Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian had a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.
During the meeting reference was made to the cooperation between the Foreign Ministries of the two countries, the conduct of regular consultations.
The Ministers exchanged views on urgent international and regional issues.
Edward Nalbandian and Sergey Lavrov signed the 2016-2017 plan of consultations between the Foreign Ministries of Armenia and Russia, under which the parties will hold tens of meetings on international and regional issues, regional affairs, exchange of information, consular services, etc.
100 LIVES and the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) have announced the creation of an award to recognize courageous reporters who bring humanitarian crises to the world’s attention.
The ICFJ Award for Integrity in Journalism in partnership with the Aurora Prize, will be presented at a 100 LIVES ceremony on April 24 in Yerevan, Armenia. 100 LIVES is an organization that celebrates those who helped Armenians during the genocide one hundred years ago and supports people and organizations that keep the legacy of gratitude alive.
100 LIVES will also give its inaugural Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity to honor heroes who continue the spirit of responsibility and compassion today. ICFJ will join 100 LIVES and Aurora Prize Co-Chair George Clooney to announce the recipient of the journalism award in Yerevan.
“I cannot overstate the impact that journalism can have on illuminating and alleviating human suffering,” says 100 LIVES co-founder Ruben Vardanyan. “At the time of the Armenian Genocide, sustained commitment and coverage by international journalists helped spur others to act and intervene. Today, we see that commitment continue in places like Syria, Sudan and other war zones around the world.”
In that same spirit, the ICFJ Award for Integrity in Journalism will be given to a journalist who sheds light on important humanitarian issues in difficult environments. The recipient demonstrates unparalleled courage in covering the plight of imperiled communities and unwavering commitment to integrity, freedom and justice. The coverage inspires others to take action to save lives.
“ICFJ is honored to work with 100 LIVES to emphasize the crucial role journalists play in telling the stories of persecution in hot spots around the world,” says ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan. “We’re delighted to recognize journalists in this meaningful way.”
In 2016 the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will use its equipment in the Eurovision Song Contest to provide another network layer to the overall infrastructure for the voting procedure, Eurovision’s official website reports.
Eurovision Flex is a self-managed digital transmission tool that enables broadcasters to deliver live content over multiple networks. The goal is to ensure that each participating Member is connected through at least two independent networks allowing maximum protection.
“The Eurovision Song Contest is the EBU’s flagship event, the longest running annual TV music competition in the world,” said Graham Warren, Director of Eurovision Network. “Last year the three live shows reached an audience of 197 million viewers. We have decided to complement our satellite and fibre connectivity by deploying the Flex IP hybrid technology to ensure full security and smooth delivery of the voting results.”
“We are very proud to link the Eurovision Song Contest with the Eurovision Flex product,” added Jon Ola Sand, Eurovision Song Contest Executive Supervisor.
The 2016 Eurovision Song Contest will take place on 10th, 12th and 14th May in Stockholm.
The Azerbaijani side deliberately aggravates the situation at the line of contact, the NKR Defense Ministry said in a statement today.
The rival used artillery weapons of different caliber as it fired more than 850 shots in the direction of the Armenian positions on March 8 and 9.
The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army gave a worthy response and confidently continued with their military duty all along the line of contact, the Ministry said.
“Ignoring the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs’ calls to implement confidence-building measures, the Azerbaijani side not only continues to deliberately aggravate the situation at the line of contact, but also disseminates misinformation, accusing the Armenian forces of opening fire at the civilian population,” the statement reads.
The NKR Defense Ministry declared that it respects the peaceful population of Azerbaijan, which has been forced to bear the heavy burden of the Aliyev regime in the course of 20 years.
Title chasers in England and Germany meet on Thursday night as Tottenham Hotspur travel to Borussia Dortmund for the first leg of their Europa League last-16 tie.
Spurs and Dortmund find themselves five points behind the current leaders – Leicester City in the Premier League and Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga – but still in the running.
The first leg in Germany will be head coach Mauricio Pochettino’s 100th game in charge at Tottenham.
“Borussia Dortmund have very good players, a very good team, a great coach – Thomas Tuchel is fantastic and he has showed that from the beginning of the season,” Pochettino said ahead of the match.
