Seconds Out
June 4 2006
Darchinyan stops Maldonado in 8, then calls out Arce
Vic “Raging Bull” Darchinyan hooks Luis Maldonado – Tom
Casino/Showtime

By Paul Upham: The pure power of IBF/IBO flyweight world boxing
champion Vic “Raging Bull” Darchinyan was evident when he defended
his titles against Mexican Luis Maldonado by 8th round TKO on
Saturday night. Elevated to main event status at the Thomas & Mack
Center in Las Vegas, USA after the cancellation of Corrales-Castillo
III, Darchinyan showed that even though he weighs in at only 112lbs,
he is among the hardest punchers in the world pound for pound.
“It was great. It is a very, very good feeling,” Darchinyan 26-0 (21)
said, after the win. “Today I was fighting as the main event and it
is a very good feeling. I am very happy with the win.”
Fighting in Las Vegas for the first time, 30 year-old Darchinyan’s
speed and left hand power was impressive, even though he may rely on
it a little too much.
“I have very good power in my left hand,” he said. “My trainer Jeff
Fenech, the three-time world champion, he was telling me not to rush
and go for the knockout punch, it will come. I know I have big power
and I am very proud of my left hand and I want to knock them out. I
want to knock them out with my first punch. With my left, I know and
believe that I can knock out anyone. It is inside of me.”

The southpaw called out popular WBC Interim flyweight champion Jorge
Arce from Mexico for a showdown at 112lbs.
“I want Arce,” he said. “I went to Mexico to challenge him. He told
me that of course he would fight me. Now he is saying that he is
moving up a division. What does this mean? Does it mean that he is
scared? Mexico has some great fighters, but Arce is a chicken. If he
doesn’t want to fight me, just tell me.”
If not Arce, Darchinyan said he is prepared to move up in weight, as
long as he is fighting for more world titles.
“I don’t have any difficulties making my weight at flyweight,” he
explained. “If anyone wants to fight me who has world title belts, I
am ready. From any weight. I want to fight and I want to fight for
world titles. I don’t just want to defend my titles, I want to win
new belts.”
Darchinyan, who is promoted by Gary Shaw, was in his crouching style
early in round 1 as he followed the 28 year-old Maldonado 33-1-1 (25)
around the ring. There were not many punches thrown in the opening
seconds until Darchinyan started to load up with his left hand.
Maldonado turned southpaw towards the end of the round and used the
stance for the majority of the fight. The Mexican countered to the
body after Darchinyan swung and missed wildly. “Throw your second and
third punch Vic,” trainer Jeff Fenech told him in the corner. “Don’t
go for the one big punch.”
After Darchinyan had done enough to win round 1, round 2 was much
closer with Maldonado from Mexicali, Mexico boxing on the outside
nicely. Darchinyan was still looking to land the one big knockout
blow. Maldonado jabbed nicely as he alternated stances. The two
boxers went toe to toe to end the round to the cheers of the crowd.
Maldonado was leading with his punches in round 3, which was his best
round of the fight. Darchinyan swung himself off his feet such was
the fury of his punches. Two good left uppercuts stung Maldonado. Two
more good left hooks at the end of the round cut Maldonado in the
corner of his right eye. Maldonado’s hand speed was slow compared to
Darchinyan’s and two straight lefts rocked the Mexican. Another left
hand, which landed directly on Maldonado’s eye cut, rocked him
backwards.
Maldonado, who is a protégé of the great featherweight Erik Morales,
was not running in round 5, but trying to box and counter from right
in front of Darchinyan. The round was slower, but then a big left
uppercut from Darchinyan hurt Maldonado and forced him back into the
ropes with a follow up left hand.
Two left hooks stunned Maldonado in round 6, who was dropped to the
canvas as he tried to hang on to the world champion. Beating referee
Joe Cortez’ count, Darchinyan swarmed all over the hurt fighter but
was unable to land the one clean blow he was looking for to finish
the fight. Maldonado’s sheer guts kept him in the fight and the two
stood toe to toe trading in the final ten seconds of the round.
A right hand from Darchinyan landed early in round 7. Maldonado was
trying to box his way back in, but a left hand high on the head
slowed him up again. A series of strong left hands from Darchinyan at
the end of the round saw Cortez go to the Mexican’s corner at the
bell. “If he takes more punches like that, I’m going to stop the
fight,” Cortez told Maldonado’s trainer. In Darchinyan’s corner
Fenech said, “Be tidy and be smart. Short punches Vic.”
