Category: News

Journalist and writer Hayko Bağdat has filed a counterclaim against Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek over the content of Gökçek’s legal claims against him, Today’s Zaman reports.

In March, Gökçek made what some see as a verbal attack on Cem Özdemir, the co-chairman of the Green Party in Germany, writing on Twitter: “I am asking Özdemir just out of curiosity… Please give me a response Cem Özdemir… Are you of Armenian origin?”

Gökçek’s tweets came after Özdemir called on Turkey to recognize the killings of Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

In response to Gökçek’s tweets, Bağdat posted several tweets mocking Gökçek’s question. “Reply Cem Özdemir! … You are said to be an Armenian,” posted Bağdat.

In his following tweets, Bağdat suggested that Gökçek is Armenian. “I formally say you are an Armenian. In my opinion, you should sue me @06melihgokcek,” Bağdat wrote.

“The capital city [Ankara] was handed over to an Armenian! What a shame! I wait for you to come to church on Sunday @06melihgokcek. We are all grieving…” wrote Bağdat.

After these tweets, Gökçek first filed a criminal complaint against Bağdat and then filed a lawsuit demanding compensation of TL 10,000 for psychological damages, arguing that Bağdat’s remarks defining him as an Armenian were insulting and libelous, and made with the intention of harming Gökçek’s reputation.

Bağdat also used a hashtag #melihgökçekermeniymiş” (Melih Gökçek turns out to be Armenian), which Gökçek referenced in his lawsuit.

In response, Bağdat announced the lawsuit on Twitter, saying: “Turns out Melih Gökçek sued me demanding TL 10,000 for calling him Armenian. We are going to have so much fun.”

After that case was launched, Bağdat filed a counterclaim against Gökçek based on the content of Gökçek’s claims against Bağdat, stressing that the word “Armenian” had been used to defame and insult him, amounting to an “explicit example of an attack on his rights and honor.”

Bağdat demanded compensation of TL 10,000 in damages.

Pluto has mountains made of ice that are as high as those in the Rockies, images from the New Horizons probe reveal, the BBC reports.

They also show signs of geological activity on Pluto and its moon Charon.

On Wednesday, scientists presented the first pictures acquired by the New Horizons probe during its historic flyby of the dwarf planet.

The team has also named the prominent heart-shaped region on Pluto after the world’s discoverer Clyde Tombaugh.

The spacecraft sped past the dwarf planet on Tuesday, getting as close as 12,500km and grabbing a huge volume of data

 

 

 

Famous English film director Sean McAllister’s film A Syrian Love Story is included in the competition of documentary films of the Golden Apricot International Film Festival.

It is a story of love and family under the conditions of the Syrian crisis. Filmed over five years, A Syrian Love Story charts an incredible odyssey to political freedom in the West. For Raghda and Amer, it is a journey of hope, dreams and despair: for the revolution, their homeland and each other.

“I have tried to avoid politics as much as possible and focus on the love story of a couple, which is more universal than politics,” Sean McAllister told a press conference today.

Having left school at 16, Sean McAllister worked in a variety of factories in the North of England before he picked up a camera and filmed his way into the National Film School, where he graduated in 1996.

His first film, Working for the Enemy was followed up with The Minders and both earned him Royal Television Society Award Nomination. After these came Settlers (2000) and Hull’s Angel in 2002.

From his early films to his more recent international successes, Sean McAllister’s films portray, with characteristic intimacy and frankness, people from different parts of the world who are struggling to survive but are survivors. They are caught up in political and personal conflicts, trying to make sense of the world we live in.

 

 

Asbarez – The Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Bird’s Nest Orphanage Seta Khedeshian said His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia has ordered the suspension of plans to

According to Lebanon’s Aztag daily, Khedeshian told Voice of Van radio station that the Catholicos decided to suspend plans in order for the Catholicosate to provide a more comprehensive explanation to the public, and to create a calmer atmosphere so that the issue is analyzed in a broader way.

Over the past few months, several reports were published claiming that there were plans to build a luxury beach resort on two-thirds of the historic Bird’s Nest Orphanage plot in Jbeil, Lebanon. In early February, the Board of Directors of Bird’s Nest informed the public that plans for the site envision relocating the 33 individual graves to 2 collective tombs on the upper part of the Bird’s Nest plot. Around two-thirds of the graves are of orphans; one-third are of genocide survivors or employees of the orphanage born before 1915. The decision to relocate the bodies was purportedly made to “bring the remains of these orphans closer to the grave of Maria Jacobsen, the founder of the orphanage.”

