Category: News

US President-elect Donald Trump has named Obamacare critic Tom Price as his choice for health secretary, the BBC reports.

The Georgia congressman and orthopaedic surgeon, 62, chairs the budget committee in the House of Representatives.

He would play a central role in Republican plans to replace the Affordable Healthcare Act.

In his campaign, Mr Trump vowed to repeal and replace the act, considered President Obama’s flagship measure.

However, he has since said he favours keeping certain provisions.

The Dutch BNN Public TV has aired 2 films about Armenia with the support of the Development Foundation of Armenia and the Armenian Embassy in the Nethelands.

The group representing the “3 op Reis” travel program spent a week in Armenia to shoot the series.

The first film presents the places of interest in capital Yerevan –The Vernissage, the Cascade, the Chess House, the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial, the Republic Square, the Armenian Genocide Museum Institute and others.

In the second part the reporters travel to Lake Sevan, the Noravank and Tatev Monasteries, and other sites of Armenia.

The films are available at  and .

An airplane with 72 people on board, including players from a Brazilian football team heading to Colombia for a regional tournament final, has crashed on its way to Medellin’s international airport, AP reports.

Medellin’s Mayor Federico Gutierrez said that it is possible there are survivors.

“It’s a tragedy of huge proportions,” Gutierrez told Blu Radio on his way to the site in a mountainous area outside the city where the chartered aircraft is believed to have crashed shortly before midnight local time.

He said ambulances and rescuers were on their way. It is not clear what caused the crash.

Medellin’s airport confirmed that the aircraft, which departed from Bolivia, was transporting the Chapecoense football team from southern Brazil, which was scheduled to play the Copa Sudamerica finals against Atletico Nacional on Wednesday in Medellin.

Armenian Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan attended a reception at the Armenian Embassy in Russia on November 28.

Representatives of the Russian legislative and executive authorities, outstanding political analysts and experts, heads of Armenian community organizations, public and political figures who have contributed to the deepening of Armenian-Russian relations were present at the reception.

The Armenian Defense Minister briefed the attendees on the ongoing reforms in the Armed Forces, the new cooperation programs with different Diaspora organizations within the framework of the Army-society ties.

During the meeting the participants exchanged views on the reinforcement of the Armenian-Russian strategic partnership, the deepening of friendly relations between the two countries, as well as the need for steps stemming from the regional developments.

Minister of Culture Armen Amiryan briefed President Serzh Sargsyan on the priority directions of the Ministry’s activity –popularization of the Armenian culture in Armenia and abroad, new initiatives aimed at intensification of the cultural life outside capital Yerevan.

Minister Amiryan presented the issues raised during his meetings with culture workers.

Armen Amiryan offered to create a pan-Armenian symphony orchestra that will bring together talented Armenians from different sides of the world. He said the first concert is expected on April 24, 2017, after which the orchestra will perform in different cities of the world.

The President welcomed the idea, underling that it goes in line with his vision of Armenia-Diaspora cooperation and can well serve an example for cooperation in other spheres, as well.

“Over the last 24 hours, 14 neighborhoods in eastern Aleppo (around 300,000 residential quarters) were completely liberated from terrorists,” the Russian center said, TASS reports.

The Spanish website  has listed Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev among the 48 dictators of the world.

“In 1993, the democratically-elected President Abulfaz Elchibey was overthrown by a military insurrection led by Colonel Surat Huseynov, which resulted in the arrival of Heydar Aliyev,” the website writes.

In 2003, Ilham Aliyev succeeded his father as president and his government has been charged with maintaining many of the policies of his predecessor, as well as seeking greater openness to the West and turning Azerbaijan into an industrialized nation.

According to the publication, to date the country has not fulfilled its commitments. “Although its constitution allows conscientious objectors to opt for alternative civilian service, the Government has not yet adopted a law to establish this alternative to military service. Conscientious objectors are currently being pursued, and there are reports of prolonged illegal detentions in military barracks.”

The leaders of Belarus, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are also included in the list.

A piece of music handwritten by Gustav Mahler has broken the record for the highest price for a musical manuscript sold at auction, the BBC reports.