The end for Maldonado came in round 8. Darchinyan was crouching and
jumping in from long range to land. A left, right, left combination
forced a hurt Maldonado into the ropes and referee Cortez waved off
the contest at the 1:38 minute mark.
The Armenia born Australian citizen had a large viewing audience
watching the world feed in both countries. “I am coming back and I
will show more and more power and win more and more belts,” he told
them. “I will show what I can do in the future and I know you will be
happy and proud of me.”
Also on the card, the Top Rank promoted Yuri Foreman from Brooklyn,
New York won a shut out points win over Jesus Valverde at junior
middleweight. Judges scored the fight for 25 year-old Foreman 100-89,
99-90 and 99-90.
Paul Upham
Contributing Editor
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Chessbase News, Germany
June 4 2006
Olympiad R12: Armenia leads, China or Russia for Silver
04.06.2006 There is little doubt that Armenia will take Gold at the
37th Olympiad in Turin. With one round to go, the team is 2.5 points
ahead of China, which is half a point above Russia. Second seed India
has dropped to 33rd place after Vishy Anand lost to Pascal
Charbonneau, almost 300 points below him. In the women’s section,
Ukraine is two points ahead of the field and virtually assured of
Gold.
The Olympiad is in its final round, which begins tomorrow, Sunday, at
10 a.m. In the evening there is a closing ceremony, and on Monday
everyone leaves Turin. This means that we will most likely only
report on the final standings before our departure, and use the
remaining time to collect as much material as possible. Hopefully we
will be able to provide some picture report, stories and reflections
after we have returned to our home base.
Turin 2006: After round twelve
Armenia drew France 2:2, with all games drawn. China defeated the
Czech Republic, which is having a bad strech. Russia defeated Cuba
3:1, with Kramnik, Grischuk and Morozevich winning and Peter Svidler
losing. This reduced the lead of the Armenians to 2.5 points, but
with just one round to go there is little chance that they will miss
their Gold medal. Israel scored a 2.5:1.5 victory over the USA, with
Kamsky losing to Gelfand and Nakamura beating Sutovsky. The USA is
now in place 7-9 (with the Netherlands and Bulgaria). Vishy Anand
lost to Pascal Charbonneau of Canada, rated almost 300 points lower
than him. With the team result 1.5:2.5 number two seed India now
occupies a dismal 33rd place.
Complete scoreboards and photos
sid=3157

The Scotsman, UK
June 4 2006
The bullets and the babies
PAUL STOKES

Niall Ferguson
The War of the World
Penguin: Allen Lane, £25
IN OCTOBER 1941, Walter Mattner wrote down the following account of
his activities as a policeman on behalf of the Third Reich. “When the
first truckload arrived, my hand was slightly trembling when
shooting,” he wrote. “But one gets used to this. When the 10th load
arrived, I was already aiming more calmly and shot securely at the
many women, children and infants.”
So steady was Mattner’s aim by then that he could take aim at babies
as they were tossed into the air by his comrades. “We shot them down
still in flight, before they fell into the pit and the water,” he
wrote.
It is a horrific account, but there is one more element that makes it
all the more shocking. Mattner’s narrative is not taken from a
statement in a criminal investigation, or even from a page of
confidings to his personal diary. It is taken from a letter home, to
his wife in Vienna. It is not a confession but a triumphant
description of a good day at the office.
Mattner’s letter appears about two-thirds through The War of the
World, the latest, typically ambitious, work from the prolific
historian Niall Ferguson. It is one of a number of occasions in the
book when the grand theme of global conflict just seems to vanish.
The fog of war lifts and you find yourself staring down the barrel of
a gun, on occasions being forced to confront whether you too might
have pulled the trigger. For the really shocking message of this book
is not how unusual a man like Mattner is, but how commonplace.
Ferguson’s account is not limited to horrors perpetrated during the
Third Reich and the Second World War, although that provides the bulk
of the book. On a gruesome global tour of mayhem, we take in the
trenches of the First World War, the Turkish massacres in Armenia –
the first true genocide when as many as one million, a half of the
total Armenian population were slaughtered – the civil wars, purges
and gulags of the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, and the
cruelties of the Japanese empire in the East, in particular the Rape
of Nanking. War of the World sets out to explain not just why so much
conflict occurred, but why it was so bloody.
It concentrates, for obvious reasons, on the two global wars. At its
heart, War of the World is a long history of the origins and course
of the Second World War, although, for some reason Ferguson seems
quite keen to disguise that with an introduction and epilogue which
touch very briefly on the century’s many other conflicts, and which
feel slightly tacked on. Perhaps he thought that yet another book on
the Second World War would fail to spark interest. If that is the
case, then he was wrong, for as an exploration of that war in its
widest sense, it is a gripping read.
