Armenia and Azerbaijan to Hold Peace Settlement Talks in Washington on Sunday

File photo: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (C) meets with an Armenian delegation including Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan (L) and a delegation with Azerbaijan including Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in New York, New York, US, 19 September 2022. (EPA)
File photo: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (C) meets with an Armenian delegation including Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan (L) and a delegation with Azerbaijan including Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in New York, New York, US, 19 September 2022. (EPA)
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Armenia and Azerbaijan to Hold Peace Settlement Talks in Washington on Sunday

File photo: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (C) meets with an Armenian delegation including Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan (L) and a delegation with Azerbaijan including Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in New York, New York, US, 19 September 2022. (EPA)
File photo: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (C) meets with an Armenian delegation including Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan (L) and a delegation with Azerbaijan including Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in New York, New York, US, 19 September 2022. (EPA)

Armenia and Azerbaijan will hold a new round of talks in Washington on Sunday to try to normalize relations, the spokesperson of Armenia's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

Tensions have been rising again between the two countries over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, where Russian peacekeepers were deployed in 2020 to end a war, the second that Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought over the enclave since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Reuters said.

The mountain region is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated mainly by ethnic Armenians.

"From April 30 Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan will be in Washington DC on a working visit. The next round of discussions on the agreement on normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan is scheduled," the spokesperson, Ani Badalyan, said on her official Facebook page.

There was no immediate confirmation of the meeting by Azerbaijan.

Despite years of attempted mediation between them, Armenia and Azerbaijan have yet to reach a peace agreement that would settle outstanding issues such as the demarcation of borders and return of prisoners.

Azerbaijan set up a new checkpoint last Sunday on the road to Karabakh, the Lachin corridor, in a move that Armenia called a gross violation of a 2020 ceasefire.



India: Efforts Are on to Reconstruct Events that Caused Air India Crash

FILE PHOTO: A tail of an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane that crashed is seen stuck on a building after the incident in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A tail of an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane that crashed is seen stuck on a building after the incident in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo
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India: Efforts Are on to Reconstruct Events that Caused Air India Crash

FILE PHOTO: A tail of an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane that crashed is seen stuck on a building after the incident in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A tail of an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane that crashed is seen stuck on a building after the incident in Ahmedabad, India, June 12, 2025. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo

Efforts are underway to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the Air India plane crash this month that killed 260 people, and identify contributing factors, India's civil aviation ministry said on Thursday.

The London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed moments after takeoff from India's Ahmedabad city on June 12, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and the rest on ground in the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade.

The black boxes of the plane - the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) - were recovered in the days that followed, one from the rooftop of a building at the crash site on June 13, and the other from the debris on June 16.

They were transported to national capital Delhi on Tuesday, where a team led by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau began extracting their data, Reuters quoted the ministry as saying in a statement.

"The Crash Protection Module (CPM) from the front black box was safely retrieved, and...the memory module was successfully accessed and its data downloaded...the analysis of CVR and FDR data is underway," it said.

The CPM is the core part of a black box that houses and protects data recorded during a crash.

India said last week that it was yet to decide where the black boxes would be analyzed. The data retrieved from them could provide critical clues into the aircraft's performance and any conversations between the pilots preceding the crash.

The air disaster has also brought renewed attention to violations of norms by airlines in the country.

India's aviation regulator said on Tuesday that multiple instances of
aircraft defects reappearing were found at the Mumbai and Delhi airports - two of India's busiest.

Reuters has reported that warnings were given by India's aviation regulator to Air India, which has come under increased scrutiny since the crash, including for permitting some aircraft to fly despite emergency equipment checks being overdue.

The airline has also been warned for violations related to pilot duty scheduling and oversight.

Air India has said it had implemented the authority's directions and was committed to ensuring adherence to safety protocols.

It also said it was accelerating verification of maintenance records and would complete the process in the coming days.