Category: News

A1 Plus | 17:29:52 | 18-03-2004 | Politics |
PRESIDENT KOCHARYAN RESTORES JUSTICE
President Kocharyan introduced newly appointed Prosecutor General Aghvan
Hovsepyan to the office staff on Thursday.
Kocharyan said there is no need of special introducing as his nominee is
well-known in justice area: he worked at the post of Prosecutor General for
long years and has been dismissed not for mismanagement but because of
political situation in the country.
President said his move is motivated by desire to restore justice. “A real
professional, a strong and high-principled man”, Kocharyan said portraying
Hovsepyan. “I’ve known him since 1981, he has long worked in Nagorno
Karabakh”, Kocharyan added.
In his opinion, Prosecutor Office is increasingly loosing confidence and its
role as one of the most important institutions in the country.
In his words, the Prosecutor Office must be the key institution in combat
against corruption and other crimes. It should secure state property and
state interests.
“We expect more vigorous work from the new prosecutor”, Robert Kocharyan
said.
—

A1 Plus | 16:54:25 | 18-03-2004 | Social |
PHOTOGRAPHER CHILDREN FROM KASHSTAKH EXPOSE THEIR WORKS
Photo exhibition opened Thursday at Alexander Tamanyan Museum. Photographers
are children ranged from 9 to 15 who attend photographic studio in their
native village of Kashatakh.
The studio director Khachik Baghdasaryan said he is unhappy about the fact
that the children have no time for lessons because they are involved in
cattle-breeding business.
At the same time, he noted proudly the kids have their attitude toward the
photo art and own taste.
—

Posted on Thu, Mar. 18, 2004
Franklin Institute to honor scientist snubbed for Nobel
By Faye Flam
Inquirer Staff Writer
Raymond Damadian, the scientist who was publicly miffed that he didn’t
win last year’s Nobel Prize, is a winner of one of the Franklin
Institute’s top awards, to be announced today.
Damadian, 67, a pioneer in medical imaging research, made waves in
October when he bought ads in three major newspapers to argue that he
should have won the 2003 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.
He is among the scientists and innovators to be honored with the
prestigious Franklin awards, bestowed over the last 180 years on
scientists, engineers and inventors including such luminaries as
Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham
Bell.
In addition to five Franklin Medals, the institute gives out two
special honors called the Bower Awards, one for business and one for
science. The awards are tied to a different theme each year – for
2004, it’s brain research.
Damadian won the Bower Award for business leadership. It carries no
monetary prize. He said he was honored to be recognized by the
Franklin Institute and has put the Nobel disappointment behind him.
The Bower Award for science, which includes a cash prize of $250,000,
will go to Seymour Benzer of the California Institute of Technology,
who laid the foundation for today’s understanding of the way genes
influence behavior. Benzer’s work was chronicled in the Pulitzer
Prize-winning book Love, Time, Memory by Bucks County author Jonathan
Weiner.
Benzer discovered he could use fruit flies to study how the brain
works. Small and simple as they appear, fruit flies can record
memories and learn. They have elaborate courting behavior and keep
time with internal clocks. And fruit flies multiply fast, so multiple
generations can be tracked in just a few weeks. Benzer bred flies with
abnormalities in their behavior and then isolated the genetic mistakes
responsible.
This year’s other winners include physicist Robert Meyer of Brandeis
University; chemist Harry Gray of Caltech; computer scientist Richard
Karp of the University of California, Berkeley; electrical engineer
Robert Newnham of Pennsylvania State University; and mechanical
engineer Roger Bacon of Amoco and Union Carbide.
All of the medalists will be honored at a ceremony at the Franklin
Institute on April 29.
Damadian was recognized for his contribution to the medical use of
magnetic resonance imaging, which has proved extremely valuable for
detecting tumors, damaged ligaments and cartilage, and other problems
with the body’s soft tissue. It also has opened up new frontiers in
brain research.
During the 1950s, scientists were using what was to become MRI as an
analytical tool for chemistry. The technique, then called nuclear
magnetic resonance, relied on the way the nuclei of different atoms
became excited when subjected to a magnetic field and pulses of radio
waves. The time these different nuclei took to “relax” back to their
normal states could be used to distinguish one type of atom from
another.
In the late 1960s, Damadian thought it might be possible to use
nuclear magnetic resonance to distinguish cancerous tumors from
healthy tissue. He tested his idea and eventually secured a patent on
the technology.
Damadian, a native of Forest Hills, N.Y., started a company named
Fonar, which has installed 300 MRI machines around the world. He and
his company have prospered; in one recent patent dispute against
General Electric, he won $127.8 million.
But there was more to the MRI story. During the 1970s, two other
researchers, Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield, independently
realized that if they varied the magnetic field in space, the
molecules in different parts of an internal organ – say, the brain –
would respond differently, depending on their positions. These
scientists further developed this concept as a way to build up a 3-D
picture of the brain or other soft tissue in the body, which is the
main use of MRI today.
In 2003, Lauterbur and Mansfield won the Nobel Prize in physiology or
medicine for developing MRI as a technique for 3-D images. Some who
work in the field have said publicly they agree with the Nobel
committee’s decision; others side with Damadian, who has suggested he
might have been overlooked because of his outspoken view that God
created human beings along with the rest of the universe 6,000 years
ago, a notion that offends many scientists.
Damadian spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take out full-page
ads in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington
Post under the headline: “The Shameful Wrong that Should be Righted.”
He argued that if he had never been born, there would be no MRI today.
Contact staff writer Faye Flam at 215-854-4977 or [email protected]

