The court martial of Army Private First Class Bradley Manning gets under way today, February 23 as the soldier prepares to enter a plea to charges he leaked classified information published on the Wikileaks website, Bloomberg reported.

Manning, 24, is set for arraignment at the U.S. Army’s Fort Meade in Maryland, where he will hear the charges read against him and be asked to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. A hearing in December resulted in a finding that the U.S. government had enough evidence to proceed to a court martial.

“The case is a drama that embodies either great heroism or great villainy, depending on who you talk to,” Steven Aftergood, director of a government secrecy program at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said in an interview. “Up to this point, we’ve been in a preliminary phase, and the arraignment begins the process in earnest.”

The defense of Manning by attorney David Coombs has included requests for government assessments of the damage the leaks allegedly did to national security and for depositions of dozens of witnesses, partly to establish whether the material was classified.

The 2010 WikiLeaks episode, in which hundreds of thousands of classified records and State Department cables were made public, spurred a drive to tighten government security.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told an audience in Washington last month that the administration is trying to develop a national insider-threat policy. Manning, who was stationed in Iraq at the time of the leaks, is charged with violations including aiding the enemy, which carries a possible life sentence.

President Barack Obama established a task force in October to develop a governmentwide program to detect and stop potential insider threats. He issued an executive order outlining responsibilities of federal agencies for securing classified information on their computer networks.

“We refuse to perform in a country, notorious for mass killings and massacres of Armenians, a country where hatred for Armenian people is a part of governmental policy, a country banning the entrance of any person of Armenian nationality regardless of citizenship,” the statement said.

The performers reiterated their distrust for Azeri security guarantees, citing the murder of Gurgen Margaryan at the hand of Azeri officer at Budapest-hosted NATO seminar.

The Armenian singers stressed willingness to participate in Eurovision with other country selected as a host, as well as intention to take part in future contests.

Seventy-two signatures have been collected so far, although only 60 were enough, Le Figaro writes.

With a vote of 127 in favor and 86 against, France’s Senate passed on January 23 criminalizes the denial of the genocides which this country has formally recognized.

This bill sets a one-year prison sentence plus a 45-thousand-Euro fine for anyone who denies these genocides. According to the regulations, the French President will ratify it within fifteen days of the Senate’s decision. And Turkey had announced earlier that if the bill were to pass, it will impose a number of sanctions against France.

Constitutional Council can censor the law which it considers unconstitutional if 60 appeals from the Senators are received.

The Council will decide whether the law is constitutional in a month.

The French Senate adopted bill criminalizing the Armenian Genocide denial after long debates on Monday.

President of France will ratify the law in 15 days after receiving the finally adopted law from the government. He can ask the parliament to review the full law or certain articles. The review cannot be rejected.

Last December the French Parliament adopted the bill penalizing denial of genocides, including the Armenian Genocide. The law introduced by MP Valerie Boyer, in case of violation, intends one year of imprisonment and a fine amounting to €45,000.

The French parliament is to vote on a bill on Thursday making it illegal to deny that the 1915 killing of Armenians during World War I was genocide. The bill, which is expected to pass, provides for a one-year prison term and a fine of $58,000 (45,000 euros) to anyone who publicly denies it was genocide.

The vote in the French National Assembly has stirred a diplomatic frenzy and French and Turkish politicians are jumping into the fray.

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“This proposed law targets and is hostile to the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish nation and the Turkish community living in France,” Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister wrote in a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Reuters reports.

During a Saturday news conference, Mr. Erdogan suggested that France ought to investigate her own role and actions in colonial Africa, including Rwanda.

Turkey maintains that the proposed bill is a political ploy by Sarkozy’s political party to win the votes of 500,000 Armenians in France ahead of next year’s parliamentary and presidential elections. Sarkozy has also been an outspoken opponent of Turkey desire to join the European Union.

Jean Leonetti, the European Affairs Minister of France, dismisses such allegations and says that opposition Socialists will endorse the bill as well. “It has been nearly 100 years since the Armenian genocide took place, those responsible are dead, it is simply a matter of recognizing a fact of history,” he told Radio Classique, The Telegraph in London reports.

Ersin Onulduran, chairman of the department of international relations at Ankara University, told Today’s Zaman, a Turkish daily, that “only historians and archival experts should pass judgment on the merits of historical events.”

Although there is little consensus, Armenians say that about 1.5 million people were killed during the mass deportations of 1915-16.

The Turkish government acknowledges the death of many Armenians, yet, it denies that Ottoman forces deliberately exterminated them. Turkey considers the numbers as inflated and says that Turks were also killed due to the upheaval that followed the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.

Many Turks, disappointed and disillusioned by European delays over entry into the EU, are now embracing a more assertive rhetoric.

“I want to state clearly that such steps will have grave consequences for future relations between Turkey and France in political, economic, cultural and all areas,” Erdogan said according to Reuters. While Turkey implicitly threatens to boycott French products if the bill passes, it has ruled out imposing trade sanctions.

So far this year, bilateral trade between Turkey and France is estimated at more than $13.5 billion. About 1,000 French companies operate in Turkey.

“We have to remember international rules and with regard to Turkey it’s a member of the WTO (World Trade Organization) and is linked to the European Union by a customs union and these two commitments mean a non-discriminatory policy towards all companies within the European Union,” said French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero, Reuters reports.

In 2006, a similar bill was introduced and approved by the French National Assembly but was later dropped by the Senate. In France, any legislative initiative requires the endorsement of both parliament and the Senate to be enacted.

The bill will be submitted for French Senate’s confirmation.

“It will be Western Georgia’s commercial and economic, and Georgia’s main, center at the Black Sea coast,” Saakashvili noted.

Large-scale construction will commence in the coming year. The city will also have a large port. “We will create several thousand jobs,” the Georgian President noted, stressing that a tender will be announced for the engineering and construction activities.

Demonstrators in Tehran stormed the building of the British Embassy.

Iranian police initially did not try to interfere with the thugs, and then blocked access to the Embassy. Those who still managed to reach the territory of the British mission will be detained, reports AFP.

Reuters reports that the protesters got inside the building and threw the Embassy documents out of the windows. There are several dozen people inside the building.

Iranian television reported that during the anti-British demonstrations, protesters pelted the embassy with stones and Molotov cocktails, smashing several windows.

The demonstrators tore and burned the British flag, replacing it with Iranian.

Protests in Iran have been caused by the introduction of the UK for new sanctions against Tehran.

STEPANAKERT. – The adversary violated the ceasefire more than 260 times, in the past week, at the line of contact between Karabakh-Azerbaijani opposing forces.

Vanguard subdivisions of the Azerbaijani army fired, through different weaponry, around 1,300 shots in the direction of Armenian positions.

Despite such activeness by the Azerbaijani side, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) Defense Army forces refrained from taking corresponding actions and responded to adversary’s aggressive tactics in case of extreme necessity, NKR Defense Army Media and Propaganda Department informed.

YEREVAN. – Press secretary of Armenian Minister of Defense David Karapetyan commented on information published in the media that Armenia purchased nonfunctional weaponry from Moldova.

“Purchase of weaponry and military equipment for Armenian army is carried out under relevant norms and regulations of Armenian Constitution and International law. For national security reasons information on quantity and variety of armament as well as details about the seller are not subject for publication,’’ said Karapetyan. ‘‘I can only assure you that ever since its independence Armenia did not purchase nonfunctional weaponry.”