employees of the Ministry of Culture of Armenia started a labor strike on Friday.

They were demonstrating outside the ministry building and protesting the government decision on dissolving the Ministry of Culture and joining part of it to the Ministry of Education and Science and the other part—to the Ministry of Urban Development.

Employees of the Ministry of Diaspora of Armenia joined the labor strike by the workers at the Ministry of Culture.

The demonstrators noted that if there were too many ministries in Armenia, let them study and try to resolve this problem, but this had nothing to do with the main functions of the Ministry of Culture.

 

US Secretary of Defense James Mattis will leave his post in February, President Donald Trump announced.

“During Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting,” Trump tweeted. “General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations.”

The US president added that a new Secretary of Defense will be named shortly, and he thanked Mattis for his service.

 

Speaking at the Turkish parliament floor, Garo Paylan, the Armenian member of this legislature, reflected on the recent snap parliamentary election in Armenia, and he congratulated Acting Prime Minister and his political team for the victory they achieved in this vote.

“Immediately after the elections, Mr. Pashinyan announced that they [Armenia] are ready to establish relations with Turkey, without preconditions. I hope that Turkey has responded, ‘I’m ready.’

 

President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday held a working meeting with State Secretary Stanislav Zas  of the Security Council of Belarus, press service of the Belarusian president informed.

Zas informed about his meetings with leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member countries, and who would agree on his candidacy as the new Secretary General of this organization.

The leaders of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Russia have approved his respective candidacy.

And Lukashenko formally supported Stanislav Zas’ appointment by signing the respective draft decision by the CSTO Collective Security Council.

Stanislav Zas expressed his readiness to meet with the Armenian leadership “at any convenient time  to discuss the issues or problems they see in the organization’s activities." His remark came after the meeting with the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.