Category: News

Armenia’s Minister of Economic Development and Investments Suren Karayan had a meeting with EU Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström.

During the meeting Minister Karayan attached importance to the Armenia-EU negotiations on a new framework agreement, which is developing in three directions – politics, trade and investments and cooperation in different spheres.

“The fifth round of talks held in Brussels allows to report considerable progress in the negotiation process and inspires hopes for completion of the negotiation process in the near future,” he said.

Commissioner Malmström noted, in turn, that the negotiations on trade and investments are developing in a constructive atmosphere. The parties reached a number of agreements that will be implemented by the end of the negotiations.

The framework agreement will raise the Armenia-EU cooperation to a qualitatively new level, will reflect the volume and depth of the relations and will outline new landmarks for mutually beneficial cooperation.

Minister Suren Karayan invited the EU Commissioner to Armenia.

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.

Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) lodged a complaint at an Istanbul prosecutor’s office, accusing Kurtulmus of breaching the universal human rights declaration to which Ankara is a party, as well as the Turkish penal code, AFP reports. 

The use by a senior Turkish official of a pejorative word meaning “infidel,” widely used in Ottoman times to describe non-Muslims, has sparked accusations of hate speech and fears of discrimination against minorities.

In a speech earlier this month, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus used the word “gavur” (“infidel”), prompting an outcry from Turkey’s Armenian minority.

Kurtulmus on December 3 boasted of “new Turkey” being shaped under the wings of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) which he said stood against imperialism or exploitation.

“We need to take the issue of independence seriously. To us, independence is to stand tall and call an infidel ‘an infidel’,” he told a meeting in the northern Turkish city of Kastamonu.

Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) lodged a complaint at an Istanbul prosecutor’s office, accusing Kurtulmus of breaching the universal human rights declaration to which Ankara is a party, as well as the Turkish penal code.

Ahmet Hakan, a columnist in the Hurriyet newspaper, wrote that Kurtulmus’s comments constituted “hate crime.”

“Even the Ottoman (empire) that you like so much banned the use of expressions like ‘infidel’ in order to put an end to discrimination against non-Muslim citizens,” he said, referring to the government.

In the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire banned the use by officials or private persons of inflammatory epithets based on religion, language or race, as part of a series of reforms heavily influenced by European ideas.

Garo Paylan, Istanbul MP of Armenian origin from the opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said Kurtulmus’ comments were hate speech that required an apology.

“He should have apologised,” he told AFP. “I am an MP who was chased and stoned in his childhood and was labelled an infidel.”

Kurtulmus later clarified his comments, saying they were “not meant to offend our non Muslim citizens” but to take a firm stand against imperialism, in a statement to the official news agency Anadolu.

He also made a personal call to Hakan, saying: “There’s an epithet in my wife’s hometown that says “infidel haji’. Even a man who went to hajj (Muslim pilgrimage) is called infidel. Why? Because he is a tyrant.”

Paylan said the term “infidel” was a “contaminated word” and added: “When you ask people on the street who an infidel is, at least 50 percent would say he’s an Armenian.”

The word Brexit has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the BBC reports.

It defines Brexit as “the (proposed) withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and the political process associated with it”.

It continues: “Sometimes used specifically with reference to the referendum held in the UK on 23rd June 2016, in which a majority of voters favoured withdrawal from the EU.”

The OED’s senior editor said it became widely used with “impressive” speed.

Craig Leyland said economists started using the word in May 2012, influenced by “Grexit”, which has also been added to the OED, and was used to describe the potential withdrawal of Greece from the Eurozone monetary union.

 – The office of the Armenian National Committee of South Americalaunched a campaign celebrating the ten years of the Argentine National Law 26.199 that officially recognizes the Armenian Genocide in the country.

The bill was supported by the Armenian National Committee of Buenos Aires and was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on November 29, 2006, and by the Senate on December 13, 2006.

Armenian Deputy FM has lashed out at his Azeri counterpart for attempts to politicize the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization.

Addressing the 35^th meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of BSEC member states, Armenian Deputy FM Ashot Hovakimyan said “the attempts to politicize the organization are unacceptable.”

He noted that “BSEC is not the platform where one can try to raise issues in no way related to the mandate of the organization and.”

During the meeting in Belgrade the Council summed up the six months of the Serbian presidency.

Ashot Hovakimyan noted in his speech that “over the past six months Armenia has kept making efforts to promote multifaceted economic cooperation, implement the programs on the agenda of the organization, encourage investments.”

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.