The meeting of Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan Edward Nalbandian and Elmar Mammadyarov started in New York, Armenian foreign ministry tweeted.
The OSCE Minsk Group CO-Chairs are also participating in the meeting.
Professor establishes Armenian Scholars Program in Price School
By Thursday marked the 26th anniversary of Armenia obtaining independence from Soviet rule, and professor Frank Zerunyan celebrated by wearing his Armenian army uniform.
On all other days, Zerunyan proudly displays the gift from the defense minister of Armenia on a hanger in his office in Lewis Hall. Zerunyan is of Armenian descent, but has no familial connection to the country as it stands today.
Zerunyan teaches graduate level courses in the Sol Price School of Public Policy that focus on governance, negotiation and leadership, and he is in the process of establishing the Armenian Scholars program at USC. The 10-year program is set to begin in Fall 2019.
The program’s goal is to consecutively bring five scholars from Armenia to enroll in the doctorate in public policy and management program at the Price School. Upon graduating, each student will return to Armenia to form a public policy and management department at a university. By the end of the 10th year, the department will have five employees, all graduates of the USC program. If a scholar commits to working for the department for at least five years, USC will pay for his or her education.
“Every year, we will try to recruit someone with a variation of interest in public policy and management so that we don’t have duplicates,” Zerunyan said. “Even though they will all come from Price, we will make sure that they all matriculate into different disciplines.”
The idea for the Armenian Scholars program was conceived about five years ago when Zerunyan began traveling to Armenia to teach. It was at Yerevan State University, the largest university in the country, where Zerunyan realized public management is only offered at the undergraduate and master’s levels in Armenia; a doctoral program in public management does not exist.
After brainstorming ways to combat the issue, he asked colleagues from Yerevan State University to write him a letter about the need for a doctoral program in public management. He then presented the document, as well as his ideas for the Armenian Scholars program, to Jack H. Knott, dean of the Price School.
Zerunyan said Knott supported the idea then and still supports it today.
“Through establishing this Price School doctorate program, we will have the opportunity to prepare the first generation of Armenian scholars and educators in public policy and management,” Knott said in an email to the Daily Trojan. “It will help to improve Armenian governance, professional public management and democratic political development. This program will reflect USC’s moral imperative to use its expertise to make a positive global impact.”
According to Zerunyan, the Los Angeles area is the largest Armenian community outside of Armenia itself, making USC the perfect place for the program.
“My hope is that this becomes the hub of the caucuses in the former Soviet Republics as the premier institution for public policy and management doctorate programs,” he said.
Zerunyan said he will begin recruiting scholars when he teaches in Armenia next summer, and plans to make a final decision by January 2019. In the meantime, he said he will prepare, develop and raise funds for the program.
“To me, this is a mission,” Zerunyan said. “We want them to go back and provide that mission back to the country.”
Armenian Genocide documents from Vatican archives arrive at AGMI
The Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute in Yerevan has received documents from the secret archives of the Vatican about the events of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire.
Part of the valuable documents acquired with the help of Italian entrepreneur of Armenian origin Artur Asatryan, were transferred to the museum, AGMI said in a statement.
Manana Hakobyan from the TV show “Of Armenian origin” transferred the documents to the Institute and said that at the moment only a part of the documents have been digitized.
Also, Armenia’s ambassador to the Vatican Mikayel Minasyan has also facilitated the transfer of the documents.
Some three dozen countries, hundreds of local government bodies and international organizations have so far recognized the killings of 1.5 million Armenian in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Turkey denies to this day.
Armenian American Orphans Christmas Telethon strives to be most successful one yet
Ovanes Balayan during the 17th annual Armenian American Orphans Christmas telethon. (Photo courtesy of Alex Kojababian)
For almost 20 years, Glendale resident and TV show host Ovanes Balayan has raised money to help disadvantaged children in Armenia by organizing the Armenian American Orphans Christmas Telethon, which is set to be held Thursday.
Balayan’s nonprofit organization, the Armenian American Orphans and Disabled Children Fund, will host the 18th annual telethon and ask viewers to donate toward the renovation of an existing facility in Spitak, Armenia, into a kindergarten, recreation center and gymnasium.
According to telethon spokesman Alex Kojababian, the renovated site will serve more than 1,000 children and will take approximately 11 months to build. Last year’s telethon helped secure enough funds to build two schools from the ground up in Gymuri, Armenia, where about 600 children now attend.
“I love kids no matter if they are Armenian or not. I started this for Armenian kids, but if I can help any kids, I will,” Balayan said.
