Category: News

New images have emerged from Palmyra, hours after Syrian troops recaptured it from the Islamic State group (IS).

The pictures reveal the extent of destruction wrought by the group during their 10-month occupation of the Unesco World Heritage site.

While some treasured monuments have been destroyed, much of the ancient city’s ruins are said to remain intact.

Syria’s antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim said authorities had been “expecting the worst”.

But he told the AFP news agency that “the landscape, in general, is in good shape”.

 

Photo: EPA

 

A Taliban splinter group says it carried out a suicide attack on a park in Lahore, Pakistan, which killed more than 70 people, including children, the BBC reports.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said it had targeted Christians celebrating Easter, though police have said they are still investigating the claim.

There were scenes of carnage as parents searched for children amid the debris.

Pakistan’s president condemned the attack, and the regional government has announced three days of mourning.

At least 300 people were injured, with officials saying they expected the death toll to rise.

All major hospitals in the area were put on an emergency footing after the blast, early on Sunday evening.

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS KAREKIN II
SUPREME PATRIARCH AND CATHOLICOS OF ALL ARMENIANS
ON THE OCCASION OF THE GLORIOUS RESURRECTION
OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, March 27, 2016

 

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

O Christ, you rose from the dead,
Destroying the hell today.
And through Your Resurrection
You granted life to Your creatures
(Hymn)

Our Beloved Faithful in Armenia, Artsakh and in the Diaspora,

Today, on this joyous feast of Holy Easter, with the words of the hymnist we praise our Lord and Savior, who is risen from the dead, destroyed hell, and with His resurrection gave life to His creatures.

Christ’s resurrection shined onto the darkness of death the light of eternity, bestowing on mankind the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom, and the grace of a resurrected life on this earth and in the life to come.  With Christ’s resurrection, a new creation, a new mankind, which is emancipated from sin and the curse of death, lives in the grace of God and is made worthy of eternal life.  In accordance with the words of the apostle, “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17). For the only begotten Son of God, our Lord and Savior, “who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel:” (2 Timothy 1:10). The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the gospel of resurrection, the gospel of eternity, the gospel of life; through which comes to us the understanding of God’s boundless love, the Lord’s voice, that gives life to souls; and the truth of the resurrection of Christ.

Today, in front of the mystery of the Lord’s miraculous resurrection, the question naturally arises – to what extent are we living the life that Christ has renewed for us, to what extent are we following the Savior’s words and commandments? What do we cherish in our lives?  The gospel of resurrection, or wandering teachings and deceitful ideologies?  Following the will of the Lord, or sinful, life-destroying paths? Accumulating treasures in heaven, or greedily aspiring for worldly gains?  Spiritual freedom, or shameless unrestrained living?  True righteousness and honesty or the “justice” Pilate sought?  Do we choose Jesus, or Barabas, the bandit?

Alongside the unprecedented progress in science and education, we also witness in our days the destruction of traditional values, humanity’s moral decay and evidence of bankrupt spirituality. Yet, in the state of life’s modern conveniences, fast pace, and opportunities; people, even family members, are estranged from one another.  In the midst of plentiful goodness, neither need, nor hardship is eliminated, but rather society becomes progressively polarized. While life has become easier through the advances of technology it has also facilitated new means of warfare and terrorism, which continuously shake the world, becoming a common threat against humanity.

In light of these realities, and at all times, it is imperative that we all realize and speak out about divine justice and atonement on this earth and in the life to come, which is imminent for every individual and nation. Indeed, Christ-given resurrection is not merely a gift, but also subject to judgment, as is written in the Gospels, “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice.  And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.” (John 5:28-29).  The journey of resurrection and life is the rejection of everything that makes us slaves to sin, for: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life” (Romans 6:23). It is with this understanding that the Apostle emphasizes putting on the heavenly, “that mortality might be swallowed up of life” (2 Corinthians 5:4-5).

The life that swallows death, is a life of spiritual fullness, longing, and an effort to live in God; in mind, heart and the entire strength of soul; and, in accordance with the commandments of the Gospel which injects the strength of the resurrected life into the individuals and people who have put their trust in Christ.

