Armenian News... A Topalian 13 editorials
[this statement shows that the Azeris do not care the people of Karabakh, only the land: they use the term that Armenia made territorial claims ignoring the wishes of the vast majority of the population]
Trend
6 October 2019
Baku, Azerbaijan
President Aliyev: Concept of “the people of Nagorno-Karabakh” does not exist
Concept of “the people of Nagorno-Karabakh” does not exist, said Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, addressing the plenary session of the 16th Annual Meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club held in the city of Sochi, the Russian Federation, Oct.3.
9 October 2019
‘NerUzh’ Diaspora Startup Program Application Deadline Approaching
Are you a Diaspora Armenian with an innovative startup or startup idea? Have you considered moving to Armenia to establish your startup in the homeland?
If YES, then check out the “NerUzh” Diaspora Startup Program, launched by the Republic of Armenia’s Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs and the Ministry of High-Tech Industry, in partnership with FAST Foundation.
Selected applicants will have the opportunity to attend a four-day launch event at UWC Dilijan from December 16 to 20, learn about Armenia’s startup ecosystem and the benefits of doing business in Armenia, network with local partners, and develop their startup ideas. At the event, teams will pitch for a chance to win grants ranging from $15,000 to $30,000, as well as entrepreneurial support to establish their startup in Armenia. This year’s target areas are financial, social, governance, educational, mobile, internet, agricultural technologies, healthcare, robotics, engineering, and others.
Are you ready to apply? Visit the website and fill out the application form by October 21.
Armenpress.am
8 October 2019
Unemployment rate drops in Armenia
Unemployment rate has dropped in Armenia by 2.6% in the second quarter of 2019, compared to the same period of 2018, amounting to 17.7%, The Statistical Committee released the respective data.
The number of unemployed people comprised 207.2 thousand in the second quarter of 2019, against the 236.4 thousand people in the second quarter of 2018.
The unemployment rate has significantly dropped by nearly 4.2% in the second quarter compared to the first quarter of this year.
In the second quarter of 2019, compared to the same period of 2018, the employment rate increased by 1.6%, amounting to 47.9%.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
Aysor, Armenia
Oct 9 2019
Decision made over my arrest: Former director of Hayatsan All-Armenian Fund
Former director of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund Ara Vardanyan wrote on Facebook that a decision has been made over his arrest. He stressed that he does not admit the charges and will fight till “the end of this absurd.”
“It is a primitive step to silence me. They do not understand that being arrested in conditions of dictatorship is not a punishment but an honor. I have not caused even a penny harm to the state, just the opposite I have sought to be useful to my homeland. And soon everything will come to its place,” he wrote.
Aysor, Armenia
Oct 9 2019
Armenia has big potential of human talent: Alexis Ohanian meets with Armenia’s PM
Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan received today Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanyan who is in Armenia to participate in the WCIT 2019.
The Prime Minister welcomed Ohanian in Armenia and in the Armenian government and highlighted his participation in the event.
“We are proud of the achievements of our counterparts who are known with their successful activity, who make our homeland recognizable in the world. I am happy to host you here and discuss opportunities of implementation of mutually beneficial projects,” Pashinyan said.
Alexis Ohanian expressed gratitude to the prime minister for voiced assessments, noting that he is happy to visit Armenia where such important technological event is taking place.
“Armenia has a big potential of human talent and various opportunities to develop and prosper and make part of world technological progress,” Alexis Ohanian said.
Armenia’s PM and the American-Armenian businessman discussed the pace of the WCIT-2019, cooperation in the IT sector, issues on involvement of young people and women in the IT sector.
Nikol Pashinyan stressed that the government has declared IT sector a priority aiming to make Armenia a technological country.
ARKA, Armenia
Oct 9 2019
Armenia's struggle against shady dealings exceeds four times IMF's recommendations
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, speaking Wednesday at the economic congress "What to Do - 2", said that the results of Armenia's struggle against shady dealings exceeded four times the International Monetary Fund's recommendations.
"There are both good and bad news in the struggle against shadow," Pashinyan said. "The good news is that the International Monetary Fund said in one if its reports that if the ratio of tax revenue to GDP will change by 0.3 percent every year in Armenia, this will be success for the country. Now this indicator is improved by approximately 1.2%, i.e. it is four times better than the IMF's best recommendations."
The premier said that figures can be corrected upon completion of the year, but unprecedented measures are being taken in the country to root out shadow economy.
As bad news, Nikol Pashinyan pointed out the component connected with people's behavior. As an example, he pointed out the celebration of the Day of Gyumri in Armenia's second biggest city. All day along the city's restaurants and cafés were hosting people, and the people's flows were not dwindling. Gyumri hosted some 15,000 visitors that day.