That money went toward a three-day Christmas celebration for children at Aram Khachaturian’s event hall in Yerevan, Armenia. Since it began, the telethon has raised money to construct nine orphanages and schools throughout Armenia, Kojababian said.
“Our annual telethon raises more than $250,000, and every year that amount is growing,” Balayan said in a statement, adding that he’s confident this year’s telethon will be the most successful one yet.
The Armenian American Orphans Christmas Telethon will be held from 5 p.m. to midnight Thursday at the ARTV station, 4401 San Fernando Road. The event will be broadcast on AABC, High Vision and ARTV.
Balayan also hosts a Sunday TV show on AABC.
“We need support, so we can help those in need,” Balayan said. “For many years, we have been able to complete our goals due to the generosity of everyone that has contributed.”
This Is What An Armenian Billionaire’s Wedding Looks Like
This is a very expensive-looking fairytale. Sep 19, 2017 12:46am
Just when you think that you’ve seen the most lavish wedding in history, one like this comes along and takes things to a level you never deemed possible before.
Karen Karapetyan, the son of Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, tied the knot this weekend with his social media star bride, Lilit, in Moscow.
The couple, refusing to do anything simply, completely redecorated two entire venues—both the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Safisa banquet hall—adding up to eight lavish rooms, dripping in crystals and fresh flowers, which you can see here:
see more photos: http://www.harpersbazaar.com.au/bazaar-bride/armenian-billionaire-karen-and-lilit-wedding-pictures-14372
Armenian IT firms’ direct taxes top those of major supermarket chains
It turns out that Armenia-based IT companies pay more taxes than major supermarket chains that have multiple stores in Yerevan.
According to PanARMENIAN.Net ‘s own calculations, the biggest 10 firms in the information technologies sector have paid direct taxes worth AMD 3.4 billion in 2016.
Major supermarket chains, on the contrary, have paid by AMD1.1 billion less in the reporting period.
The list of 1000 major Armenian taxpayers, released by the tax service, includes Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, Oracle, Softline International, PicsArt, CQG, Monitis and a number of other companies.
Synopsys, by the way, is the biggest company in terms of direct tax payments.
UCLA lecturer harmonizes Armenian, American cultures through song
Karenn Chutjian-Presti’s recently published book, “My First Armenian Songbook,” is a bilingual collection of 16 nursery rhymes and children’s songs translated from English to Armenian. (Hannah Burnett/Assistant Photo editor)
By Andrew Warner,
Karenn Chutjian Presti began translating nursery rhymes and American folk tunes into Armenian about 6 1/2 years ago, when her first daughter was born.
“A lot of people talk about having a baby and your brain turning to mush and it wasn’t like that at all,” she said. “I was learning new words, I was learning new vocabulary and I realized how many words I was missing, being born in the U.S.”
The Herb Alpert School of Music lecturer published her translations in “My First Armenian Songbook,” a bilingual collection of 16 children’s songs on Aug. 17. Chutjian Presti said music has helped her raise her children in a multilingual environment because it makes it easier for them to break down the sounds of various languages.
Although Chutjian Presti and her husband are raising their children to speak Armenian, German, Italian and English, she said she feels particularly passionate about Armenian. The dialect of Armenian that Chutjian Presti speaks, Western Armenian, is classified as definitely endangered by UNESCO, and is a minority language in every country where it is spoken in.
“It’s not a language that’s spoken (officially) in any country – in Armenia, they speak Eastern Armenian,” she said. “So, we have this sense of responsibility growing up Armenian to keep the language strong.”
Chutjian Presti also said Armenian speakers of her generation had less access to supplementary materials in Armenian, such as television shows and books, than children today do. As a result, her Armenian vocabulary was somewhat limited, and she didn’t know basic terms she wanted to use with her children, such as playground vocabulary.
Now, Chutjian Presti speaks to her children almost exclusively in Armenian, only addressing them in English when they have monolingual friends around.
“I think one of the drawbacks of (being bilingual) is you’re not really part of one culture completely, you have one foot in one culture and one foot in the other. At least, this is my experience,” she said. “They are American and yet they are Armenian, so I wanted to find a way to connect these two things.”
Chutjian Presti also created piano and vocal arrangements for her translations, which her sister, Stephanie Betjemann, sang on a CD recording that accompanied the book. Chutjian Presti said she chose to use western instrumental arrangements, rather than traditional Armenian instruments, to retain the familiarity of the songs.
“That’s the bridge I wanted to have, the Armenian words with the American melodies,” she said.