The world filled with anxiety and turbulence as well as our own reality, which is likewise filled with worrisome difficulties and problems, can be transformed by a life of spiritual fullness granted by Christ, conquering mankind’s pains and tragedies, and establishing the foundation of security and happiness everywhere.  Christ’s resurrection is an ever-resounding invitation for the world to rise from sin towards grace; so that all that spreads death and distraction may be swallowed by the life, led and lived by God.  Christ’s resurrection is the foundation and the reinforcement of faith, which enlightens the hearts of humanity, grants consolation and hope to those mired in hardship, imparts strength and power to rise from the sufferings of “golgothas”, bestows courage and a brave spirit in just struggles, inspires dedication, and gives joy and elation to live and create.

This spirit and path are natural and characteristic for our people, our life, and history, and illuminate our present and future.  Rising, facing difficulties undaunted, building a new life – our people testified to these through the re-establishment of our independent state, which will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary this year.  In our efforts of strengthening our homeland, building and empowering our national life, as well as confronting the challenges before us today, dear beloved, we have the faith and light of Christ’s resurrection leading us.  Hereupon, let us fill our lives with the love of our Lord, mutual support, and with the good news of God-pleasing labor.

Through the mystery of Easter, our souls shine with the grace of the resurrection that Christ has bestowed upon us, which is sealed on our lives when we live with faith and Christian values, for our dear ones, our people, our homeland, and our Holy Church.

In this Cathedral of the descent of the only-begotten Son, we pray and wish that every child of our nation accept with renewed faith the good news of the resurrection of Christ, and we as a nation with love towards Christ our Lord, may always proceed through our just and worthy deeds in the path of progress, having on our lips the everlasting praise:

O Christ, you rose from the dead,
Destroying the hell today.
And through Your Resurrection
You granted life to Your creatures.
(Hymn)

With the joy of the Holy Resurrection of Christ in Our heart, we greet the incumbents of the hierarchical sees of our Apostolic Holy Church; His Holiness, Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia; the Armenian Patriarch of Jersualem, Archbishop Nurhan Manoogian; Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, Archbishop Mesrop Mutafian; and to all the oath-bound clergy of our Church. We convey our greetings in the love of Christ to the heads of our Sister Churches, beseeching the Lord for His abundant grace to be poured from heaven upon their God-protected flocks.

With the good news of the resurrection we greet and bring our best wishes to the President of Armenia, His Excellency Serzh Sargsyan. We extend our greetings to President Bako Sahakyan of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh; Armenia’s state officials, and the representatives of diplomatic missions accredited in Armenia. We bring our love and blessings to all our people, in Armenia and in the Diaspora.

On this day of Easter, filled with hope and grace, it is our plea that the graces of the risen Christ be widely spread all over the world and in our homeland, that peace reign everywhere, and humanity, raised out of the caverns of tragedies and sorrows and hardships, build its life with hope and faith, full of love, brotherhood and solidarity.

May the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the mercy of God remain with us and all, today and forever. Amen.

Christ is Risen from the dead.
Blessed is the Resurrection of Christ.

Photo: AFP

A suicide bomber killed at least 65 people and injured more than 280 others, mostly women and children, at a public park in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Sunday, striking at the heart of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s political base of Punjab, Reuters reports.

The blast occurred in the parking area of Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, a few feet away from children’s swings.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which occurred in a busy residential area during the Easter holiday weekend. Police said it was not clear whether the attack had deliberately targeted mainly Muslim Pakistan’s small Christian minority.

Photo: Reuters

 

Syrian government forces backed by heavy Russian air support drove Islamic State out of Palmyra on Sunday, inflicting what the army called a mortal blow to militants who seized the city last year and dynamited its ancient temples, Reuters reports.

The loss of Palmyra represents one of the biggest setbacks for the ultra-hardline Islamist group since it declared a caliphate in 2014 across large parts of Syria and Iraq.

The army general command said that its forces took over the city with support from Russian and Syrian air strikes, opening up the huge expanse of desert leading east to the Islamic State strongholds of Raqqa and Deir al-Zor.