IF ALL THIS sounds unremittingly gruesome, that’s because it is. Yet,
in the hands of a skilled phrasemaker like Ferguson, it is far from a
grim read. Discussing the failure of the French to resist the German
invasion in 1940, and the British failures against the Japanese in
the Far East, Ferguson points out that both can be attributed to a
failure of nerve, saying: “If Frenchmen were not ready to ‘die for
Danzig’, their British counterparts were just as reluctant to perish
for Penang.”
There is even the odd moment of light relief, as when Ferguson points
out that the Battle of Britain fighter pilots joked that Churchill
was referring to their unpaid mess bills when he said that never in
the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
At the outset Ferguson dismisses the notion of any correlation
between rising casualty lists and increasing firepower. If that were
the case, he argues, then the end of the century would have been more
bloody than the beginning. The most recent and horrific genocide, the
slaughter in Rwanda, was committed using the most basic of killing
machinery. It is not weaponry that is the problem, it is the people
who wield it.
More controversially he also discounts the contribution of the
extreme ideologies of communism and fascism, claiming that such
extreme worldviews have existed before without resulting in such
extreme outcomes.
There is a brief examination of the lessons of evolutionary biology
and the possible insights it might have into the twin urges to kill
and rape which manifest themselves in war, and some distinctly
unsettling psycho-sexual musings on what Ferguson calls the love-hate
relationship between the Nazis and the Jews. But in the end Ferguson
attributes the peculiar bloodiness of the first half of the last
century to the coming together of three factors, ethnic hatred,
economic volatility, and the fall and rise of empires.
The scene is set by the fall of the Ottoman, the Austro-Hungarian,
and the Kaiser Reich, and the emergence in their place of a number of
nation states comprised of peoples of different ethnic backgrounds.
Under the loose confederation of empire such differences could be
tolerated. Inside the nation state, with its stress on uniformity,
they soon became a source of conflict.
Economics plays its part by exacerbating ethnic tension. Ferguson
stresses volatility as the important factor, suggesting that economic
growth can be as destabilising as contraction, as the benefits it
brings are never evenly spread. Time after time the ethnic groups
singled out for special treatment are prosperous minorities.
It is empire again which provides the trigger for conflict, this time
the imperial ambitions of both Japan and Hitler’s Germany, which
together set off a global war. However, it is the peculiar nature of
both these empires, their belief in their own racial superiority and
the sub-human status of the peoples they conquered, which returns us
again to the idea of ethnic difference.
The big question here is how did the extreme ideologies of the few
translate into the actions of the many? How do you transform an
ordinary policeman from Vienna into a genocidal killer? The gradual
nature of that process, as oppressed minorities are progressively
stripped of their rights, their individuality and their humanity
until they can be slaughtered with impunity, gives the lie to
assertions that it could never happen here.
For all his ability as a writer, there are times when you feel as if
Ferguson is being carried away by the neatness of his own grand
theorising when explaining the messiness of war. Citing economics,
imperial ambition and ethnicity as the cause of bloodshed is a bit
like saying everything is caused by everything else.
At the heart of the darkness of the 20th century is one man, Adolf
Hitler. Was he really inspired to fight a massive murderous war, as
Ferguson asserts, by the volatility of the German economy? It is not
a grand theory but a simple truth that Hitler was motivated by the
human emotion of hatred. That remains very difficult to explain, and
very hard to deal with.
This article:
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Kurdish Media, UK
June 4 2006
Do the Turks understand the rights of a passport holder

6/3/2006 KurdishMedia.com – By Heval Hylani
Introduction
A passport is an identity document issued by a sovereign country to
its people. The identify document facilitates entry and exist into
international borders with relative ease. The color, shape and size
of the identify document varies from country to country and it
usually depicts the holder’s photograph, signature, date of birth,
nationality, and sometimes other means of individual identification.
In modern time, passports are used, reused and even misused by one
and all for various reasons. To arrest any misuse or forgery, many
countries are in the process of developing biometric properties for
their passports in order to further confirm that the person
presenting the passport is the legitimate holder.
Language on Passports
In 1920 the International Conference on Passports, Customs
Formalities and Through Tickets mandated that passports be issued in
French and at least one other language, though many countries,
particularly in Asia, now issue passports in English and the language
of the issuing country. For example:
1. Belgium allows its citizens to choose which of its three official
languages (Dutch, French, or German) should appear first in the
individual’s passport.
