Armenian intensive care units are almost full, said the country’s health minister on Thursday during the government’s sitting.

According to Arsen Torosyan, all medical centers have only 1-2 free beds.

The minister added that they can accommodate patients who are in serious and critical conditions, and the total number of such people is 650, while 44 patients are hooked up to ventilators.

Torosyan assured that the increase in new capacities continues.

593 new COVID-19 cases reported in Armenia, 10 new deaths 4 of which from other diseases

As of 11am Thursday, 593 new cases of coronavirus have been registered in Armenia; this was reported by the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

A total of 26,658 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed as of Thursday morning.

The total number of tests conducted so far is 115,765, and 2,100 of them were performed in the past one day.

Also, 11,010 people—an increase by 110 in the past one day—are currently being treated.

According to the latest data, 15,036 people—with 473 in the last day—have recovered thus far.

ANCA Western Region Communications Director, Alex Galitsky, examines the reverberations of the Armenian Genocide felt by Christian communities in Turkey and the Armenians of Artsakh in the Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy. 

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recently found that Azerbaijan violated the European Convention on Human Rights for pardoning, promoting, and honoring an Azerbaijani officer who murdered an Armenian colleague in his sleep during a NATO Partnership for Peace training program in Budapest in 2004.

The court judgement laid bare the deep-rooted institutionalization of anti-Armenian sentiment in Azerbaijan. It also showed how the country’s practice of state-sponsored discrimination consumes the regime so much that it directly contravened international law to uphold its national narrative depicting “Armenians of the world” as the main enemy of the state. For the Armenian people, and keen observers of history, this feels all too familiar.

One hundred and five years ago, the Ottoman Empire engaged in the deliberate and systematic eradication of its indigenous Christian population, resulting in the first modern-day genocide. This event took the lives of 1.5 million Armenians and a further 1.5 million from other minority communities, including Greeks and Assyrians, during the First World War.

Orange County’s weekly coronavirus news conferences have started with the county’s top local elected official, supervisors’ Chairwoman Michelle Steel, painting a rosy picture of OC’s coronavirus data, saying it’s better than all of the surrounding counties.

It’s not.

Hospitalization and death rates in Orange County – two of the main measurements of the pandemic – have been worsening and outpacing neighboring counties in recent weeks.

Yet at the County of Orange weekly press conferences that Steel introduces, she has routinely mischaracterized the data.

“Orange County is well on its way to getting out of this situation,” Steel said in her intro to the county’s June 11 news conference, adding “we have reason to be positive about where we are.”

“We have continued to see very low numbers of COVID-19, especially relative to our surrounding counties and region,” she said. “Orange County continues to see the lowest rate of confirmed cases and the lowest rate of COVID-19-related deaths, compared to all our neighboring counties and the state as a whole.”

But by the time of that press conference, the pace of deaths per-capita in Orange County was more than four times that of neighboring San Diego County.

By the next weekly news conference on June 18, Orange County had outpaced three of the four surrounding counties’ hospitalization and death rates, and had the highest rate of coronavirus patients in intensive care – even higher than Los Angeles County.

Yet Steel continued to proclaim OC had better numbers than the surrounding counties.

“Orange County’s number of COVID-19 have continued to remain lower than our surrounding counties and region,” Steel said at the June 18 news conference.

“Orange County continues to see [the] lowest rate of confirmed cases and the lowest rate of COVID-19 related deaths compared to all our neighboring counties and the state altogether.”

With OC’s coronavirus hospitalizations reaching their highest levels yet, health and business leaders are raising concerns the county’s top elected official is underplaying the truth of the pandemic’s continued spread.

“That’s not reflective of reality – certainly not…the numbers from the county,” said Dr. Paul Yost, chairman of the board at CalOptima, the county’s health insurance plan for low-income residents, regarding Steel’s statements that OC has been doing better than the surrounding counties.

“I don’t know what county she’s looking at, but it’s not Orange County.”

Steel didn’t return phone messages seeking comment for this article. When reporters have questions for her at the weekly news conferences, county officials often reply that Steel is no longer present.

Lucy Dunn, president and chief executive officer of the Orange County Business Council, said it’s important for the public to understand the pandemic is serious and that masks and physical distancing are crucial for keeping businesses open.

When asked about Steel’s statements, Dunn said, “We are not out of the first wave. And thus, irrational exuberance makes no sense in order to keep businesses open in Orange County.”