The composer’s Second Symphony, which spans 232 pages, fetched £4.5m at Sotheby’s on Tuesday morning.

But a controversial manuscript which the auction house said was handwritten by Beethoven failed to sell.

The authenticity of the manuscript for the composer’s 1817 piece, Allegretto in B minor, had been questioned.

Sotheby’s had stood by the manuscript’s authenticity and expected it to fetch up to £200,000.

But ahead of the auction, Prof Barry Cooper, a musicologist and Beethoven scholar, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there were inconsistencies within the piece.

The film “Earthquake” based on the real events surrounding the disastrous earthquake which struck Armenia in 1988, has been submitted for 2016 Golden Globe Awards.

The terrible earthquake claimed at least 25,000 lives and left about half a million people homeless.

For director Sarik Andreasyan it was a very special project, in which he wanted, after almost 30 years, to tell the story not only of death and destruction but also to show the hope and community spirit in the face of the nightmare, according to the .

The story is built around a Russian family living in the Armenian city of Leninankan. Anna Berezhnaya (Maria Mironova) with her son Vanya (Daniil Izotov) and daughter Katya (Anastasia Savkina) awaits the return from prison of her husband (Konstantin Lavronenko) who eight years prior was sentenced to prison for the death of two people in a car accident.

Konstantin Lavronenko says that he immediately accepted the invitation for the role: “I knew right away when I heard the suggestion that this is not an easy film, and immediately agreed to participate. I do not want to repeat the lofty words about the tragedy and memory, but thanks to this movie, we can live and feel the terrible events, and then to feel how beautiful and fleeting life is, how important it is to appreciate each other. It is necessary to empathize with the pain of our loved ones – because, unfortunately, we are starting to get used to the deaths of thousands of people.”

The director Sarik Andreasyan and producer Ruben Dishdishyan recall how the original script underwent a lot of changes, despite the fact that they liked it very much. They decided to make the story more understandable to people not privy to the events of 1988. The script added some Russian and French characters, to show the role of other countries in the assistance to the victims.

“The tragedy that united the world” – is the slogan of the film. Part of the filming took place in the Armenian city of Gyumri, former Leninakan – one of the four cities most affected by the earthquake. Some locations there still look the same as they looked after the quake in 1988.

“New history lessons adopted by the California Board of Education this year may especially resonate with Fresno students and families,” Mackenzie Mays writes in an article published by .

Schools are now required to teach about the Armenian genocide – an important history in the Fresno area, which has a large Armenian American community. Teachers also are to provide information on the “unprecedented American humanitarian response” to the genocide: relief efforts raised more than $117 million in the aftermath, saving more than 1 million refugees.

The new content, which is more inclusive and aims to teach students to think critically about historical events, is expected to show up in textbooks by 2018.

“Turkish authorities first arrested hundreds of Armenian intellectuals who eventually were killed. The remaining Armenians were ordered onto death marches into the Syrian desert, during which they were subjected to rape, torture, mutilation, starvation, holocausts in desert caves, kidnapping and forced Turkification and Islamization,” reads the curriculum framework for California’s 10th-graders.

“The Armenian genocide has been ignored in history textbooks,” said Barlow Der Mugrdechian, director of Fresno State’s Center for Armenian Studies. “I know several local teachers who have already been providing materials on it, but it’s absolutely essential for all teachers. It brings to light an example of how government can choose to go down a path toward genocide and what conditions allow that to happen.”

Der Mugrdechian pointed to Adolf Hitler’s quote before invading Poland, in which he asked who remembered the annihilation of the Armenians – leading many to believe that it encouraged him to proceed with plans to kill millions of Jews.

That alone “is a clear statement about the necessity to remember history,” Mugrdechian said.

Fresno Unified school board member Brooke Ashjian’s great-grandmother survived the Armenian genocide. He says contributions made by Armenian Americans have shaped the city and beyond, pointing to famous writer and Fresno native William Saroyan.

“It’s a valuable lesson because it’s something you don’t want to repeat,” Ashjian said of the Armenian genocide. “Armenian people are resilient.”