Category: News

Photo: AP

 

A bus has crashed into a truck in northern Ghana, killing at least 53 people, police say, the BBC reports.

The Metro Mass Transit coach reportedly collided head-on with a cargo truck carrying tomatoes near the town of Kintampo on Wednesday evening.

Regional police chief Maxwell Atingane told Reuters news agency that many passengers died at the scene.

He said police were investigating the cause of the crash, believed to be one of the worst in many years.

Joy News, a Ghanaian website, reported that a passenger told police that the bus had been experiencing brake problems.

At least 23 people are being treated at a local hospital.

The coach was full of passengers and travelling north from Kumasi, the second largest city after Accra, the capital.

Photo: Valeriy Sharifulin/TASS    

The Syrian army and self-defense forces have regained control over the town of Kensaba, the last stronghold of militants to the north of Latakia (320 kilometers from Damascus), reports.

A spokesman for Syrian Armed Forces told SANA news agency on Thursday that Syrian forces also regained control over the Shellef fortress where fire positions of the enemy were situated.

 

 

 

 

The memorandum of political agreement between the Republican Party of Armenia and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation will be signed next week, Spokesman for the Republican Party Edward Sharmazanov declared following the sitting of the RPA Executive Board.

He noted that the discussions focused both on the provisions of the President’s speech of February 12 and the political agreement with ARF. Members of the Bboard came forth with a number of proposals, which will be discussed this week and the memorandum will be ready next week.

Edward Sharmazanov noted that the interests of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh lie in the basis of the political agreement.

 

US President Barack Obama is to visit Cuba in the coming weeks as part of a broader trip to Latin America, the BBC reports.

He will be only the second sitting US president in history to travel to the island, after Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

US Republicans have criticised the visit, saying it should not take place while the Castro family is in power.

Washington and Havana restored diplomatic ties last July and the US relaxed travel and trade restrictions after a 54-year freeze.

Pope Francis is expected to visit Armenia in September 2016, Information Service of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin reports.

The issue was discussed today at the sitting of the Supreme Religious Council held under the chairmanship of His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians.

The Mother See keeps in touch with the Vatican to organize the Pope’s visit.

The European Court of Human Rights has refused to consider the case of Dilham Askerov and Shahbaz Guliyev, citizens of Azerbaijan serving sentence in Nagorno Karabakh, authorized representative of the Government of Azerbaijan in the European Court of Human Rights Chingiz Askerov has said, Trend reports.

Askerov added that the government of Azerbaijan has sent an inquiry to the European Court for further clarification.  He said their families had applied to the Court back in 2014.

The Azeri saboteurs crossed the NKR border in July, 2014. The third commando, Hasan Hasanov, was killed, and his body was handed over to Baku.

The actions of the subversive group left an underage resident of Karvachar region and a soldier killed and a woman wounded.

The First Instance Court of General Jurisdiction of Nagorno Karabakh  sentenced Dilham Askerov to life imprisonment, and Shahbaz Guliyev to 22 years in jail.

Private of the NKR Armed Forces David Terteryan, born in 1997, was fatally wounded under unknown circumstances in  one of the military units located in the eastern direction of the Defense Army at about 1 p.m. today.

Probe into the details of the case is under way.

The NKR Ministry of Defense shares the sorrow of the heavy loss and expresses its support to David Terteryan’s family and friends.

The voting in the Eurovision Song Contest is set to be radically transformed in 2016, according to Eurovision’s official website.

In previous years the results of the professional juries and viewers have been presented as a combined result, each accounting for 50 percent of the final score.

From 2016, the professional juries and televoters from each country will each award a separate set of points from 1 to 8, 10 and 12. This now means the top 10 countries in both the jury and televote will receive points, adding a new level of excitement for hundreds of millions of viewers in Europe and beyond.

After viewers have cast their votes by telephone, SMS or using the official app, each national spokesperson from the 43 participating countries will be called in to present the points of their professional jury. After the presentation of the scores from the juries, the televoting points from all participating countries will be combined, providing one score for each song. These televoting results will then be announced by the host, starting with the country receiving the fewest points from the public and ending with the country that received the highest number of points, building towards a guaranteed climax.

For those wanting to know how their country has voted, the televoting and jury scores from each participating country will be available after the show on Eurovision.tv.

February 16-17 an Armenian delegation headed by Armenian Deputy Defense Minister David Tonoyan participated in the High-Level Military Doctrine Seminar organized by the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation.

Some 350 high-level military officials and experts from the OSCE’s 57 participating States and 11 OSCE Partners for Co-operation are attended the meeting held once in five years.

Addressing the meeting, David Tonoyan said “Armenia plans to implement a number of measures to reach the objective of ensuring the country’s security and creating favorable conditions for the negotiations under way within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group.”

“Among them is the Deterrence system, which Armenia is applying to ease the current military confrontation. ‘Deterrence’ is gradually oust the ‘static defense’ approach from our doctrinal approaches, which could be seen by the rival as an evidence of “insufficient might.” Our defensive position of the past 25 years has done nothing but encourage provocative actions,” the Deputy Defense Minister said.

Tonoyan said “Armenia will implement qualitative solutions to neutralize the quantitative inequality, at the same time remaining committed to the restrictions existing in the field of armament control.”

The second round of Armenia-EU talks on the formation of a new legal basis for relations was held in Brussels on February 17. The Armenian delegation was headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Karen Nazaryan.

The first part of the negotiations was dedicated to political dialogue, reforms, issues of cooperation in the the fields of justice and freedoms.

The results of the first two stages of negotiations were summed up at a plenary sitting, during which the parties hailed the progress achieved so far and set the framework and timeframe of the future discussions.

The sides attached importance to the coordination of activities between different negotiating teams.