The Nobel Prize in Medicine
Author(s): Michael Ruse
Metanexus Salus
2004.03.16.
In the op/ed piece below, Michael Ruse, Professor of the Philosophy of
Biology at Florida State University, considers the possible political
and religious issues at stake in the selection of winners of the 2003
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The 2003 prize was awarded to
Dr. Paul Lauterbur and Dr. Peter Mansfield for their work in magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI). Amidst the controversy surrounding the Nobel
committee’s exclusion of Dr. Raymond Damadian despite his groundbreaking
work in MRI, Ruse speculates that Damadian’s exclusion was motivated by
knowledge of his religious commitments, specifically his support of
creation science.
Michael Ruse was born in 1940 in Birmingham, England. He received a B.A.
in Philosophy and Mathematics from Bristol University in 1962, an M.A.
in Philosophy from McMaster University in 1964, and a Ph.D. from Bristol
University in 1970. Ruse has worked at the University of Guelph in
Ontario, Canada since 1965, obtaining the rank of Professor. He has been
a visiting professor and scholar at Cambridge University, Harvard
University, and Indiana University. Ruse is a fellow of the Royal
Society of Canada, the AAAS, Guggenheim, Killam, the John Templeton
Foundation, and a Gifford Lectures. Ruse is the author of many books,
including The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. 1979;
Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy 1986; The
Philosophy of Biology 1989; Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in
Evolutionary Biology 1996; Readings in the Philosophy of Biology, 1998
with David Hull; Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social
Construction? 1999; Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship
between Science and Religion, 2001; The Evolution Wars, 2000; The Nature
of Science, (forthcoming 2001); Darwin and Design: Science, Philosophy,
Religion, 2003; Cloning (edited volume), 2001.
–Editor
The Nobel Prize in Medicine – Was there a Religious Factor in this
Year’s (Non) Selection?
By Michael Ruse
Dr. Raymond Damadian failed to be included in this year’s Nobel honors
for work in Medicine, and feels sore about it. Although he was the
inventor of the first machine that discovers cancers through magnetic
resonance imaging, the award went to two other and somewhat subsequent
scientists, Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield. Notoriously, the Nobel
committees never reveal their deliberations (until everyone is long
dead) and never change their minds. So, although by having taken out
advertisements of protest in the New York Times and the Washington Post
may make him feel somewhat better, and draw attention to his bad luck,
Damadian seems fated to remain with the rest of us who are not Nobel
Laureates. He will join Charles Best of Banting and Best fame who
discovered the significance of insulin treatment for diabetes –
Frederick Banting and his boss J.J.R. McCleod (who was on vacation at
the time) got the award and Best the junior scientist was left out.
But perhaps Dr. Damadian does have reason to feel having been slighted
for the wrong reasons. He is not just an inventor, but also a very
prominent Christian. And not just a Christian of any bland kind, but a
Creation Scientist – one of those people who believes that the Bible,
especially including Genesis, is absolutely literally true – six days of
creation, Adam and Eve the first humans, universal flood, and all of the
rest. It is as least as likely a hypothesis that Damadian was ignored by
the Nobel committee because they did not want to award a Prize to an
American fundamentalist Christian as that they did not think his work
merited the fullest accolade. In the eyes of rational Europeans – and
Swedes are nothing if not rational Europeans – it is bad enough that
such people exist, let alone give them added status and a pedestal from
which to preach their silly ideas. Especially a scientific pedestal from
which to preach their silly anti-science ideas.
Is this unfair? One certainly feels a certain sympathy for the Nobel
committee. Creation science is wrong and (if taught to young people as
the truth) dangerous. It does represent everything against which good
science stands. However, even the best scientists believe some very
strange things, and if we start judging one area of their work in terms
of other beliefs that they have, we could well do more harm than good.
Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist of them all, had some very strange
views about the proper interpretation of such Biblical books as Daniel
and Revelation, and in respects believed things about the universe – its
past and its future – that make today’s Creation Scientists seem
comparatively mild. More recently, Alfred Russel Wallace, the
co-discoverer of natural selection along with Charles Darwin, became an
enthusiast for spiritualism, believing that there are hidden forces
controlling every aspect of life. People knew this and were embarrassed
by it, but it did not stop them from celebrating and praising Wallace’s
great scientific work. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and
given Britain’s greatest award for achievement, the Order of Merit.
All of my life I have fought for evolution and against Creationism – in
writings, on the podium, and in court in 1981 as a witness in Arkansas
against a law demanding that Creation Science be taught alongside
evolution in the state supported schools. But as one who loves science
above all and thinks it the greatest triumph of the human spirit – as
one who has no religious beliefs whatsoever – I cringe at the thought
that Raymond Damadian was refused his just honor because of his
religious beliefs. Having silly ideas in one field is no good reason to
deny merit for great ideas in another field. Apart from the fact that
this time the Creation Scientists will think that there is good reason
to think that they are the objects of unfair treatment at the hands of
the scientific community.

