JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian defence minister Vigen Sargsyan travelled to Tehran for a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Dehqan in which both sides pledged to improve their military ties. Neighbours, Armenia and Iran have become increasingly close over the past couple of years, boosting military, economic and trade relations.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
JAN. 31 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Exports from Armenia grew by 20% to $1.8b in 2016, the state statistics service reported. Russia remains the biggest trade partner with total bilateral trade of nearly $1.4b, compared to China which has bilateral trade with Armenia of $454m. Bilateral trade with Russia was up by 15%, indicating a general pick up in the economy.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)
JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia and Armenia are likely to set up a new airline to fly routes between Yerevan and Moscow, Vahan Martirosyan, Armenia’s communications and technology minister, was quoted as saying. Armenia has been without a national flag-carrier since 2013 when Armavia was declared bankrupt. The privately-owned Armenia, a low-cost airline, started flights last year to Russia.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The leaders of Armenia’s three main genuine opposition parties — the Republican party, Bright Armenia and Civil Contract — have confirmed that they will fight a parliamentary election set for April as a united opposition bloc. The bloc is called Yelik, Way Out. Leaders of Yelik said that they are in negotiations with the Heritage party, the fourth main opposition party, for it join too.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)f
JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a partial victory for Armenia, Denmark’s parliament voted to adopt a resolution that criticised a ban in Turkey on using the term genocide to describe the killing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians at the end of World War II by Ottoman Turks. Parliament stopped short of describing the killings as genocide, saying that it traditionally didn’t issue judgements on historical events. While Armenia has pushed hard for foreign governments to recognise the killings as a genocide, Turkey has refuted all allegations of an organised genocide.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
YEREVAN, JAN. 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The five member states of the Kremlin-lead Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) are preparing to act on new rules that will mean they have to place graphic warnings about smoking on all cigarette packages.
Lawmakers have heralded the move as an important step towards deterring smoking but many people in the notoriously hard-smoking former Soviet Union think it is a pointless piece of bureaucratic self- indulgence.
In Yerevan, Armen Manvelyan, 32, drew hard on his cigarette. It was cold, and snow lay on the streets. Like many Armenian men, he had been smoking since school. All his attempts to quit had failed.
“I don’t think people realise that it is dangerous,” he said. “They just find it really hard to stop smoking. I haven’t see any awful photos on cigarette packs yet but surely they are not going to stop me.”
InRussia the new regulations regarding cigarette packaging have already come into force but Armenia has until November 2017 to enforce them.
From then, cigarette packets will carry photos of smoke-affected organs and the names of diseases linked to smoking.
Smoking is part of Armenia’s culture. According to Alexander Bazarchian, director of the state’s National Institute of Health half of all men smoke and every year 4,000 people die of smoking-related diseases.
Mr Bazarchian said that the new EEU directive was important.
“Using photos of smoke-affected organs is an internationally proved practice to reduce the number of smokers,” he said.
The Armenian health ministry welcomed the reforms and there have already been a number of moves to cut down on the popularity of smoking. This has included banning cigarette advertising and banning smoking in many buildings and areas.
Importantly, though, in many restaurants and bars, where there is no mandatory ban, the air is thick with cigarette smoke. The EEU and Armenian officials want to change this.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — US car rental company Enterprise, which owns the Enterprise, Alamo and National brands, said it had made a franchise deal with Yerevan- based TravelCar. The deal will expand the brands to Armenia and also to neighbouring Georgia. The deal is part of a global drive by Enterprise to spread its business across the Middle East and Asia.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)f
JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Highlighting increasingly tight ties between Armenia and Russia, Armenian PM Karen Karapetyan ordered his government to start preparing processes that would allow Russians to enter Armenia on their internal passports, essentially an ID document. This, potentially, opens up Armenia a holiday destination to the millions of Russians who don’t hold an international passport. Surrounded by its enemies Turkey and Azerbaijan, Armenia is reliant on Russia for military, economic and energy ties.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)f
JAN. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia has banned chicken imports from six regions of Iran because of an outbreak of bird flu, media reported. Trade between Iran and Armenia has increased rapidly over the past few years meaning that the ban will hit chicken supplies in Armenia.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)f
JAN. 24 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian PM Karen Karapetyan flew to Moscow for a series of meetings, including with Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev, designed to underline just how close relations between the two countries are. Armenia has been compared, by some analysts as a Russian vassal state, reliant on it for trade, military and energy cooperation. This was Mr Karapetyan’s first visit to Russia as PM. He has close personal ties with Russia and previously used to work for Gazprom Armenia.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)
