City News Service
October 7, 2005 Friday
Investment Scam
LOS ANGELES
A Van Nuys man accused of fraudulently raising about $20 million via
his Glendale-based investment firm made his initial appearance in
federal court today on mail fraud and other charges. Melkon
Gharakhanian, 43, also known as Mike Garian, was indicted Wednesday
by a federal grand jury on eight counts related to his operation of
National Investment Enterprises Inc. Gharakhanian, who was arrested
yesterday, could face up to 40 years in prison if convicted of all of
the charges against him, according to Thom Mrozek of the U.S.
Attorney’s Office. The defendant’s bond hearing was postponed to
Tuesday, so he will remain confined over the weekend, Mrozek said.
Arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 17. Last year in a civil action,
the Securities and Exchange Commission won a $2.6 million judgment
against Gharakhanian and his firm, Mrozek said. From late 1999 to
2001, Gharakhanian falsely told investors he had an inside line on
initial public offerings for Internet- and technology-related
securities, promising quick profits, the indictment alleges. But
Gharakhanian, who targeted people of Armenian descent, never used
investor funds as promised, though he sent out false account
statements supposedly documenting the purchase of highly sought-after
IPOs, the government alleges. Some National Investment Enterprises
clients recouped their initial investments but, when the firm
collapsed in 2001, investors lost about $5 million, Mrozek said.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
October 9, 2005 Sunday 1:17 PM Eastern Time
Monument to Russian Cossacks unveiled in Yerevan
By Tigran Liloyan
YEREVAN
A monument to Russian Cossacks who died in the Russian-Persian and
Russian-Turkish wars in Armenia was unveiled in Yerevan on Sunday.
The monument was installed near a Russian Orthodox temple and the
Russian military base.
The monument location is not accidental, Yerevan Mayor Yervand
Zakharyan said at the ceremony. A Cossack regiment, who helped to
free Armenia from the invaders, was deployed on the place. Now it is
the location of a Russian military unit. “The fact that the monument
was unveiled on the Yerevan City Day is another proof to the lasting
friendship and brotherhood between peoples of Armenia and Russia,”
the mayor said.
“Russia and Armenia are connected by ties of kinship and
brotherhood,” Rostov Governor Vladimir Chub said. “Our countries have
been dynamically developing, and this development is rooted in our
history,” he said. A large Armenian community took residence in the
Don area in the times of Empress Yekaterina II, he said.
The history is not only the constructive labor but also the blood
spilled in the fight for independence, and it is a great sin to
forget about that, Kuban Cossack Troop Ataman Vladimir Gromov said.
“Today’s event is an important reminder for future generations,” he
said. “Russia and Cossacks have always been together with Armenia,
and at present our states and peoples are loyal to commandments of
their ancestors,” he said.
Head of the Rostov Armenian community Eduard Vartanyan financed the
monument project.

The Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia)
October 8, 2005 Saturday
Big fat Greek wedding ship
BRIDES (PG)
***
A POPULAR choice as opening-night film at this month’s Greek Film
Festival, Pantelis Voulgariss’s drama — his first international
production — is sure to resonate with mainstream moviegoers simply
looking for a well-acted, well-told adult story.
A box-office hit in veteran Voulgariss’s native Greece, the project
attracted Italian-American maestro Martin Scorsese as executive
producer.
Scorsese’s personal links to America’s immigrant experience no doubt
provided reminders of the Greek experience portrayed here.
While Voulgariss isn’t particularly effective at suggesting the
ship’s movements for the scenes that provide the bulk of the
locations, interest is held by the human drama being played out on
the S.S. King Alexander in the 1920s.
The ship is carrying 700 passengers — young women from Greece,
Turkey, Russia and Armenia — bound for America and arranged marriage
to strangers.
Perhaps looking to broaden the appeal of a story that could have been
treated in documentary fashion, Voulgariss has opted to focus on a
romance that develops between an American photographer, Norman Harris
(Irish actor Damian Lewis) and one of the intended brides, Niki
(Victoria Haralabidou).
She’s a dressmaker from Samothrace who is bound for Chicago to fulfil
a marriage contract a younger sister has broken because of
home-sickness.
There’s suspense as the King Alexander gets closer to New York. Will
Niki fulfil her heart’s desire and accept Norman’s marriage proposal,
or will she stay true to her family honour and go ahead with the
planned marriage?
More could have been made of the taxing conditions in third class
where the bulk of the women travelled.
It’s left to veteran British actor-director Steven Berkoff to provide
the film’s dramatic element as a nasty Russian marriage broker
Karaboulat not beyond trading the innocent young women as sex slaves
during the voyage.
Most of the performances are above-average, with Dimitris Katalifos
as the ship’s captain whose mind-set is getting his passengers to New
York with a minimum of fuss, and Andrea Ferreol as a colourful madam
who makes the voyage livelier than the brides, who are kept pretty
much in the background.

