Зеленский пригласил Джо Байдена и Си Цзиньпина на саммит мира в Швейцарии. Президент Украины обратился к мировым лидерам из разрушенной российским ударом типографии в Харькове и призвал их приехать 15-16 июня на Глобальный саммит мира. Главы США и КНР пока не подтвердили свое… pic.twitter.com/sGUv5q42a8
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Day: May 26, 2024
The “Tavush for the Holemland” announced during a rally in Yerevan, attended by thousands on Sunday, that its leader Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan will be the protest movement’s candidate for prime minister of Armenia.
The announcement was made by another leader of the movement, Gurgen Melikyan, who told the crowd that for the past month, meetings and consultations were held with representatives of a diverse groups — political parties, civic organizations and student associations.
“The overwhelming majority of the participants of these meetings and consultations that the candidate, of course, is Archbishop Bagrat,” Melikyan told the crowd.
“We understand that this is critical decision for the archbishop since it will change the course of his life. It is critical decision, however, it is part of his service,” Melikyan added.
Later Galstanyan, who is the Primate of the Tavush Diocese, told the rally that he had asked Catholicos Karekin II to suspend his 30-year clerical service so that he can take political mantle.
“Keeping in mind the expectation of wide circles … regarding being a candidate for the prime minister, and as a result of the discussions with my spiritual brothers under the chairmanship of His Holiness the Catholicos, we have reflected that I cannot combine being a candidate for the prime minister with my spiritual circumstances,” Archbishop Galstanyan told the rally.
“This is a personal decision, taking into account all the sacrifice, expectation that I am ready to put on the altar of my sacred motherland, the state,” Galstanyan added.
“This movement is about having an education system that prepares morally impeccable individuals, having a generation that respects its own identity and values, has competitive knowledge, is able to transform its own country and takes responsibility,” he said.
“This movement is about not having political prisoners, returning prisoners of war from Baku prisons. It is about having an amnesty from the baseless accusations and deprivation of freedom of many of our compatriots in Armenia’s prisons, and turning the prison and detention in general into an environment that not only punishes people, destroys people, but also dominates and reinterprets life,” explained the archbishop.
“Finally, this movement is about creating an equal and dignified life opportunity for our Artsakh sisters in the motherland and returning our forcibly displaced people to their homeland, responding to the demands expressed by the international community,” he added.
The “Tavush for the Homeland” movement was spearheaded by Galstanyan after the Armenian government unilaterally agreed to cede four villages in the Tavush Province to Azerbaijan under the border delimitation process between the two countries.
He began a protest march from Tavush to Yerevan, arriving there on May 9 to a rally attended by tens of thousands of supporters who along with the archbishop are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his government.
Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which stars Armenian actors Karren Karagulian and Vache Tovmasyan, has won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Karren Karagulian is a regular in Sean Baker’s films, having starred in all of the director’s films. In his speech, Sean Baker called the actor his “lucky charm” due to their collaboration spanning over 20 years.
“Anora” centers on Ani, a Brooklyn stripper turned call girl who strikes gold with a wealthy client, the son of a Russian oligarch, only for the fairy tale to turn sour. It was an instant favorited among film critics, drawing rave reviews in Cannes.
“This, literally, has been my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with the rest of my life,” Baker joked, before adding that his ambition would remain to “fight to keep cinema alive.”
The 53-year-old director said the world needed reminding that “watching a film at home while scrolling through your phone, answering emails and half paying attention is just not the way, although some tech companies would like us to think so.”
He added: “So, I say the future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theater.”
The Palme d’Or is the most prestigious prize of the film festival – and arguably the most prestigious prize in all of cinema. The film is also the first American film to win the Palme d’Or since Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” in 2011.
YEREVAN (Azatutyun,am)—At least two people died and hundreds of others were evacuated on Sunday after rivers in Armenia’s northern Lori and Tavush provinces overflew their banks, leaving several local settlements under water and washing away roads and a bridge.
The flash flooding also forced authorities to close Armenia’s main border crossing with Georgia and suspend rail service between the two countries.
Sections of the two national highways leading to the Bagratashen crossing were destroyed by the fast-flowing Debed and Aghstev rivers overnight following heavy rainfalls. The Armenian Interior Ministry reported one casualty in the morning. Its Rescue Service said it is searching for another man believed to have fallen into the swollen Debed.
News reports and footage posted on social media suggested that the Lori town of Alaverdi and nearby communities were hit hardest by what was the country’s worst flooding in decades. According to the Interior Ministry, most of the 232 people evacuated from their homes by early afternoon lived there.
An Alaverdi resident, Ani Mosinyan, said flood waters destroyed a bridge connecting two parts of the town.
“I can’t leave my home because it’s too dangerous,” Mosinyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “I can see from my window that the first floors of buildings are under water.”
Another Alaverdi resident, Gevorg Aslanyan, gave a similar account. He said he went to the flooded part of the formerly industrial town, the Sanahin neighborhood, to help a friend trapped there. He said he found no rescuers at the scene.
“The evacuations were mainly carried out by local residents themselves,” Aslanian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “There are still people remaining in their [flooded] homes. They don’t want to get out even though they have no water, gas or electricity.”
Armenia’s national water distribution company, Veolia Djur, said the floods disrupted water supply to not only Alaverdi but also 15 other settlements in Lori.
“The level of the Debed went up by six meters, and it is not possible to approach the [regional] water main or carry out any other work at the moment,” the company said in a statement.
Also left without water were some parts of Dilijan, a resort town in neighboring Tavush. Outside the town, Tavush Governor Hayk Ghalumyan looked on as heavy trucks and excavators hastily shored up Aghstev river banks to prevent further damage to the regional highway leading to the Georgian border. Road police limited but did not block traffic through the damaged sections of the highway.
The Rescue Service reported that a short circuit caused an explosion at an inundated gas station in Alaverdi. It did not say whether anyone was hurt as a result.
“The river has washed away all shops, restaurants and other structures located along the highway running parallel to it,” said Anush Navasardyan, the owner of a guesthouse in Tumanyan, a town 20 kilometers south of Alaverdi.
“We can’t get out of town right now because the road was damaged from both sides,” she said, adding that people staying in the guesthouse remain stranded there.
The Rescue Service evacuated about three dozen people from another, bigger hotel which is located on the Debed river bank.
Another Lori town, Akhatala, and surrounding villages were reportedly cut off from the rest of the province. Speaking to Akhtala, an environmental activist, Oleg Durgarian, said that a bridge on the sole road connecting the area to Alaverdi and provincial capital Vanadzor was under water in the afternoon.
The Armenian government set up a task force to cope with the natural disaster uncommon for the mountainous country. It said Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rushed to the flooded areas in the afternoon to inspect rescue efforts and damage caused to them.