Category: News

The government of Azerbaijan has banned , along with a number of media outlets and human rights activists, from entering the country to cover the inaugural European Games which begin on Friday.

The Guardian originally applied for accreditation for its chief sports correspondent, Owen Gibson, in January, when the process opened. Flights were booked and accommodation in the media village confirmed by the organisers.

Following repeated inquiries as to the status of the accreditation, which also acts as a visa for entry to Azerbaijan, it was confirmed on 5 June by the head of press operations that approval for Gibson was still pending subject to government background checks.

Confirmation that the application had been turned down and the Guardian would not be able to enter the country to cover the event and associated issues was not received until Thursday morning – the day before the opening ceremony and three hours before the flight that had been booked.

The decision appears to be linked to the Guardian’s trip to Azerbaijan in December to report on preparations for the European Games and the country’s ambitious attempts to expand its portfolio of international sporting events, against a backdrop of rising concern about the government’s clampdown on freedom of speech and any political opposition. Gibson met government critics including the investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova, who investigates corruption in Azerbaijan’s first family. Ismayilova was jailed shortly after and remains behind bars.

A new approach to teaching kids using technology in Armenia has educators from the Middle East, Europe and the US looking to replicate the programme, according to  

The after-school curriculum run by the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies lets students pick areas of interest and acquire skills at their own pace.

“What we’re trying to do is to create an environment where teenagers will be able to reach their full potential,” Marie Lou Papazian, the centre’s director, says.

“We want to give them the opportunity to learn as much as possible, to experiment as much as possible, to be self-confident of what they can do, and never be afraid to jump and take big leaps.”

More than 6,000 students between the ages of 12 and 18 are enrolled free-of-charge at the centre, which was set up with a $20m grant from the US-based Simonian Education Foundation.

Students use a workspace called a Tumo-mobile, which can be moved around for students to work individually or in groups, and they log into a special learning interface called Tumo World.

The proprietary software guides the students through a learning programme in English or Armenian, allowing them to focus on animation, digital media, game design and game development.

“Computer science or programming is a skill that is essential to everyone of the focus areas,” says Papazian.

“You cannot not know or not be familiar with computer programming today. You have to understand how programs work, where you can use them.”

“Even if you’re not a programmer and you’re an artist, you need to know those skills.”

Teachers at the centre include experienced professionals from the world’s leading companies, notably Disney and Pixar; renowned musicians including Serj Tankian, frontman of System of a Down; and film-makers of the calibre of Oscar-nominated Atom Egoyan.

Liz Artinian, a New York animation art director and background designer, volunteers her time to teach at Tumo a few weeks of the year.

“I tell them it’s an arts school, where arts meet technology. It’s a free school for kids to get a good foundation for arts and technology,” says Artinian.

“What I like is that it’s not just old art practices. It’s trying to find the new way and new programmes.”

The centre costs about $1.5m a year to run and its programmes have attracted the attention of educators from around the world, including the US, Russia, Germany, Lebanon, and Egypt.

Nearly a dozen countries are looking to replicate Tumo’s blueprint for learning centres.

“Someone came from MIT Media Lab, and I told them, this is not a school,” says Papazian.

“He said, ‘This is a school and you have to take it very seriously, because this is the future of the school system.’”

A Construction company in London has been sentenced after pleading guilty to safety failings after a 55 year old employee fell through a skylight roof, the Health and Safety Executive, Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety, informs on its webpage.

Southwark Crown Court heard that Armenian national, Petros Pogosyan fell through a skylight from a unit roof on a London industrial estate while working for Race Interiors Ltd on 18 January 2013.

Mr Pogosyan fell four and half meters on to a concrete floor at Unit 1, Roseberry Industrial Estate, London and suffered life changing injuries including a fractured back. He is now partially deaf, has damage to his brain, is paralysed from the waist down and psychologically traumatised.

During the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecution case, the court was told he will need personal care for the rest of his life, and will never work again. His wife has given up work to care for him full time. Since the incident the couple have been living on state benefits.

Judge May QC described the accident as highly foreseeable, pointing out there was no protection to prevent a fall from or through the roof. She ruled that the company fell far short of the required standards for managing risks at work as the supervisor was not trained and there was a complete lack of planning with no risk assessment or method statement for the work.

HSE inspector Simon Hester said: “This tragedy should not have happened. Nobody should work on a roof without proper planning.

“It is the employer’s responsibility to ensure that all reasonable precautions are taken to prevent a fall. Mr Pogosyan could have been killed by his fall and now suffers massive and irreversible life-changing injuries.”

