Armenian girls team stuns Google experts with sign language app (video)

August 12, 2017 By administrator

Armenian girls team stuns Google experts with sign language app An Armenian team of young women was selected among the finalists and won the People’s Choice Award in a months-long app-building competition, The Technovation Challenge, organized by Google at the company’s campus.

More than 11,000 girls from 103 countries formed teams to address issues in several categories: peace, poverty, environment, equality, education, and health. This week, the finalists traveled to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to pitch their ideas to a panel of tech leaders and other experts.

The Armenian team was comprised of Aghavni Hakobyan, Sona Avetisyan, Svetlana Davtyan, Violeta Mkrtchyan, Vardanush Nazaretyan, Google said in a blog post.

When a deaf classmate visited their school, the team of five girls from the village of Karbi, Aragatsotn village, came up with the idea for an app — aptly called Armenian Sign Language — to help people learn Armenian sign language using videos of sign gestures. Armenian Sign Language was developed to help connect those with poor hearing and those with good hearing. The app is suitable for English and Armenian speakers of all ages.

Four girls from Kazakhstan behind a safety app called QamCare were crowned the winner of the Senior Division and will receive $15,000.

Armenia, other finalists Kenya and India will receive $10,000 each.

Armenian girl’s murder by Azerbaijani boy is captured on video

October 14, 2015 By administrator

Moscow police have arrested the young Azerbaijani man who killed Anna, a nineteen-year-old Armenian girl.

The young man has been taken into custody for two months.

There is no doubt that Emil Zulfagharov had committed this crime.

The victim’s father said the boy was not leaving his daughter alone.

Since Anna had rejected his love, the Azerbaijani youth had started following her.

The girl’s relatives had to always accompany her to and meet her from the university she was attending, reported NTV television of Russia.

A street video camera has captured the last seconds of this Armenian girl’s life. The recording shows the boy hitting the girl several times in the stomach and fleeing the scene. Subsequently, the bleeding girl falls on the pavement and dies before an ambulance arrives.

Anna’s father noted that even though he had repeatedly petitioned to the police, the latter had ignored his complaints about this Azerbaijani boy.

Source: news.am

Iraq’s Sole Yazidi Lawmaker Says 25,000 Girls Abducted By IS To Be Raped, Sold

November 5, 2014 By administrator

By Freshta Jalalzai and Luke Johnson

Iraq’s only ethnic Yazidi member of parliament says that the human rights situation in her country is “deteriorating,” with Islamic State (IS) militants kidnapping, raping, and selling Yazidi women.

“They are still without any shelter. They are sleeping on the streets. The situation is not good and the winter is [advancing], and it’s raining, actually, in Iraq [now]. So the situation is deteriorating,” legislator Vian Dakhil told RFE/RL in an October 8 telephone interview from Iraq’s Kurdish region.

Dakhil, who has been cited by U.S. President Barack Obama, was named the winner of the 2014 Anna Politkovskaya Award on October 6 by the organization Reach All Women in War. The award, named after the murdered Russian journalist, honors women working to help those trapped in conflict.

The lawmaker, who is currently recovering from injuries she suffered in an August 12 helicopter crash on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq, said that while IS militants have forced Christian women from their homes, Yazidi women often suffer worse fates.

“Only Yazidi women are kidnapped. We don’t know, actually, why exactly the Yazidi women [are targeted],” she said.

Dakhil says that of the more than 500,000 Yazidis in Iraq, some 25,000 Yazidi girls have been abducted by IS militants.

“We don’t know exactly [where all of them are], but some are [kept] at [various] prisons here, still in Iraq, and some have been taken to Syria, and some are in Mosul,” she said. “They are taken to be raped, and they are selling them — $150 for a girl.”

Dakhil called on the international community to step in to help the plight of the Kurdish religious and ethnic minority that has faced religious persecution for centuries and that has been dubbed “devil worshippers” by some Muslims.

“I ask every government — not only here — to take some action to save these people here because the situation is really bad. What is happening here cannot be solved by [the] Iraqi government only,” she said.

Dakhil gained international attention in August after making an impassioned plea to the Iraqi parliament about Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar, which was surrounded at the time by IS militants. She called it genocide.

“My family is being butchered, just like all Iraqis are being killed. … And today, the Yazidis are being slaughtered. Brothers, away from all the political disputes, we want humanitarian solidarity. I am speaking here in the name of humanity. Save us! Save us!” she told lawmakers on August 5.

The speaker of parliament interrupted her speech, while others shushed her emotional address, after which she collapsed.

The speech caught the attention of the U.S. president, who referenced her on August 7 when announcing U.S. air strikes against IS militants and a humanitarian aid effort to rescue the Yazidis.

“Earlier this week, one Iraqi in the area cried to the world, ‘There is no one coming to help.’ Well today, America is coming to help,” Obama said.

‘What Would You Feel?’

Dakhil broke both legs and several ribs in an August 12 helicopter crash on Mount Sinjar. The pilot of the aircraft, which was carrying about 35 people, was killed in the accident, while “New York Times” reporter Alissa Rubin was injured.

Dakhil said that she plans to return to parliament once she is fully healed.

She also asked Western Muslim women who are supporting IS militants — an estimated 30 of whom have actually traveled to Iraq or Syria — to look at what the group, which is also known as ISIL, is doing to Yazidi women.

“Every girl [in the West] who is supporting ISIL should put herself in any [local] girl’s [shoes] and see what she has gone through. Twelve-year-old girls [are being] raped. Ten-year-old girls [are being] raped. I would like to ask [women supporting ISIL], if she was in their situation, what would she feel? If she was from your family, what would you feel?” Dakhil said.

“This girl could be your daughter, she could be your sister, she could be your neighbor,” she continued. “[Would] you be totally comfortable if someone raped your daughter, or your sister, or your neighbor?”

Interview conducted by Freshta Jalalzai of RFE/RL’s Radio Free Aghanistan in Prague and written by RFE/RL correspondent Luke Johnson in Washington