Category: News

President Serzh Sargsyan received today the RF culture figure, the well-known musician and artist of the Armenian descent, director and producer Stas Namin – Anastas Mikoyan, who has arrived to Armenia to participate in the events to be held in Yerevan on December 14-20 on the occasion of his 65th birth anniversary conducted in the framework of the Armenian-Russia cooperation.

Welcoming the celebrated artist to Armenia, President Sargsyan noted that the Armenian people have a great respect towards their talented compatriot who has always stood by our nation in difficult times and today celebrates his anniversary in Armenia through a number of cultural events which will raise the spirits and will introducing the public to exceptional pieces of art.

The President hailed years-long activities of Stas Namin in different areas and added that he carries on worthily the best traditions of his wonderful family.

Stas Namin noted that the visit to Armenia is a great honor for him and underscored that in his perception Armenia has always been a fairytale land. He said that he was truly happy to be able to demonstrate here his works.

“I was raised in the Armenian spirit and I am profoundly thankful for the invitation and warm welcome,” said the celebrated performer at the meeting with the President of Armenia.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

 

An 18th Century Chinese imperial seal has been sold for a record €21m ($22m) – more than 20 times its estimated price, the BBC reports.

The sale, to an unnamed Chinese collector, took place in Paris on Wednesday after a heated bidding war, Drouot auction house said.

The palm-sized seal is made of red and white steatite, a type of mineral rock.

It was one of hundreds owned by Emperor Qianlong, one of the longest serving Chinese emperors.

The previous record set for an auctioned seal was €14m in 2011.

Yahoo has said more than one billion user accounts may have been affected in a hacking attack dating back to 2013, the BBC reports.

The internet giant said it appeared separate from a 2014 breach disclosed in September, when Yahoo revealed 500 million accounts had been accessed.

Yahoo said names, phone numbers, passwords and email addresses were stolen, but not bank and payment data.

The company, which is being taken over by Verizon, said it was working closely with the police and authorities.

Yahoo said it “believes an unauthorised third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with more than one billion user accounts”.

The breach “is likely distinct from the incident the company disclosed on September 22, 2016”.

However, the three-year-old hack was uncovered as part of continuing investigations by authorities and security experts into the 2014 breach, Yahoo said.

Account users were urged to change their passwords and security questions.

The California-based company has more than a billion monthly active users, although many people have multiple accounts. There are also many accounts that are little used or dormant.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

A deal to evacuate the last rebel-held part of eastern Aleppo is back on, opposition fighters say, a day after a previous agreement fell through, the BBC reports.

Rebel fighters and civilians in the Syrian city had been due to leave early on Wednesday, but the truce collapsed.

Rebel groups said late on Wednesday that evacuations would take place in the early hours of Thursday.

But there has been no confirmation so far from the Syrian government or its major ally Russia.

On 14 December, the European Friends of Armenia organised a briefing to assess the current state of the play in the EU-Armenia framework agreement negotiations, one year into the process.

Garegin Melkonyan, First Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Economic Development and Investments of the Republic of Armenia, Dirk Schuebel, (EEAS) and Petros Sourmelis (DG TRADE) were the speakers at the Briefing, which was moderated by Dr Hrant Kostanyan, Researcher at CEPS – Centre for European Political Studies, and attended by more than 40 participants.

Mr Schuebel, Head of Division “Eastern partnership bilateral”, kicked-off the discussion, speaking about the political aspects of the negotiations: “I am very happy to see that Armenia is very ambitious in these negotiations, and positively surprised to see how much of the previously negotiated Association Agreement we will be able to keep”, he said. Mr Schuebel warned, however, “it is up to Armenia to decide how much of the EU acquits it is prepared to adopt”.

Mr Sourmelis, Head of Unit “Russia, CIS, Ukraine, Western Balkans, EFTA, EEA and Turkey”, spoke next. He confirmed that a positive atmosphere and quick progresses can also be observed in the “trade and investment” track of the negotiations and stated: “The new agreement will be closer to the defunct DCFTA (Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement) than to the existing PCA (Partnership and Cooperation Agreement); but the toughest issues are the ones left to the end”.

Mr Melkonyan was the last of the three speakers to take the floor. He explained that since this is not a Free Trade Agreement, total trade liberalization is not to be expected, but added that the new agreement will likely contemplate some tariff reductions. As for the timeline of the negotiations, Mr Melkonyan said: “We are more concerned about the substance, rather than the timeline. For us, the most important is to reach a good final outcome, and position Armenia as an ideal investment destination, with a strong and stable political, economic and administrative environment, and an easy access to markets such as the EU’s, the EEU’s and Iran’s”.