Los Angeles Times
October 9, 2005 Sunday
Home Edition
Governor Puts a Wrap on Legislation
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday completed action on the 961
bills sent to him by the Legislature this year. In total, he signed
729 into law and vetoed 232. For more information on bills, go to
*
Bills Signed
Armenia: Extends a law to allow California to create a trade office
in the Republic of Armenia and authorize the state to accept private
donations to run the office. (SB 897 by Sen. Jack Scott, D-Altadena)
[the rest omitted]

Detroit Free Press (Michigan)
October 6, 2005, Thursday
The soprano superwoman
By Mark Stryker
For an opera regarded as one of the peaks of the repertoire,
Vencenzo Bellini’s “Norma,” which opens Michigan Opera Theatre’s
season this weekend, doesn’t often make it to the stage. The reason
is simple: Norma — the Druid priestess who breaks her vow of
chastity in an affair with the Roman pro-consul, the mortal enemy of
her people — is possibly the most difficult role to cast in opera.
The vocal demands are immense, requiring a soprano who marries
Herculean strength and stamina with the usually contradictory agility
and control. Those qualities are all needed to sing Bellini’s florid
coloratura lines, unusually expansive lyric melodies and floating
high notes . Dramatically, the singer must express the mercurial
depths of a woman who is part warrior, part politician, part lover,
part mother, part feminist and part Medea.
“If you can sing this role, you are truly blessed,” says Armenian
soprano Hasmik Papian, who will alternate with American Brenda Harris
as Norma in MOT’s production.
A failure at its 1831 premiere, “Norma” rallied quickly, earning a
reputation as the greatest dramatic masterpiece of the age of bel
canto — literally “beautiful singing” — defined by the
hyper-lyrical and fluidly melodic works of Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti
and Gioacchino Rossini. In Bellini, even more than his
contemporaries, melody becomes the key means to express drama and
character.
Like Hamlet, Lear or Stanley Kowalski, Norma has always been
associated with specific stars dating back to Guiditta Pasta, who
sang the premiere. Legends like Rosa Ponselle and Rosa Raisa were
associated with the role in the 1920s and ’30s. Maria Callas reigned
supreme in the 1950s and early ’60s, and for many her intensity still
defines the role. Joan Sutherland took another path, relying on
blissful vocal splendor in her 1960s and ’70s performances.
In 1989, Sutherland sang the last Normas of her career for MOT in a
production that general director David DiChiera commissioned
expressly for her. The same production, designed by John Pascoe, is
being redeployed this time around.
After Sutherland and the slightly younger Montserrat Caballe, others
have stepped into the role, some successfully, some disastrously. But
in recent decades it seems like God stopped making Normas.
“Actually, it’s not that God hasn’t made Normas,” says DiChiera.
“It’s that God hasn’t made superstars who are Normas. In America it’s
not an opera that’s reached the broad public like those by Puccini
and Verdi. ‘Norma’s’ success from the box office perspective has
depended on superstars. People weren’t necessarily going to see
‘Norma’ in the past. They were going to see Maria Callas or Joan
Sutherland.”
For years, DiChiera has wanted to revive the opera, but every time he
traveled to Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles or elsewhere to hear a
soprano hyped as the next great Norma, he’d return home dejected.
Then he discovered Papian, who has made the role a specialty, earning
rapturous reviews in Washington, Montreal, Vienna and elsewhere —
and the endorsement of some aficionados as the Norma the opera world
has been waiting for.
Papian first sang the role for Polish National Opera in Warsaw in
1992. She was drafted as a last-minute substitute, five days before
opening night. Though she had previously studied the role, she did
not have it nearly up to performance standards when she impulsively
agreed to the offer.
“I said yes and then I realized, ‘My God, what have I done?’ ” she
recalls.
The director of the production, fortuitously, was mezzo-soprano
Fedora Barbieri, who had sung the supporting role of Adalgisa to
Callas’ Norma and was able to pass along a number of insider tips,
among them that she should sing the famous aria “Casta Diva” — a
prayer to the moon for peace between Gaul and Rome — with no
extraneous body movement. “It’s a prayer. Everything is in the
voice,” Papian says.
As difficult as Norma is, Papian says that singers cannot let the
challenge intimidate them. A steely confidence is required. The role
demands respect, but not fear.
Still, it can be daunting knowing that every time you step on stage
as Norma, the cognoscenti will be comparing your every move to
Callas, Sutherland the rest of the pantheon. All of which feeds into
mythology of the role.
Harris, who is singing just her third production of “Norma” for MOT
but has generated promising buzz, recalls a recent MOT rehearsal when
stage director Mario Corradi referred to a couple of Callas
recordings of “Norma” made a decade apart that differ greatly in
terms of detail. His point was that even the greatest artists keep
searching for new depths .
“I said, ‘Look, if you’re going to start throwing the C-word around
here, I’m going to leave the room,’ ” says Harris with a laugh.
Harris tries not to think about the inevitable Callas comparisons,
but she is aware of the lineage and responsibility.
“I think about it with regards to how awesome this music is and am I
doing it the best justice I can — whether that’s in the greatness
range or just my own greatness range,” she says. “I’m someone else
with my own strengths and approach. But if I thought about it too
much, I couldn’t do it.”

