Armenian News... A Topalian

mediamax.am
ARMENIAN UNIT PARTICIPATING IN CSTO EXERCISE
August 27, 2015 16:08
Yerevan/Mediamax/. The last phase of Interaction-2015 military
exercise of rapid response forces held in Russia within the framework
of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will be held on
August 28.

To take part in the exercise the Armenian unit left for Pskov on August
22, the press service of the Defense Ministry of Armenia reported.

Exercises aimed at more effective operation in crisis conditions, as
well as exercises granting the chance of acting together to confront
general threats and ensuring interaction between various units will
be conducted during the last phase for the servicemen of the Armed
Forces of CSTO member states.

Up to 2000 servicemen, 200 units of automotive materiel and armored
vehicles as well as around 40 units of aircraft participate in
Interaction-2015 military exercise. 

RFE/RL Report
Armenia Offers To Send More Peacekeepers To Lebanon
26.08.2015

Armenia is ready to increase the number of its soldiers serving in a
United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon led by the Italian
military, Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian said on Wednesday.

According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, Ohanian offered the
additional troop deployment at a meeting with Italy's ambassador to
Armenia, Giovanni Ricciulli, and Moscow-based military attache,
Brigadier-General Massimo Fogari. A ministry statement said he cited
"the already positive experience of joint service by Armenian and
Italian peacekeepers."

The statement did not clarify how many additional troops Yerevan is
ready to dispatch to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFL) deployed
near the country's borders with Syria and Israel. The Armenian
military joined the UNIFL with 32 soldiers in November.

Ohanian personally inspected the Armenian contingent in April. He flew
to Lebanon from Rome, where he held talks with Italian Defense
Minister Roberta Pinotti and top executives of several Italian defense
companies. Ohanian's press office reported afterwards tentative
Armenian-Italian agreements on joint manufacturing of military
equipment. But it gave no details.

Ambassador Ricciulli was reported on Wednesday to praise
Italian-Armenian military cooperation and say that his government is
ready to deepen it.

Ohanian's first deputy, Davit Tonoyan, expressed Armenia's readiness
to step up its participation in UN peacekeeping missions around the
world when he met with senior UN officials in New York late last
month.

Some 120 Armenian soldiers currently serve in Afghanistan and 35
others in Kosovo as part of NATO-led multinational missions.


armenpress.am
FOX NEWS INCLUDES ARMENIA IN "FORMER WAR ZONES 

TURNED INTO VACATION PARADISES"
26 August, 2015
YEREVAN, AUGUST 26. Armenia that boasts numerous churches
and monasteries is an attractive destination for tourists from the
United States. It is also the favourite place of European tourists
with limited means. Armenpress reports that the website of famous
American FOX NEWS television notes the abovementioned in its article
"Former war zones turned into vacation paradises".

FOX NEWS reports that Armenia is no stranger to disorder. "Its capital,
Yerevan, changed hands more than a dozen times between 1512 and
1735. But it was the horrors of the Armenian Genocide that occurred
between 1915 and 1918 that people remember most. Today, Armenia has
become a favorite destination for European budget travelers. Last
year the number of foreign tourists increased to over 1.2 million,
11.3 percent more than the year before. The rugged, mountainous
landscape affords unspoiled hiking and outdoor activities.

Culturally, the first nation to establish Christianity as a state
religion, boasts of countless churches and monasteries -- all free to
visit. Also, public transportation is affordable and reliable, crowds
are few and far between and everything is relatively cheap. Expect
to pay $130 a night at a five-star hotel.", says the article. 

RFE/RL Report
Central Bank Moves To Shore Up Armenian Currency
Nane Sahakian
27.08.2015

The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) has stepped up its hard currency
interventions in an apparent effort to prevent a renewed depreciation
of the national currency, the dram, as a result of downward pressures
from Russia.

The CBA injected $50 million in the local currency market on
Wednesday, a sharp increase from the usual volume of its interventions
rarely exceeding several million dollars a day.

