Scholars believe it to be the world’s largest treasury of ancient Buddhist texts. The sheer immensity of the collection held in the National Library of Mongolia has prevented a proper tally to date.
After public pressure forced him to back away from a head-on effort to drastically curtail abortion rights in Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is resorting to back-door methods to get his way, women’s rights activists assert.
Amid a lingering climate of fear hanging over southern Kyrgyzstan, journalists there are embracing a Soviet-style survival tactic: rather than run the risk of reprisals for writing freely, they are self-censoring and reporting only on what are considered safe topics.
In recent months, criticism has persisted that Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s government is allowing politics, rather than evidence, to guide criminal prosecutions of old foes. A curious case against a 19-year-old computer programmer, Vasil Jamalashvili, helps illustrate how that criticism has taken root.
As President Imomali Rahmon gears up for a reelection bid later this year, he’s apparently trying to take care of some unfinished business from Tajikistan’s civil war, which ended 16 years ago. Specifically, Rahmon is striving to neutralize a prominent political rival, former Prime Minister Abdumalik Abdullajanov.
Issues of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) rights have been much in the news in the former Soviet Union over the past year. In Russia and Ukraine, proposed legislation criminalizing "homosexual propaganda," or just about any discussion of homosexuality in front of minors, threatens to roll back the boundaries of tolerance for the LGBT community.
The priest’s voice echoed off the crumbling plasterwork of the sanctuary, as only two worshippers took part in a recent Sunday service in Istanbul’s Meryem Ana Church. The low turnout is typical these days. The Turkish Orthodox Church is possibly the country’s smallest Christian denomination, and certainly its most controversial.
Uzbekistan has introduced sweeping new banking and import regulations that appear designed to keep hard currency from leaving the country. Observers say residents and entrepreneurs should expect a bumpy ride in the coming months, as the cumbersome new measures are expected to drive up prices for basic goods and encourage an expansion of the shadow economy.
Narcotics use is wreaking havoc in Russia, responsible for 30,000 annual deaths and 200 new HIV infections every day. But Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is letting knee-jerk hostility toward the United States cloud its response to the drug-trafficking crisis.
Kazakhstan will serve as the host for sensitive international talks later in February concerning Iran’s nuclear program. The official announcement is a diplomatic coup for Astana.
