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Armenia’s acting PM to demand explanations from Kazakh, Belarus leaders

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Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan has unveiled his plans to demand explanations from Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as he is startled with the fact that Lukashenko has revealed details of the closed-door meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to the ambassador of Azerbaijan, a non-member country of the organization.

He stressed a closed-door session of the military-political bloc where the heads of its member states hold discussions, entails a “a closed conversation between the allies.” “I am astonished that a person who has served as head of state for some 30 years can allow himself to take such a move,” Pashinyan told reporters on Friday.

“And of course, I shall demand clarifications from the president of Belarus, and not only from the president of Belarus,” the official said, adding he is also going to demand explanations from the Kazakh president for making a statement contrary to the overall agreements.

“Nursultan Nazarbayev has also made a statement contrary to our agreements. After the closed-door summit in Astana, he stated that a Belarusian representative would take office as CSTO secretary general. No one had the right to make such a statement since decisions at the CSTO are made by consensus, and we have clearly expressed our position,” Pashinyan noted.

The acting PM stressed the need for Armenia to have open talks with its allies within the framework of the CSTO so that the sides clearly realize the obligations they have to one another.

Pashinyan says he raised the issue during the telephonic conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, adding discussions are also underway with the CSTO partners.

“We maintain respect for our partners and hope they will act in the same way,” he concluded.

Kazakh president starts official visit to Armenia

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The president of Kazakhstan on Wednesday started his two-day official visit to Armenia.

Arriving at the Zvartnots International Airport, Emomali Rahmon  was greeted by Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian.

The presidential press service said earlier that the Kazakh leader is scheduled to have meetings with top government officials in the course of the visit.

After high-level talks at the Presidential Palace in Yerevan, the Armenian and Kazakh leaders will join a ceremony of signing bilateral interstate documents.

They will later hold a joint press conference to sum up the meeting.

Kazakh Armenian girl creates website, which helps scientists worldwide

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armenian girlAccess to scientific works is so expensive nowadays that even the Harvard University has no enough money for that.

15,000 academics recently signed a petition, in which they urged to boycott Elsevier academic publishing company for charging exorbitantly high prices for scientific works.

The income of the company is over billion dollars, while the academics get nothing for their publications. Often they don’t even have access to their own works, since their universities might not be subscribed.

Thus, to publish an open access work in Cognition journal, the researcher must pay over 2,000 dollars.

And without publications in an authoritative journals it’s impossible to make a career in the scientific world, this resulting in a catch-22 situation, Meduza writes.

Consequently, the academics have to find different ways to get access to the necessary works.

For instance, they have created a special forum, where they ask a colleague to forward certain work. A “professional” Twitter hashtag – #icanhazpdf – also serves this end.

Alexandra Elbakyan, who studied at Kazakh National Technical University, also faced the situation where she couldn’t afford buying expensive articles. And thus she made up her mind to struggle. In 2011, Elbakyan created the website Sci-Hub. It works as follows: After the query is entered, the system checks whether the needed work is in the database of another pirate website LibGen. If not, the algorithm gets round the paywall on the website of the publishing company or the necessary journal.

The access keys are provided by the academics whose universities are linked to a certain database. The article requested for the first time is every time added to LibGen database. During the next query, Sci-Hub must take it from there.

In November 2015, the New York court ruled to discard the domain sci-hub.org. LibGen’s domain was also discarded.  Elsevier assured the court that thousand of works were downloaded from them every day via Sci-Hub.

Elbakyan says that if all publications and journals are considered, the number of downloaded articles will reach hundred and thousands. The websites, however, get more independent with each downloaded work: they need to take the document only once.

Elsevier assessed its losses in $750-150 000 for each downloaded work, i.e. a total of billion dollars of losses may be involved.

However, most probably nobody will appear in the American court, since Sci-Hub and LibGen servers are in Russia and the Netherlands, whereas the websites already work by other domains.

Alexandra Elbakyan stands for the freedom of disseminating information. In a letter to the American court, she slammed Elsevier for charging money from academics.

Armenia News – NEWS.am

Russian, Kazakh and Belarusian leaders sign treaty on creation of Eurasian Economic Union

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Presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus — Vladimir Putin, Nursultan Nazarbayev and Alexander Lukashenko have signed a Eurasian Economictreaty on setting up the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). The treaty will come into effect on January 1, 2015.

The presidents signed the document upon the results of the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Council at the level of state leaders in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, on Thursday.

Vladimir Putin noted that thanks to a common constructive approach, readiness and ability of each party to find compromises the three countries succeeded to settle many difficulties on this path and sign the document timely as it was planned before June 1, 2014.

“The Eurasian Economic Union will work on universal transparent principles clear for all, including on WTO principles,” Putin said. “This is a result of our joint work, close co-operation between the governments of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.”

According to the Russian leader, this document had brought the countries on an essentially new level of integration. “Preserving fully state sovereignty we ensure a closer and well-orchestrated economic co-operation and interaction,” he said.

Putin noted that this union accounted for one fifth of world gas reserves and about 15% of oil reserves in the world. The troika has a well-developed industrial base and a strong personnel, intellectual and cultural potential, the president added.

“The geographical position permits us to create transport, logistic routes of not only regional, but also global importance that permits to attract massive trade flows in Europe and Asia,” Putin stated.

All these factors give a guarantee of competitiveness of the new union, its dynamic development in a rapidly changing and complex world.

Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan has called for signing a treaty on the country’s joining the Eurasian Economic Union by June 15, 2014. A draft document has been prepared, Sargsyan said at a session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council on Thursday.

The leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus replied with a proposal to consider this issue by July 1, stressing that Armenia should meet all the requirements imposed on the union’s members. In particular, Vladimir Putin believes the treaty on Armenia’s joining the EEU shall be approved and signed in the nearest time.

Kyrgyzstan also has all chances to join the EEU, the Russian president has stated.

“We’d like to ring in the New Year jointly with other members of the Customs Union,” Kyrgyzstan’s President Almazbek Atambayev said at the session of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Union Council on Thursday.

“Of course, a great work on preparing the relevant documents is ahead, and we are ready to help. Nevertheless, there are all chances to join our union in the soonest time,” Putin noted.