Armenia and Georgia have reached agreement to extend the hours of operation of the Stepantsminda-Lars checkpoint from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. instead of 6 p.m.
The move aims to ensure the uninterrupted export of agricultural products from the Republic of Armenia.
Armenian Minister of Transport and Communication Gagik Beglaryan negotiated the issue with Georgian counterparts upon the instruction of Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Turkey was prepared for all necessary measures to tackle security threats along its borders, highlighting Ankara’s growing anxiety about conflict near its southern frontier in Syria, Reuters reports.
He was speaking on television late on Sunday, ahead of Monday’s meeting of a National Security Council meeting, where Syria was expected to top the agenda, and as local media reported Ankara was considering military steps to counter security risks from Syria.
Syrian Kurdish forces secured the town of Kobani near the Turkish border over the weekend, beating back Islamic State militants.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Turkey would never allow formation of a Kurdish state along its southern borders.
“If any harm is to come to Turkey’s border security, if Turkey reaches the conclusion that this garden of peace is being threatened, it is prepared for any eventuality,” Davutoglu said in comments broadcast late on Sunday.
“We will take the necessary measures to reduce the risks related to cross-border security.”
The pro-government Star newspaper said a possible cross-border operation would be considered at the national security council meeting, citing unnamed sources.
One option that could be considered was the creation of a 110 km “secure zone” within Syria, the newspaper said.
Borussia Dortmund goalkeeper Mitchell Langerak has signed a three-year contract with Bundesliga rival Stuttgart, Goal.com reports.
The Australia international, 26, joined Dortmund from Melbourne Victory in 2010, making his debut in a 3-1 defeat to Bayern Munich in February of the following year.
Langerak made nine league appearances for the Signal Iduna Park outfit last term and became a regular between the posts in the latter stages of Jurgen Klopp’s stint as coach.
The shot-stopper is the second goalkeeper to arrive at Stuttgart in a matter of days, with Przemyslaw Tyton having joined from PSV last week.
Dortmund, now coached by Thomas Tuchel, brought in Roman Burki from Freiburg earlier this month to compete with Germany goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller.
A Canadian cabinet minister, two MPs, a Toronto councilor, a former judge, a newly-elected Kurdish MP from Bingöl, Turkey, an evangelist preacher, the European representative of the ‘Kurdish Rojave Cantons Regional Government’ in Syria, and Syrian-Kurdish spokesman took part in the Canadian Conference on the Kurdish Humanitarian Crisis on June 21 in Toronto.
While the gathering’s name focused on the Kurdish tragedy, the speakers also addressed the plight of the other Syrian and Iraqi minorities victimized by the so-called Islamic State and other terrorists. About 250 people attended the conference.
According to conference organizers the Syrian Civil War has resulted in one of the largest refugee crisis in the 21st century with an estimated 12 to 14 million people who have been internally and externally displaced.
“In the Kurdish regions, about two-and-half million Kurdish people and Christian minorities such as Armenians, Assyrians, Yezidis are in urgent need of humanitarian aid,” according to conference organizers. “Sunni and Shia Arabs, and Turkmens too are arriving to the Kurdish regions for safety and well-being,” reported a flyer promoting the gathering.
Saleh Muslim, the co-chair of the Syrian Kurdish PYD (Democratic Union Party) addressed the crowd via skype and said Kurdish fighters were standing fast in the positions they have taken from the Islamic State. He also underlined the humanitarian crisis in the Kurdish areas of Syria.
Prof. Hisyar Ozcoy, recently elected to the Turkish parliament (HDP-Bingöl), said that Erdogan’s folly led to the defeat of the party. “He became overly ambitious in his dreams to run Turkey the way he wanted,” said Ozcoy. Until recently a professor in Michigan, Ozcoy moved to Turkey to run in the elections.
Keynote speaker Senam Mohammadi, European representative of ‘Rojave Cantons Regional Government’, described in fluent English the calamity and the Kurdish resolve to defeat the extremists.
Former MP and now Toronto councilor Jim Karygiannis began his speech by saying: “You all know who the elephant in the room is. It’s Turkey.” The Toronto politician accused Turkey of being behind the Civil War in Syria and in Iraq. He also called on the Canadian government and its allies to expose Turkey for instigating and fueling the crisis.
“It is time we engaged all sides on the issue regarding ISIS. All sides need bear responsibility. Canadian federal politicians should stop pandering to the communities of the region for votes and stand with them shoulder-to-shoulder in order to defeat ISIS. Many words have been spoken about how they (the federal politicians) and their parties are assisting. However, they have and will continue to fail if they do not engage and hold Turkey also responsible,” said Karygiannis.
