Category: News

The Georgian Government has given nod to a deal with Gazprom on the terms of gas transit to Armenia, Minister of Energy Kakha Kaladze has declared, Gruzia Online reports.

The Minister said the parties would shift to partial monetization of payments for the transit of Russian gas to Armenia.

Kaladze noted that “the changes will not increase Georgia’s dependence on Russia.”

Previously, Russia paid Georgia for gas transportation by supplying natural gas in the amount of 10% of the transported gas volume, but the agreement expired on December 31.

“As a result of multi-round talks we managed to reach an optimal proposal with the exiting circumstances taken into account,” Kakha Kaladze told reporters after the government sitting. “The government discussed and decided to sign the deal,” he added.

The Minister said the rates will be among the highest in Europe.

Last year Georgia transported 2.1 cubic meters of natural gas through its pipeline from Russian to Armenia, of which 0.3 cubic meters stayed in Georgia.

The Stepantsminda-Lars highway is open for all types of vehicles as of 10 a.m. January 11, the Georgian Ministry of infrastructures and Territorial Development has informed the Armenian Ministry of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies.

The Ministry warns, however, that tire chains need to be used.

Michigan State University is one of a growing number of institutions using video testimonies from genocide survivors to inspire learning and new research insights across multiple academic disciplines. The University is providing its students, faculty and researchers with access to University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive®, the world’s largest collection of eyewitness accounts from genocide witnesses and survivors, available through .

“Moving forward into an era in which we will no longer be able to speak with Holocaust survivors personally, oral testimonies provide essential historical and emotional truths about the Holocaust,” said Amy Simon, William and Audrey Farber Family Endowed Chair in Holocaust Studies and European Jewish History at Michigan State University.

“Faculty from a range of disciplines are interested in furthering their research through this archive,” added Simon. “All of us hope to complement our printed sources with these oral testimonies as we write about history, language, economics, trauma studies, literature, and more. Many of us have also begun using these testimonies in the classroom, encouraging our students to delve into them in their own research.”

The Visual History Archive includes 54,000 video interviews, each one a source of unique and powerful stories from the Holocaust and other genocides, including those that occurred in Rwanda, Guatemala, Armenia and Nanjing. Soon to be added will be testimonies from Cambodia. The average length of each testimony is about two hours, preserving a complete personal history of life before, during and after the subject’s firsthand experience with genocide. Digitized, fully searchable via indexed keywords, and hyperlinked to the minute, the archive contains more than 114,000 hours of testimony that can be precisely narrowed to pinpoint topics of interest, making it particularly useful to students, faculty and researchers.

USC Shoah Foundation and ProQuest launched a partnership in 2016 to dramatically improve access, discovery and contextual understanding to the content of the Visual History Archive. The ability to connect the streamed video and metadata to a library’s holdings of ProQuest content – which can span dissertations, historical news, periodicals, scholarly journals, government records, primary source documents, and ebooks – provides researchers with a much richer experience and greater insights about the impact of these exceptional testimonies.

About 50 cases of ceasefire violation by the Azerbaijani side were registered at the line of contact with the Karabakh forces last night, the NKR Defense Ministry reports.

The rival fired over 900 shots in the direction of the Armenian positions. More intensive firing was reported in the eastern (Martuni) direction of the line of contact.

The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army confidently continue with their military duty and resort to response actions in case of extreme necessity.

Photo: Getty Images

 

Prosecutors have charged relatives of former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with conspiracy to bribe a government official, the BBC reports.

Mr Ban’s younger brother and his nephew stand accused of offering money to a Middle Eastern official, through an American middleman.

They allege the two men bribed the official to use state funds to buy their building project.

Mr Ban served as UN secretary general from 2007 until 2016.

He was succeeded by former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres on 1 January 2017. Mr Ban is now being seen as a possible future president in his home country of South Korea.

Reuters quoted his spokesman as saying Mr Ban was unaware of the circumstances surrounding the allegations against his relatives.

Vice-Speaker of the Armenian National Assembly Edward Sharmazanov met with the Head of the Armenian Diocese of Tehran Sepuh Archbishop Sargsyan at the National Prelacy of Iran.

During the meeting the interlocutors highlighted the unique role of the Armenian Apostolic Church in preservation and spreading of Armenian identity, spiritual, moral and national values.

“The role of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church is unique in the life of the Armenian people and particularly in the life of the Iranian Armenians. Today, in the world of challenges we should remain faithful to our spiritual and national values,” Sharmazanov said.

In the course of the meeting the interlocutors highlighted the strengthening of the Armenia-Diaspora-Artsakh unity.

The Museum for Islamic Art is hosting Dor Guez’s solo exhibition in Jerusalem. The project’s title, The Sick Man of Europe, quotes a term coined in the 19th century to describe the disintegrating Ottoman Empire, accoding to .

Using this term, Guez examines the culture and history of some of the nation states that have emerged from the Ottoman debris. He appropriates this metaphor by reconstructing “the sick man” as a historic figure. Each section of the project recounts the story of an individual who embodies a subject fallen victim to military conditions,

The exhibition is centered on a film in which Guez presents the story of Hagop, an Armenian composer whose family was expelled from Kütahya during World War I. Guez accompanies Hagop on his first visit to sacred sites in contemporary Armenia. Along the way we hear an archival conversation between Komitas and Suni, two renowned early Armenian composers. The two compare composing to a journey, and point out a connection between the art of composition and Armenian topography.

The exhibition also includes a series of photograms featuring ground plans of Armenian churches, ceramic objects from Kütahya that Guez traced and extracted from the museum’s collection, and showcases containing prints reproduced from glass slides, documenting the Ottoman army during WWI, among them, a slide showing Enver Pasha, one of the principal perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.

Three people have been released without charge by French police investigating a Paris jewellery robbery that targeted TV reality star Kim Kardashian West, the BBC reports.

They include her chauffeur in Paris, Michael Madar. The three were among 17 people arrested in co-ordinated raids across France on Monday.

The driver’s brother is still being questioned by police, reports say.

Kardashian West was held at gunpoint and tied up by the robbers while staying at a hotel in Paris in October.

She was targeted at the exclusive flat near Place de la Madeleine while her bodyguard looked after her sister at a nightclub.

The gang stole €9m of jewellery, including a diamond ring valued at around €4m.

Gazprom Export has offered a guaranteed income from service on gas transit to Georgia, the company said in a .

A meeting between Director General of Gazprom Export LLC Elena Burmistrova and the Minister of Energy of Georgia Kakha Kaladze took place on January 10, 2017, in Minsk. The terms of gas transit to Armenia through the territory of Georgia, as well as gas supplies to Georgia were discussed at the meeting.

“Gazprom Export has made a package proposal to Georgia under optimal and mutually beneficial conditions, which will allow the Georgian party to raise guaranteed income from transportation services and improve the reliability of gas supply in Georgia,” Director General of Gazprom Export LLC Elena Burmistrova said.

Georgia serves as a transit country to transport Russian gas to Armenia.

Previously, Russia paid Georgia for gas transportation by supplying natural gas in the amount of 10% of the transported gas volume.

“In the global practice of gas trade they no longer apply payments with raw materials. The Russian party has proposed to the partners switching to money payments for gas transportation services on the basis of the rates used in the EU,” the statement reads.

“Gazprom has made an interesting proposal,” Georgia’s Minister of Energy Kakha Kaladze said, reports. He stressed that the offer ‘is a final one.’

Speaking to Imedi TV, Kaladze said the previous meetings had produced no result because of the difference between the positions of the sides.

The Minister called the latest offer “interesting” and said the decision would be made after discussions of the issue at the government.

Photo: Reuters

 

President Barack Obama has called on Americans to defend their democracy in his farewell speech in Chicago, the BBC reports.

“By almost every measure, America is a better, stronger place” than it was eight years ago when he took office, he told thousands of supporters.

But he warned “democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted”.

He implored Americans of all backgrounds to consider things from each other’s point of view, saying “we have to pay attention and listen”.

The country’s first black president, now 55, was first elected in 2008 on a message of hope and change.

His successor, Donald Trump, has vowed to undo some of Mr Obama’s signature policies. He will be sworn into office on 20 January.

Raucous chants of “four more years” from the crowd were brushed aside by the president. “I can’t do that,” he said with a smile. US presidents are limited to two terms by the constitution.

“No, no, no, no no,” he said, when the crowd booed the prospect of Mr Trump replacing him.

Striking an upbeat tone, Mr Obama said that the peaceful transfer of power between presidents was a “hallmark” of American democracy.

But, he outlined three threats to American democracy – economic inequality, racial divisions and the retreat of different segments of society into “bubbles”, where opinions are not based on “some common baseline of facts”.