Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Yerevan on Friday for an official one-day visit during which he was expected to sign agreements strengthening energy and communication relations between Armenia and its southern neighbor.

You want to root, root, root for the home team (sorry, that’s a baseball reference), but don’t know why, other than blind nationalism or the fact that Armenian team sport has given us so little to “root” about. You want to appear as a seasoned veteran of the game, but, well, you aren’t. You want to know the difference between a yellow card and a red card other than the obvious. You want a reason to get happy about men shorts other than the potential obvious. The following is for you ...

Armenia’s shy dreams of football respectability gained legitimacy Friday evening in Yerevan’s Republican Stadium with a 4-1 victory over FYR Macedonia in UEFA Euro 2012 Group B qualifying.

Independent Armenia has never reached this level of soccer success and while the unexpected turnaround is a tribute to coach Vardan Minasyan, it is also a cautiously captivating highlight in the otherwise dim Armenian team sports world.

As expected, United States President Barrack Obama did not use the word “genocide” in his annual address April 23, a day before Armenians worldwide commemorate the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide which began April 24, 1915.

The president, who has steadfastly maintained “my personal view of history” that the events beginning on this date constitute genocide, instead invoked the more politically expedient rhetoric of his predecessors, borrowing the Armenian phrase “meds yeghern” (great calamity).

Fans of the Armenian national football team will have to look to the moral scoreboard to find a ‘W’ following 90+ minutes of 0-0 action against Russia at the Vazgen Sargsyan Republican Stadium in Yerevan Saturday evening.

In a much-anticipated UEFA qualifier, the red and blue came into the match the Group B-leading visitors in competition aiming toward Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine.

The “Ter” in his name is an Armenian construct to indicate that Levon Ter-Petrosyan comes from a family of priests. So who should dare split theological hairs with the Armenian National Congress leader?

Let me take a shot, so as to not totally waste four years of university religious study and two years of seminary, in reply to Ter-Petrosyan’s claim that the reason he is snubbing Raffi Hovannisian is based on Christian conviction . . .

The day was seized by Levon Ter-Petrosyan, but it belonged to Raffi Hovannisian.

When Ter-Petrosyan entered Liberty Square yesterday, he walked through a door cracked open because Hovannisian had the audacity to sit night and day on a park bench there.

(Updated: 9:45 p.m.) At 7 p.m. today 10s of thousands of opposition sympathizers led by Levon Ter-Petrosyan and bolstered by a two-day hunger strike by opposition Heritage party founder Raffi Hovannisian stood down a ring of police in riot gear, to enter without incident into Liberty Square from which they have been banned by authorities for nearly a year.

By 7:20 p.m. police, who had formed a barricade at 3:45 p.m. around the one-block-square perimeter of the Opera House (Liberty Square) had boarded buses and were leaving the grounds to the jubilant crowd – the biggest gathering the opposition has amassed since 2008.

President Serzh Sargsyan has made laudable proclamations over the past few days, including issuing orders that, if earnestly implemented, would advance the possibility of fair elections over the next two years – something Armenia has not seen since its first poll 20 years ago.

Monday, the president reminded high-ranking police officials that the republic’s law enforcement is obliged to not wield power out of a sense of political loyalty to the ruling regime.

A highly regarded voice of the Armenian Diaspora is speaking out in an attempt to diffuse speculation that last week’s decision by American billionaire Kirk Kerkorian to cease giving aid to Armenia is related to misgivings the philanthropist had about how hundreds of millions of dollars he spent here was managed.

When news broke that the Lincy Fund was being dissolved and its $200 million would be transferred to a new fund at UCLA, noted commentator/editor of the California Courier weekly, Harut Sassounian politely bypassed ArmeniaNow’s request for comment, saying “I am not the Lincy spokesman”.