ARMENIAN NEWS: BREAKING NEWS 24.09.2018

Snap election for the capital city Yerevan Council of Elders were held on Sunday. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan-supported My Step bloc gained decisive victory polling 81.06 percent of the votes. The Prosperous Armenia Party has come in second with surprisingly low support of 6.95 percent. Meanwhile, Luys alliance, members of which were a party Yelq parliamentary group but was recently critical of Pashinyan’s mayoral candidate, was the third with 4.99 percent. Although they failed to pass the threshold of 6 percent for parties and 8 for blocs, Luys will still be a member of the Council of Elders.

The voter turnout in the elections was 370,323 or 43.65 percent of eligible voters.

Despite minor inaccuracies and violations, none of the political forces running in the election spoke about major electoral fraud. All political forces congratulated the winner, thus admitting the election results. Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan, who is on a visit to New York, congratulated “My Step” candidate Hayk Marutyan as well Prosperous Armenia and Luys. Speaking during a meeting in New York, Marutyan said elections should be held as soon as possible in order to quickly begin the process of economic recovery. Pashinyan emphasized that he will soon launch negotiations with parliamentary and non-parliamentary political forces to discuss the schedule and conditions for holding early parliamentary vote.

A Karabakh army soldier was killed in Azerbaijani fire on Saturday afternoon in the eastern direction of the line of contact.

Artsakh Hovsepyan was fatally wounded, Karabakh Defense Army said in a statement.

Armenia’s Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan will meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov, on Wednesday in New York.

The ministers will meet by the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called the events that unrolled in Armenia in April a “fantastic example.”

“We recently had a fantastic example of a peaceful transfer of power demonstrated in Armenia,” Guterres said while answering questions on Facebook. “This is a fantastic example, which says that there are reasons to believe that the new generation will be able to make decisions better than my generation.”

President Donald J. Trump today announced his intent to nominate Lynne M. Tracy of Ohio, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Armenia.

Ms. Tracy is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor.

Head of Armenia’s National Security Service Artur Vanetsyan has been unanimously elected the president of the Football Federation of Armenia (FFA) during an extraordinary session of FFA.

Former FFA president Ruben Hayrapetyan who has been heading the federation since 2002 was not present at the meeting.