Pedro Agramunt, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was banned from chairing the Assembly sitting as His Majesty King Felipe VI of Spain was addressing the sitting.
According to member of the Armenian delegation to PACE Samvel Farmanyan, Agramunt was banned from chairing the sitting under the pressure of PACE political groups.
Farmanyan is confident today is Agramunt’s last working day at PACE and expects the Spanish to resign tomorrow.
An Illinois couple married for 69 years have died with an hour of each other, family members tell US media, the BBC reports.
Isaac Vatkin, 91, was holding the hand of his wife Teresa, 89, as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease on Saturday, the Daily Herald reported.
Isaac died 40 minutes later. Family members said they took comfort in knowing they were together at the end.
“You didn’t want to see them go,” said grandson William Vatkin, “but you couldn’t ask for anything more.”
“Their love for each other was so strong, they simply could not live without each other,” said daughter Clara Gesklin at the couple’s joint funeral.
For nearly a century, members of the Dildilian family practiced photography in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and the United States. Unlike the best known Armenian photographers who practiced in Istanbul during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, the Dildilians worked primarily in Central Anatolia and on the Black Sea coast. The archive they left behind gives a vivid glimpse into provincial life at a time of rapid change and brutal tragedy, the reports.
“Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home” brings together over 200 extraordinary photographs from the Dildilian archive. It also includes text and notes written by Armen Marsoobian, a professor at Southern Connecticut State University who has organized exhibitions based on the collection in Turkey, Armenia, the U.S., and the U.K. He is the grandson of Tsolag Dildilian, the founder of the family business in Sivas in central Turkey in 1882.
Joined by his brother Aram, Tsolag’s photography business developed rapidly and he was able to open studios over a period of 30 years in towns like Amasya, Konya and Adana. The book features photos from these studios, as well as from the family’s travels across Anatolia. More than 900 photographs and glass negatives survived, along with family memoirs describing life during this tumultuous era. It is amazing that so many photos were preserved, and most of the ones reprinted in the book are in top condition.
Many Dildilians perished during the genocide of Armenians in 1915, but some family members were able to survive. Tsolag knew the commander of the local gendarmerie and had himself worked as a photographer for the Ottoman army. He and other family members were allowed to remain in Merzifon if they converted to Islam and assumed Turkish identities, which they did.
When the First World War ended in 1918, the surviving Dildilians reclaimed their Armenian identities with the hope of rebuilding their lives. But things got difficult once again with the Turkish War of Independence and they finally ended up leaving Turkey in November 1922.
“Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home” is a rich, moving chronicle of a vanished world.
The Turkish Ministry of Foreign affairs has issued a statement, condemning and rejecting ‘in strongest’ terms the resolution adopted by the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic on Armenian Genocide and other crimes against humanity.
“We are also disappointed by President Zeman’s letter of 24 April 2017 addressed to the Armenian diaspora in his country with regard to the events of 1915, as it includes serious inconsistencies,” the Ministry said in a statement.
“President Zeman, while stating in his letter that history should not be interpreted by politicians, and exposing the fact that politicians abuse history for their political interests, and that the past should first and foremost be analyzed and interpreted by historians; contradicts his own words as he makes political assessments with regard to the events of 1915,” the Ministry said.
The Ministry of Foreign affairs has conveyed the reaction to these political actions to the Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Ankara.
The adopted accused the Ottoman Empire of carrying out systematic genocide against Armenians, as well as other Christian minorities.
Photo: Murad Sezer / Reuters
The hull of ‘the Liman,’ a 1,560-ton reconnaissance ship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, was breached below the waterline in the collision, the Defense Ministry said.
The Turkish coast guard said it rescued 78 people from the Russian ship, which was later confirmed by the Russian authorities.
“All crew members of the research ship of the Black Sea Fleet are alive and well and are currently preparing for evacuation from the Turkish rescue ship to a Russian ship,” the Defense Ministry said.
According to the Defense Ministry, ‘the Liman’ collided with another ship, ‘Ashot-7,’ about 40km northwest from the Bosporus Strait.
‘The Liman’ was built during Soviet times in Poland and commissioned in 1970. It is mostly unarmed, but carries a radar station, a hydroacoustic detector and other reconnaissance equipment needed to track surface ships and submarines.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan has all of the ingredients needed to be a star player for Manchester United next season, Matt Le Tissiersays, reports.
The Armenia playmaker has earned plenty of praise for his performances in the second half of the season after initially struggling to make much of an impact at Old Trafford following his transfer from Borussia Dortmund last summer.
Mkhitaryan has been a regular fixture in Jose Mourinho’s first team since the turn of the year and will be hoping to feature when Manchester United take on bitter local rivals Manchester City in Thursday’s derby clash.
The playmaker has scored eight goals in all competitions for Manchester United so far this season and will be hoping to help the Red Devils win the Europa League and finish in the top four this term.
And former Southampton star Le Tissier is expecting big things from the 28-year-old at Old Trafford next season.
Le Tissier told : “I think he’s shown enough to demonstrate he will be a hit next season, certainly in the Europa league, having taken his time to get into the team.”
The Colorado State Legislature adopted a resolution recognizing the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Members of both the House of Representatives and Senate voted unanimously to adopt the resolution at the capitol on Wednesday.
The states: “We express support for efforts toward constructive and durable relations between the country of Armenia, the homeland for the 22 Armenian people, and its neighbors, based upon acknowledgment of the facts and ongoing consequences of the Armenian genocide, and a fair, just, and comprehensive international resolution of this crime against humanity.”
“We, the members of the Colorado General Assembly acknowledge April 26, 2017, and April 26 of each year thereafter, as “Colorado Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide”; and that we express support for efforts toward constructive and durable relations between the country of Armenia, the homeland for the Armenian people, and its neighbors, based upon acknowledgment of the facts and ongoing consequences of the Armenian genocide, and a fair, just, and comprehensive international resolution of this crime against humanity,” the resolution states.
President Serzh Sargsyan received today EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia Herbert Salber.
The interlocutors referred to Armenia-EU relations, parliamentary elections in Armenia, reforms to be implemented in different spheres, as well as the opportunities of furthering the negotiation process on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict.
The EU Special Representative congratulated President Sargsyan on the successful conduct of parliamentary elections, underlining that Armenia made a serious step towards stability and reinforcement of democracy. Mr. Salber hailed the progress in Armenia-EU relations.
President Sargsyan, in turn, emphasized EU’s considerable contribution in the process of preparation of the elections, which helped organize elections meeting international standards.
Serzh Sargsyan and Herbert Salber discussed the perspectives of furthering the negotiation process, the existing problems and challenges, the ways of EU’s possible contribution to the process.
The EU Special Representative assured of the European Union’s willingness to contribute to the settlement of the conflict by supporting the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs within the bounds of possibility.
Photo: AFP
Donald Trump has indicated he will scrap plans to find cash for his border wall in this week’s spending bill, the BBC reports.
The president’s close adviser, Kellyanne Conway, said funding for the wall would be left out of a budget measure that must pass by Friday.
Building the wall, paid for by Mexico, was a key campaign promise.
Democrats had threatened to block the bill if money was earmarked for the wall, so its omission may now avert a government shutdown.
But the president insisted on Twitter that he still supported the wall and that it would be built.