“I like the way they play but I think that it’s a good challenge for us. I think we play against one of the best teams in Europe,” he added.
“The strikers they have – Aubameyang, (Henrikh) Mkhitaryan, Gundogan in midfield, Hummels – they’re internationals and big players. They can stay here or go to Real Madrid or Barcelona,” the Tottenham manager said.
A woman flew from Istanbul to Paris with a four-year-old girl hidden inside her hand luggage, Air France has said.
The airline said the child, travelling without a ticket, was discovered on board the flight on Monday night.
An airport source told AFP news agency that the woman was a resident of France who was in the process of adopting the child, from Haiti.
The airline notified the French authorities but prosecutors decided not to press charges.
The woman was in the transit zone in Istanbul but was preventing from boarding her flight with the child, the source told AFP.
She then bought a new flight ticket and hid the child in a bag.
Once on board, she placed the child at her feet under a blanket, but the girl needed to go to the toilet and was noticed by other passengers, the source said.
The Aurora Prize and the Public Radio of Armenia team up to present a new project titled “With gratitude from Armenian Genocide survivors.”
The program launched on March 10 will air twice a week on Tuesdays (5:12 p.m.) and Thursdays (5:27 p.m.) and will be repeated on Wednesdays and Fridays at 11.12 a.m. and 11.27 a.m. respectively.
In the leadup to the inaugural award ceremony scheduled for April 24, 2016, the program will present the goals and mission of the initiative and will tell stories of Armenian Genocide survivors.
The co-founders of 100 LIVES and the Aurora Prize Selection committee – co-chaired by Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and Academy Award-winning actor and humanitarian George Clooney – will honor the Aurora Prize finalists for their exceptional acts of humanity with a weekend of events from April 22 through April 24, 2016.
On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, and in gratitude to their saviors, the Aurora Prize celebrates the strength of the human spirit that compels action is the face of adversity.
Recipients will be recognized for the exceptional impact their actions have made on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes. On behalf of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide and in gratitude to their saviors, an Aurora Prize Laureate will be honored each year with a US$100,000 grant as well as the unique opportunity to continue the cycle of giving by nominating an organization which inspired their work for a US$1,000,000 award.
The Aurora Prize will be awarded annually on April 24 of each year in Yerevan, Armenia.
The U.S. ambassador to Armenia met this week with representatives from Fresno-based Armenian Technology Group Inc. to discuss the company’s efforts in agriculture and rural development in Armenia, the Fresno Bee reports.
Ambassador Richard Mills Jr., accompanied by Jeff Paretchan, a special adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Armenia, were in Fresno on Monday to visit with ATG executive director Varoujan Der Simonian and veterinarian James Reynolds, ATG’s president. Among the issues for the meeting were ATG’s delivery of a prototype mobile veterinary diagnostic laboratory to help Armenian veterinarians prevent the spread of animal diseases and increase farm income. ATG is also working with Armenia’s agriculture ministry to establish a grape nursery to develop a new stock of grape vines in the Ararat Valley, where some established vineyards are infested by nematodes that attack the roots of the vines.
Mills capped his tour with a visit to the Armenian Museum of Fresno to see art by local artists as well as artists based in Armenia.
The European Central Bank cut all its interest rates and expanded its monthly bond purchases by a third as President Mario Draghi strives to fend off the threat of euro-area deflation, reports.
The 25-member Governing Council, meeting in Frankfurt on Thursday, cut the rate on cash parked overnight by banks by 10 basis points to minus 0.4 percent, and its benchmark rate to zero. Bond purchases were raised to 80 billion euros ($87 billion) a month, starting in April, and corporate bonds will now be eligible. Draghi will hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m. local time.
Market expectations for more stimulus had risen after the ECB said it would review its program as persistent weakness in consumer prices and a Chinese slowdown threaten to undermine the euro-area recovery.
– Twenty-five years ago a new church was consecrated in the town of Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria, dedicated to the Armenians killed en masse in 1915. Ironically the building erected in memory of the victims of violence has now been destroyed by bombs.