The Age , Australia
Oct 10 2005
Diamanda Galas
By John Slavin
October 10, 2005
Hamer Hall, October 7
PHILOSOPHER Theodor Adorno once wrote: “After Auschwitz, poetry is no
longer possible.” It is a contentious statement for a number of
reasons. Poetry is the paramedic of culture: without poetry, what
will cleanse language through which history, politics and media is
polluted?
The other contention is that there were other genocides before the
Holocaust. Greek-American artist Diamanda Galas confronts these
issues head-on. Hers is a poetic chronicle and angry protest of man’s
inhumanity to man pushed up hard against the glass of memory.
The horrors that her extraordinary, over-the-top performance
commemorates are the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the Anatolian
catastrophe of 1923 in which an estimated half a million Greeks lost
their lives and another 1½ million were displaced. “The Defixiones”
of her title are the lead beads left on graves in the Middle East to
warn against the desecration of graves. Her hour-and-a-half sustained
chant for the dead based on poems by the Greeks Ritsos and Seferis
and eyewitnesses to the murders in Armenia and the writings of the
novelist Dido Soteriou, among others, are the chain of a rosary told
for the victims upon which she hangs her performance.
It is one of the weirdest and most intense theatre events I have
seen. Dressed in the dark robes of an Orthodox nun, Galas wails,
rails and rants her anguish. The voice range is four octaves. It
could crack glass at 20 metres, but the strain she imposes on it is
enormous.
As with the KARAS Dance Company’s Green, there is a reliance on
hypnotic repetition and the presentation of oblique, introspective
art. This disjunction between text and performance is the central
problem.
Although a minute printout of the poems is provided, the audience
seated in the dark can’t possibly understand the details of a recital
delivered in a smattering of Greek, Armenian and Turkish.
The effect is that of the Delphic Oracle at the mouth of her cave,
who warned of disasters yet to come in a psychobabble that none could
untangle.
This is the contradiction of protest art. Galas, like the Beat poets
of the ’50s and ’60s, with whom she has much in common, takes the
anger and internalises it so that the body and the voice become an
instrument of emotional reaction. The moral anguish is undoubtedly
genuine, but the difficulty is one of communicating a position that
can be shared and acted upon. Portraying the horrors of World War I
proved less effective at the time than the ironic cartoons of Grosz
or Dada artists mocking all assumptions about rationality in
civilisation.
Diving into Galas’ performance is like entering someone else’s
nightmare. It is intense, incomprehensible and finally tedious. It
did, however, arouse an enthusiastic response from an audience of
ululating Goths who might have identified with Galas’ romantic
despair.
Diamanda Galas performs today at 8pm at Hamer Hall
photo: Over the top: Diamanda Galas, on Friday night, dressed in the
robes of an Orthodox nun, during her hour-and-a-half sustained chant
for the dead. Diving into Galas’ performance is like entering someone
else’s nightmare.
Photo: Wayne Taylor

