Sunday 21 December 2014

Armenian News


armenpress.am

TURKISH MAYOR APOLOGIZES TO THE ARMENIANS
16 December, 2014


YEREVAN, 16 DECEMBER. During an event held in Sweden, one
of the mayors of the Turkish city of Mardin, Ahmet Turk apologized to
the Armenians, the Assyrians and the Yezidis for the fact that certain
Kurdish ashirets had been accomplices during the Genocide of 1915,
reports the Turkish Demokrathaber.net, reports "ArmenPress".

"Unfortunately, the Kurds, who implemented and executed the
government's decision taken in 1914-15, were overtly used under the
name of Islam. We now feel the bitterness about the participation
of our fathers and forefathers in those massacres as their children
and grandchildren," Ahmet Turk mentioned, adding that the Kurds will
never forget the pain that those nations experienced. "We ask the
Armenians and the Assyrians and our Yezidi brothers to forgive us,"
the mayor of Mardin said.


armradio.am
ARMENIA 56TH IN FORBES' BEST COUNTRIES FOR BUSINESS 
2014 RANKING
18 Dec 2014


The best country for business this year is Denmark, which ranked No. 1
three straight years between 2008 and 2010. The top10 includes also
Hong Kong, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, Norway, Singapore
and Switzerland.

Armenia's neighbors in the region are placed as follows: Russia is
91st, Azerbaijan is 60th, Georgia is 47th, Turkey is 50th.

"After several years of double-digit economic growth, Armenia faced
a severe economic recession with GDP declining more than 14% in 2009,
despite large loans from multilateral institutions. Sharp declines in
the construction sector and workers' remittances, particularly from
Russia, led the downturn. The economy began to recover in 2010 with
2.1% growth, and has grown even faster in the three years since then,"
Forbes writes.

" Armenia will need to pursue additional economic reforms and to
strengthen the rule of law in order to regain economic growth and
improve economic competitiveness and employment opportunities,
especially given its economic isolation from two of its nearest
neighbors, Turkey and Azerbaijan," Forbes says.

Forbes' annual ranking of the Best Countries for Business grades
countries on 11 different metrics, including property rights,
innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and
monetary), red tape, investor protection and stock market performance.


RFE/RL Report
Armenian Currency Rebounds Strongly
Emil Danielyan, Sargis Harutyunyan ## Hovannes Movsisian
18.12.2014


The Armenian dram strengthened against the U.S. dollar by 16 percent
on Thursday after weeks of depreciation that accelerated dramatically
earlier this week amid turmoil in Russia's currency market.

Armenia's national currency traded at an average of 476 drams per
dollar in the evening, up from 553 drams per dollar registered the
previous night. The dram thus essentially regained its value lost
since last weekend. Still, it was 13.5 percent weaker against the
greenback than in the beginning of November.

The dram rallied strongly despite the apparent absence of increased
monetary intervention from the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA). The CBA
said in the afternoon that its latest daily hard currency offer of $4
million attracted no purchase bids from local commercial banks.

The Central Bank governor, Artur Javadian, insisted on Wednesday that
the dram is grossly undervalued and will start appreciating
soon. Javadian blamed its sizable depreciation on speculators and
"panic" which he said has spread from Russia. But he also acknowledged
that Armenia's dependence on multimillion cash inflows from Russia is
a serious factor.

The ruble appreciated by 9 percent on Wednesday after dramatically
falling on Monday and Tuesday. Its exchange rate was essentially flat
on Thursday.

Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian noted the dram rebound as he opened a
weekly session of his cabinet in the morning. "A stabilization trend
has been observed in the financial market in the second half of
yesterday and today," he said. "I am sure that it will continue."

"Yesterday I met with representatives of the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank, other relevant agencies and economic
entities," Abrahamian told ministers. "Our international partners
fully support our efforts to stabilize the financial market in the
face of sharp exchange rate fluctuations conditioned by external
factors."

The CBA's Javadian spent four hours answering lawmakers' questions
about the currency crisis during an emergency session of the Armenian
parliament held behind the closed doors late on Wednesday. Finance
Minister Gagik Khachatrian and other senior government officials were
also present at the six-hour session. Parliament speaker Galust
Sahakian told reporters afterwards that he believes the dram's
exchange rate will stabilize by the end of this month.

Opposition deputies were far from satisfied. Levon Zurabian of the
Armenian National Congress claimed that the CBA chief failed to
clearly explain the causes of the exchange rate volatility which has
adversely affected economic activity in the country. Zurabian said the
dram depreciation was made possible by a lack of foreign investment
and outflow of capital from Armenia.

Another opposition lawmaker, former Prime Minister Hrant Bagratian,
said the weaker dram has already lowered living standards in the
country. "The dram may appreciate a little but the national economy
cannot meet our needs," he said. "So we are left to be worse off."