Dunn insisted that the public “mask up.”

“It is incredibly important that now that we’ve re-opened, we need to stay open. And businesses follow false exuberance at their peril,” Dunn said, calling masks the “first line of defense.”

“We must be mindful, careful, mask up, take nothing for granted. And our job is to stay open and be safe,” Dunn said.

Last week, as hospitalizations continued to rise, county officials did not convene a weekly news conference on coronavirus. It was the first time the weekly news conference wasn’t held since they began in March.

Yost said he’s concerned about what’s happening in Texas – which opened faster and earlier than Orange County – where a major children’s hospital in Houston started accepting adult patients due to a shortage of intensive care units at other hospitals.

“They opened before we did and more aggressively. I think you have to have a lot of caution right now. And unfounded optimism is not helpful,” Yost said.

“The public needs to know how to behave, and they need accurate info to be able to do so,” he added.

“We know what works to slow the spread of a highly infectious disease that is spread by respiratory droplets – and that’s masking and social distancing, and if our leaders are messaging that truth and modeling good behavior, then it doesn’t bode well for the health of the residents of the county.”

Steel has also falsely claimed hospitalizations were going down, when in fact they were going up – and keep going up.

“Hospitalizations are decreasing,” Steel’s office quoted her as saying in an April 30 news release.

In fact, hospitalizations had been consistently increasing – up 23 percent from a week earlier.

And they’ve continued to rise.

On Tuesday, the county reported 510 current hospital patients with coronavirus, up from 292 at the beginning of this month and 218 at the beginning of May.

The contrast between Steel’s narrative and county health officials has at times been stark.

At the county’s May 21 news conference, Steel described Orange County as having “some very promising numbers,” including “the lowest rate of COVID-19-related deaths.”

She then handed over the news conference to the county’s then-health officer, Dr. Nichole Quick, who immediately noted the county had just reported 14 deaths, its highest-ever number of deaths in a single day.

“First I want to acknowledge we reported our highest number of deaths in a single day here in Orange County,” Quick said. “We extend our heartfelt sympathies to the friends, family members and loved ones of the lives that we recently lost to COVID.”

This week, Steel continued to emphasize Orange County’s numbers are lower than surrounding counties.

“Our hard work and determination have paid off for several months, with our numbers remaining low when compared with surrounding counties,” Steel said in a news release Tuesday.

But Orange County’s rates continues to be higher than several of the surrounding counties, with a hospitalization rate per-resident that’s 40% higher than neighboring San Diego County as of Steel’s statement Tuesday.

Orange County’s rate of coronavirus patients in intensive care, per-resident,  also is higher than Los Angeles, San Diego, and Riverside counties.

Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at UC Irvine, said the latest data continue to show the county’s situation is serious, with a rising number of hospital and intensive care patients.

“We’re not in a good place right now,” he said. “We’re in the pandemic. People aren’t taking it seriously. As long as they’re not taking it seriously, it will continue to get worse….It’s the opposite of fatalistic. We have the power to change this.”

“We have all the power to bring these numbers back down” through measures like wearing masks and social distancing, he said. “Some infection is unavoidable. But look at some other counties, and they’re doing much better.”

Coronavirus fatalities will soon top 60,000 in Brazil, the worst-hit country after the US. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro extended an emergency stipend to workers affected by the virus.

• Brazilian coronavirus deaths are likely to top 60,000 on Wednesday
• Leading US expert warns cases could reach ‘100,000 a day’
• Germany announces restrictions to ease on travelers from up to 11 non-EU countries

All updates in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC/GMT)

11:15 Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan says the European Union has treated Turkey unfairly over the coronavirus, accusing Brussels of taking a political stance. 

Erdogan said the EU had behaved in a restrictive way.

While he did not provide further details, his comments came after the EU excluded Turkey, along with the United States and other countries, from an initial “safe list” of countries from which the 27-member bloc will allow non-essential travel.

10:51 German carmaker Volkswagen is shelving plans to build a new factory in Turkey in response to a drop in demand for new cars during the coronavirus pandemic, according to DPA news agency.

Germany’s largest automaker had been planning to open the factory in Manisa on the western coast of Turkey.

The €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) plant was to build the Volkswagen brand Passat and the Superb, a sedan from its subsidiary Skoda.

