Day: November 9, 2023

Member of the US House of Representatives Jim Costa calls for funding to benefit Armenia and over 120,000 Armenians who have been displaced from their homeland as a result of Azerbaijan’s.

On November 8, 2023, Armenia’s Ambassador to US Lilit Makunts hosted the delegation led by Baroness Carolyne Cox, member of the UK House of Lords.

The Ambassador expressed gratitude for the decades-long humanitarian and advocacy work the Baroness had been performing worldwide, and especially for standing with Armenian people during the darkest hours of modern Armenian history.

The interlocutors shared their views on the current security and humanitarian situation in and around Armenia.

US Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy joined the Armenian rally in Miami, where protesters called on the Republican Party (GOP) to hold Joe Biden accountable for enabling Azerbaijan’s genocide of Artsakh’s Armenian Christians.

Citigroup has been fined more than $25 million for discriminating against Armenian Americans and blocking them from getting credit cards, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday.

From 2015 through 2021, Citi singled out for discrimination applicants for certain credit card products, based on their surnames, whom it suspected of being of Armenian descent. Citi supervisors conspired to hide the discrimination by instructing employees not to discuss the discriminatory practices in writing or on recorded phone lines. Citi employees also lied about the basis of denial, providing false reasons to denied applicants. Under today’s order, Citi will pay $1.4 million to harmed consumers along with a $24.5 million penalty.

“The CFPB found that Citi purposefully discriminated against applicants of Armenian descent, primarily based on the spelling of their last name,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “Citi stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud. In reality, Citi illegally fabricated documents to cover up its discrimination.”

Citibank, N.A. is a national bank with headquarters in New York City that issues consumer credit cards, including retail services credit cards for companies like Home Depot and Best Buy. Citi’s parent company is Citigroup (NYSE: C), a global financial services holding company. As of June 30, 2023, Citi had $1.7 trillion in total assets – making it the third-largest bank by asset size in the United States.

Citi treated Armenian Americans as criminals who were likely to commit fraud. From at least 2015 through 2021, Citi targeted retail services credit card applicants with surnames that Citi employees associated with Armenian national origin as well as applicants in or around Glendale, California. The bank specifically targeted surnames ending in “-ian” and “-yan.” Nicknamed “Little Armenia,” Glendale is home to approximately 15% of the Armenian American population in the U.S.

Australia said on Thursday it would investigate an outage at telco Optus that cut off internet and phone connections to nearly half of its population, causing widespread chaos and leading some small business customers to seek compensation.

More than 10 million Australians, 40% of the population, were hit by the 12-hour network blackout at the nation’s No. 2 telco firm for much of Wednesday, triggering fury and frustration among customers and raising concerns about the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.

The government would undertake a post-incident review into the outage that hit payments, transport and hospitals, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said, describing the impacts as “particularly concerning.”

“While we welcome that Optus services were restored over the course of the day, it is critical the government conducts a process to identify lessons to be learned from yesterday’s outage,” Rowland said in a statement.

Australia’s media regulator will conduct a separate review into the outage after emergency triple zero (“000”) calls went down on Optus landlines, Rowland added.

Taxi driver Ian Martin-Brown told Nine Network that he might take legal action after losing a day’s work. Other customers including cafe owners and niche online retailers told media outlets they would seek compensation for lost revenue. 

“There’s no doubt that it has to be on the table,” Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones told ABC Radio. “If you’re a small business that’s lost a day’s takings because your phone system wasn’t working then you’re going to be asking those hard questions.”

Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) (STEL.SI), did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Optus has not given the cause for the unprecedented outage, one of the biggest the country has witnessed, but it has ruled out for now any cyber hacks.

Singtel said the outage had “let down our customers” and apologized as it reported on Thursday an 83% jump in half-yearly profit.

But UBS analysts said Optus now faces the possibility of losing customers to Telstra (TLS.AX), the nation’s largest telco firm, and TPG Telecom (TPG.AX) due to “strong brand perceptions” of the network quality of rivals.

The government said it would also check the possibility of allowing customers to switch to available networks when future outages occur.

“The industry is prepared to be involved … it is feasible and we’re going to take this forward as a government,” Rowland told the ABC.