Kickback probe targets chief of U.N. program
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 18, 2004
By Betsy Pisik
NEW YORK — The United Nations has begun an internal investigation into
accusations that a prominent U.N. official took kickbacks from the
multibillion-dollar Iraqi oil-for-food program that ended last year. The
accusations have also prompted U.S. congressional concern. The General
Accounting Office, which has been examining Iraq’s finances since May,
is preparing to brief staffers of the House International Relations
Committee tomorrow afternoon.
“There are important implications here in how the U.N. operates that are
vitally important to the oversight committees of the House and Senate,”
said committee spokesman Sam Stratman.
Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican, “wants to pull
together information about the extent of this problem to determine the
options the committee has for proceeding,” he said.
Benon Sevan, the executive director of the Office of the Iraq Program at
the United Nations, is accused by some Iraqi officials of accepting oil
vouchers from Saddam Hussein’s regime. The charges are based on papers
found in the Ministry of Oil listing kickbacks and bribes.
Some 270 people, organizations and corporations were subsequently
accused of taking bribes by an Iraqi newspaper, though the claims have
not been authenticated. Nonetheless, the inclusion of Mr. Sevan in the
list has fueled long-held suspicions about the U.N. program, which sold
more than $60 billion worth of oil in 6 years.
According to reports published in Iraq, Mr. Sevan, a native of Cyprus,
received a voucher for 1.8 million barrels of Iraqi oil. At today’s
prices, the oil would be worth more than $67 million. Presumably the
bearer of the voucher could claim the oil, or consign it to a middleman
and pocket the proceeds when it was sold.
Mr. Sevan, currently on vacation and about to retire, has denied all
accusations through a U.N. spokesman.
The U.N. Inspector General’s Office, known as the Office of Internal
Oversight Services (OIOS), has begun an investigation into whether Mr.
Sevan or other U.N. officials accepted gifts or bribes from Saddam’s regime.
U.S. diplomats say they have stressed to U.N. officials that “they had
better take this investigation seriously.”
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has considered whether to request a
separate investigation, looking broadly into the program as a whole and
various governments’ manipulation of it. That would likely require the
approval of the Security Council and the General Assembly.
“We’ve begun the investigation, and so far it is procedural,” said one
U.N. official of the Sevan accusations. “There are allegations, which
you have to find out about, to understand. That’s where we are now.”
The office sent formal letters seeking assistance to the Iraqi Governing
Council and the Coalition Provisional Authority in mid-February, but
received a positive response from L. Paul Bremer’s office only on Tuesday.
OIOS “is looking for information. They’re asking us for records, and
Bremer is looking for them. We’re absolutely interested in helping the
U.N. in their investigation,” said a U.S. official.
Mr. Sevan is in Australia, according to U.N. officials, where he is
taking two months’ vacation. He is expected to return to U.N.
headquarters for about a week in April, then retire.
As the executive director of the U.N. Office of the Iraq Program since
it was established in 1997, Mr. Sevan narrowly escaped injury when the
U.N. offices in Baghdad were bombed last summer.
He has served in the U.N. system for most of his adult life.
Among his previous positions, he has been U.N. security coordinator,
deputy head of the department of political affairs, assistant director
of administration and management, and head of conference services.
Mr. Sevan spent much of 1988 through 1991 in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
monitoring the withdrawal of Soviet troops and overseeing U.N.
operations in the region.

