficit problem the sides discussed several projects that would ensure increasing the Azerbaijani gas supply in Georgia.
One of the projects discussed during the meeting was construction of an underground natural gas storage facility. Kaladze said SOCAR expressed interest to participate in this project. Georgia was going to start construction works in 2016.
Another project was about increasing the existing capacity of SOCAR gas transit.
It will be very important for our country to implement this project [underground natural gas storage facility] in order to solve country’s natural gas supply problem. SOCAR’s both natural gas pipelines operate at full capacity. In the future we plan to implement such project that will ensure us to increase the capacity of gas transit,” Kaladze said.
Another project the sides discussed in order to avoid the natural gas supply deficit in Georgia was Shah Deniz gas field in the Caspian Sea, offshore from Azerbaijan, that opens Europe for Azerbaijani gas.
Kaladze said the second stage of the project would be completed by 2019. $400-700 million USD will be invested in Georgia in the framework of construction for the second stage of development of the Shah Deniz project.
Kaladze said Shah Deniz project would enable Georgia to enjoy additional supply of natural gas.
“At the meeting we have discussed the technical problems that we face during the winter. There are some periods when gas consumption reaches its peak level. And especially in winter when we used to balance the gas supply deficit with Russian gas. I want to say once again that Georgia and Azerbaijan are strategic partner. We will continue cooperation in the future,” Kaladze said.
The Energy Minister explained technically it was impossible to receive additional supply of gas from Azerbaijan this year. However after implementing the above mentioned projects Georgia would overcome the natural gas supply deficit challenge.
Earlier this week Kaladze explained extra gas supplies from Russia and Iran could be necessary only in a transition period until Azerbaijan’s Shah-Deniz field begins having an impact in 2019.
According to a presidential decree of January 12, Tigran Sargsyan has been relieved of the duties of Armenia’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States.
According to another decree, Grigor Hovhannisyan has been appointed to the position.
Remind that on December 21 Tigran Sargsyan was appointed President of the Board of the Eurasian Economic Union.
Today, President Serzh Sargsyan received the Head of the European Union delegation to the Republic of Armenia, Ambassador Peter Switalski.
At the meeting, the parties discussed issues pertinent to the Armenia-EU relations. Serzh Sargsyan stressed once again that Armenia’s cooperation and development of her relations with the European Union remain a priority for Armenia’s foreign policy. The President of Armenia expressed gratitude to the EU for the assistance in carrying out reforms in Armenia and underscored that especially after the constitutional changes Armenia has entered a new stage of large-scale reforms. Serzh Sargsyan expressed hope that assistance provided by the EU for the implementation of the reforms will be continuous, considering the efficiency of the assistance provided so far for the country.
The Head of the EU delegation in Armenia, Ambassador Peter Switalski also expressed hope that in 2016, the Armenia-EU bilateral relations will acquire a new quality and before the end of the year, negotiations on the new comprehensive Armenia-European Union legal document will have been concluded. Ambassador Switalski reiterated the EU’s interest in assisting Armenia in the development of cooperation and implementation of the reforms.