"I wondered what trade turnover was recorded that day, and it became known that the number of cash register slips provided that day didn't differ from that provided before," Pashinyan said.
The government has take a step toward businesses in Gyumri by organizing such a large event, he said, but business people should take return steps.
But as a whole, he said, over eight months of this year the number of slips have been 75 million more than at the same period a year before.
Aysor, Armenia
Oct 9 2019
Armenia’s Catholicos expresses concern over increasing number of divorces in Armenia
One of the serious concerns nowadays is the destruction of families, divorces which makes a big number in the world and in Armenia as well, Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II stated at the Church and Family in 21st Century: Values and Challenges international conference.
“The causes of this reality differ starting from social, economic, moral issues ending with dependence on technology which harm the inter-personal relations inside the family. In the pre-context of this challenge we pay a special attention to the cooperation with the state for the sake of the preservation of families and prevention of existing threats. A real, firm family having Christian system of values means guaranteed future of the state and the country,” the Catholicos stated.
Arminfo, Armenia
Oct 9 2019
WB Report: More than 40% of emigrants from Armenia are people with higher education
In Europe and Central Asia, demographic trends are worsening, in addition to all, the number of able-bodied people is declining, which further exacerbates the problem. The latest World Bank Economic Update for Europe and Central Asia evidences this. (Migration and Brain Drain. World Bank Europe and Central Asia Economic Update).
The report examines migration trends and gives an idea of both countries of destination and countries of origin. The report also indicates concern about the "brain drain" of skilled labor from countries of origin, as people with higher levels of education are more likely to migrate throughout the region.
"Statistics show that 55% of people with higher education from Bosnia and Herzegovina live abroad, and this figure is more than 40% for the educated population of Armenia and Latvia, and almost 40% for Albania, Moldova, Northern Macedonia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Romania and Tajikistan, "the report says, while pointing out that these are more likely symptoms of the problem, rather than their cause.
However, the reporting experts are convinced that improving governance and strengthening institutions in countries of origin is a long-term policy that can address the root causes of continued emigration. World Bank experts believe that promoting the private sector and stimulating job creation, investing in higher education and empowering women in the economy will eliminate the causes of the outflow of the population, especially the highly skilled.
Armenpress.am
8 October, 2019
First Smart Bus Stop in Armenia launched in the city of Etchmiadzin
On the occasion of the 2704th anniversary of the city of Etchmiadzin (Vagharshapat), the first and still only one Smart Bus Stop was put into operation in Armenia.
The ceremony was attended by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, several members of Cabinet, Mayor of Etchmiadzin Diana Gasparyan, Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan, LSG representatives, MPs, other guests.
The Smart Bus Stop has been launched by the initiative of the Etchmiadzin Municipality and the Smart Bus Stop LLC.
The Smart Bus Stop has been built in accordance with the new bus network and appearance of the city.
The installation of the bus stop aims at ensuring the comfortable travel of the locals, making the waiting time enjoyable and efficient.
With the special screens of this multi-functional bus stop the citizens can be informed about the number of the route, the time of its approach, etc.
In addition, the Smart Bus Stop also includes information interesting to tourists, such as where to go, what to see, where to eat. It also has a free Wi-Fi, USB outlets, ATM, etc.
It’s an indoor bus stop equipped with air conditioning and heating systems. There are special bins in the bust stop for sorting the garbage. There is also a fire fighting system. Passenger transportation is controlled by cameras.
The Smart Bus Stop is the first of its kind in Armenia.
Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
RFE/RL Report
October 08, 2019
Russian Management Of Armenian Rail Network Under Review
The chief executive of the Russia Railways (RZD) company managing Armenia’s railway network met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Tuesday to discuss the uncertain future of its operations in the country.
RZD runs the network called South Caucasus Railway (SRC) in line with a 30-year management contract signed with the former Armenian government in 2007. The deal committed it to investing $230 million in Armenia during the first five years of operations and another $240 million in the following years. The
state-run company, which operates Russia’s vast network of railways, claims to have honored those commitments.
Law-enforcement officials raided the SRC offices in Yerevan and confiscated many documents kept there in August 2018 three months after a dramatic change
of Armenia’s government. They subsequently launched criminal proceedings against the company, saying that it is suspected of large-scale fraud.
RZD and SCR denied any wrongdoing. None of their executives in Armenia are understood to have been charged to date.
Russia’s Deputy Transport Minister Vladimir Tokarev warned last month that RZD is considering unilaterally scrapping the 2007 contract because the continuing investigation prevents it from “operating normally” in Armenia. “Our arguments about compliance with the terms of the contract are ignored,” Russian media quoted him as saying.
Earlier in September, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian defended the probe and said the Armenian government is “actively” discussing the matter with the Russian side.