RFE/RL Report
PM Vows Action Against `Baseless' Price Hikes
Sargis Harutyunyan
18.12.2014


Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian on Thursday ordered Armenia's
anti-monopoly regulators to crack down on businesses that he said have
disproportionately raised the prices of key goods to cash in on sharp
exchange rate fluctuations.

"In particular, yesterday there were sizable increases in the prices
of sugar, flour and a number of other basic consumer products
[imported to Armenia,]" Abrahamian said at a cabinet meeting which was
attended by Artak Shaboyan, the head of the State Commission on the
Protection of Economic Competition (SCPEC).

"I am calling on you to treat these abuses with utmost strictness. The
government will not tolerate baseless price hikes," he told
Shaboyan. He said the PSRC should submit its findings to the
government on a daily basis.

Abrahamian also instructed Health Minister Armen Muradian to
investigate similarly sharp increases in the retail prices of
medicines. He complained that some drug prices have shot up by as much
as 40 percent this week.

Key foodstuffs imported to Armenia became more expensive even before
the depreciation of the Armenian dram dramatically accelerated on
Monday and Tuesday. Shaboyan told the government last week that the
cost of flour, sugar, poultry, eggs, butter and cooking oil has risen
by between 2 percent and 13 percent. He described that as an
inevitable consequence of the weaker dram.

The Central Bank of Armenia estimated last week that the price rises
will push up inflation by up to 2 percentage points this year. But it
said the annual inflation rate will remain within the Armenian
authorities' target band of 4 percent (...........5 percentage
points).

Later on Thursday Abrahamian visited some supermarkets in Yerevan to
talk to their staff and buyers and receive first-hand information
about food prices. "If the dollar's exchange rate changes by 10-15
percent a product cannot become 30 percent more expensive," he told
reporters at one of those stores. "I'm sure people have realized that
they can't play such games with our people."

"People must not be tempted. They must not use such situations to
clinch more money from our people. After all, they are our compatriots
and the government is responsible for them," the premier said. He
declined to name any of those businesses.

Imports of basic foodstuffs and fuel to Armenia have long been
controlled by a handful of wealthy businesspeople close to the
government.


RFE/RL Report
Public Transport Strike Widens In Yerevan
Karlen Aslanian
18.12.2014

Dozens more minibus drivers in Yerevan refused to work Thursday on the
second day of a strike action organized by their colleagues in protest
against a sharp rise in the price of liquefied gas used by their
vehicles.

The price went up by over 20 percent late last week following a
sizable depreciation of the national currency, the dram. The fuel sold
by liquefied gas stations is imported from Russia at a price set in
U.S. dollars. The national distribution network, Gazprom Armenia, has
not raised its retail prices so far.

The strike began in Yerevan's Malatia-Sebastia district on Wednesday
and spread to minibus routes operating from at least two other parts
of the capital the following day. In the Nor Nork suburb, about 100
empty minibuses were parked along a street as their drivers rallied to
demand a price cut.

The drivers, who are also responsible for collecting fares, say that
because of the higher gas price they are unable to not only earn any
personal income but also meet daily revenue targets set by their
private employers. They said they have run up substantial debts as a
result.

"Has anyone asked the drivers whether they have earned anything in the
past five days?" one of the angry protesters told RFE/RL's Armenian
service (Azatutyun.am). "We have only gotten into debt. They are
already demanding that we repay our debts. But how can we do that?"

Henrik Navasardian, the head of the Yerevan municipality's public
transport department, again met with the drivers and tried in vain to
make them end the strike. "We can't solve the problem by just standing
here," he told the Nor Nork drivers.

Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian mentioned the protests at a cabinet
meeting earlier in the day. He claimed that the gas price has already
fallen back from 230 drams (about 50 U.S. cents) to 200 drams per
cubic meter. The price varied from 210 to 230 drams at liquefied gas
stations across Yerevan as of Thursday evening, however.


tert.am
THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE AND THE POLITICS OF GENOCIDE
18.12.14


One hundred years ago this April, the Ottoman Empire began a brutal
campaign of deporting and destroying its ethnic Armenian community,
whom it accused of supporting Russia, a World War I enemy. More than
a million Armenians died. As it commemorates the tragedy, the U.S.

government, for its part, still finds itself wriggling on the nail on
which it has hung for three decades: Should it use the term "genocide"
to describe the Ottoman Empire's actions toward the Armenians, or
should it heed the warnings of its ally, Turkey, which vehemently
opposes using the term and has threatened to recall its ambassador or
even deny U.S. access to its military bases if the word is applied
in this way? The first course of action would fulfill the wishes of
the one-million-strong Armenian American community, as well as many
historians, who argue that Washington has a moral imperative to use
the term. The second would satisfy the strategists and officials who
contend that the history is complicated and advise against antagonizing
Turkey, a loyal strategic partner.