Answering questions from the audience, Mr Schuebel stated that, given the first signs of a successful implementation of the visa facilitation and the readmission agreements, the EEAS stands ready to start a dialogue with Armenia towards a Visa Liberalisation Action Plan. However, he also stressed that the Council must authorize such a mandate, and some Member States seem reluctant to do so at this stage, for reasons not directly related to Armenia.

While stressing that this is a bilateral agreement with Armenia, and therefore specific to Armenia, Mr Sourmelis added that it could somehow become a kind of a “blueprint” for future agreements with other EEU members, such as, for instance, Belarus. The panelists reminded, however, that the situation of Human Rights in Belarus does not allow the EU to envisage starting negotiations any time soon.

Mr Melkonyan closed the debate affirming that although Armenia has commitments and responsibilities stemming from other integration processes as well, “these negotiations showcase Armenia’s devotion to the EU, which has been, is, and will probably remain our main trading partner”.

Diogo Pinto, Director of the European Friends of Armenia, speaking after the Briefing, said: “This was a successful event, and I am happy to see that it attracted the interest of so many people. Even more importantly, this evening we heard many very positive things about the progresses already made in the negotiations between Armenia and the EU. I am confident that the ambition and the constructive approach shown by the two sides will allow for a very positive conclusion of the negotiations, and that the new EU-Armenia framework agreement will soon be signed. This is great news for EuFoA and all the European friends of Armenia, but also for Armenia and the EU too”.

Photo: Instagram

 

Oscar winner Leo DiCaprio  bought a work by hot painter Joe Bradley for $65,000 at the Children of Armenia Fund’s gala at Cipriani 42nd Street, according to .

DiCaprio’s friend, art dealer Tony Shafrazi, was the gala’s honorary chair, and Simon de Pury presided over the auction. Terry George and Eric Esrailian were honored.

On December 9th, the 13th Annual COAF Gala at Cipriani in New York raised $3.1 million to fund COAF’s extensive range of programs in Armenia.

Spanning education, health, wellness, science, technology, innovation, culture, art, communication and languages, COAF’s programming was created to empower a new generation of healthy, educated Armenians to significantly improve the future of their homeland on both a local and global scale

Famous Lebanese Armenian journalist Paula Yacoubian will join the new Government, reports.

According to the source, Paula Yacoubian will represent Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s bloc in the 30-member government.

Paula Yacoubian is a Lebanese media trainer and a political strategist; she is also the host of a prime time talk on Future News network.

If appointed, she will become the first female member of the government in the country.

Apart from Armenian, Yacoubian is fluent in Arabic, English and French.

US business magazine Forbes named Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin the most influential person in the world for the fourth time in a row, Sputnik reports.

The magazine also included US President-elect Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the list of The World’s Most Powerful People, granting them the second and the third places, respectively.

“For the fourth consecutive year, Forbes ranked Russian President Vladimir Putin as the world’s most powerful person. From the motherland to Syria to the U.S. presidential elections, Russia’s leader continues to get what he wants,” the magazine said.

The magazine ranks global state leaders, capitalists, philanthropists and entrepreneurs along four criteria. The magazine editors assess the extent and use of the person’s political power, influence and financial resources.

After years of controversy, Austria’s parliament has passed a law allowing it to seize the house where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, the BBC reports.

Owner Gerlinde Pommer had repeatedly refused to sell the building in Braunau am Inn or allow renovations.

Mrs Pommer will now be given compensation. But it is still not clear what the government will do with the former guesthouse.

The authorities are keen to stop it becoming a draw for neo-Nazis.

The parliament’s decision puts an end to a long-running row between the government and Mrs Pommer, who is now retired.

For many years, the government paid Mrs Pommer a generous rent in an attempt to prevent the three-storey building being used as a site for neo-Nazi tourism.

In the past it was used by a local charity as a day centre and workshop for people with special needs.

But the charity was forced to move out several years ago when Mrs Pommer blocked renovations.

The building’s future has been widely debated, with opinion torn between razing it or changing its use.

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

 

Engineers and employees from major tech companies — including Google, IBM, Slack, and Stripe — have pledged never to build a database of people based on their religious beliefs.

A group of employees at major tech companies have signed  refusing to help build a Muslim registry. The pledge states that signatories will advocate within their companies to minimize collection and retention of data that could enable ethnic or religious targeting under the Trump administration, to fight any unethical or illegal misuse of data, and to resign from their positions rather than comply.

The group describes themselves as “engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people.”

“We, the undersigned, are employees of tech organizations and companies based in the United States. We are engineers, designers, business executives, and others whose jobs include managing or processing data about people. We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies. We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable,” the pledge reads.

“We have educated ourselves on the history of threats like these, and on the roles that technology and technologists played in carrying them out. We see how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others. We recall the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. We recognize that mass deportations precipitated the very atrocity the word genocide was created to describe: the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. We acknowledge that genocides are not merely a relic of the distant past—among others, Tutsi Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims have been victims in our lifetimes,” the signatories said.