{"id":273204,"date":"2016-06-16T15:47:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T11:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=273204"},"modified":"2016-06-16T15:47:21","modified_gmt":"2016-06-16T11:47:21","slug":"a-little-firework-never-hurt-anybody-gyumri-to-organize-amd-1-million-worth-of-fireworks-for-pope%e2%80%99s-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2016\/06\/16\/a-little-firework-never-hurt-anybody-gyumri-to-organize-amd-1-million-worth-of-fireworks-for-pope%e2%80%99s-visit.html","title":{"rendered":"A Little Firework Never Hurt Anybody: Gyumri to Organize AMD 1 Million Worth of Fireworks for Pope\u2019s Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\tThe Council of Elders of Armenia&rsquo;s second largest city of Gyumri approved today unanimously a proposal to allocate 1 million drams for the organization of fireworks in connection with the visit of Pope Francis next week, yet during a pre-vote discussion councilman, editor-in-chief of Gyumri-based &ldquo;Asparez&rdquo; newspaper Levon Barseghyan had raised some concerns about the advisability of the initiative.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;As far as I know, the Pope doesn&rsquo;t like fireworks. Are they absolutely necessary? Can&rsquo;t we spend this money effectively on more pressing issues, or do we absolutely have to set it on fire?&rdquo; Barseghyan inquired.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tGyumri mayor Samvel Balasanyan, however, insisted on the necessity of the fireworks, saying: &ldquo;We too want to show that we have a beautiful city.&rdquo; He added that the fireworks could actually cost 500-600 thousand drams, but they were allocating a million drams &ldquo;just in case&hellip;for unanticipated costs.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;As for the fireworks&rsquo; necessity &ndash; it&rsquo;s a celebration and we&rsquo;re going to have many guests. The Pope will be in Gyumri until 6pm, and it wouldn&rsquo;t hurt to have a firework display a couple of hours later. We are only human after all&hellip;We are not doing this for the Pope, but for ourselves,&rdquo; the Mayor reasoned.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gyumri mayor Samvel Balasanyan, however, insisted on the necessity of the fireworks, saying: \u201cWe too want to show that we have a beautiful city.\u201d He added that the fireworks could actually cost 500-600 thousand drams,,,<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":273197,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[20282,34587,14237,18396],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273204"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}