PRESS RELEASE
Office of Sarkis Assadourian M.P.
120 Confederation
House of Commons, Ottawa, Canada
Contact: Daniel Kennedy
Tel: 613 995 4843
Ottawa March 18, 2004
Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration
To Review Foreign Credentials Issue
Says Chair Assadourian
Mr. Sarkis Assadourian (Brampton Centre, Lib.): Chairman of the
Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration of the House of
Commons, announced today, that the committee will undertake a study of
the issue of recognition of foreign professional credentials in
Canada.
The committee is tentatively scheduled to travel across Canada in the
coming weeks. Hearings will be held in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto,
Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver to hear witnesses present evidence
relating to the issues of recognition of professional credentials and
to explore possibilities that will allow new Canadians with
professional experience to more fully participate in growing Canada’s
economy.
Under the current system, some immigrants to Canada with professional
credentials have been unable to participate fully in the Canadian
economy because their foreign credentials have not been recognized by
the professional licensing agencies. Canadians of Chinese, East
European Indian and Pakistani origin in particular have been
affected. The committee will look for new ways to allow these talented
professionals to share their skills with their fellow Canadians.
Commenting on the upcoming business of the committee M.P. Assadourian
said, “I am extremely pleased that the Standing Committee on
Citizenship and Immigration will be studying this important issue. It
is time for us to stress the need for a re-thinking on the recognition
of foreign professional credentials to allow for skilled Immigrants to
Canada to contribute fully to Canada’s growth. I have always
considered it a tremendous waste of skill and talent when immigrants
with professional credentials were sidelined and prohibited from
realizing their full potential in Canada. We must utilize fully the
talents of foreign graduates. ”
-30-
For further information contact: Daniel Kennedy 613-995-4843

OSCE chairman optimistic about resolution of Georgia-Ajaria row
Arminfo
17 Mar 04
YEREVAN
Armenia hopes that relations between Georgia and Ajaria will improve,
Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan told a news conference today
held jointly with the OSCE chairman-in-office and Bulgarian foreign
minister, Solomon Passi.
If the tension between Georgia and Ajaria aggravates, there is no
doubt that it will a have negative impact not only on Georgia but on
the whole region. “We hope that the negotiations which are now being
held will yield positive results, the situation will get better as
soon as possible and, therefore, we will be able to avoid additional
difficulties,” Oskanyan noted.
“For his part, Passi noted that he was “optimistic” and said that the
situation can be resolved peacefully and called on the sides to calm
down and start dialogue. “The escalation of tension can be avoided
through direct dialogue,” Passi said.

Armenian foreign minister off to Slovakia for EU conference
Arminfo
18 Mar 04

YEREVAN
A two-day international conference “Enlarged Europe – New Agenda”
opens in the Slovak capital, Bratislava today. Armenian Foreign
Minister Vardan Oskanyan will attend the conference. The Foreign
Ministry told Arminfo agency that the Armenian minister plans to
address the conference.
[Passage omitted: countries participating in the conference cited]