Race Interiors Limited was fined £60,000 with costs of £7,784 after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

However, in a highly unusual move the fine was converted into a compensation order of £60,000 to be paid directly to Mr Pogosyan. The judge described this as “an exceptional case” as Race Interiors are in dispute with its insurance company and Mr Pogosyan is unlikely, if at all, to receive compensation for his injuries.

A former police intelligence chief is required to serve up to 860 years in prison in a wiretapping case, in which he has been found guilty of wiretapping 48 people, including several government officials, journalists, judiciary personnel and businessmen, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Ramazan Akyürek, the former chief, was indicted on the charge of “heading a terrorist organization” and sentenced to more than eight centuries in prison over the case filed by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on June 9.

Akyürek had previously been and was sent to prison on Feb.27.

Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist, was shot dead on Jan.19, 2007, while Akyürek was the Trabzon Police department head.

Akyürek was among 50 police officers from various ranks whose names appeared in a 130-page indictment with charges of “forming and running a criminal organization,” “fabricating false documents,” “illegally keeping private information,” and “violating private life and communication privacy” in the wiretapping investigation, led by prosecutor Alpaslan Karabay.

All the 50 were accused of forming a terrorist organization serving the goals of the alleged “Fethullahist Terrorist Organization.”

The indictment also contained a report made by the Turkish Interior Ministry that stated the executive assistant of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) head Devlet Bahçeli and his advisors had been wiretapped.

“Wiretapping people from a political leader’s inner circle begets wiretapping that political leader. The wiretapping done right before the parliamentary elections on June 12, 2011, could have had a bearing on the fate of a political party and the country’s domestic politics,” it stated.

 

 

 

An international conference on “NATO-Armenia relations in the context of new challenges” initiated by the Analytical Center for Globalization and Regional Cooperation (ACGRC) was held in Yerevan today.

According to ACGRC Head Stepan Grigoryan, Armenia’s cooperation with NATO is rather constructive, but it cannot go too deep because we are part of a different security system.

“There is no doubt that the cooperation with NATO comes to supplement our security. I think NATO has chosen the right way of cooperation with Armenia to the extent the latter wants, without any noise and ambitions,” Grigoryan said.

The cooperation with NATO has risen to a certain level in the field of peacekeeping operations, which has led to the improvement of Armenia’s international standing, Stepan Grigoryan said. He added that the “humanitarian and scientific programs are also on a high level.”

Gerlinde Niehus, Head of Communications at NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division, said Armenia is a very important country for NATO. She hailed the cooperation in international peacekeeping and voiced hope that the collaboration would further succeed.

German Ambassador to Armenia Rayner Morel voiced his appreciation for the level of Armenia’s relations with NATO.

Amb. Morel noted that Armenia is a good member of the CSTO and added that there are other opportunities the country should use.

As for statements from Azerbaijan suggesting that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship should be extended to include Germany, the Ambassador said “Germany supports the OSCE Minsk Group, but has no wish to join it.”

Speaking about the Armenian Genocide Resolution pending at the Bundestag, Rayner Morel said he can make no predictions, but voiced confidence that discussions will take place. He reminded that the German President made it clear that the what happened in 1915 was genocide.

In a statement released on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis calls on Turkey, the United States and Israel to recognize the Genocide, the reports. 

The Massachusetts Board of Rabbis reaches out in solidarity and sorrow to Armenians everywhere on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. We acknowledge the pain carried through generations of a people decimated, the psychic scars transmitted, the truncated branches of family trees yet to regenerate. We hear the echoes of pleading voices long stilled that call us to remember, to learn, to witness. We call for universal recognition of what happened on the plains of Anatolia, the 1915-23 atrocities carried out by the Ottoman government. Only truth shall be surety for the timeless cry of “Never Again.”

Details unfold as a scroll of lamentation, these we remember and pour our hearts out. We remember the hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, the writers, artists, doctors and lawyers, the communal and political leaders arrested and executed on April 24, 1915. We remember the desert death marches, the killing squads, and the concentration camps. We remember the 1.5 million Armenians killed of some 2 million in their ancestral homeland prior to World War I, mourning the destruction and exile of an ancient people. We remember the use of trains for deportation to death, cattle cars packed with human beings, portent of genocide to come. We remember the heroic efforts of American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, the missionaries and aid workers who cried out to the world for response. We remember the continuing denials and the shame of refusing to recognize what happened, to call it for what it was.

We remember words that challenge silence and disallow denial. Words of witness by Ambassador Morgenthau, laying bare the plan by its architect, Talat Pasha: “It is no use for you to argue…we have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians…we have got to finish with them…” Igniting the flames of one genocide from the embers of another, Adolph Hitler, his memory be blotted out, cynically asked, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” We honor with pride and humility the work of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who did speak, who coined the word “genocide” in 1943, his long-held anguish for Armenians merging in the midst of the Holocaust with anguish for his own people.