The project had been on hold since last year. It had faced opposition from German labor unions and Volkswagen faced further criticism after Turkey launched a military incursion into Syria last October.

10:37 China’s aviation authority has said it will suspend Sichuan Airlines from operating the Cairo-Chengdu route for a week from July 6, after six arriving passengers tested positive for coronavirus.

China has largely been quick to act on suspending travel routes that have imported COVID-19 cases. For example, last month when a China Southern Airlines flight from Dhaka to Guangzhou was suspended for four weeks after imported infections.

The National Center for Crisis Management received a call today, at 14:26 that a bomb is placed at the food court of Yerevan Mall, the ministry of emergency situations told Armenpress.

Rescuers and the operative group of the Crisis Center left for the scene.

Jun Yamada, Ambassador of Japan to Armenia and Atom Janjughazyan, Minister of Finance of the Republic of Armenia signed on June 30 the exchange of notes (E/N) for the Japan’s Grant Aid, “The Economic and Social Development Program”.

This E/N is for the Provision of Japanese Medical Equipment to the Republic of Armenia. Through this Project, the Government of Japan will provide four hundred million Japanese Yen (approximately 3.7 million USD) for obtaining Japanese medical equipment.

This Project intends to assist Armenia in its fight against COVID-19 epidemic, through strengthening its mid- to long-term healthcare and medical system. The latest generation of MRI system and other items will considerably upgrade the current level of medical service in the country, alleviating various health related issues and saving peoples’ lives.

As we are all aware, currently the whole world, including Armenia, is fighting against serious epidemic of COVID-19. Japan, as a close and friendly partner for Armenia, is willing to support the country to attain well-balanced and sustainable economic growth. This should be realized through improving various institutions, infrastructure and developing human resources, in particular in the medical sphere. From this point of view Japan has been supporting Armenia`s healthcare and medical institutions in Yerevan as well as in the provinces. Apart from such government-to-government Technical Assistance and Grant Aid, Dr. Akira Ishiyama, a world-famous Japanese physician and professor at UCLA, continues his yearly visit to this country to offer his incomparable skills in cochlear implantation for Armenian children.
This latest project embodies Japan’s strong commitment to support Armenia. Our unique and strong bonds, which will see the 30th anniversary since Armenia regained independence in 2 years, will yet again testify to our shared universal values, as well as our determination to cooperate ever closely to make this world a better place for everybody.

Ambassador Yamada said, “On behalf of Japanese Government, I would like to highlight the utmost importance and timeliness of this Project, particularly in view of the current situation of COVID-19 pandemic in Armenia and the world. I sincerely hope that the new equipment from Japan will contribute to significantly upgrading capacity of healthcare and medical institutions in the country, thus saving more lives and enhancing the living standard of the Armenian people.”

Arsen Torosyan, Minister of Health of the Republic of Armenia noted, “Cooperation between Armenia and Japan in the field of healthcare incorporates the best traditions. We highly value the continuous assistance that the Government of Japan kindly rendered to Armenia for many years to increase the healthcare capacity. During the last 25 years, several important projects have been implemented through the funding by the Japanese Government. Japanese high-tech medical equipment, cars and other medical products have long been well-known in our country.

At present, when the world is facing a coronavirus epidemic and there is a difficult struggle also in our country, we are once again grateful for the Japanese Government’s new offer to Armenia worth ¥ 400 million to obtain expensive medical equipment.

Convinced that any product provided by Japan will find the best and most useful utilization in our field, I extend my sincere gratitude to the people of Japan, the Government, all our Japanese partners and friends for their every endeavor aimed at generous support to Armenia in the fight against the pandemic and beyond”.

By Dikran Yegavian

LYON – After having being postponed for three months, the second stage of municipal elections in France took place on June 28, leaving a record of Armenian absenteeism. Though a candidate of Armenian descent, Jeanne Barseghian, won in the municipality of Strasbourg, these elections are marked overall by the decline of Armenian forces and the growing influence of French-Turkish candidates.

The first round of municipal elections took place during an unsettling climate on the eve of a pandemic lockdown. The scheduling and implementation of the second round was not just a welcomed sign of the resumption of the democratic process, but equally salient, a return to some form of normalcy in our lives. While this is an overall positive step for French civic life, for some citizens, their pre-lockdown political concerns have festered and now threaten to derail the causes for which they fight. I speak of course of the French-Armenian community and its struggle to ward off the continued encroachment of the Turkish and Azerbaijani governments on civic life in France through their well-financed and increasingly organized emissaries in local French communities.

