“Hakarvik”- a structure safeguarding the area and ensuring water drainage built adjunct to one of Kapan’s landslide zones- has now become a threat to residents of neighboring houses.

A resident of 39th lane of Railroaders’ street Valentina Shahverdyan is forced to take her school-age child to a kindergarten in summer so that he doesn’t play in the yard, because the hole caused by landslide and gradual erosion makes playing outside a dangerous leisure for children.

A hostel in Kapan designed for students has been turning into an asylum for homeless, leaving no chance for students to get a room there.

People who reside in the hostel refuse to leave it, saying they have no place to go, while students of Armenia’s State Engineering University’s (ASEU) Kapan branch who came Kapan to study from different towns of Syunik province are forced to seek other housing.

The unprecedented heavy rains of June caused damage reaching millions of drams to Nrnadzor community, the remotest borderline village of Syunik province and the village made popular because of its pomegranates.

Rainstorms damaged crop lands, internal village roads and a part of the bridge. The village was left without electricity, 3 power poles fell down, damaging the village school’s main wall. About 400 m. of internal village road is ruined. A cowshed collapsed, and the wind blew off roofs. (No injuries were reported. A regional commission was formed and sent to Nrnadzor to estimate the damage. (The preliminary damage to the agricultural sector is estimated at 72 million drams ($240,000), while the damage to road infrastructures makes 21 million drams ($70,000)

The southern Armenian town of Kapan has a puppet troupe, but its fate is in limbo.

The seven-member puppeteers perform only occasionally by invitation. They have no and no support.

Nine years ago Vahe Arzumanyan opened this theater after coming across old threadbare puppets at one of the town clubs. He thought that the town lacked a puppet theatre (a popular attraction for Armenian children) and children didn’t even have any idea of what it was, so he decided to revive this genre of art.

For the past eight years the School for Young Leaders in Kapan has encouraged teenagers to develop leadership skills. The organizer of the school is the Kapan Women’s Regional Association NGO.

School Director Susanna Martirosyan says that the idea of having such a school was prompted by the Republican Women’s Council. During one of the conferences in Kapan, Council Chairwoman Nora Hakobyan noted that only gray-haired women were attending and there were no representatives of the new generation. And when they started to think about preparing young people in the public sector to come to replace them, they decided on having such a school.

An art salon, Avetis, opened in Kapan is the first of its kind in the town. It exhibits and offers for sale hand-made art works mainly made from wood.

The art salon’s owner, 42-year-old sculptor Armen Avetis says that he had plans to open such a salon in Kapan for several years, but the community was not ready for it: “They say people here do not understand arts, but you should show it so that they can understand. There is an art gallery in the town, but few even know its location and few visit it.”

From the beginning of June environmentalists in the Syunik region have sounded alarm about suspicions of African swine fever among wild boar in the territory of the Shikahogh preserve.

Head of the Syunik regional division of the state environmental inspection of the Armenian Ministry of Nature Protection staff Levon Petrosyan says that on June 2 he received a signal from the Shikahogh preserve that a sick wild boar was found in the vicinity of the Srashen community. “We also turned to Kapan’s chief veterinary Artur Khachatryan, he concluded from external symptoms that it is African swine fever. The body was disinfected and buried in a deep hole. A sample was taken from the entrails for an examination,” he said.

A jobs fair in Goris was the first such attempt in Syunik province to create opportunities for employers and the unemployed to meet.

Surik Hovhannisyan, a craftsman and driver, hoped to find a job for the first time in years. He has a family of five to care for. He stopped by the stall of Vosmar LLC, which had vacancies for five mechanics and six laborers. The company’s head of staff Sona Gabrielyan said that they were interested in Hovhannisyan and he left his contacts.

In an attempt to draw more attention to German as a foreign language in Armenia, the German Embassy in Armenia on May 22 and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) on May 20-24 for the first time arranged a trip visiting Armenia’s southern provinces. Within the framework of a project called Deuschmobil the Germans visited schools and institutes of Yeghegnadzor, Goris, Kapan, Meghri and Agarak. The project was open for everybody who had interest in the German language and Germany.

The delegation in Kapan presented 450 books to the Kapan college on behalf the Goethe Institute. A survey on area study was held for the pupils and a training session for teachers of the college.

Geological survey on uranium mines in Syunik is to start amid serious concerns among the population.

On April 22 of this year the RA Ministry of Environmental Protection and Russia’s Atomredmetgoloto open trade stock company signed an agreement on founding a joint entity that would carry out a geological study of Armenia’s uranium mines and start exploiting. Minister Aram Harutyunyan informed that the geological survey in Syunik is planned to start in September.