The move followed a roughly 1.4 percent weakening of the dram against
the U.S. dollar registered since last weekend. The dollar-dram
exchange rate had barely changed since the beginning of this year.

The CBA did not give any reasons for what was a massive dollar
injection by Armenian market standards. Analysts believe that the move
was designed to shore up the dram amid a further depreciation of the
Russian ruble resulting from a continuing decline in international oil
prices.

The ruble has fallen by around 13 percent against the dollar since the
beginning of July. The Russian currency has lost roughly half of its
value against the dollar and the euro over the past year.

The ruble's depreciation has significantly cut the dollar-denominated
value of vital remittances sent home by hundreds of thousands of
Armenians working in Russia. Consequently, the dram came under strong
downward pressures late last year, weakening against the dollar by
around 17 percent in October-December.

Exchange rate fluctuations in Armenia were particularly sharp in
mid-December, causing panic buying of dollars and briefly disrupting
retail trade. The CBA managed to stabilize the currency market by
sharply raising interest rates, tightening minimum reserve
requirements for Armenian commercial banks and cracking down on what
it called speculative currency trading. The dram depreciated by only
1.6 percent from January through the end of last week.

Bagrat Asatrian, a former CBA governor critical of the Armenian
authorities, on Thursday criticized the latest Central Bank
intervention, saying that the dram's exchange rate is "artificial" and
that the authorities want to keep it unchanged for political
reasons. In particular, he pointed to a constitutional referendum
which President Serzh Sarkisian plans to hold in November.

"Over the past year, the most stable currency [in the non-Baltic
former Soviet Union] has been the Armenian dram," Asatrian told
RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). "This should not have been
the case because the Armenian economy is definitely not the most
stable among these countries."

Asatrian also claimed that the authorities risk further depleting
Armenia's modest foreign exchange reserves. "If this is a continuous
policy, if the Central Bank wants to set a particular exchange rate,
then that runs counter to both the bank's obligations and the
interests of our economy," he said. 

RFE/RL Report
`Electric Yerevan' Organizers To Resume Street Protests
Sisak Gabrielian
28.08.2015

An Armenian youth group that was behind the recent "Electric Yerevan"
protests said on Friday that it will resume campaign of "civil
disobedience" next week, accusing the government of reneging on a
pledge to subsidize the energy prices.

Leaders of the group called No To Plunder said that while the tariffs
remain unchanged for households for now, Armenian businesses are being
forced to pay more for electricity used by them. They said this runs
counter to President Serzh Sarkisian's assurances the government will
"shoulder the whole burden" of the more than 17 percent price hike
pending the findings of an emergency audit of Armenia's national power
utility.

Sarkisian made the statement on June 28, at the height of nonstop
protests on a central Yerevan avenue that were organized by No To
Plunder and attended by thousands of mostly young people. No To
Plunder was pushed aside by other, more radical activists after urging
the protesters to unblock Marshal Bagramian Avenue because of the
concessions announced by Sarkisian.

"He said nothing about not subsidizing small and medium-sized
businesses," argued Artush Chibukhchian, one of the group's leaders.

"Serzh Sarkisian has fooled the people and we must respond to that on
the street," Chibukchian charged at a news conference. "Serzh
Sarkisian wants to make electricity more expensive. He doesn't want to
solve this problem."

"We are resuming the street struggle," he said. "We have had a chance
to see that issues are solved on the street. They [the authorities]
won't do anything unless you put pressure on them."

Mihran Avagian, another No To Plunder leader, announced that the youth
movement will resume its street protests on September 1. But neither
he nor Chibukhchian disclosed details of the planned actions. They
said only that the group might again occupy Marshal Bagramian Street
leading to the presidential administration building.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear who and when will conduct the promised
audit of the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA), the loss-making
utility owned by the Russian company Inter RAO. The Armenian
government has so far only commissioned a U.S. consulting firm,
Deloitte, to investigate and conclude whether the price hike
sanctioned by Armenian state regulators in early June was justified.