A conspicuous example of Turkish and Azeri interests operating on French soil is the relationship cultivated between Rachida Dati, a first time challenger of Anne Hidalgo, the current mayor of Paris. For many years, she has been lobbying on behalf of Azerbaijanand has become a reliable propagandist of Azeri and Turkish interests in France

While the French-Armenian community is undoubtedly proud of its decades-long achievements in France, particularly of the French government’s official commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in 2019, those same accomplishments are on a tenuous footing these days. Resting on our laurels provides an opening for the political strategy of the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments to undermine our work and places us in a politically precarious position with elected officials in France.

The Turkish State’s Strategy in France

There are currently around 330,000 Turkish nationals living in France. Most of them hold dual citizenship in France and Turkey and they vote as a unified bloc at the direction of Ankara. They remain overwhelmingly loyal to the autocratic regime of Erdogan, upholding a political philosophy that is anathema to the governing philosophy of the French Republic.

Currently, the Turkish diplomatic services in France are represented by six general consulates in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, Nantes and Bordeaux, which cast a large net across the country.

In addition, the Turkish Foreign Ministry functions as a tree structure across the continent. One branch is the UTDE, the Union of European Turks Democrats, which carries out the actions and ideology of the ruling party in Turkey, the Justice and Development Party (AKP).  Another branch is the COJEP, an NGO ruled by pro-AKP officials founded in 2015.

The Parti Egalité et Justice (PEJ) is a micro-party based in Strasburg, which advocates the ultranationalist discourse of Ankara. Its sidelining in 2014 forced the Turkish community to adopt a new strategy: the pro-AKP lobby is now trying to reinvent itself as a party geared towards Turks and Muslims in lower-income neighborhoods. Like its mirror operation in the Netherlands, the Denk, which placed several deputies in Parliament, it is a miniature replica of the Turkish presidential movement. In France, this micro party cynically enmeshed itself in the fight against Islamophobia and prepared its candidates for the last legislative elections of 2017 accordingly.

In order to streamline its control and messaging, the Turkish state set up several institutions such as the DITIB (The Turkish Islamic Union for Religious Affairs), better known as the Diyanet, a powerful religious administration relying on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It manages mosques and cultural associations. In 2017, there were more than 151 Turkish imams (more than the Algerians or the Moroccans) who were supplemented with dozens of Turkish language teachers, all of whom are employees of the Turkish government. These officials are sometimes used to denigrate the opponents of Erdogan, such as leftists, Kurds or those suspected of belonging to or supporting Fethullah Gülen’s movement. The DITIB manages about 250 places of worship in France, including more than 60 in Alsace-Lorraine in the east, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior. But the Islamist organization Milli Görüs (National vision), from which Erdogan came forward, oversees 70 other associations.

Topics: French politics, French-Turkish communityPeople: Recep Tayyip Erdogan MORE FROM INTERNATIONAL 

ARMENIAN-ISRAELI RELATIONS

Armenia Opens Embassy in Israel: Yerevan’s Former Ambassador to Washington Shares Insights: Video Report

All of these structures, including the powerful Müsiad, a pro-regime Turkish trade union, which financially supported their achievements, and the Scholar Grup al Kindi, are working hard for years to shore up their power at the local level. In order to reach their goal, they use religion and education as a way to boost their growing influence and maintain the local Turkish community mobilized to serve the interests of Erdogan’s policy domestically and abroad. Enjoying considerable means, they successfully managed to eradicate all of the work of the leftist organizations (composed of Alevis and Kurds), by intimidating them.

The Challenge of the Municipal Elections 

The municipal elections are an eloquent example of the Turkish methods of shoring up their own power base at the local level. After the lockdown, French-Armenians were blindsided at how active French-Turkish candidates have been, particularly how bold their actions have been in historically Armenian communities within France.

The Rhône – Alpes region, located at the center of the country, with Lyon as its major city, is known for being a hub of Armenian activism in the 1970s and 1980s; a city where Georges Kevork Kepenekian, a local figure of the community was the acting mayor between 2017 and 2018. But now, with 140,000 Turkish residents, it is the most important base of the Turkish diaspora in France. Thus, a new reality confronts us in the French political system.

