Mongolians in South Korea will celebrate their traditional Naadam Festival on June 26 for the first time since the Mongolian diaspora had been formed in the country.
The festival will be organized by the efforts of Mongolian Association in Ujinbu.
Golomt and Khaan Banks, headhunted in Ulaanbaatar, together with Seoul Global Center and two Korean lenders Woori Bank and Shinhan Bank announced will sponsor the cultural event, infoMongolia.com reports.
Experts have called Armenia’s Metsamor nuclear power plant “among the most dangerous” nuclear plants still in operation.
The Metsamor nuclear power plant is only 20 miles from Armenia’s capital and most populous Yerevan city. Its location in a seismic zone has drawn renewed attention since Japan’s nuclear crisis, NatGeo magazine said in its article “Is Armenia’s Nuclear Plant the World’s Most Dangerous?”
The power plant Metsamor was built in 1979 and closed in 1989 after an earthquake prompted officials to reconsider the safety of the location.
BBC World Service, which is a U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office-funded Broadcasting Services Organization in 32 languages world wide, will close its broadcasting operations in Azeri, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Russian, as well as in five languages of Balkan Republics due to the drastic budget cuts by the British government from Saturday March 26.
The broadcasting operations are going to close in Serbian, Portuguese, Macedonian, Albanian, and English in Balkan republics Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan had its first Facebook-organized rally last Friday.
According to Amnesty International information, about 300 people gathered in the city’s Fountain Square for a rally held by the Musavat opposition party. Several people were also detained on their way to the event by the police.
“There is no justification for heavy-handed tactics to be used against obviously peaceful protestors,” said Natalia Nozadze, Amnesty International’s Azerbaijan expert who was present at the protest.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko won a fourth term on Monday after a landslide victory marred by a violent police crackdown on mass protests and the arrest of opposition challengers.
Early Monday the state electoral commission said Lukashenko had won 79.7 percent with Sannikov, his closest rival, garnering only 1.6 percent.
Belarus police Monday arrested hundreds of protestors. The numbers of demonstrators at a rally in central Minsk swelled to tens of thousands at one point, AFP correspondents reported, with some of them trying to storm government buildings and smashing the glass doors.
North Korea’s iconic leader Kim Jong-il hailed his country’s “shining victory” and sang patriotic songs while attending a concert on Wednesday, according to official media outlets.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il attended a concert yesterday celebrating the 57th anniversary of the Korean War as the two main adversaries from that conflict conducted war drills off his country’s eastern coast.
Beginning this year, Russia is altering a prison system that dates back of 70 years to the time of Stalin, separating for the first time career criminals from the general prison population.
As the New York Times reports, currently, “the inmates are divided into barracks housing a hundred or so men without regard to the severity of their crimes. At night, a guard locks the door and walks away, leaving first-time offenders and people convicted of nonviolent crimes to fend for themselves in a crowd of gang members, hit men and other career criminals.”
After a lengthy, interesting, and highly competitive presidential election in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich was finally sworn into office in the country’s capital of Kiev yesterday.
The Associated Press
Friday, February 19, 2010; 6:46 AM
ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — Turkmenistan is set to allow the creation of a second political party this year, breaking up the one-party system that has been in place since the Central Asian nation gained independence, state media reported Friday.
The only political force registered in the ex-Soviet nation is the pro-government Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, which is closely modeled on the Communist Party.
“If anyone wishes to propose creating a new political party, we can register one this year, as stipulated by the Constitution,” President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov said at a government meeting Thursday. The constitution that was adopted in 1992 allows for the formation of political parties.
McDonald’s opened its first outlet in Russia 20 years ago this past Sunday, on January 31, 1990, while thousands of Moscoviets braved the cold in Pushkin Square.
To celebrate the milestone, as well as a 23 percent year on year profit increase last quarter, McDonalds’ CEO Jim Skinner announced that they would be expanding their business in Russia by 45 outlets in 2010.