2. The face page of the Hungarian passports (“Útlevél” in Hungarian,
lit. “Roadletter”) is in Hungarian only, though on the inside there
is a second, Hungarian-English bilingual page citing “Passport” also.
The personal information page offers trilingual Hungarian, English
and French explanation for the details. An additional page including
the explanations in English, French, Chinese, Russian, Spanish and
Arabic has been added in recent years.
3. Passports issued by European Union member states bear all of the
official languages of the European Union.
4. United States passports, once issued in English and French only,
are now issued in English, French, and Spanish since the second
Clinton administration, due to the fact that they are used in
Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico. Soviet passports were also printed in
Russian and French.
Iraqi passport with Kurdish language
Most of the countries recognise Iraqi passports, with few exceptions.
Generally these exceptions are due to circumstances where one country
does not recognise another territory’s administration as a sovereign
state, but Iraq is a sovereign state, and Kurdistan is a Federal
State in its motherland Kurdistan.
Double standards with Cyprus
The Turks have unwise experience in passport disputes. The `Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)’ issues passports, but only Turkey
recognises the statehood of Northern Cyprus. TRNC passports are not
accepted for entry into the Republic of Cyprus. Until 2003, the
Republic of Turkey did not accept passports of the Republic of
Cyprus, because it did not recognize that government.
Turkey now accepts Republic of Cyprus passports, but does not stamp
them; rather, Turkish immigration officials stamp a separate visa
issued by the Turkish state.
Turkey’s fear and hatred
A complex and bizarre situation exists in Turkey, where Kurds living
as dhimmis-subjugated non-Muslims, are facing the dual-loyalty issue.
The hatred of the Federal State of Kurdistan by the Kamelist cannot
be considered unique. Turkey desired to see the Kurdish Federal State
destroyed. Turkey has taken control of many extreme terrorist cells,
and giving them funds and orders to attack the Kurds in their
homeland in particularly in Kirkuk.
Kurds in Turkey face wide-spread hatred and there are obviously hate
in Turkish blood vessels. The Kurds in Turkey experience constant
distrust, as Kamelist authorities consider them threat to their
uncivilized state rules.
Hatred of the Federal State of Kurdistan is an issue which needs to
be examined in Turkey. When looking at Turkish society, we find many
sensitive issues facing the Kurds. Like in many other Muslim
countries Turks are in fear, whether they admit it openly or not.
They answer is not one we will establish here, that question will
remain open for now.
Turkey and the European Union
The question that remained subject to the dialogue is: How on earth
Turkey apply to become a member of the EU? How could EU baptise a
dirty mind by washing it is body. Turks built their state on
Armenian, Kurds bodies and hate to everyone. How could they enter EU
if they are not willing to share, to learn, to civilise.
Conclusion
The Kamelist have to understand that the international community will
condemn and force them to abandon the national hate that `Turkey is
only for the Turks’ and begrave the roots of this national hate. The
Turks not only hate the Kurds, they also hate Arabs. In Turkey if a
Turk acts stupidly (which is very usual), they call him `Arab’. So
why the Turks are happy with the Arabic text, but not the Kurdish.
We all know that the time will come soon for the 35-40 millions Kurds
in Turkey to say NO to Kamelist and force the Turks to bend for the
Kurdish Human Rights, otherwise the roads to EU would be impossible
for their crimes against humanity.

Agence France Presse — English
June 4, 2006 Sunday 2:48 AM GMT
Business against all odds at a Caucasus mountains market
VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia, June 4 2006
At the ramshackle market in this Caucasus mountains town, Zaira sells
green prunes and peppers from her native South Ossetia — a breakaway
Georgian republic just to the south of the snowy peaks.
“They are better than the few that grow here because the climate is
drier there,” said Zaira, a former accountant who fled to Russia when
a war between Ossetians and Georgians broke out in her homeland in
the early 1990s.
Here in Vladikavkaz, a Russian town of 350,000 people, stallholders
from the Caucasus region’s many ethnic groups mix peacefully but the
trade bans that characterise these borderlands make business tough.
In the Caucasus, Armenians and Azerbaijanis have fought over
Nagorny-Karabakh, Georgians and Ossetians over South Ossetia,
Georgians and Abkhaz over Abkhazia and Chechen separatists have
fought for independence from Russia since the collapase of the Soviet
Union in 1991.
“I stopped bringing in fruit from Georgia, it’s hell now. I buy my
stuff in Azerbaijan,” said Zaor, a 29-year-old Georgian who has lived
in Vladikavkaz for the past five years, pointing to a truck filled
with sacks of garlic from Azerbaijan.
