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Turkey arrests bakers' union head for calling bread-eating societies 'stupid' ANKARA, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Turkey jailed a bakery union head for "publicly insulting the Turkish nation" on Wednesday, state media reported, after he said society's "stupid" fondness for bread explained why it had elected President Tayyip Erdogan's governments for two decades. Union for Bread Producers Chairman Cihan Kolivar made the comments to broadcaster Haberturk on Monday as he spoke about the rising price of bread and Turkey's soaring inflation. "Bread is the staple food for stupid societies. I speak scientifically, I am not making it up - per capita...

Father Aho will serve 25 months in prison for providing “help to a terrorist organisation”. The clergyman, absent from the courtroom, has always rejected the charges. The trial was held without journalists and public. Anti-Christian repression is growing as evinced by the Assyrian monk’s trial and the fate of Hagia Sophia.Istanbul (AsiaNews) – A Turkish court sentenced Assyrian monk Sefer (Aho) Bileçen to two years and a month in prison after he was convicted of providing “help to a terrorist organisation”. The clergyman found himself up on terrorism charges after he gave a piece of bread to two people who...

What was the shape of Noah’s Ark? For millennia Jewish and Christian clerics, scholars, and academics, as well as others with too much time on their hands, have pondered this question. Artist rendering of the one true shape of Noah’s Ark, scientifically provenILLUSTRATION: JON BERKELEY What makes it tantalizing is the precision of the numbers in Genesis 6 (here, in the King James translation): [13] And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. [14] Make thee...

A team of German and Kurdish archaeologists have uncovered a 3400-year-old Mittani Empire-era city once located on the Tigris River. The settlement emerged from the waters of the Mosul reservoir early this year as water levels fell rapidly due to extreme drought in Iraq. The extensive city with a palace and several large buildings could be ancient Zakhiku – believed to have been an important center in the Mittani Empire (ca. 1550-1350 BC)....The south of the country in particular has been suffering from extreme drought for months. To prevent crops from drying out, large amounts of water have been drawn...

U.S. President Joe Biden has frayed relations between Ankara and Washington “beyond repair” with his recent statement using the word “genocide” to describe the 1915 Armenian genocide by Turkey, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency argued Tuesday. The Ottoman Empire enacted what is widely considered the first genocide of the modern world against Armenian, Assyrian Christian, and Greek populations in what is now Turkey. The Turkish government adamantly denies this occurred, claiming all those killed died in a war featuring violence on both sides, a claim not corroborated by historical

Our Faith PROFESSION OF THE ORTHODOX FAITH OF THE HOLY APOSTOLIC CATHOLIC ASSYRIAN CHURCH OF THE EAST IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT; AMEN. We believe in one God the Father, the Omnipotent, the Maker of all things visible and invisible. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God; the Only-Begotten and the Firstborn of all creatures. He who was born of His Father eternally before all worlds and was not created, true God from true God, of the same nature of His Father, by whom the...

ISIS fighters discovered an ancient Assyrian palace under the ruins of Mosul, but unfortunately, they looted and sold off the tantalising treasures they discovered.Professor Peter Miglus, the archaeologist who has led work at the site, said that gold kept by Sennacherib may have been discovered by ISIS. He said: “We can presume many very valuable objects must now be on the black market." The archaeologists found gold objects littered within the tunnels that were discarded by ISIS. Gold from ancient Egypt, such as a gold scarab ring and a small sceptre with the ankh, the pharaonic symbol that represents...

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution to formally recognize the Armenian Genocide, which saw approximately 1.5 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Following the 405-11 vote, the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, 39 — who has proudly embraced her Armenian heritage — praised the government for its decision in a post on her Instagram. “Yesterday was such a huge victory for the Armenian people when the US House Of Representatives acknowledged the Armenian Genocide!” Kim’s ties to Armenia has been especially evident as of late. Earlier this month, her family traveled to...

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Tuesday refused to support a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide, saying it was important first to condemn the preceding "mass slaughter" of "hundreds of millions of indigenous people," as well as the "transatlantic slave trade." Omar, in a statement explaining her vote of "present" on the resolution, seemingly suggested that the century-old mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks may not have occurred at all.

Almost 2,000 years after its last native speakers disappeared... [t]he recordings include excerpts from some of the earliest known works of world literature, dating back to the first years of the second millennium BC... readings of Babylonian poems, myths and other texts in the original tongue... -- available online for free at www.speechisfire.com -- are given by Dr. Worthington's fellow Assyriologists. Babylonian is one of two variants (or dialects) of Akkadian, the other being Assyrian. Akkadian became the 'lingua franca' of the Near East around, until its use began to decline around the 8th century BC. The last Akkadian cuneiform...