ARKA News Agency
Oct 7 2005
MOSCOW, YEREVAN MAYORS DISCUSS COOPERATION PROGRAM
YEREVAN, October 7. /ARKA/. Moscow and Yerevan Mayors, Yuri Luzhkov
and YUewrvand Zakharyan have discussed the implementation of the
cooperation program between the two capitals, as well as the
decisions of the 1st meeting of the working commission for
cooperation between the Moscow and Armenian Governments. The Yerevan
Mayor reported that the Moscow Mayor is visiting Armenia as part of
the Year of Russia in Armenia, Days of Moscow in Yerevan and Days of
Yerevan. Zakharyan said that the implementation of the cooperation
programs between the Moscow and Yerevan executive powers for
2005-2007 has been sped up, which is evidence of intensified
relations between the Russian and Armenian capitals. “The holding of
Days of Moscow in Yerevan testifies that it is a common festival of
multipronged Russian-Armenian cooperation, which is a striking
example of warm relations between the two fraternal nations,”
Zakharyan said.
The Moscow Mayor is to hold meetings with RA President Robert
Kocharyan, Prime Minister Anranik Margaryan and discuss the
development of relations between Moscow and Yerevan. P.T. -0–

ARKA News Agency
Oct 7 2005
YSMU HONORARY DOCTOR CONFERRED ON INDIAN VICE-PRESIDENT
YEREVAN, October 7. /ARKA/. The title of Honorary Doctor of Yerevan
State Medical University (YSMU) has been conferred on Vice-President
of India Bhairon Singkh Shekhavat. A YSMU “Gold Medal” was awarded to
him as well. The Indian Vice-President congratulated YSMU Rector
Vilen Hakobyan and the students on the 75th anniversary of the
University. He expressed his appreciation of the YSMU’s achievements.
“Indian citizens have a good opportunity to gain necessary knowledge
here and they must not miss it,” said Bhairon Singkh Shekhavat. He
also expressed readiness to render all possible assistance to the
cooperation between Armenian and Indian educational institutions.
Over 700 Indian students study at YSMU now. P.T. –0–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARKA News Agency
Oct 7 2005
ARMENIA’S DEFENSE CONCEPT TO BE APPROVED IN 2007
YEREVAN, October 7. /ARKA/. Armenia’s defense concept is to be
approved in 2007, RA Minister of Defense Serge Sargsyan stated at the
Rose-Roth seminar, NATO Parliamentary Assembly. According to him, the
concept will be in harmony with the strategy of national security and
will be made public. “It will also be submitted to the RA National
Assembly, which will ensure the basis for short- and long-term
defense-military planning,” the Minister said. Sargsyan said that the
defense concept illustrates the role and mission of the armed troops
and will serve as a fundamental document for efforts towards reforms.
“It will ensure a single strategic direction for armed forces and
other government officials responsible for national defense,”
Sargsyan said. He added that the dissemination of defense doctrine
will give an impetus to public discussions of defense problems and
ensure assistance in satisfying military needs stipulated by the
document. “The defense strategy will also have a paramount importance
for reforms and modernization or the RA armed forces,” Sargsyan said.
P.T. -0–

ARKA News Agency
Oct 7 2005
CBA CHIARMAN: 95% OF MONETARY TRANSFERS TO ARMENIA ACCOUNT FOR
TRANSFERS IN USD
YEREVAN, October 7. /ARKA/. 95% of monetary transfers to Armenia
account for transfers in USD, as the CBA Chiarman Tigran Sargsyan
stated in the framework of the Second open international interbank
conference “Monetary Transfers”. According to him, the problem is
that citizens have no possibility to choose the currency of payment,
but they might like to transfer rubbles from the RF and receive AMD
in the RA. According to Sargsyan, AMD appreciation to USD has been
recorded in the RA recently. It caused discontent of people who
receive transfers in USD, since the buying capacity of USD reduced by
17%.
According to Sargsyan, the problem of monetary transfers is actual in
Armenia. “The actuality of the issue has been observed all over the
world. The issue is discussed at all international conferences. The
phenomenon is preconditioned by the inflow of migrants from many
countries and by the fact that migrants make monetary transfers to
their relatives”, he said. According to him, the second factor
contributing to the growth of monetary transfers is the active
monetary policy program of the USA and growth of dollar liquidity.
A.H. -0–