Betjemann, who also studied linguistics in college, said music and singing can help improve a child’s skills in a given language because the brain processes and stores words set to music differently than words that are not.
She added that one of her favorite songs to sing is “The Zoo,” because it helped her learn the Armenian names of some animals she would not have known otherwise.
“It helps keep the language relevant,” Betjemann said. “A language is only as good as its applicability or function in a person’s life.”
For the book’s imagery and design, Chutjian Presti turned to her friend Alastair Sadler, a professional illustrator. Sadler took on the project, despite having no familiarity with Armenian culture or language prior to working on the project.
“That’s sort of one of the pleasures of the project, is having to deal with something that is completely new to me,” he said. “I had to go through a bit of a learning process with (Chutjian Presti’s) help, to figure out which of the words in Armenian corresponded to the words in English.”
He said the first song that appears in the book – “Zoom Zoom Zoom, We’re Going to the Moon” – was one of his favorites to illustrate because it reminded him of when he first introduced the song to Chutjian Presti at a toddler’s music group meeting when their kids were younger.
Now as Chutjian Presti reads the book to her own children, she said she wishes she had a similar songbook for herself as a child growing up in an Armenian-American household. She added she hopes the songs can serve as a bridge between Armenian and American culture.
“It was just more of a practical concern – why shouldn’t they think that we have … all of these songs in Armenian tradition?” she said.
source: http://dailybruin.com/2017/09/10/ucla-lecturer-harmonizes-armenian-american-cultures-through-song/
Turkish Thieves break into Istanbul’s Armenian church, steal several items
A number of items have been stolen from St. Gregory the Illuminator Armenian church in Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, Turkey.
The thieves managed to steal several objects from the church. However, they were forced to run away after being spotted taking out a massive icon and a cross out of the church, according to Ermenihaber.am.
Leaving the icon and the cross outside the church, the thieves ran away taking a number of stolen objects with them.
The prove is under way.
Armenian, Azeri youth should be brought up as neighbors: top cleric
Armenian and Azerbaijani youth should be educated with the understanding that the two peoples will be neighbors and will live next to each other, Allahshukur Pashazade, leader of Muslims of Azerbaijan, head of Muslims of the Caucasus said on Friday, September 8.
Pashazade was meeting with Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in the Russian capital.
“We should not meet for the sake of meeting. We should meet to ensure that we have the opportunity to address the leadership of our countries so that they do everything possible to prevent conflict,” Pashazade said.
“Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan will ever leave these territories, so they must live side by side, and the youth should be brought up in this spirit.”
Armenian alcoholic beverages to flood the Chinese market
The Development Foundation of Armenia jointly with the Wine-growing and Winemaking Foundation of Armenia will promote the recognizability of the locally produced wines and cognacs: an agreement of cooperation was signed today by the heads of the Foundations Armen Avak Avakian and Zaruhi Muradyan.
As the first practical step, the Foundations will jointly organize the participation of Armenian companies in the Prօwine China 2017 Exhibition to be held in Shanghai, China, from 14 to 16 November.
Prօwine China is one of the largest international exhibitions of the sphere: 650 companies from 37 countries will attend the Exhibition; moreover, more than 12000 importers, distributors and wholesale buyers are envisaged to take part in it.
Fifteen wine, cognac and alcoholic drinks producers will represent the industry of Armenian alcoholic beverages with the joint pavilion at the Prowine China 2017. The participation of the Armenian companies will be co-financed within the framework of state support.
The Armenian beverages have already been exported to the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Germany and other countries under the contracts concluded with the support of DFA during the previous international wine exhibitions. Last year, with the support of the Wine-growing and Winemaking Foundation of Armenia, the Armenian wine-making companies took part in the MUNDUS VINI 20th Grand International Wine Awards international ceremony, returning with 10 gold and 13 silver medals and reaching new export markets.
“The Development Foundation of Armenia has a fruitful experience in promoting the Armenian products at international exhibitions. Our delegations return with export orders after every exhibition”. Besides “Prowine China”, my team is ready to further use its experience to present the local products at their best to international buyers and suppliers in cooperation with partner Foundations”, noted the CEO of DFA Armen Avak Avakian.
“In the short period of its activities, the Wine-growing and Winemaking Foundation of Armenia has already recorded significant results in raising recognizability and demand for Armenian wines. I am confident that this cooperation will create new opportunities for developing the sector and promoting export”, added the CEO of the Wine-growing and Winemaking Foundation of Armenia Zaruhi Muradyan.
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