Jordan is supposed to be their transit country; they are seeking resettlement to other countries via the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Australian Special Humanitarian Program. The registration with the UNHCR gives them the protective status of refugee as they await resettlement. Yet, the process of resettlement takes at minimum several months and sometimes even years due to the growing refugee backlog..... "The majority of those stuck in limbo have been waiting more than two years—some since the rise of ISIS in 2014," according to the report. "Since January, the process has become...

When did Christianity first appear in China? Well, you may come across a much reasonable answer by examining the over 4,000 stone tablets at Xi'an Beilin Museum, or Stele Forest, located in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.  A much-justified answer to that question is in 635 AD during the early Tang Dynasty (618–907), the time of which was inscribed on the world famous Nestorian Stele, a 279-centimeter tall limestone block.  Xi'an Beilin Museum, established in 1087, houses the highest number of stone tablets in China. /CGTN Photo Xi'an Beilin Museum, established in 1087, houses the highest number of stone tablets in...

"Armenian refugees in Syria in 1915. An Armenian child lies dead in the fields within sight of help and safety at Aleppo." title="Armenian refugees in Syria in 1915. An Armenian child lies dead in the fields within sight of help and safety at Aleppo." On April 24, 2019, the 104th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the world community will honor the more than 2.2 million Armenians tortured and massacred starting with the 1894-96 Hamidian Massacres of Ottoman Turkey’s Christian population, mostly Armenians, Greeks & Assyrians and ending over 25 years later; some say it has not yet ended.  The portion...

As can be seen in the region every day, it is not realistic to expect the Assyrians to be quiet and accept their "fate" under the tender mercies of Shiite or Sunni rule. The future Assyrian regional government could be an independent state or autonomous region like the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq. Even if it is city-state like Vatican City, it would be monumental in stopping the annihilation of Assyrian people and could also serve as a safe haven for other persecuted minorities. "Thank God that Jews, a historically persecuted people just like us, now have Israel......

The new school year has started this month in Turkey, but Assyrian Christians, otherwise known as Syriacs or Chaldeans, still do not have a single primary school in the country where they could learn their native language and culture. The Istanbul-based newspaper Agos reported that the activists of the Syriac community applied to the Ministry of National Education in 2012 to get its permission and support to open a Syriac kindergarten in Istanbul. When their application was rejected, they took on a legal struggle and were finally able to open the Mor Efrem kindergarten without any economic support from the...

The Turkish government has recently seized numerous properties belonging to Assyrian (Syriac) Christians − such as churches, monasteries and cemeteries − and transferred them to public institutions.On June 23, the Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos reported, Inquiries by the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation revealed that dozens of churches and monasteries have been transferred to the Treasury first and then allocated to the Presidency for Religious Affairs, known as the Diyanet, in Turkish. And the cemeteries have been transferred to the Metropolitan Municipality of Mardin. Kuryakos Ergün, the president of the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation, told The Philos Project that the decision of...

You’ve probably heard by now that the Syrian Kurds have taken Tal Abyad, the key border town due north of Islamic State’s capital, Raqqa.It’s a huge loss for Islamic State, and a big boost for the Kurds. But it’s something more than that: a glorious victory. That’s not something I get to write very often.Most war stories are the dead opposite of glorious. You start out, as a war-nerdy kid, believing that Gettysburg is the norm—a good clean fight between brave, simple soldiers, ferocious against each other but sparing non-combatants. There was exactly one civilian death at Gettysburg, and...

Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) publicly apologized for not properly acknowledging the Armenian Genocide during her tenure under the administration of U.S. resident Barack Obama. Almost every Armenian-American family was touched in some way by the genocide. Ongoing Turkish denial makes the genocide an open wound… I am very sorry that, during our time in office, we in the Obama administration did not recognize the Armenian Genocide,” Power said in a series of tweets. .... Power has faced much criticism for her silence on Obama’s failure to recognize the Armenian Genocide, and had refused to publicly...

Giovanni Semerano had to wait 90 years before receiving his first institutional acknowledgement for his important discoveries concerning ancient languages, in particular, the Etruscan language. Semerano has revolutionized the theories tied to the Indo-European languages as the root of the current Mediterranean and European languages. He was defined a "heretic" scholar because he erased centuries of philosophical studies that saw in the Greek-Latin philosophies the origins of European culture. Thanks to his etymological studies the 90-year-old philosopher instead sustains that Western culture derives from the Shiites and the Assyrians.

ISIS barbarians have destroyed a 2,000-year-old gate close to their Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. The breathtaking structure is known as the Gate of God, and used to guard the ancient Assyrian city Nineveh. The destruction of the ancient structure, also called the Mashki Gate, has been confirmed by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, and the Antiquities Department in Baghdad has not denied the demolition. The terrorists demolished the ancient gate using military equipment, according to activists in Mosul. ISIS thugs have destroyed many of Iraqi historic sites and monuments, including the Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Winged...