Observers believe that the energy tariff for households will not rise
at least until a referendum on constitutional changes seen as vital
for President Sarkisian's political future. The referendum is expected
to take place in November.


BGN NEWS, Turkey
Aug 28 2015
New beginnings for Armenian school in Istanbul after 171 years

Mesut Ã-zdemir has one month left to achieve his life-long dream: to
open a new school for the Armenian community in Istanbul.

"I am very delighted to see the school is almost done. Moving to a new
building after 171 years makes us all happy," said Mesut Ã-zdemir, who
is chairman of the Surp Asdvadzadzin Church Foundation.

Construction on the project began three years ago. From the outside,
it is not much different from other schools. Yet it is still unique:
it is the first school that Istanbul's Armenian community is building
in Republican Turkey within a legal framework.

The community opened schools in previous decades but these were
dependent upon special permission granted by prime ministers.

There are 22 minority schools In Istanbul; five of them are Greek, one
is Jewish, and the remaining 16 are Armenian.

What made this latest project possible was a 2008 legal reform brought
forward by the government and pushed through parliament.

The changes allowed minorities to acquire and renovate properties. The
Turkish government also began returning previously confiscated
properties to minority communities.

Such changes were welcomed and supported at the local level. Bakırköy
Municipality exempted the Armenian school from certain fees to smooth
construction. "Members of the local council unanimously voted for the
exemption," Ã-zdemir recalls.

Despite such help from the municipality, Ã-zdemir says that financing
was challenging for the community. The foundation depended on several
fund-raising efforts to finish the job.

To relieve some of the financial burden, the government added minority
schools to a list of institutions eligible for state aid.

In Turkey, the state partially aids students with financial
difficulties so that they can enroll in private institutions. Minority
schools are not categorized as `private' institutions, but the
government included them in the list, Ã-zdemir says.

"We thank everyone who helped us to have this joyous moment:
Ministers, mayors and the Armenian community¦" Ã-zdemir says, adding
that first day of the school year, September 28, will be its official
inauguration day.

Minority schools are regulated by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the
founding document of the Turkish Republic.

According to that treaty, Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities have a
right to open their own schools. The state should allocate money and
although the curriculum is determined by the state, the schools can
offer education in Turkish and their own languages.

Over 3,000 students currently attend Istanbul's 16 Armenian schools.
The Bakırköy neighborhood on Istanbul's European side housed one small
school which was constructed 170 years ago by an Ottoman official,
Hovhannes Dadyan.

Across the decades, the Armenians of Bakırköy depended on that one
school but, as their numbers increased, capacity became a problem. Now
the school has to accommodate 400 children -- more than enough for the
old building.

The new school has now more space to accommodate even more than 400.
Ã-zdemir says the school now is able to offer a kindergarten service to
the Armenian community; that will increase number of students to 500.

"We now have a bigger sports and conference hall," Ã-zdemir says,
adding that parents and students toured the construction site to see
what the school would be like and were excited for the upcoming
education term.

New schools, bigger halls and new services not only pleased Armenian
students and parents but also broadened the community's expectation
for the new generation. "We expect more qualified people from this
environment," Ã-zdemir says.


armenpress.am
BEN AFFLECK'S GIRLFRIEND CHRISTINE OUZOUNIAN STARRING 

IN REALITY SHOW
27 August, 2015

YEREVAN, AUGUST 2. Holywood star Ben Affleck's girlfriend
Christine Ouzounian has decided to follow Kim Kardashian in starring
at a reality show. "Armenpress" reports, referring to French "Gala",
that Ben Affleck has already made and arrangement with an American
television network which will release the reality show.

According to French magazine "Elle" TV viewers will see Christine in
non-standard situations getting to know her lifestyle and opinions.

The French magazines do not exclude the idea of Christine's and
Affleck's romance being included in the reality show.