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.
The National Opera and Ballet Theatre after Alexander Spendiaryan will stage a ballet La Boheme based on the songs of Charles Aznavour, choreographer, People’s Artist of Armenia Rudolph Kharatyan told reporters today. The one-act play will track Aznavour’s creative path.
Among the important works of 2012, Rudolph Kharaytyan pointed out the “Two suns” ballet dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
In 2016 Kharatyan will also stage “Anush” ballet, which, he said, has nothing to do with Armen Tigranyan’s famous work.
Through combination of classical and Armenian national motifs, he will try to create something that will allow the Armenian ballet to enter the international arena. He’s confident we cannot be part of world ballet with “Gayane,” because the latter is too ‘Armenian.’
“Folklore is interesting to foreigners, but within limits,” Kharatyan said.
A bomb detonated by remote control killed seven Turkish security force members travelling in a military vehicle in southeast Turkey on Thursday, security sources said, a day after a car bomb attack in the capital Ankara killed 28 people, Today’s Zaman reports.
The blast hit the armored vehicle on the highway linking Diyarbakır, the largest city in the mainly Kurdish southeast, to the district of Lice. Sources had previously said the explosion hit a convoy of vehicles.
Photo by AFP
An Indian company has launched what is being billed as the world’s cheapest smartphone, the BBC reports.
Ringing Bells earlier said their Freedom 251 phone would be priced under 500 rupees ($7.3), but at the launch on Wednesday, it said it would cost just 251 rupees ($3.67).
The phone has 8GB storage and cameras in the front and back.
India is the world’s second-largest mobile market and has one billion mobile phone subscribers.
Freedom 251 is expected to target a market already dominated by low-cost handsets.
“This is our flagship model and we think it will bring a revolution in the industry,” the AFP news agency quoted a spokeswoman as saying.
At present, the firm imports parts from overseas and assembles them in India, but plans to make its phones domestically within a year, she added.
Ringing Bells was set up a few months ago and recently launched one of India’s cheapest 4G smartphones at 2,999 rupees, the Press Trust of India reported.