“There used to be a big wholesale market for Georgian fruit in South
Ossetia. But for many months now Russian border guards and Ossetian
customs have not been letting us through,” he added.
Relations between Russia and Georgia have cooled since President
Mikheil Saakashvili, a pro-Western leader, came to power in 2004
after a wave of popular protests in 2004.
Russia has banned major Georgian imports, including wine and mineral
water, and Tbilisi accuses Moscow of supporting the Georgian
separatist provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which lie
on key Caucasus transport routes.
Like many at the market, where Georgians rub shoulders with Ossetians
and Armenians with Azerbaijanis, Zaor blames the region’s politicians
for stirring up ethnic tensions.
Smiling at Nana, the ethnic Georgian who runs the stall next to hers,
Zaira said there was no hatred between ordinary people — “It’s the
politicians who came up with it all.”
South Ossetia fought for independence from Tbilisi in a 1990-1992
conflict that killed hundreds of people and the rebel province is now
seeking to join up with Russia.
Every day, trucks laden with fresh produce snake 100 kilometres (60
miles) through the mountains from South Ossetia to Vladikavkaz. But
Nana complains that fruit from Georgia is harder to come by.
“This will have to be resolved from above,” said Zaor, expressing the
long-cherished hope of merchants in this impoverished region that
governments will ease conditions for business.
“They close roads, but it’s the people who suffer. Officials couldn’t
care less, they can take a helicopter.”

Agence France Presse — English
June 4, 2006 Sunday 5:58 PM GMT
Armenian, Azerbaijani presidents meet to discuss disputed enclave
BUCHAREST, June 4 2006
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan met Sunday in Bucharest to
discuss the disputed enclave of Nagorno Karabakh.
Armenian President Robert Kocharian and Azerbaijani leader Ilham
Aliyev got together for a face-to-face meeting hosted by the Polish
embassy, an Armenian diplomat said, requesting anonymity.
It was the first meeting between the two men since the February 2006
talks in France, which failed in their aim of setting out a framework
for a negotiated settlement of the near-20-year-old conflict.
Kocharian and Aliyev, who will on Monday take part in a forum of the
Black Sea contries in Bucharest, were also received by Romanian
President Traian Basescu.
The pair discussed the Nagorno Karabakh problem with the Romanian
president, Basescu’s office said in a statement, without giving
details.
The Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno Karabakh seceded from
Azerbaijan in the late 1980s, sparking a six-year conflict between
Armenia ad Azerbaijan that claimed that 25,000 lives and displaced
hundreds of thousands of people.
Despite a 1994 ceasefire, tensions remain high and the mountainous
region, surrounded by Azerbaijani territory, is separated by one of
the world’s most militarized zones.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Agence France Presse — English
June 4, 2006 Sunday 2:10 PM GMT
President Ahmadinejad tells World Cup team: Bring glory to Iran
FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, Germany, June 4 2006
Iran arrived at their World Cup base here on Sunday under
instructions from president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to bring glory to
their country.
Iranian football supporters braved the rain to welcome their national
side amid expectations of protests about Tehran’s politics.
German authorities have promised strong police protection for the
Iranian side, and a local police spokesman said there were “plain
clothes policemen” at the airport.
The team were surrounded by children asking for autographs as they
made their way through the terminal before leaving by bus for a
luxury hotel in Schnetzenhausen, a small town northwest of
Friedrichsafen on the shores of Lake Constance.
There were more fans waiting at the hotel, but they were kept at a
distance by security men.
Iran had left Tehran optimistic they could create a surprise at the
world Cup where they are drawn in Group D against Angola, Mexico and
Portugal.
“We’re ready for the World Cup. We’ll do everything to reach the
second round. It’s our big objective,” insisted captain Ali Daie.
It has been expected that the team’s arrival could be marked by
protests against the hardline regime of President Ahmadinejad, but
the police said they did not know about any planned demonstrations.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany is planning however to hold a
protest at the World Cup football match between Iran and Mexico in
Nuremberg on June 11.
Daie said the controversy surrounding the Iranian president who has
called for Israel to be wiped off the map and has repeatedly denied
the Holocaust had only served to spur on the squad.
“Knowing the players I can tell you that this negative publicity
against our country is going to motivate them to show by their
behaviour and game that it’s totally unjustified.”
About a possible visit from President Ahmadinejad the Iranian
football president Mohammad Dadkan remarked: “I invited the president
to come to Germany on Thursday. He said he would if his work schedule
permitted.”