Bulgarian News Network, Bulgaria
March 18 2004
Bulgarian foreign minister continues shuttle between Armenia, Azerbaijan
SOFIA (bnn) – Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Solomon Passy urged
Wednesday Armenia’s leaders to resume talks with Azerbaijan about the
future of the latter’s Armenian-dominated breakaway province of
Nagorno Karabakh, the BGNES news agency reported.
Passy, who is chairing the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, met Armenia’s Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan and
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanyan. He was scheduled to meet President
Robert Kocharyan later in the day. On Tuesday Passy held talks on the
Nagorno Karabakh issue with Azeri President Ilham Aliev.
Azerbaijan’s autonomous region of Nagorno Karabakh, which is
populated mainly by Armenians, petitioned to become part of Armenia
towards the end of the Soviet era. Serious fighting erupted in 1991
and in the following two years Armenian forces gained control of
Nagorno-Karabakh and occupied almost 20 percent of Azeri territory.
The leaders of the Nagorno-Karabakh region have declared
independence, though this status has not been recognized by any
state. The fighting between Azeris and Armenians left more than
15,000 dead.
Armenian leaders on Wednesday voiced readiness for negotiations with
Azerbaijan, but emphasized on what they see as Azerbaijan’s ethnic
Armenians’ right of self-rule, the report said.
Passy met also the head of Armenia’s Apostolic Church Garegin II, who
also spoke in favor of dialog with Azerbaija, the agency said. /bnn/

Nassau Guardian, Bahamas
March 18 2004
Uncertainty over Cable Beach?
By LINDSAY THOMPSON, Guardian Business Editor [email protected]
Hotel Corporation Chairman George Smith says he has not been informed
that Lyford Cay billionaire Dikran Izmirlian withdrew a $1 billion
proposal for an upscale redevelopment of Cable Beach.
A “no comment” response came from the Izmirlian residence when The
Guardian called there Tuesday afternoon.
Additionally, a source close to the situation told The Guardian that
noted hotelier George Myers and a group of Bahamian businessmen
called “Prestige” were also interested in the project.
Mr. Myers told The Guardian that he was watching the process and “was
not interested at this time”.
Mr. Smith was asked how close was the government to announcing a
preferred developer for the Cable Beach redevelopment project.
He noted that plenty “ingredients” are involved in the process, and
that Prime Minister Perry Christie has “very, very high ambitions”
for Cable Beach.
The government owns the Radisson Cable Beach Resort, which has
undergone tremendous refurbishing, particularly to 150 rooms, which
were damaged by Hurricane Michelle in November 2001.
Other improvements were carried out the exterior of the property, the
grounds, the escalator, the golf course with netting and lighting,
which impacts upon the value of the property, Mr. Smith said. And,
there is an anticipated 100 per cent occupancy over the next several
weeks, he added.
A number of groups have expressed interests in developing the Cable
Beach strip, which includes the Radisson, Wyndham Nassau Resort and
Crystal Palace Casino and the Nassau Beach Hotel, in addition to the
former Hobby Horse racetrack land opposite.
The Wyndham and Nassau Beach hotels are owned by Phil Ruffin, who is
reportedly refusing to sell to the Swiss-Armenian billionaire Dikran
Izmirlian who owns the largest real estate plot in Lyford Cay.
A source representing Calstar Properties of Orange County, California
told The Guardian it is interested in the development, at an
estimated $500 million.
Calstar Properties estimates that the redevelopment of the hotels
would be completed within 36 months. The opposite land would take a
bit longer and would comprise a convention centre, an amusement and
entertainment park.
According to the source the project will not disrupt the Cable Beach
area as, “We are not pulling down.” It is anticipated that between
1,600 and 1,800 permanent jobs would be created at the completion of
the project.
Mr. Smith noted that the golf course is on 110 acres of land
surrounded by an additional 30 acres of “excellent land with
tremendous value”, and about 55 acres of the Hobby Horse racetrack.
“Those are very valuable assets and the government and the
corporation want to find the best possible entities to proceed with
the massive improvements to make it into a first class destination,”
Mr. Smith said.
It has also been said that potential developers are seeking the same
type of tax concessions granted Kerzner International when it opened
its resort on Paradise Island.
Analysts say that most investors would like to get the “most generous
concessions” but those have to be negotiated and in some cases what
may appear to be generous in one area, is not in another.
The deal surrounding Radisson seems to be taking shape like that of
the sale of Bahamas Telecommunication Communications (the government
went through a bidding process, then decided to postpone the sale).
To this, Mr. Smith said, “Radisson is an ongoing hotel that is doing
a whole lot better now that it was a year ago. It has all its rooms
in very good condition, we have retained the staff and there was
great temptation when the 150 rooms were not in circulation to lay
off staff… this makes it an attractive hotel to a purchaser.”