On 16 July Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan participated in the sitting of the Defense Army’s command staff convoked to sum up the results of the inspection conducted in the armed forces, Central Information Department of the Office of the NKR President reported.

President Sahakyan highlighted the inspections implemented in the army noting that they greatly contribute to the raising of combat readiness of the armed forces.

The President gave appropriate instructions underlining that all the revealed drawbacks must be eliminated unconditionally and within the set time frame.

Swiss authorities said on Thursday they had extradited to the United States an official detained in a U.S. corruption investigation into world soccer’s governing body FIFA, Reuters reports.

They did not name the official, but the news came six days after a source told Reuters that Jeffrey Webb – one of seven current and former FIFA employees arrested in Switzerland in May – had agreed not to fight his extradition.

The allegations under investigation by U.S. and Swiss authorities cover bribery, fraud and money laundering, including possible corruption in the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively.

They have rocked the administration of the world’s most popular sport, raised questions for the game’s powerful commercial sponsors, and forced FIFA President Sepp Blatter to announce he will step down.

A Swiss justice official said: “The first of the seven FIFA officials being held in custody in Switzerland was extradited to the U.S. on 15 July.

“He was handed over to a three-man U.S. police escort in Zurich who accompanied him on the flight to New York.”

Webb and the six others were arrested by Swiss police in a dawn raid on a luxury Zurich hotel two days before a FIFA Congress in May where Blatter was re-elected for a fifth term.

Greece scrambled fighter jets to chase off six Turkish aircraft trespassing into Greek airspace, defense officials said, SputinkNews reports.

Turkish planes, flying in a formation, violated Greek airspace 20 times on Wednesday, officials said, cited by the local Kathimerini newspaper.

Turkish aircraft reportedly crossed into Greece in the northeastern, central and southeastern Aegean Sea, the body of water dividing the two countries’ mainlands. At least two of the fighter jets were armed, officials said.

Spanish giants Real Madrid have topped Forbes‘ list of the world’s most valuable sports teams for the third year running, reprts.

The 10-time European Cup winners head the world rankings with a value of $US 3.26billion, ahead of NFL franchise Dallas Cowboys and MLB’s New York Yankees, which are both valued at $3.2bn.

Manchester United remain England’s most valuable club, despite dropping from third in 2014 to fifth on the list this year at $3.1bn.

Manchester City, valued at $1.39bn or £890m, are 29th overall, Chelsea ($1.37bn) sit 31st and Arsenal ($1.31bn) are placed 36th.

The American business magazine has been valuing teams in the major sports leagues since 1998.

Champions League holders Barcelona, who sit fourth on the list with a value of $3.16bn (£2.02bn), are the remaining top five team.

American sports dominate the rest of the top 10.

The NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks, the New England Patriots and Washington Redskins of the NFL and baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers all make the top 10.

Ferrari, at $1.35bn, rank 32nd and are Europe’s only non-football representative on the list.

The average current value of a team on the list is $1.75bn, the highest ever, which represents a 31 per cent increase from last year.

A 2006 Olympic ice dancing champion says she is to marry President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman later this summer, the Associated Press reports.

Tatiana Navka has been dating Dmitry Peskov, a father of three from two previous marriages, for several years and they had a daughter in August last year. Despite frequent public appearances together Peskov has not spoken publicly of his relationship with Navka, who also has a daughter from a previous relationship.

Navka, 40, said in an interview with the state-owed news agency on Thursday that the wedding is planned in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, scene of the Winter Games in 2014. She didn’t disclosed the date.

Peskov, 47, has said he would not comment on his private life, which is “nobody else’s business.”

By Assadour Guzelian

Organised by the Armenian Institute of London an exceptional concert was given at the Wigmore Hall on 12 July 2015 dedicated to the Centenary of the Armenian Genocide, with the participation of Internationally renowned musicians Levon Chilingirian (violin), Sergey Khachateryan (violin), Alexander Chaushian (cello), Kim Kashkashian (viola), Sergey Babayan (piano), Lusine Khachateryan (piano), Vahan Martirossian (piano), Steven Isserlis (cello) and Yevgeny Sudbin (piano).

The programme included works by Komitas, Alexander Harutiunian, Arno Babajanian and Robert Schumann.

Music played was perfect technically and extremely moving emotionally. This was not an ordinary concert given for an ordinary music loving audience, but it was a concert dedicated to the sacred memory of one and half million Armenian men, women and children perished during the first genocide of the 20^th Century planned and executed by the Ottoman Turkish Government during the WWI.