As for security he added: “The German government has taken all the
measures to ensure the best conditions for our team and all the
others.”
The Iranian team contains one surprise – Andranik Teymourian, the
only Christian in the side.
“In terms of being a religious minority I’ve got no problem and
relations are really good at the heart of the team,” insisted the
midfielder, who is the first Armenian to be selected since Andranik
Eskandarian in 1978.
“I’m really happy to be able to take part in the World Cup at the age
of 23,” he said.
On his arrival in Germany Teymourian and his fellow teammates were
cheered by a small but vociferous crowd, most Iranians who live in
Germany and travelled some 400 kilometres (about 250 miles) from
Frankfurt, but there were also members of the local club VfB
Friedrichshafen.
“They are going to play on our pitch,” one of the local players said
proudly.
The Iranians slowly made their way past television crews and
autograph hunters, who were especially keen on Karimi, the Iranian
who plays for German club Bayern Munich.
Among them were three veiled young Iranian girls who made several
players sign a white football jersey from the national side.
Eleven-year-old David Chavoshi, who came with his Iranian father to
see the team, said he thought they could make it through to the
knockout stages.
“But after that, if they come up against Argentina or the
Netherlands, it’s over,” he told AFP.

The New York Times
June 4, 2006 Sunday
Late Edition – Final
Spoonfuls of Culture Help Medicine Go Down
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
When officials at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center were preparing
a new clinic in Sunset Park in April, everything was ready for the
big opening day except the big opening day itself.
”One of our staff members told us it was an unlucky date,” said
Pamela S. Brier, the hospital’s chief executive. ”We had to change
it.”
So the ribbon-cutting, originally scheduled for April 24, was moved
to the following day. It was a difference of only 24 hours, but all
the difference in the world to the Chinese immigrants the clinic was
largely built to serve, who believed the 25th to be a more auspicious
date.
It was one of the many ways in which the $1 million clinic was
carefully designed to cater to Sunset Park’s fast-growing Chinese
population, one of the largest in the city.
Because the color white is associated with death in China, the walls
are mostly painted in yellow and pink tones. And because Chinese
immigrants have high rates of tuberculosis infection, every patient
is tested for it. The chefs in the main hospital’s kosher kitchen
have learned to prepare rice porridge, a beloved Chinese comfort
food. ”Language, culture, food — it’s all tremendously important,”
Ms. Brier said.
The new clinic is Maimonides’s most ambitious effort to respond to a
growing and increasingly diverse population of immigrant patients. It
also reflects a broader national shift in health care as urban
hospitals move beyond the translation services that started becoming
common in the late 1990’s and acknowledge that language is not the
only barrier they face in treating people from all over the globe.
Some come from cultures that are broadly skeptical of Western
medicine, and prefer the herbs and poultices of traditional healers,
”cures” that in some cases can retard the effects of prescribed
medicines or produce dangerous interactions. Others come from
cultures where they are expected to hide sickness from strangers, or
where it might be offensive for male doctors to examine female
patients.
”It’s been a slow trend to develop because it’s not always clear to
a hospital how big a certain community might be, and sometimes it
takes a couple of years to manifest,” said Rick Wade, a senior vice
president of the American Hospital Association. But now, he said,
programs are appearing everywhere, to strengthen what hospitals call
”cultural competency.”
At Oakwood Hospital in heavily Arab Dearborn, Mich., nurses are
trained to point the beds of Muslim patients toward Mecca. In
Glendale, Calif., which had a rapid influx of Armenian immigrants
during the 1990’s, one hospital sponsors a popular health-related
call-in show that is broadcast in Armenian on cable-access
television.
But challenges can be more varied and daunting for hospitals in
places like Brooklyn, home to insular communities of Orthodox Jews,
Muslims from conservative Arab countries, recent immigrants from
rural China and Hispanics from Central and South America, among many
others.
”In each culture that we’re dealing with, there are different ideas,
family values and beliefs, whether about medicine or life in
general,” said Virginia Tong, a vice president at Lutheran Medical
Center, one of south Brooklyn’s largest health care providers.
”Let’s say you had an Hispanic godparent who brought a patient in to
see a doctor. In this country, we would say, ‘That’s not a parent;’
there might be legal issues. But in their culture, godparents are
almost as important as parents.”
Lutheran’s main hospital has a mosque on site; it also runs clinics
aimed at Caribbean and Korean immigrants. In 2001, Lutheran opened
its own Chinese clinic, on Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park, after a
survey showed that most Chinese immigrants in the area were going to
Chinatown in Manhattan for medical care.
