Tumo, an after-school learning center in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, gives youngsters an opportunity to study web design, robotics, animation, music, digital media and more. 

In a sleek classroom in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, 14-year-old Nazeli Ter-Petrosyan peers at the screen of her Apple Mac.

During a computer programming course offered at the high-tech Tumo school, Ter-Petrosyan and her classmates learn how to digitize medieval texts.

“I’m developing a program to enable artificial intelligence to read old manuscripts,” said the teen. 

Her computer screen features a page from a 15th century Bible held at Armenia’s famed repository of ancient writings, the Matenadaran.

Armenia, which is known for its rich history and troubled past, has grappled with poverty, unemployment and a brain drain since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

But despite a stagnant economy, Armenia’s tech sector has been booming over the past decade, boosting hopes that one day the resource-poor country can become a global IT powerhouse.

Tumo is a cutting edge, after-school learning center, where around 7,000 Armenians aged 12 to 18, from all walks of life, study for free.

Packed with hundreds of computers with industry standard software, 3D printers, video cameras and an animation studio, Tumo gives youngsters an opportunity to study web design, robotics, animation, music, digital media and more.

The project has been so successful that there is already a Tumo school in Paris and plans for others in Europe and the United States are under way.

In one of the center’s workshops, students are buzzing with excitement as they learn how to build robots from Lego kits and program them to perform tasks like collecting rubbish or making a salad.

“We are working on projects that we will be able to later use in our everyday life,” said Davit Harutyunyan, 14, as he showed off a half-assembled robot.

The South Caucasus country of three million people boasts a vibrant startup scene and its tech workers have been a driving force behind a wave of peaceful protests that ousted the old elite from power in 2018.

Tumo aims to raise the next generation of tech professionals and play a role in creating a knowledge-based economy in a country where 30 percent of the population live in poverty.

“We’ve got very ambitious plans,” chief development officer Pegor Papazian told AFP.

“We want to become one of the world’s most competitive labor markets,” added Papazian, who holds a master’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. 

The non-profit center was founded in 2011 by Sam and Sylva Simonian, a US-based couple who are part of the influential Armenian diaspora formed largely as a result of World War I massacres by the Ottoman forces.

The school occupies two floors of a six-story pink tufa stone building, located on the outskirts of Yerevan in the shadow of Mount Ararat which stands just across the border in Turkey.

The Simonians provided the initial investment of $60 million to set up the project but it is now largely self-sustaining, with the center renting out several floors to tech companies.

The school’s gleaming facade and huge windows contrast with dilapidated Soviet-era residential buildings nearby.

Inside the futuristic, open-plan premises, mobile computer workstations allow students to move around freely.

“In Armenia what Tumo offers is extraordinary,” Julian Sefton-Green, a professor of new media education at Deakin University, in the Australian city of Melbourne, told AFP in emailed comments.

Tumo offers “a particular vision of a techno future,” said Sefton-Green, who visited the school and studied its educational model.

From Merkel to Kanye West 

On average, students spend two to three years at the center. 

They create their own learning plans and are assisted by instructors, many of whom come from companies such as Google and Pixar. 

There are no grades and, at the end of their studies, students receive digital portfolios showcasing their work. 

Tumo has established three satellites across the country and Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh.

Plans are under way to open more than 20 centers over the next 10 years.

Papazian said the staff had been struck by the poverty in which some of their students live. “We are helping them discover a new world,” he added.

The authorities have embraced the initiative and it has become a ritual for foreign dignitaries and other top guests to visit the school.

Grammy-award winning rapper Kanye West, whose wife Kim Kardashian is of Armenian descent, toured the premises in 2015. 

Last year, the school also earned rave reviews from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“This Tumo is not for Armenia only. It’s international. It’s a philosophy,” she said in August during the first visit to Armenia by a German chancellor.

In some ways, the Tumo project could be viewed as being ahead of its time for Armenia, which still lacks the rule of law and a stable economy, among other things.

Sefton-Green said that only time would tell if the pioneering school would help reshape the country.