No other historical issue causes such anguish in Washington. One
former State Department official told me that in 1992, a group of top
US policymakers sat in the office of Brent Scowcroft, then national
security adviser to President George H. W. Bush, and calculated
that resolutions related to the topic were consuming more hours of
their time with Congress than any other matter. Over the years, the
debate has come to center on a single word, "genocide," a term that
has acquired such power that some refuse to utter it aloud, calling
it "the G-word" instead. For most Armenians, it seems that no other
label could possibly describe the suffering of their people. For the
Turkish government, almost any other word would be acceptable.

US President Barack Obama has attempted to break this deadlock
in statements he has made on April 24, the day when Armenians
traditionally commemorate the tragedy, by evoking the Armenian-language
phrase Meds Yeghern, or "Great Catastrophe." In 2010, for example,
he declared, "1.5 million Armenians were massacred or marched to
their death in the final days of the Ottoman Empire. . .

. The Meds Yeghern is a devastating chapter in the history of the
Armenian people, and we must keep its memory alive in honor of those
who were murdered and so that we do not repeat the grave mistakes of
the past."

Armenian descendants seeking recognition of their grandparents'
suffering could find everything they wanted to see there, except one
thing: the word "genocide." That omission led a prominent lobbying
group, the Armenian National Committee of America, to denounce
the president's dignified statement as "yet another disgraceful
capitulation to Turkey's threats," full of "euphemisms and evasive
terminology."

The Armenian genocide lacks the devastating simplicity of the
Holocaust.

In a sense, Obama had only himself to blame for this over-the-top
rebuke. After all, during his presidential campaign, he had, like
most candidates before him, promised Armenian American voters that
he would use the word "genocide" if elected, but once in office,
he had honored the relationship with Turkey and broken his vow. His
2010 address did go further than those of his predecessors and openly
hinted that he had the G-word in mind when he stated, "My view of
that history has not changed." But if he edged closer to the line,
he stopped short of crossing it.


epress.am
RMENIANS ASHAMED TO RAISE ISSUE OF STDS

12.18.2014  

In recent years, the number of certain sexually transmitted diseases
(STD) has increased in Armenia. Today, the dermatological and sexually
transmitted disease medical center anonymous counseling and research
service coordinator Hovhannes Hovhannisyan spoke to journalists about
STD rises.

He noted that in reality, the number of STDs has not risen but rather
the services which are able to detect them, which has resulted in an
increase in registered diseases.

Hovhannisyan noted that the most vulnerable groups are sex workers and
foreign migrant workers. STD transmission among prostitutes, according
to the expert, forms 50%. As for migrant workers, transmission is
much lower; however, it is often due to the fact that most incidents
are simply not registered. "Migrant workers are usually middle-aged
men who go abroad, mainly to Russia, without their wives. There they
often have another family. Subsequently, they bring STDs to Armenia
and transfer them to their wives," said Hovhannisyan.

According to him, a large portion of women and men are ashamed to
raise the issue and often go to a doctor in another city when it
becomes necessary to treat the disease; "for example, they go from
Spitak to Vanadzor and from Vanadzor to Spitak."

Such issues are mainly dealt with in Yerevan and the fact that Yerevan
has more registered incidents of STDs is artificially derived,
meanwhile the highest numbers are from the Shirak and Gegharkunik
provinces, because it is mainly those men who leave the country
for work.

Hovhannisyan stressed the necessity of a proper Sexual Education class
in educational institutions because the clear lack of knowledge in
that field further deepens the issue.

He noted that there are Sexual Education classes in public schools,
but "the execution is not high quality." The school principal decides
on the necessity of the class, while physical education teachers are
often the ones teaching them because, according to many principals',
"they have authority" among students." According to Hovhannisyan,
specially trained experts should teach the class.

arka.am 
ARMENIA SHEDS TWO NOTCHES TO 79TH POSITION IN 
IFA RANKING

YEREVAN, December 18. Armenia shed two notches to the 79th
position in the FIFA ranking released on Thursday.

Top Ten in FIFA rating as of December 18:

1. Germany;
2. Argentina;
3. Columbia;
4. Belgium;
5. The Netherlands;
6. Brazil;
7. Portugal;
7. France;
9. Spain;
10. Uruguay.

Armenia's rivals in UEFA Euro 2016 Qualifying Group are Portugal that
came 7th in the FIFA rating, Denmark ranked 30th, Serbia - 38th and
Albania 58th.

Denmark is the leader in the group - it has scored seven points in
four UEFA Euro 2016 qualifiers. Portuguese national has scored six
points in three matches. Albanians have four points after three
matches, while Armenia and Serbia have one point each after three matches. 

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