Maimonides, long known as ”the Jewish hospital,” in Ms. Brier’s
words, has in recent years customized the care at many of its 15
clinics, which are around southwest Brooklyn, based on the cultures
and needs of the patients each serves.
The doctors at the hospital’s Newkirk Avenue clinic, for example, see
many Indian immigrants, who have disproportionately high rates of
hypertension. Its pediatricians also see many children born in
Bangladesh. Because infants there are often not immunized against
measles, as most babies are in the United States, that means more
effort devoted to vaccination and extra care in reporting cases to
public health officials to contain any outbreaks.
But the hospital’s outreach to Chinese immigrants is its biggest,
driven by what its officials believe will be continued population
growth in south Brooklyn. ”We go where the patients are,” Ms. Brier
said.
Maimonides opened its first Sunset Park clinic in a brownstone
building in 1996. Within three years, doctors there were seeing 9,000
patients a year, including a growing number of Chinese. The number of
patients has doubled since, prompting the latest move from a
storefront space to a 10,000-square-foot building on Seventh Avenue
and 64th Street.
The attending doctors there speak Mandarin or Cantonese, two major
Chinese dialects. About 70 percent of the patients are Chinese,
according to Dr. Bing Lu, the clinic’s medical director, and a
significant number are recent arrivals to the United States. Many
hold the traditional belief, he said, that drawing blood for tests
drains a person’s life force, and they are reluctant to allow it.
”We teach them that they need it,” he added, relying on the staff
members’ language skills and familiarity with Chinese culture to
reduce patients’ suspicion. ”Generally speaking, Chinese people
don’t believe in preventative care.”
Such an attitude can be deadly. A few years ago, doctors at the
clinic found early signs of liver cancer in a man in his 30’s who was
infected with hepatitis B. The man left the clinic, Dr. Lu said, and
did not return the clinic’s phone calls. When he finally came back
six months later, he was jaundiced and underweight, with a severely
enlarged liver. The cancer had advanced beyond the possibility of
life-prolonging surgery.
It was ”a fatal mistake,” said Dr. Lu, who believes the man at
first sought out traditional healers instead of returning to the
clinic.
Several patients praised the doctors’ warmth and staff members’
willingness to help them with paperwork. Susan Lin, 31, who emigrated
from China’s Fujian Province five years ago, said, through an
interpreter: ”Sometimes we’re afraid to ask questions, to ask how to
follow up. Here, they always smile, they are always welcoming. You
feel very comfortable asking questions.”
Recently, an 80-year-old woman arrived at the clinic just before
closing time, asking to see a doctor. She said it was urgent, but
when examined she would say only that she had been unable to sleep
for about a week.
Under careful questioning, Dr. Lu said, she eventually revealed that
her husband had died the previous week, and that she had been crying
and having anxiety attacks, details that a Chinese woman her age
might consider inappropriate to admit.
”When you know the culture, you know it’s normal, but if you don’t,
as a practitioner, you can miss a significant problem,” Dr. Lu said.
”She could easily have been turned away from the clinic that day.”
URL:
GRAPHIC: Photos: At a new Brooklyn clinic, Dr. Jason Wu, top,
examines William Hung, 4, as his father, Rong Hung, demonstrates
saying ”ah.” Sue Ng, a clinic translator, talks with Chikwan Hui, a
patient, in a waiting room decorated with Asian art. (Photographs by
Ruby Washington/The New York Times)

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
June 3, 2006 Saturday 09:25 PM EST
Winners in World Chess Olympiad to become known Sun
by Alexei Bukalov
The 37th World Chess Olympiad draws to a close in Turin. Winners of
the competitions, which were held according to the Swiss system of 13
rounds in Turin’s Oval Palace of Sports, are to be announced on
Sunday.
The competitions involved a record-high number of chess players: 148
men’s teams and 108 women’s ones, 1,320 sportsmen, all in all. More
than 450 accredited journalists from various countries have covered
the competitions. Three hundred volunteers assisted the organisers in
conducting the chess Olympiad.
After two weeks of competitions, the men’s team of Armenia (with
Levon Aronyan, 23,making a splendid showing at the first chessboard)
is confidently in the lead with 34 points, followed up by the teams
of France and China (31.5 points each), as well as Russia (31
points). Ukraine’s chessplayers lead in women’s tournament.