“Unless there is structural economic response to the kind of investment Tumo has offered, it is possible that benefits will not be felt,” he said.

“However the country itself is in a good place to be able to rise to these kinds of challenges.”

Nine people have been arrested in Thailand, Australia and the US in connection with an online pedophilia network. Fifty children were rescued in the international operation.

A two-year international operation involving police from Australia, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Thailand and the US and coordinated by Interpol has led to the arrest of nine alleged child sex offenders in Thailand, the US and Australia. 

More arrests are expected, with referrals being examined in nearly 60 countries.

The investigation — called Operation Blackwrist — was launched in 2017 after police found material showing the abuse of 11 boys, all below the age of 13, by an online international pedophilia ring operating on the dark web on a subscription basis. Police say the perpetrators often masked the children’s faces, with little audio on the videos that could serve as clues for police.

Dark web sites cannot be found via search engines, and access requires typing in the specific URL address.

Police said 50 children were rescued, with around 100 more suspected of having suffered abuse. The youngest boy was just 15 months old. Police are working to identify the victims.

“Operation Blackwrist sends a clear message to those abusing children, producing child sexual exploitation material and sharing the images online: We see you, and you will be brought to justice,” Interpol Secretary-General Jürgen Stock said in a statement.

Interpol stressed that international cooperation in fighting child sexual abuse was key as pedophilia networks tended to be “transnational.”

First arrests in 2018

In early 2018, police made the first arrests, capturing the site’s main administrator, Montri Salangam in Thailand. He was seen abusing the 11 boys, one of whom was his nephew. Another administrator, Ruecha Tokputza, was detained in Australia.

In June that year, a Thai court sentenced Salangam to 146 years in prison for child rape, human trafficking as well as possession and distribution of child sex abuse material. Tokputza was jailed for 40 years in Australia — the highest sentence ever handed down for child sexual abuse in the country.

While Armenian debating their political future in Armenia Here in Los Angeles Armenian community busy testing and promoting Armenian wine, Thanks to Stepan Partamian he organizes GiniFest Armenian wine tasting event for the second year, Stepan Partamian is music producer, book publisher, talk-show host, and promoter of Armenian art and culture like GiniFest, Armenian Rose Parade Floats among many others.

For over two decades, he has helped shape public discourse through his television programs and a string of publications noted for their unconventional take on political, social, and cultural affairs. soon opening Genolive Center in Yerevan, Armenia we wish him all the best…

Turkey is staring down a June deadline to cancel its purchase of a Russian missile system, The Washington Examiner says, citing a new report.

If it receives its purchase of the S-400 next month, the country will be ousted from Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program and will not receive 100 of the fighter jets it has ordered, and will also face US-imposed sanctions, according to CNBC.

Instead, the US has proposed that Turkey purchase Raytheon’s US-made Patriot missile defense system so it can remain in the F-35 program.

It’s unlikely there’s an opportunity for an extension past the first week of June. Sources at the State Department said the offer is final when asked if the deadline could be pushed back.

“NATO countries need to procure military equipment that is interoperable with NATO systems,” a State Department official told CNBC. “A Russian system would not meet that standard.”

“We underscore that Turkey will face very real and negative consequences if it completes its S-400 delivery,” the official said.

Co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for the monitoring of Armenia said political stakeholders must refrain from actions and statements that could be perceived as exerting pressure on the judiciary.

Co-rapporteurs Yuliya Lovochkina (Ukraine, SOC) and Andrej Šircelj (Slovenia, EPP/CD) issued a statement following the statement by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan calling on citizens to block the entrances and exits of courts, on 19 May. This call followed a judge’s decision to release former President Kocharyan from pre-trial detention.

“Without prejudice to the merits of this decision, we wish to emphasise that the independence of the judiciary is a pre-requisite for the rule of law, and that the rule of law is therefore best served by the absence of any interference from political actors. There are clear legal procedures, such as appeals to a higher court, to challenge a court decision that seems questionable. Respecting the rule of law requires respecting the procedures that exist to protect all citizens, irrespective of who they are.”