Palmyra would become “a launchpad to expand military operations” against the group in those two provinces, it said, promising to “tighten the noose on the terrorist group and cut supply routes … ahead of their complete recapture”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes continued on the eastern edge of Palmyra, around the prison and airport, but the bulk of the Islamic State force had withdrawn and retreated east, leaving the city under President Bashar al-Assad’s control.

According to the BBC, President Bashar al-Assad has hailed the recapture of Palmyra from so-called Islamic State (IS) as an “important achievement” in the “war on terrorism”.

President Assad said this showed the success of the army’s strategy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Mr Assad, a Kremlin spokesman said.

By Robert Fisk

All week, the G-word has been rattling around the foreign ministries of the world. Ever since John Kerry – he of Israeli-Palestinian peace “in six months” fame – announced that Isis was committing genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims, we’ve been trying to work out just what he’s talking about. Even the poor old Canadians and their super-liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau, have since been refusing to recognise the Isis atrocities as “genocide” – the attempt to exterminate an entire race of people – preferring instead to talk about “crimes perpetrated…against religious and ethnic minorities.” Could this be, ask Canadian critics, because Canada last month withdrew the last of its clapped out CF-18 fighter jets from the battle against Isis?

More likely the Canadians have caught on to the whole genocide trap. But first: yes, Isis have indeed committed horrific crimes against minorities under their control. Their massacre of Shia Muslims and the murder and enslavement of Yazidi and Christian women and children are all real – perhaps 10,000, perhaps 100,000, the figures are as numbing as they are vague. The Isis magazine Dabiq admits all this – perhaps the closest anyone has come to self-incrimination since Pol Pot listed his crimes in Cambodia.

But there’s a problem. These terrible atrocities are being committed on the very land and deserts upon which a far more terrible genocide was perpetrated just over a hundred years ago by the Turks who head-chopped and knifed and shot to death a million and a half Armenian Christians, raping their women and throwing so many of their dead men into the waters of Anatolia that the very rivers changed course. And Turkey – heaven be praised – is now our good friend, Nato ally and, since this month, our bastion against the Muslim refugee “invasion” of Europe. Back in 1915, the Brits and Americans had no problems in naming the guilty party, along with the Turks’ militia ally – again, take in your breath – the Kurds, now our brave allies against the forces of Isis darkness.

All this, you see, is a bit embarrassing. The Yazidis and Christians of Iraq have certainly been massacred – including a few Armenian grandchildren of the 1915 survivors, although that hasn’t cut much ice in the US – although the Shia Muslims of Iraq were being slaughtered in Iraq by the thousand during the latter half of America’s military occupation.  The Shia, I suspect, have been given a bloodbath upgrade to genocide because Shia Iran agreed to a nuclear deal with the rest of the world. But back to Yazidis for a moment.

One of the worst genocides against this forlorn, centuries-old religion occurred in 1892 when the Turkish Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II targeted them for mass extermination. But the Sultan included among his victims tens of thousands of 19^thcentury Armenians – whom Mr Kerry cannot bring himself to declare victims of genocide in the 20^th century (although he did so for many years when he was a mere Senator). So earlier references to Yazidi extermination have to be left out of the Kerry narrative of history. The current Kerry mantra for the Armenian genocide is “one of the worst atrocities of the 20^thcentury”.

La Clinton is going to be no help in all this. She regularly condemned the Armenian genocide until she became Secretary of State to Barack Obama and discovered that the frightful persecution of the 1915 Christians – a teaching forum for future Nazis who witnessed the genocide as young German army officers and later put their lessons into practice against the Jews – was now “a matter of historical debate”. Donald Trump has not yet entered this particular blood-boltered ‘debate’ although his Trump hotel in Azerbaijan – a country which, like Turkey and (to its shame) Israel, denies the Armenian genocide – suggests that we shall be hearing from him soon.

Much of the rest of the world – governments and parliaments of 29 countries up to last year – have recognised the Armenian genocide. For 20 years, The Independent has regularly referred to the Armenian Holocaust – with a capital ‘H’, the very same word (‘Shoah’ in Hebrew) used by many ordinary Israelis to describe the slaughter. But not the Americans.