Chicago Tribune
Distributed by Knight/Ridder Tribune News Service
June 1, 2006 Thursday
Walter H. Vartan: 1907 – 2006Armenian genocide survivor
by Mitch Dudek, Chicago Tribune
Jun. 1–Walter H. Vartan was 8 years old in 1915 when a Turkish Army
officer announced from the center of his small hometown that all
residents had to gather their valuables and form a line.
The line, filled with Turks of Armenian descent, was ordered to begin
a four-week march through mountainous terrain during a genocidal
campaign launched by the Turkish government to rid the region of
Armenian Christians during World War I. About 1.5 million Armenians
died from forced marches and other atrocities.
Mr. Vartan lost a brother, a sister and his mother as a result of the
roundup and march. But he also gained an appreciation for the
fragility of life and a sense of how easily things could be taken
away, his son Gibby Vartan said.
“When I was 8 years old, I was running around worried about being
late to school. When my father was 8 years old, he was worrying about
whether or not he would see the light of the next day,” he said.
Mr. Vartan overcame this difficult start and lived a long and
prosperous life as a businessman in the Chicago area. He also was a
Golden Gloves champion in his youth and became a friend of Mayor
Richard J. Daley.
Mr. Vartan, 99, of the Lakeview neighborhood died Sunday, May 28, of
heart failure in the Midwest Palliative and Hospice Care Center in
Skokie.
His life began with tragedy. At the start of the march he and his
family were forced to make in 1915, Mr. Vartan’s brother Garabed, 16,
was rounded up with the rest of the men from his hometown of Harpoot
who were of fighting age. His sister Elizabeth, 14, was also taken.
The two were never heard from again, Gibby Vartan said.
Mr. Vartan’s father, Hagop, had immigrated to the United States a few
years earlier to earn money to send back to his family. His other
sister, Agnes, was forced into service in the home of a Turkish
officer, but she survived, Gibby Vartan said.
Mr. Vartan walked for four weeks with his mother, grandmother and two
brothers under the constant gaze of armed guards.
They were to march from Harpoot to Aleppo, Syria, where they would
reach the safety of refugee camps run by the French Foreign Legion.
Many people died of starvation or exposure, or at the hands of
Turkish soldiers.
One night, Mr. Vartan sneaked away from the camp with his brothers
Leo and Victor in search of food. But a Turkish soldier caught them,
Gibby Vartan recalled his father saying.
The soldier ordered two of the brothers to stand one in front of the
other, so he could shoot them with one bullet.
Before the soldier was about to pull the trigger, Mr. Vartan’s
grandmother, who noticed the missing boys and went to look for them,
appeared and appealed to the soldier to spare the lives of the boys
in exchange for money. The soldier accepted, and the march continued
the next day.
After a month of marching, the family made it to Aleppo. But upon
their arrival, his mother died from malnutrition, Gibby Vartan said.
Mr. Vartan and his surviving relatives traveled to Marseille, France,
and from there to Boston, where Mr. Vartan was reunited in about 1915
with his father, who worked in a shoe factory, Gibby Vartan said.
Mr. Vartan lived and worked in Boston, where he met his future wife,
Irene, before his family moved to Chicago about 1920 for better
economic opportunities. Mr. Vartan attended Lane Tech High School on
Chicago’s North Side while living with his family in the Little Italy
neighborhood and later in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood.
During his time at Lane Tech, Mr. Vartan was a Golden Gloves boxing
champion, and he befriended Robert Quinn, a boxer who became
Chicago’s fire commissioner. Quinn introduced to Mr. Vartan to Daley,
and the three became friends, gathering occasionally to play
handball.
Mr. Vartan worked throughout high school and years after as a
woodcarver and at a photo engraving plant.
In 1930, Mr. Vartan married Irene, and two years later, during the
Depression, and with his wife pregnant with the couple’s first child,
Mr. Vartan started Lake Shore Photo Engraving with a partner, his son
said.
Using a bench as bed, Mr. Vartan often slept in the building that
housed his company at 222 E. Superior St. after finishing shifts that
lasted as long as 16 hours, he said.
In 1948, the Vartans moved to Evanston, where the couple lived for 54
years and where Mr. Vartan was active in civic and community affairs.
Mr. Vartan was appointed by Daley to be chairman of the city’s first
Armed Forces Week in the 1970s.
Mr. Vartan retired in 1974 after selling his business to his sons
Gibby and Gentre.
Mr. Vartan also is survived by a daughter, Juraine Golin; a third
son, Gerron; 10 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. His wife
died in 2003.
Visitation will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Donnellan Family
Funeral Home, 10045 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. A funeral service will be
held at 10 a.m. Friday in St. Athanasius Church, 1615 Lincoln St.,
Evanston.