A loud countdown rang out in the early afternoon on December 21, creating echoes in the sleepy hills surrounding Sirince, an ancient village near Turkey’s Aegean coast. Mayan zero-hour had arrived.
“Five, Four, Three…”
The type of noise that locals normally associate with New Year’s Eve was being made by outsiders who had converged on Sirince’s central square to mark “Judgment Day.”
It is time for a pop quiz on Kazakhstani history. Going back more than 2000 years ago, the peoples who called what is present-day Kazakhstan home were:
A) Blood-thirsty barbarians.
B) Uncultured nomads who wandered the Steppe.
C) Mainly farmers who also raised cattle and horses in year-round settlements.
D) A and B.
Uzbekistan is facing a public health time bomb, experts are warning. Authorities contend they are making gains in the battle to contain the spread of HIV/AIDS, but independent specialists say such claims are built on twisted figures and deceptive methodology.
China is increasingly active in Central Asia, building pipelines and infrastructure projects, as well as expanding its diplomatic and cultural presence in the region.
As challenging as living conditions may be for children in Armenia’s 10 state-run orphanages, the difficulties only seem to multiply when they turn 18 years old and must fend for themselves.
It is becoming a pattern: As temperatures plunge in Kyrgyzstan, the gas gets cut, the electricity system overloads and burns out, and people shiver. Once central Bishkek, the capital, was immune to such suffering. No longer.
Health tourism can be a hairy business anywhere, but for Turkey this is literally the case. Hair transplants have been a cornerstone of the country’s billion-dollar-plus medical-tourism market for more than a decade. But recently, a growing number of medical tourists, especially Middle Eastern men, have been traveling to Turkey specifically for facial hair implants.
