Category: News

The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh region causes serious concern, the sides should evade further escalation of the conflict, Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Secretary General Nikolai Bordyuzha said Sunday, reports.

“We are greatly concerned about the situation in the Caucasus, especially in connection with the Karabakh conflict, where on the contact line heavy weapons, tanks are used, there are casualties,” Bordyuzha said in an interview to Rossiya-24 television.

He added that political resource of the CSTO states should be used to prevent further destabilization of the situation.

“To ensure that this conflict, that is already in a fairly hot stage, does not turn into a large-scale military clashes,” Bordyuzha stressed.

Turkey’s main opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (CHP) faction has submitted a bill to the parliament, which offers to provide Turkish citizenship to the heirs of those exiled from the country starting from 1914 and those deprived of citizenship because of some reason, Ermenihaber.am reports, quoting haberaktuel.com.

If the bill passes, citizenship will be granted to Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians who lost their homeland during the genocide, as well as their heirs (up to the fourth generation).

The bill also applies to Armenians, Greeks and Jews that suffered as a result of the massacre in Istanbul on September 6-7, 1955, also as their heirs.

Should the bill turn into law, the Armenian Genocide survivors and their generations can apply for Turkish citizenship if they present the following documents: passports of the time, church protocols, protocols of the minority organizations, Ottoman documents, documents from the countries of residence, which prove they arrived from Turkey.

A similar bill was submitted by the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), but was rejected by the Turkish Parliament.

Kurdish groups in southeastern Turkey have called for self-rule, separate from Ankara, as heavy fighting between them and the Turkish Army continues, Reuters reports.

Over 200 Kurdish militants were killed on Sunday during a security operation by the army.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had cancelled a planned meeting with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) on Saturday, saying its politics were rooted in violence.

The call came at the tail end of a summit of the Democratic People’s Congress (DTK), a coalition of non-governmental Kurdish groups.

“To form a democratic autonomous region including one or several neighbouring provinces, one needs to take into account their cultural, economic and geographic affinities,” said Hatip Dicle, Leader of Kurdish Democratic People’s Congress.

The final resolution of the meeting called for the formation of autonomous Kurdish regions, including several neighbouring provinces.

With Christmas just days away, 30 U.S. Representatives, led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA), have called on the Obama Administration to condemn the ongoing Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) attacks against Christians and other Middle East minorities as ‘genocide,’ reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

The December 23rd letter, addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry comes in response to reports that the Obama Administration is set to characterize the ISIS attacks on Yezidis as genocide, but will stop short of similarly referencing the murder and destruction of Christians and other minority groups. “While it is hardly possible to overstate the brutality of ISIL’s attempts to destroy the Yezidis, an overly narrow finding would wrongly discount similar violence directed against other minorities in the region, with likely dire consequences for those minorities,” noted the letter.  The Congressional letter cited the recent U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report which, “call[ed] on the US government to designate the Christian, Yazidi, Shi’a, Turkmen and Shabak communities of Iraq and Syria as victims of Genocide by ISIL.”

A copy of the letter is available here:

The effort is part of a broad outcry of concern by Congressional leaders, genocide experts and rights groups, including the ANCA, to secure a clear U.S. genocide determination regarding the anti-Christian atrocities, including calls for passage of various U.S. House and Senate genocide measures and Obama Administration’s determination.

 

– In the Chinese city of Yiwu, Christmas comes 365 days a year.

Yiwu could be anywhere in workaday urban China. It is a smoggy, swarming, unremarkable place some 300km south of Shanghai.

Except for one thing – a series of vast halls that constitute what is claimed to be the world’s biggest wholesale market. That’s where Christmas happens every day, even if most Chinese people themselves do not really believe in it.

There’s nothing grand about it – but inside the utilitarian buildings there’s a dazzling cornucopia of festive stuff ready for the world’s consumers. There are hundreds of booths, with thousands of different glittering things to buy by dozen, or the hundreds, or the container load.

There are cascades of plastic flowers, and batteries of singing Santas, there are life-sized reindeers, and twinkling LED garlands in more colours than a rainbow.

There are dozens of cuddly soft toy stalls, with characters bearing a peculiar familiarity to well-known global trademarks.

There are ribbons and baubles, and lights everywhere. Dazzled, the eye does not know where to look, what to take in. You amble on, floor after floor of glittering stuff ready for the export market.

Each of the more than 60,000 booths seems to represent a separate business. Each of them specialises in a very particular product, often from far away factories.

It’s not just toys and baubles. There are hundreds of booths of festive gloves and hats, tools, car accessories, bicycles, and pots and pans. Most of the products are gaudy and low tech. They say that 1,700,000 different things are on show. I gave up counting them.

Effectively this mind-boggling place is the shop window for the great Chinese industrial revolution, the extraordinary rush to turn the country into the global manufacturing powerhouse that has transformed China’s cities over the past 30 years.

It’s one of those statistics which nobody can prove, but they say that more than half of all the world’s Christmas decorations are made in China. A huge proportion of them are on sale to global buyers in the endless booths of the Yiwu wholesale market.

The relative calmness was maintained at the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan last night.

The rival fired about 500 shots from weapons of different caliber in the direction of the Armenian positions, the NKR Ministry of Defense said.

The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army remained committed to the ceasefire regime and confidently continued with their military duty all along the line of contact.

Across the world, Christians have begun marking Christmas with services, with Pope Francis holding midnight mass at the Vatican, the BBC reported.

In the holy city of Bethlehem, the West Bank town where it is believed that Jesus was born, events have been overshadowed by recent violence between Palestinians and Israelis.

“There’s lights, there’s carols, but there’s an underlying sense of tension,” one pilgrim to Bethlehem, Briton Paul Haines, told Associated Press news agency.

Scores of people are reported killed in an explosion at an industrial gas plant in south-eastern Nigeria.

A truck is said to have exploded as it was off-loading butane cooking gas in the town of Nnewi in Anambra State, the BBC reports.

Reports of casualties vary from 35 to more than 100 people killed, including factory workers and neighbours.

Local police have confirmed the incident but have yet to provide further details. A huge fire reportedly followed the blast.

The dead and injured were taken to the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital in Nnewi which has a predominantly Christian community.

Photo: TASS    

Russia’s airbase in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, has started flight calibration of squadrons of Mi-24P helicopter gunships that have entered service over December, Maj. Andrey Dobrosmyslov, spokesman for the Southern Military District of Russia’s Armed Forces, said Friday, TASS reports.

“During flight calibration, crews of the attack helicopters will practice takeoff, flights at various speeds, at altitudes of 100 to 1,500 meters and landing,” Dobrosmyslov said. “In easy and complicated weather conditions, the pilots will inspect the parts and accessories during loads and g-loads,” he said. “The flight calibration of the helicopter squadron will last two months.”

 

 

 

World-known film director, actor and musician Emir Kusturica will perform in Armenia today with the “No Smoking Orchestra” in a concert organized within the framework of the events dedicated to the Armenian Genocide Centennial.

Earlier today he visited the Armenian Genocide Museum Institute to pay tribute to the memory of the 1.5 million victims.

Speaking to reporters today, Kusturica referred to the similarities and differences of the Armenian and Serbian peoples and expressed his opinion about the geopolitical events.

The Serbian director said he’s happy to return to a country, which is very much like his homeland.  The difference, he said, is that the Armenian nation, which has survived genocide, is united and has clear demands, while the Serbian history is different, Serbians are seen as criminals, not victims.