Pashinian’s office reported few details of his meeting with RZD’s visiting chief executive, Oleg Belozerov. It said vaguely that they discussed “prospects for making investments and implementing concrete projects in the future.”
RZD did not immediately issue statements on Belozerov’s talks with Pashinian.
Tech Crunch
Oct 7 2019
Armenia and the technology of diaspora
Jon Evans
It’s a tough world out there for small countries. Technology is the future, everyone knows that; but how do you claim your share of that future when you’re competing with America, China, the EU, and India?
How do you build a thriving ecosystem of tech wealth and tech education — successful international businesses whose alumni found and invest in burgeoning startups — when you face the triple threats of a small population, limited capital, and a potential brain drain? Even nations as wealthy and successful as my homeland Canada often struggle with this.
So imagine what it’s like for, say, Armenia, from which I write, a former Soviet republic turned tiny nation of three million, sandwiched between unfriendly neighbors in the Caucasus Mountains. I’m here because the Armenian government is, at obvious expense, hosting one of the world’s seemingly countless / endless Major Tech Conferences, this time the World Congress of Information Technology, presumably in the hopes of garnering international attention for — and investment in — Armenia’s tech sector.
This may seem quixotic. Armenia styles itself as “the Silicon Valley of the former Soviet Union,” and its tech sector is successful enough to have played a prominent role in last year’s ‘velvet revolution.’ But it’s still a country of three million in a relatively obscure corner of the world. However, Armenia has a fascinating secret weapon — its diaspora.
Thanks to their homeland’s troubled 20th-century history, many more Armenians live scattered around the world than in Armenia proper, including, most famously, hundreds of thousands in Los Angeles. It is “one of the largest and most sophisticated diasporas in the world.” Obviously there’s cultural drift — but at the same time, I’m repeatedly assured it’s a rare Armenian who doesn’t have a distant friend or relative in L.A. and/or Moscow.
The effects of this unusually large and loose-knit diasporal web are significant. It leads, sometimes directly, often indirectly, to American clients, German universities, and Russian partners; to international connections to venture capitalists and startup
incubators; to brain gain as well as drain. It means Armenia isn’t just a landlocked nation of three million, but the beating cultural heart of ten million, inadvertently strategically scattered across the globe. That’s a far, far stronger position.
I’ve argued before that as technology shortens and tightens the bonds between distributed communities, they’ll grow more significant, culturally, financially, and eventually politically. (And of course tech also makes entire sub-industries even possible;
one of WCIT’s sponsors here is a slick and fast-growing crowdfunding marketing company, not exactly a traditional strength of the former Soviet bloc.) The Armenian diaspora is almost a natural experiment testing this theory.
This natural experiment will test whether this secret weapon will help Armenia continue to punch further and further above its weight in technology, tourism, and other diaspora-enhanced fields. If that happens, and I expect it to, it will be especially interesting
to see which other distributed communities follow in its wake … and whether those will be affiliated with any nation-state at all.
Turkey Purge
Oct 8 2019
Armenian human right activist detained in house raid: report
Arlet Natali AVAZYAN, an Armenian-origin Turkish human rights activist, was detained following a police raid on her house on Tuesday.
According to a Twitter account, police teams searched Avazyan’s house and then took her to the Anatolia Courthouse in İstanbul’s Kartal district.
Avazyan yesterday tweeted that she had been summoned by Turkish police to testify in a case filed against her for alleged terrorism links.
“I was just called by the law enforcement agency. I was called to testify due to my tweets. If I am not checked in an hospital by my doctor tomorrow, I will go to the police to give a testimony. Until 864 imprisoned babies are set free, I will continue my tweets,” Avazyan tweeted.
Avazyan is known in Turkey with her tweets that are in critical of the Turkish government.
In the aftermath of a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, more than 17,000 women from all walks of life including teachers, doctors and housewives have been jailed in Turkey on coup charges in government-led operations. There are currently more than 800 children accompanying their mothers in Turkish jails.
RFE/RL Report
Global IT Forum Starts In Armenia
October 07, 2019
Emil Danielyan
More than 2,000 technology professionals, business executives and government officials from around the world are taking part in the latest World Congress on
Information Technology (WCIT) that began its work in Yerevan on Monday.
The three-day forum is held under the aegis of World Information Technology and Services Alliance, a global consortium of national IT associations. It will
feature more than a dozen keynote speakers and over 80 prominent panelists.
The participants include senior executives of tech giants like Google, Siemens and Ericsson as well as Armenian-American celebrities such as reality TV star
Kim Kardashian, the Reddit social media platform’s co-founder Alexis Ohanian and rock musician Serj Tankian.
