A fire at a care home for elderly people in China’s Henan province has killed 38 people, state media report.
Another six people were injured in the fire, which broke out at the privately run Kangleyuan home in Pingdingshan city on Monday night.
Two of the injured were in serious condition, said the Xinhua news agency.
President Xi Jinping ordered “all-out efforts” to care for the injured and bereaved relatives and to find out what had gone wrong, Xinhua reported.
The Minister of National Defense of Cyprus Christoforos Fokaides will arrive in Armenia on May 27 for an official visit.
Within the Framework of the visit Christoforos Fokaides will meet with Arfmenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan. The meeting will be followed by consultations with the participation of the delegation of the two countries.
The 2015 Military Cooperation Plan will be signed between the two countries.
Two of B.B. King’s daughters are alleging that the blues legend was poisoned to death by his closest associates. But the coroner says preliminary autopsy results don’t support that contention, the CNN reports.
King’s daughters, Patty King and Karen Williams, made the accusations in separate, but identically worded, affidavits filed over the weekend.
“I believe my father was poisoned and that he was administered foreign substances to induce his premature death,” they said in their affidavits. “I believe my father was murdered.”
King died May 14 in home hospice care in Las Vegas at age 89.
No investigation was conducted at the time of his death. And King’s attending physician listed the cause as multi-infarct dementia, which is caused by a series of small strokes.
But the daughter’s say that two of King’s associates gave him medication to induce diabetic shock.
John Fudenberg, the coroner for Clark County, Nevada, told CNN that initial autopsy results found “no evidence to substantiate the allegations.” But full forensic results will take six to eight weeks.
On 26-27 May, a final conference of the Asylum Systems Quality Initiative in Eastern Europe and South Caucasus Project gathers migration officials from ten countries in Kyiv to discuss achieved results and plans for future collaboration. Enhanced training for government asylum officers, the creation of a research database in Russian and the development of quality assurance tools are key achievements of the regional project that has improved the refugee system in Armenia.
The two and a half year project, funded by the European Union and co-funded and implemented by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, was designed to strengthen the protection of asylum-seekers and refugees in six countries in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The participants benefited from active engagement with four EU Member States: Germany, Poland, Romania and Sweden. With a 2.5 million euro budget, the project focused on improvement of the quality, fairness and efficiency of asylum decision-making in the participating countries.
Following a joint survey of the national asylum system, Armenia has committed to build on existing strengths, to bridge gaps and to develop quality assurance mechanisms. “The progress in Armenia since the gap analysis report was prepared is notable. In particular, the authorities have developed draft legislative amendments to close gaps in the legal framework; have with UNHCR support adopted 7 Standard Operation Procedures to ensure procedures are consistently applied in line with international standards and have introduced a new staff position to undertake country of origin information research,” said Mr. Christoph Bierwirth, UNHCR Representative in Armenia.
Through more than 100 regional conferences, joint trainings, study visits and individualized training events, the project helped the participating countries to address the most important weaknesses and enhance practical cooperation on asylum matters. The EU Member States have provided good practice advice and shared their vast experience with the relatively new asylum systems in the region. Migration officials from Eastern Europe received access to several training modules developed for EU Member States by the European Asylum Support Office. Translated into the Russian language, these capacity building tools can be easily accessed and used by new staff and other countries.
The Head of the Migration Agency of the Ministry of Territorial Administration of the Republic of Armenia, Mr. Gagik Yeganyan, highly appreciated the international engagement in the regional project: ‘’The international experience and support have been crucial in the future development of the asylum system in Armenia’’, he said.
At least 13 people have been killed by a tornado that hit the northern Mexico border city of Ciudad Acuna, the BBC reports.
Hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed in the city, in Coahuila state, just across the border from Del Rio, Texas.
The US state has had big floods, with at least three dead and 12 missing.
Coahuila Governor Ruben Moreira, on a visit to the stricken area, said 10 adults and three children had died and a baby was missing. Another 150 people had been taken to hospital, he said.
The authorities say that more than 1,000 homes have been damaged by the storm.
The delegation headed by the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia, Colonel-General Yuri Khachaturov will participate in the regular sitting of the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces of the CIS member states to be held in Sochi on May 26, Press Service of the Ministry of Defense reports.
On May 26th, 2015 Haypost CJSC cancelled and put into circulation a new stamp dedicated to the Armenian poet, French Resistance fighter and a national hero of France Missak Manouchian.
The stamp’s official cancellation ceremony took place at the newly built new technologies development and training center of Haypost CJSC. The cancellation was carried out by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to Armenia His Excellency Jean-François Charpentier, the Deputy Minister of the RA Ministry of Transport and Communication Mr. Gagik Tadevosyan, the Deputy Minister of the RA Ministry of Foreign Affrairs Mr. Karen Nazaryan, the Chairman of the Union of Philatelists of Armenia Mr. Hovik Musayelyan and “Haypost Trust Management” BV Managing Director Mr. Juan Pablo Gechidjian.
The postage stamp depicts Missak Manouchian at the background of The Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the “Red poster” (l’Affiche Rouge), the Eternal flame and a fragment of a letter addressed to his wife Meline Manouchian.
The “Red poster”, depicting the portrait of Missak Manouchian and his friends, was distributed by the fascist army in order to detect the underground activists.
The Embassy of Armenia in France provided a great contribution to the proccess of creation of this stamp.
Missak Manouchian was born in 1906 in the Armenian village Adiyaman of Western Armenia. Losing his parents during the Armenian Genocide of 1915, he found himself in the French orphanage in Syria, where he studied French and got acquainted with the French culture. Moving to France in 1925, he started his activity by uniting the Armenians around him, publishing literary magazines, not being apart from the events taking place in France.
After the occupation of France by the Nazi troops Manouchian founded the International group of French Resistance movement, but he was arrested together with his group 1943 and three months later they were executed.
Manouchian was only 37 years old.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan received Russian Energy Minister, President of the CIS Electrical Energy Council Alexander Novak, who has arrived in Armenia to participate in the 47th sitting of the Council in Yerevan.
The President attached importance to the Yerevan sitting of the CIS Electrical Energy Council, which, he said, is a good opportunity to discuss issues related to the development of relations, taking into consideration that the energy sector is one of the important components of the Armenian-Russian strategic relations.
Minister Novak expressed gratitude for organizing the sitting of the CIS Electrical Energy Council on a high level. He praised the effective work of the sitting, which discussed a number of issues important for the member countries – parallel work and integration of the energy systems, development of legal documents, exchange of experience, etc.
During the meeting the Armenian President and the Russian Energy Minister discussed the current state and the perspectives of development of the Armenian-Russian cooperation in the fields of electric energy, gas and nuclear energy.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has not excluded the perspective of Azerbaijan’s joining the Eurasian Economic Union, but only after the settlement of territorial disputes in Armenia, RIA Novosti reports.
“Never say never. We should keep all perspective in mind,” Mammadyarov said in an interview with Rossia 24.
According to him, the current Azerbaijani leadership is considering its foreign policy doctrine, proceeding from its
“One of the components of the Eurasian Economic Union is the free trade zone. But we can’t co-exist within this union with, say, Armenia. If the borders are opened, if there is a normalization of the situation, if there is an economic component between Armenia and Azerbaijan, who knows what will happen tomorrow.
The Spanish city of Santa Margarida has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, Press Service of the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports.
The decision of the City Council reads, in part:
“Considering that some governments, including those of Turkey and Spain, do not acknowledge the Armenian Genocide,
Considering that the crimes against humanity have no statute of limitation,
Taking into consideration that the Armenian the Armenian people have not received any economic, territorial or humanitarian reimbursement,
Taking into consideration that the Armenian Genocide is a precedent for the Holocaust, the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans,
The City Hall decides to support the genocide recognition and reimbursement, to demand from the Spanish Government to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide and organize the passage of this decision to international structures.”