We take to heart Elie Wiesel’s lament for the “double killing” of Armenians that happens through silence. Challenging Turkey to acknowledge what happened, it is our challenge, as well. Recognition of another’s suffering and willingness to describe it accurately should never be a matter of political expediency. The prevention of future genocides rests with our willingness to acknowledge those of the past. As the Holocaust should not be subsumed within the Second World War, neither should the Armenian Genocide be subsumed within the First World War.

We call on Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Heirs to the Ottomans, Turkey’s burden is also an opportunity to insure that what happened 100 years ago will no longer define the relationship today between descendants of the victims and descendants of the perpetrators. We call on the United States to unequivocally recognize the Armenian Genocide, affirming our commitment to justice and giving meaning to annual expressions of condolence and sorrow. We call on Israel to unequivocally recognize the Armenian Genocide, giving voice to the moral legacy of its own emergence from the ashes of the Holocaust.

Toward healing among communities and peoples:

We call on the American Jewish community through its official organizations to unequivocally recognize the Armenian Genocide, to apologize for past reticence, to reach out from heart to heart.

We call on local Jewish communities to learn about the Armenian Genocide and to reach out to their Armenian neighbors, building friendship and cooperation.

We call on all people to refrain from manipulating past horrors to demonize members of any people or faith today, Christian, Muslim, or Jew.

In the midst of Anatolia where the Biblical Mount Ararat rises, Noah’s ark found rest, a dove with its olive branch still waiting to alight. To give rest to the dead and peace to the living, a rainbow promise of never again, the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis calls for universal recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

President Serzh Sargsyan received today Natalia Voutova, the newly-appointed Head of the Council of Europe (CoE) Office in Armenia.

The Armenian president congratulated Mrs. Voutova on her appointment and wished her success. Stressing the CoE key and unique role in Europe’s general architecture, Serzh Sargsyan noted that Armenia, as a CoE member country, is keen on promoting cooperation with all the CoE institutions.

According to the president, the CoE standards regarding human rights, democracy and the rule of law provide effective guidelines for Armenia, and our country has achieved some results as a CoE member state having membership obligations which tries to fulfill its obligations.

The RA president and the head of the CoE Office in Armenia agreed that Armenia, as a CoE member country, is actively involved in the organization’s activities at all levels.

The Armenian president greatly appreciated the CoE support for the ongoing democratic reforms in our country and presented the implementation status of various reforms, touching upon, inter alia, the process of RA constitutional amendments which are being carried out in close cooperation with the Venice Commission. Natalia Voutova underscored that the CoE supports Armenia’s path to reform implementation and democratic consolidation.

The head of the CoE Office in Armenia expressed satisfaction with Armenia’s chairmanship in the CoE Committee of Ministers in 2013, stressing that Armenia’s six-month mission fulfilled excellently and creditably and the priorities set forth by it have received high praise from the organization. According to her, that chairmanship will remain in the CoE history as a successful one.

Natalia Voutova expressed the hope that taking into account Armenia’s effective cooperation with the CoE and the positive results achieved previously in the course of the RA-CoE Action Plan implementation, the new CoE action plan will likewise be implemented successfully.

The meeting of the heads of delegation participating in the first European Games was held in Baku, Azerbaijan, today. The head of all delegations thanked Hrachya Rotomyan, the Secretary General of the National Olympic Committee of Armenia, for the country’s participation in the games.

“Hrachya Rostomyan had a meeting with the President of the European Olympic Committee Patrick Hickey to discuss organizational issues,” Press Secretary of the Armenian team Karen Giloyan wrote on his Facebook page.

Before that Giloyan informed that the Armenian team resides in the Olympic Village together with those of Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Portugal, Turkey and Hungary.

A six-member group left for Baku yesterday. The Greco-Roman wrestlers and coaches are expected to join them today.

The opening ceremony will be held on Friday, June 12.

Greco-Roman wrestler Roman Amoyan will be the first Armenian athlete to enter competition on June 13.

Three Austrian synchronised swimmers have been hurt in a collision with a bus while walking in the athletes’ village at the European Games in Baku, the BBC reports.

The Austrian Olympic Committee (AOC) said Vanessa Sahinovic was “severely injured” and would be flown to Vienna for further treatment.

Luna Payer will also be flown back to the Austrian capital after suffering injuries to her arms.

Verena Breit bruised her right thigh and has returned to the village.

The AOC said the collision happened at 08:30 local time on Thursday, when the athletes were walking on the pavement in the Olympic village.