Armenia Ranks 79 in Free Countries IndexAugust 7, 2006 - 18:54 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - The 2006 State of World Liberty Index ranks countries from most to least libertarian by compiling information from four freedom indices into one single index. The indices used were:The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal, the Frasier Institute/Cato Institute, Freedom House, Reporters without Borders. The countries were broken into three criteria: individual freedom, economic freedom and government size/taxation and averaged. According to the index, the freest region is Europe whole the freest country is Estonia. "The world is not free," the experts say. The world receives a failing score of 56.9% out of 100. The mangled corpse of the Soviet Union is stretched across the list, with the Baltic states of Estonia (#1), Lithuania (#16) and Latvia (#21) all making the top 25 after embracing free market liberalism, while their neighbor Belarus (#153) and the Asian countries Turkmenistan (#154) and Uzbekistan (#152) dangle in the bottom ten. Armenia (#79), Russia (#124), Kazakhstan (#132), Tajikistan (#141) and Azerbaijan (#137) are also struggling in a post-Soviet world. North Korea is at the bottom of this list, with a score of 6.2%. Top stories Authorities said a total of 192 Azerbaijani troops were killed and 511 were wounded during Azerbaijan’s offensive. In 2023, the Azerbaijani government will increase the country’s defense budget by more than 1.1 billion manats ($650 million). The bill, published on Monday, is designed to "eliminate the shortcomings of an unreasonably broad interpretation of the key concept of "compatriot". The earthquake caused a temporary blackout, damaged many buildings and closed a number of rural roads. Partner news | Russia warns Armenia against “falling into West’s trap” Zakharova maintained, however, that anything that will benefit the people of Armenia can only be welcomed. CSTO: Armenia has not participated in secretariat’s work recently Recently Armenia has not participated in the work of the secretariat of the CSTO, Imangali Tasmagambetov said. Meeting with U.S., EU not against third parties, says Armenia The meeting scheduled for April 5 is dedicated to strengthening of the Armenia-EU-US cooperation, Yerevan added. Ucom launches network modernization efforts in few regions of Armenia In particular, on March 28, the legacy Mobile Switching Subsystem will be replaced with a new one. |