Kardashian arrived in Yerevan early on Monday together with her children and sister Kourtney. Organizers have said that she will speak, both as a “special keynote speaker” and panelist, about “how decentralized technologies have democratized the worlds of entertainment, media, and journalism.”
Armenia is using the WCIT conference to promote its burgeoning IT industry that employs some 15,000 engineers and generates more than 6 percent of the
country’s Gross Domestic Product.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian touted the industry’s achievements and tax breaks granted to it by the current and former Armenian governments in his
speech at the opening session of the conference. “As a result, the IT sector grew nearly fivefold over the past seven years, boasting a sustained 20-25
percent annual growth,” he said.
“Hosting such a major event is a great honor and pleasure for us, because it is a great opportunity to talk to you and to the international community about our strategy to make Armenia a high-tech country,” declared Pashinian.
“I hope that this truly memorable event will change a lot in the technology world’s relations with the Republic of Armenia,” he added.
The Armenian tech sector is dominated by local subsidiaries of U.S. corporations as well as a growing number of homegrown firms. Some of them, notably the U.S. software giant VMware, are among the sponsors of the 2019 WCIT.
VMware’s chief operating officer, Rajiv Ramaswami, met with Pashinian later in the day. He noted that the number of IT engineers working at his company’s
Armenian branch has increased more than tenfold, to 200, since it was opened in 2010.
“We are very happy to invest in human talent which is available in Armenia,” Pashinian’s press office quoted Ramaswami as saying. “We have only one request
to you: please increase human talent, invest in technology education.”
A shortage of skilled personnel is widely seen as the main challenge facing the local IT sector. Industry executives have long complained about the inadequate quality of education at IT departments of Armenian universities. Many of their students require additional training after graduation.
In a bid to alleviate the problem, an Armenian organizer of the WCIT, the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE), has opened over the past decade over 284 engineering labs in schools across the country. They offer schoolchildren
extracurricular robotics and computer programming courses mostly financed by the government. The Armenian Education Ministry announced last week a sharp rise in government funding for the UATE which will be used for doubling the number of those labs by the end of this year.
The Daily Mail, UK
Oct 8 2019
Kim Kardashian reveals she's 'excited' to open Skims factory in Armenia... after being criticized for making products in Turkey
Kim, 38, is of Armenian heritage through her late father Robert Kardashian
She's proud of her Armenian heritage.
And now Kim Kardashian has announced she hopes to move production of her Skims range to the country, in an attempt to bring more business to the Eurasian country, which borders Iran and Turkey.
The reality star, who is currently visiting Armenia with her children and sister Kourtney, revealed in a Reuters interview: 'I'm really excited because tonight I have a meeting to talk about future investments and how to open up a factory here and how to really bring business to Armenia.'
The move comes after Kim was criticized for selling products made in Turkey. During and after the First World War, Turks engaged in ethnic cleansing of Armenians during attempts to establish a nationalist Turkish state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
Kim herself has called for the U.S. government to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide, as it is widely known.
Kim said she was not involved in the decision to manufacture products in Turkey, explaining: 'I actually wasn't really a part of production at the beginning.'
She explained she was presented with 'tons of samples from many different factories and I picked quality. I didn't ask like 'Well where's each one made?' and no one thought to tell me until after production.'
During this week's trip to Armenia, Kim had her three youngest children baptised.
Saint, three, Chicago, 20 months, and four-month-old Psalm were welcomed into the Christian faith at the Etchmiadzin Cathedral in Vagharshapat on Monday.
Video footage posted on Kim's Instagram Story showed the family, including her eldest daughter North, six, walking to the ceremony, with the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star carrying her youngest child.
Kim's husband, the children's father Kanye West, has not joined them on the trip.
Kim - whose paternal ancestors were Armenian - was very excited to be in the country.
She tweeted on Sunday: 'Almost 3 am in Armenia and I can't sleep I'm so excited to be here and see everyone!'
Last month, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star tweeted: 'I will be visiting Armenia in the next 2 weeks and hope to seek ways I can help increase trade and hopefully create jobs for Armenians which includes @skims production there in the future.
'As a brand, we believe in embracing all people and as an individual I have been working towards broader goals in hopes of bringing forward the recognition of the Armenian genocide which I remain very passionate about. @ANCA_DC.'
Kim's late father, O.J. Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian, was born to Armenian-American parents and his great-grandparents were ethnic Armenian immigrants.
Back in April 2011, Kim had expressed anger after her image appeared on the front cover of Turkish Cosmopolitan the same month that commemorates Genocide Remembrance Day.
'Cosmopolitan Magazine has a number of international editions all around the world that run in various territories, and when I did this shoot for the international covers I had no idea that Turkey was planning to run my story on their cover THIS month, considering Genocide Remembrance Day is this month,' she said in a statement at the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment