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.

The World Cup will be expanded to host 48 teams, up from 32, FIFA has decided, the BBC reports.

An initial stage of 16 groups of three teams will precede a knockout stage for the remaining 32 when the change is made for the 2026 tournament.

The sport’s world governing body voted unanimously in favour of the change at a meeting in Zurich on Tuesday.

The number of tournament matches will rise to 80, from 64, but the eventual winners will still play only seven games.

The tournament will be completed within 32 days – a measure to appease powerful European clubs, who objected to reform because of a crowded international schedule.

The changes mark the first World Cup expansion since 1998.

The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Ambassadors Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, Stephane Visconti of France, and Richard Hoagland of the United States), released the following statement today:

Baku and Yerevan continue to accuse each other of a December 29, 2016 attempted incursion on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border resulting in casualties. Armenian Armed Forces are still holding the body of an Azerbaijan serviceman killed in the fighting.

Violations of the ceasefire are unacceptable and are contrary to the acknowledged commitments of the Parties, who bear full responsibility, not to use force. The Co-Chairs urge the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to strictly observe the agreements reached during summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg in 2016, including obligations to finalize in the shortest possible time an OSCE investigative mechanism. The Co-Chairs also urge the return, without delay, of human remains, in accord with the agreements of the Astrakhan Summit of 2010, bearing in mind the exclusively humanitarian nature of this issue. We call upon the Parties to cease mutual accusations and undertake all necessary measures to stabilize the situation on the ground.

The Co-Chairs extend their condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers and to all Armenians and Azerbaijanis for whom hopes for the New Year have been darkened with the grief of senseless loss.

Fierce debate has broken out after fans raised two Turkish flags at a Lebanese basketball match, apparently in an attempt to anger Armenian players and fans, reports.

The flags were photographed on Sunday during a game between the Riyadi and Homenetmen clubs in Lebanon’s basketball league. Homenetmen are a Lebanese-Armenian team, representing the estimated four percent of the Lebanese population who are of Armenian descent, according to Minority Rights Group.

The recent flag waving appears to have been pre-planned and deliberately provocative, as one Riyadi fan, Mohammed Khoder, tweeted on Sunday morning “Tonight we’ll be raising the turkish flag in the basketball game against homentmen ‘Armenian Lebanese team’! BURNNN”. The tweet was later taken down.

A Riyadi fan page posted the following unapologetic message on Facebook: “If you want to prevent us from raising the Turkish flag at the stadium, then prevent them from singing the Armenian national anthem at their stadium.”

Meanwhile, one Lebanese blogger called the flag-waving “disgusting, disgraceful, hurtful and despicable.”

Riyadi club issued a statement on their Facebook page, “denouncing” and “rejecting” the raising of the Turkish flag, emphasizing that no provocative chanting took place during the game, and that the flags were flown after it had finished. The club also offered assurances that it would increase its efforts to prevent a repeat of what happened.