“However, we recognise that the reaction of the public to this court decision underscores the still low level of public trust in the judiciary. Judicial reforms remain a priority and we welcome Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s stated desire for far-reaching reform of the judicial system, particularly with regard to the fight against corruption, as well as his wish to associate the Council of Europe with it,” said the co-rapporteurs.

Armenian premier Nikol Pashinyan on Monday announced sweeping judiciary reforms as protesters blockaded court buildings in Yerevan, heeding his call for a demonstration against judges he accuses of political bias.

“Courts are remnants of the former corrupt authorities. People have no trust in the judiciary and therefore it lacks legitimacy,” Pashinyan told a televised cabinet meeting.

“The time has come for a surgical intervention” with all judges subjected to a thorough vetting during a “transitional” period, he said.

He said judges who “believe they cannot be just” and those whose rulings were found unfair by the European Court of Human Rights should resign.

“If necessary, we will adopt constitutional amendments. All this will be done in conformity with international law,” he said, asking for support from Western partners.

Pashinyan’s appeal for mass demonstrations followed a court ruling to release from pre-trial detention former president Robert Kocharyan charged with staging a “coup” a decade ago.

The symbolic protest came as Pashinyan tries to consolidate power in the ex-Soviet country a year after leading a popular revolt against former president Serzh Sarkisian and corrupt elites.

– ‘Second stage of the revolution’ –

Pashinyan said he “counts on the assistance of Armenia’s international partners” in implementing the judiciary reform which he dubbed the “second and most important stage of the revolution.”

Braving torrential rain, dozens of Pashinyan supporters set up pickets outside the Constitutional Court, as well as Yerevan’s City Court building early Monday, an AFP correspondent reported.

Later in the afternoon Pashinyan called for an end to the blockade, writing on his Facebook page, that “the demonstration has achieved its goal.”

Kocharyan is accused of tipping a 2008 presidential ballot in favour of his hand-picked ally Sarkisian. He faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of “overthrowing the constitutional order.”

He was arrested in July last year, then briefly released but re-arrested again in December and has since then remained in pre-trial detention.

On Saturday, a Yerevan court released him from custody, pending a final decision in the case.

Pashinyan denounced the ruling — which has sparked widespread outrage in the impoverished Caucasus country — as politically motivated.

Kocharyan led Armenia for a decade up to 2008 when Sarkisian was elected and remained in charge until the 2018 revolt against an attempt to extend his power forced him to resign.

He has rejected the charges brought against him as “political vendetta.”

After the 2008 election, tensions erupted into violent clashes between riot police and supporters of the defeated opposition candidate, who denounced the vote as fraudulent.

Eight protesters and two officers were killed.

A Yerevan court today approved the personal guarantees from Artsakh’s President Bako Sahakyan and ex-President Arkady Ghukasyan to free former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan from pre-trial detention.

Judge David Grigoryan delivered the verdict today, on May 18^th.

Supporters of Kocharyan in the courtroom began cheering.

Rival demonstrations are taking place outside the courthouse. 

On May 16, Artsakh’s President Bako Sahakyan and former President Arkady Ghukasyan personally arrived at the Yerevan court to vouch for the release of Kocharyan, who also served as President of Artsakh in the early 90s. The court adjourned to examine the personal guarantees. Sahakyan and Ghukasyan vouched that Kocharyan will not obstruct justice.

Kocharyan, along with several other former officials, is charged with “overthrowing Constitutional Order” during the 2008 March protests in Yerevan when 8 protesters and 2 security officers died. The former President is accused of unlawfully ordering the military to intervene. He vehemently denies wrongdoing.

2nd President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan, who ruled the country from 1998 to 2008, spent two weeks in jail in summer of 2018, but was eventually freed. But on December 7, a higher court overruled the release and ordered him to be remanded into custody pending trial again.

At the time the court announced the verdict, Kocharyan turned himself in to authorities.