While Turkey speaks about engaging and helping with the fight against ISIS it still continues to persecute its minorities and deprive them of their rights, added the Toronto politician.
“There have been reports by community members in Canada that Turkey not only does not engage with the fight against ISIS but is assisting them by staying neutral. There is a genocide which is going on right now by ISIS against other religious and ethnic minorities. The first genocide of the 21st century was perpetrated against the Pontian Greeks and then against the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire–today’s Turkey,” said Karygiannis.
The Canadian politician stressed that Turkey continues its aggression by the invasion and occupation of the northern part of Cyprus and added: “Turkey is doing nothing to assist against the fights with ISIS except pay lip service. It is time to stop today’s genocide.”
Aris Babikian, Armenian community activist, said: “I am here in solidarity with you and with the other persecuted minorities in the Middle East. As a representative of a nation which was the target of the same ideology currently sweeping in the region, I know what it means to be victimized by a policy bent on eliminating anyone who does not share that racist and vile ideology.”
Babikian said that the racist ideology is bent on eradicating not only people and religions but also thousands of years of civilizations.
“After 100 years of what the Armenians endured at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, today the world is witnessing the same barbaric acts being implemented in the same Middle East,” said Babikian and added: “The neo-Ottomans in Turkey are once again the core enablers of the atrocities committed against the Kurds, the Alawites, Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, the Druz, the Yezidis and other minorities.”
He also thanked Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister Jason Kenney for their “principled stand and moral fortitude.” In addition to taking part in the attacks on ISIS, per capita Canada is the largest provider of safe haven to Syrian refugees in Canada (over 10,000 in two years). Babikian said he wanted to see other countries act as compassionately and generously.
“We are grateful for Canada’s leadership. We urge the government to go a step farther and use its global stature to pressure the Turkish government to stop training and arming extremists and helping them infiltrate Syria and Iraq,” said Babikian and added Canada’s allies should stop Turkey from acting as a middle man which “facilitates the financing of the fanatics by purchasing the looted Syrian and Iraqi oil and historic treasure and to export them to world markets.”
Hon. John Duncan, minister of state and government whip; MP Bernard Trottier, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs and for La Francophonie, and MP Mark Adler also addressed the conference. Rev. Majed el-Shafei, founder and president of One Free World International, gave a rousing speech. El-Shafei visited Iraq, Armenia and Turkey last year.
In the second part of the conference, a panel discussion was held titled “Kurdish Struggle: What’s in the future and global issues”. The panelists were Hadi Elis, sociologist and independent researcher; Andrew Marjoran, general manager of the MacKenzie Institute of Toronto; and Prof. Ofra Bengio of Tel-Aviv University.
A 1,600-year-old century Armenian cemetery in Mush has been ruined by treasure hunters and state policy, reports, quoting the Dicle News Agency.
According to the source, there were 299 Armenian churches, 94 monasteries, 53 pilgrimage sites and 135 schools with 5,669 students in Mush before 1915.
Hayrettin Aslan, head of an Armenian union in Mush, calls attention to the fact that the Turkish state policy deliberately pursues the aim of erasing the Armenian trace from the region, thus erasing the historic memory of the city, as well.
Noting that the cemetery has a history of 1,600 years, Aslan noted that the history of a whole nation faces the danger of obliteration.
He said the treasure hunters also cause great damage to the cemetery. He noted that “Armenians and Kurds peacefully lived in the city before the Armenian massacres.”
“If we want to live in an atmosphere of peace, love and respect, we have to take care of the Armenian history,” he added.
He noted that there are other Armenian monuments in the region, which also face the threat of demolition and added: “Armenians had even built infrastructures in the mountainous regions of Mush before 1915. Now the Armenian churches, monasteries and schools are on the verge of disappearance, and the government and the political-social organizations should be sensitive towards the issue. A history of millennia is jeopardized.”
Inter RAO UES does not confirm the reports on the intention to sell the Electric Networks of Armenia, official representative of the Russian energy holding told TASS.
“We do not confirm the information on the sale of the company,” he said.
Russian Kommersant daily that the ongoing protests in Armenia against the planned electricity price hike and the promise of the authorities to nationalize the Electric Networks of Armenia could make the Inter RAO UES to sell the Company.
The day will officially be a bit longer than usual on Tuesday, June 30, 2015, because an extra second, or “leap” second, will be added, NASA said.
“Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down a bit, so leap seconds are a way to account for that,” said Daniel MacMillan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Strictly speaking, a day lasts 86,400 seconds. That is the case, according to the time standard that people use in their daily lives – Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC. UTC is “atomic time” – the duration of one second is based on extremely predictable electromagnetic transitions in atoms of cesium. These transitions are so reliable that the cesium clock is accurate to one second in 1,400,000 years.