In the basement of the Armenian Martyrs’ Memorial Church in Deir al-Zour lay a shrine – a sunken area filled with sand, and laid on top, a pile of human remains.
“I was so shocked. I just stood and looked at the bones,” says British-Armenian writer Nouritza Matossian, who visited the church in 2001.
“Everybody was hushed, it was silent in there. We were all lost in our thoughts. It was really quite an isolated moment. It wasn’t pulling at you to cry or weep. It was just very simple and dignified and noble.”
Photo: Fly Photography USA
A stone pillar rose up through the ceiling, into the church and up to the roof.
“I looked at this beautiful shrine and I thought, ‘What an amazing idea to have taken this column which was like a tree, rooted in the ground, and take it right up through the body of the church, right up into the cupola and up into the sky,’” she says.
It was not an old building – the Syrian government had approved its construction in the 1980s and it was consecrated in 1991 in memory of Armenians who died in 1915.
Matossian’s ancestors were among those caught up in the events a century ago. As the Ottoman Empire crumbled, hundreds of thousands of Armenians, mainly from eastern Anatolia, were rounded up and sent hundreds of miles away across the Syrian Desert.
Some were forced to walk, while others were taken in trains and caravans to the city of Deir al-Zour.
Photo: Nouritza Matossian
Matossian’s grandfather, Hovhannes, had already left Antep – now Gaziantep in Turkey – after an outbreak of violence in the 1890s. Although he had moved to Cyprus, the rest of his family stayed behind and were eventually deported.
They were “driven across these deserts starving, without water, stripped naked, their clothes were torn off their backs everything was taken from them,” says Matossian.
“Deir al- Zour was the end of the road, it was the last Ottoman outpost into the desert in the eastern part of Syria,” says Heghnar Watenpaugh, a Lebanese-Armenian historian at the University of California, Davis. “Beyond that there’s really nothing, no settlements.
“Very few people made it there, and once they made it they were killed outright, or just succumbed to disease and starvation.”
In 2014, it was blown up during fighting between the so-called Islamic State group and the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front. The central church of the complex was almost completely demolished.
“It’s a very dark moment in our life, in our history. I never thought this could be repeated,” says Matossian.
“It’s a very dark moment in our life, in our history. I never thought this could be repeated,” says Matossian.
Photo: Alamy
Before the Syrian civil war, there were an estimated 100,000 ethnic Armenians in Syria – most of them descendants of those who survived the deportations. There were small communities in cities across the country but the majority, more than 60,000, settled in Aleppo.
For many of them Aleppo “is like a sacred word, a magical incantation,” says Watenpaugh. “All of our families went through Aleppo at some point during the deportations. For some, it was a place where salvation was possible, where you could bribe your way out of the deportation or find some way to escape.”
She says Armenian women were often taken by Bedouin families, sometimes willingly and sometimes by force.
“They became part of extended Bedouin households and the concubines or wives of various Bedouin men.
“Today, when Bedouin come to Aleppo on business and go to a store run by an Armenian they will often call the Armenians of Aleppo khalo – brother of my mother. That’s because there is this very strong connection between the Bedouin who know that their mothers or grandmothers were Armenians.”
Nouritza Matossian’s great-aunt was one of the Armenian women picked up by local Bedouin. Years later, she was spotted in Aleppo.
Photo: Getty Images
“Our relations saw her in the bazaar, and they recognised her, they called out her name – Berjouhi,” says Matossian.
“She recognized them but there were children with her, and she swept up her children and disappeared into the crowd. She was married or she was living with these people and she didn’t want to leave her children behind.
“Her face was covered in tattoos. In order to assimilate them, the Bedouin made them change their religion, and they tattooed their women – it was a sort of tribal thing.”
Deir al-Zour made a deep impression on Matossian and she returned to the city in 2007.
She bought a small box there inside is a tiny cross made of olive wood, two ears of wheat, two little candles, incense, and a tube of soil.
“The priest told me that that is the earth of Deir al-Zour. Some people take earth from where they’re born and they spread it on their grave when they die. This soil has that significance,” she says.
“I always keep this box within eyesight, on my desk. I never expected that one day I would be looking at this box and that church would be gone, destroyed. It’s very hard to accept.”