A generation of binational activists born in Turkey but raised in France are running for public office in France. These candidates maintain strong ties to Turkey through family and politics. Domestic French politics can no longer ignore them as they seek elective office. Established French politicians offer us reassurance of their support, but those promises may eventually ring hollow.

First and foremost, we have a candidate in the Lyon metropolitan area, where the chairman of the French Turkish Cultural Center, Izzet Doganel, a loyal partisan of Erdogan, has joined a slate of candidates supported by the former mayor and the former Minister of the Interior, Gérard Collomb. Doganel even organized a meeting in his local municipality for the Turkish president.

In Valence, a town of 65,000 inhabitants, amongst them more than 15,000 Armenians (most from Syria), the Turkish lobby has made a push. The mayor, Nicolas Daragon is familiar with Armenia and Artsakh. Valence has signed a charter of friendship with Stepanakert. However, that did not prevent  him from welcoming on his slate a French Turk activist, Yasin Yildirim, is suspected of denying the reality of the Genocide.

In Vénissieux, a suburb of Lyon, the “Macronist” MP Yves Blein, who is a candidate for the municipal elections, made an alliance with a local leader of the Turkish community named Yalcin Ayvali. This gentleman does not hide his closeness to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Yalcin Ayvali is well known in Vénissieux, according to the Le Progrès daily.

In 2017, he ran in the European elections under the banner of the Equality Justice Party (PEJ). No wonder, to remind the reader, as that is an Islamo-conservative party and a communitarian formation close to Erdogan’s party, the AKP, which aims at redefining secularism. In addition, Yalcin Ayvali regularly retweeted messages from Elias Imzalene, described as a “Salafist agitator“. For the municipal elections, the pro-Erdogan candidate presented himself without a label, indicating that he no longer belonged to the EYP. With 5% of the vote, he just managed to advance to the second round, which allowed him to seek an alliance with Yves Blein.

In Meyzieu, a small town  near Décines with important communities of both Turks and Armenians, the mayoral candidate, Christophe Quniou has formed an alliance with a French-Turkish candidate named Michaël Hamza Ozer.  The alliance with Ozer caused most Armenians candidates to withdraw from Quniou’s list, but oddly, one Armenian remained with the stated goal of seeking election.

The Armenians More Divided than Ever

Although the French-Armenian community’s main organization for political power and representation, the CCAF (Council of Coordination of Armenian Organizations of France), issued on June 11 a statement denouncing the disguised entry of Ankara’s negationism in French political life, the local Armenian activists seem to be more divided and facing internal struggles to organize and motivate.

One disheartening development is why the candidacy in Meyzieu was not mentioned in the statement issued by the CCAF.

Another disturbing issue is the ambivalence of the Armenian candidates for the council of Valence who did not bother to challenge Yasin Yildirim on a fundamental issue by asking him to explicitly clarify his position toward the Armenian Genocide. Another problem was the fragmentation of the Armenian political landscape in Valence and its neighboring town of Bourg Lès Valence. It was in Bourg Lès Valence where some Armenian activists made the odd choice of challenging the Armenophile mayor, Marlène Mourier, who has always been a constant advocate of the Armenian community. During her last term, she tirelessly fought for the recognition of the Artsakh Republic by endorsing the link between her town and Shushi.

We cannot deny that personal and shared interests are colliding to the detriment of the Armenian community. Coupled with a lack of vision and strategy, we are setting ourselves up for a dramatic failure, while enemies of our shared cause are on the ascendancy.

Source: https://mirrorspectator.com/2020/06/30/turkish-entry-to-local-french-elections/

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that intelligence officials have tracked down payments from the Russian military to the Taliban that could be the alleged bounties paid to kill American troops in Afghanistan.

“American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence,” reported Charlie Savage, Mujib Mashal, Rukmini Callimachi, Eric Schmitt, and Adam Goldman.

“Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty program that detainees described during interrogations,” continued the report. “Investigators also identified by name numerous Afghans in a network linked to the suspected Russian operation, the officials said — including, two of them added, a man believed to have served as an intermediary for distributing some of the funds and who is now thought to be in Russia.”

President Donald Trump has come under outrage following reports that he was given a Presidential Daily Briefing warning about the bounties on U.S. troops in spring, but did not act on it and continued to publicly seek favors for Russia like readmission into the G7.