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose Sukhoi jet had of course not yet been shot down by the Turks, attended the official genocide memorial day in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, declaring the genocide a fact of history – to the fury of the Turks — while President Obama skulked in Washington, still too fearful of offending his Nato ally whose airbases – ironically built, in many cases, on lands stolen from murdered Armenians – were so important to the US Air Force which was already supposedly destroying Isis.

All in all, then a pretty mess. Kerry tells us that Isis is “genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology and by actions…” as if the destruction of the Armenian people in 1915 was not – and is perfectly happy to label the dark forces of the ‘Islamic Caliphate’ as genocidal themselves – which they clearly are. But it raises another frightful question. Since we know that Isis sells Syrian and Iraqi oil to the Turks – Russian bomber pilots have seen miles of Isis oil convoys running to the horizon towards Turkey – and since Turkish journalists have been imprisoned for reporting on secret Turkish arms transfers to Islamists in Syria – the Americans are, in effect, blaming Isis for the genocide of a hundred thousand or more human beings while being too frightened to label the Armenian massacres of a million and a half souls as genocide lest it offend Isis’ sinister chums in Turkey.

It’s not difficult to accuse the bad guys of genocide – Colin Powell had no problem over Darfur in 2004 – but shouldn’t we stand up to the real bullies who prevent us honouring the memory of those million and a half Christians who were treated just as Isis treats the Yazidis and Christians and Shia today: the Turkish government and the Turkish army and the Turkish institutes of state? And all this at a time when an increasing number of brave Turks are themselves acknowledging the Turkish genocide of 1915?

Forget it: 75 million visas to Turkey in response to their $3-billion European bailout to block those refugees is enough to keep the Armenian mass graves of 1915 well and truly closed. Just ask John Kerry

Armenia will host Belarus in a friendly today. The match will be held at the Republican Stasium after Vazgen Sargsyan, the kickoff is at 7 pm.

The fixture will be the farewell match of Armenia’s long-time goalkeeper Riman Berezovsky.

The legendary keeper decided to quit international football after a Euro-2016 qualifier against Portugal.

Berezovsky had been playing for the Armenian national team since 1996. On club level he played for Russian “Zenit,” Torpedo” and “Dinamo” and holds the Russian and USSR record of denying penalties.

Armenia and Belarus played a goalless draw in a friendly match held in Yerevan’s Republican Stadium.

The fixture was a farewell match for Armenia’s long-time goalkeeper Roman Berezovsky.

“There was some tension in the first half, but we played more attacking football in the second half and created more chances,” Armenia head coach Varuzhan Sukiasyan said after the match.

On April 15, George and Amal Clooney will host a fundraiser for the Hillary Victory Fund, reports.

For two seats at the head table with Clinton, George Clooney and his wife, attorney Amal Clooney, at an April 15 fundraiser, a couple must contribute or raise a whopping $353,400 — a huge ticket price for a hard-dollar fundraiser.

The Bay Area fundraiser, hosted at the home of venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, is one of two events starring the Clooneys. On April 16, Clinton and the Clooneys will reunite at the Clooney Los Angeles mansion, where tickets cost $33,400 per person to dine at the table with one of Hollywood’s most glamorous couples.

Both events raise money for the Hillary Victory Fund. While the maximum donation to a presidential campaign is $2,700 for the primary elections (plus another $2,700 for the general), the Hillary Victory Fund can accept much larger contributions because it is a so-called joint fundraising committee that is comprised of multiple committees.

In addition to Hillary for America, which is Clinton’s main campaign committee, the Hillary Victory Fund also includes the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees.

The maximum donation to the DNC is $33,400 a year, while the state parties each can accept donations of $10,000 a year into their federal accounts.

Ten more suspects have been arrested in three European countries as police step up efforts to prevent further attacks after the Brussels bombings, the BBC reports.

Seven were detained in Brussels, two reportedly in Germany and one in Paris.

An investigation is continuing into Tuesday’s bomb attacks, which killed 31 people in Brussels and have been linked to November’s Paris attacks.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Brussels, said that so-called Islamic State (IS) would be destroyed.

Standing alongside Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, he expressed condolences for the victims and solidarity with Belgium, declaring “Je suis Bruxellois”.

The Western alliance would continue its fight to destroy IS, Mr Kerry said.

“We will not be intimidated. We will not be deterred.”