However, the mean solar day – the average length of a day, based on how long it takes Earth to rotate – is about 86,400.002 seconds long. That’s because Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down a bit, due to a kind of braking force caused by the gravitational tug of war between Earth, the moon and the sun. Scientists estimate that the mean solar day hasn’t been 86,400 seconds long since the year 1820 or so.
This difference of 2 milliseconds, or two thousandths of a second – far less than the blink of an eye – hardly seems noticeable at first. But if this small discrepancy were repeated every day for an entire year, it would add up to almost a second. In reality, that’s not quite what happens. Although Earth’s rotation is slowing down on average, the length of each individual day varies in an unpredictable way.
The length of day is influenced by many factors, mainly the atmosphere over periods less than a year. Our seasonal and daily weather variations can affect the length of day by a few milliseconds over a year. Other contributors to this variation include dynamics of the Earth’s inner core (over long time periods), variations in the atmosphere and oceans, groundwater, and ice storage (over time periods of months to decades), and oceanic and atmospheric tides. Atmospheric variations due to El Niño can cause Earth’s rotation to slow down, increasing the length of day by as much as 1 millisecond, or a thousandth of a second.
Scientists monitor how long it takes Earth to complete a full rotation using an extremely precise technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). These measurements are conducted by a worldwide network of stations, with Goddard providing essential coordination of VLBI, as well as analyzing and archiving the data collected.
The time standard called Universal Time 1, or UT1, is based on VLBI measurements of Earth’s rotation. UT1 isn’t as uniform as the cesium clock, so UT1 and UTC tend to drift apart. Leap seconds are added, when needed, to keep the two time standards within 0.9 seconds of each other. The decision to add leap seconds is made by a unit within the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.
Typically, a leap second is inserted either on June 30 or December 31. Normally, the clock would move from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00 the next day. But with the leap second on June 30, UTC will move from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60, and then to 00:00:00 on July 1. In practice, many systems are instead turned off for one second.
Previous leap seconds have created challenges for some computer systems and generated some calls to abandon them altogether. One reason is that the need to add a leap second cannot be anticipated far in advance.
“In the short term, leap seconds are not as predictable as everyone would like,” said Chopo Ma, a geophysicist at Goddard and a member of the directing board of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service. “The modeling of the Earth predicts that more and more leap seconds will be called for in the long-term, but we can’t say that one will be needed every year.”
From 1972, when leap seconds were first implemented, through 1999, leap seconds were added at a rate averaging close to one per year. Since then, leap seconds have become less frequent. This June’s leap second will be only the fourth to be added since 2000.
As part of the events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the City Hall of the Bouc Bel Air, France, decided to name a square after Henri Verneuil (born Ashot Malakian).
The square was solemnly unveiled on June 27. The ceremony was attended by Mayor Richard Mallié, Henri Verneuil’s wife, their two children and their families, religious leaders, representatives of the local Armenian community and journalists.
Richard Mallié noted in his opening remarks that “although 100 years have passed since the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey and the larger international community is still to recognize this tragedy. “However, there a number of reasonable people, especially artists, trying to condemn Turkey and urge to recognize the genocide perpetrated against the Armenian people. Among them was film director Henri Verneuil, who used the feature film to convey something that would not be possible through speeches and documentaries.”
On 29 June Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan visited the Stepanakert Memorial Complex in connection with the Day of Perished for Motherland and Missing in Action and laid a wreath at the monument of missing in action freedom fighters, the Central Information Department of the Office of the NKR President reported.
Primate of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, National Assembly speaker Ashot Ghoulyan, prime-minister Ara Haroutyunyan, and other officials partook in the event.
The Greek government has confirmed that banks will be closed all week, after a decision by the European Central Bank not to extend emergency funding, the BBC reports.
In a decree, it cited the “extremely urgent” need to protect the financial system due to the lack of liquidity.
Cash withdrawals will be limited to €60 a day for this period, the decree says.
Athens is due to make a €1.6bn payment to the IMF on Tuesday – the same day that its current bailout expires.
In reaction to the crisis, the London, Paris and Frankfurt stock markets fell sharply in early trading on Monday, following similar falls in Asia.
The euro lost 2% of its value against the the US dollar. Government borrowing costs in Italy and Spain, two of the eurozone’s weaker economies, have also risen.
Talks between Greece and the eurozone countries over bailout terms ended without an agreement on Saturday, and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras then called a surprise referendum on the issue to be held on 5 July.
Greece risks default and moving closer to a possible exit from the 19-member eurozone.