steiermark.orf.at
Foto Galina Toktalieva
Graz bewirbt sich als “City of Design”. Voraussetzung für diesen Titel der UNESCO ist ein klares Bekenntnis zu Kreativität und Innovation in allen Lebensbereichen der Stadt. So sollen Tourismus und Wirtschaft angekurbelt werden. Bei der UNESCO in Paris, die den Titel an kreative Städte vergibt, liegt seit dieser Woche die 230 Seiten starke Bewerbungsmappe der Stadt Graz für den Titel “City of Design”. Bisher finden sich sechs Städte im 2004 gegründeten Kreativnetzwerk, darunter Berlin, Montreal, Nagoya und Shenzhen (China). (more…)

Radio Free Europe
After president elections in Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan’s Central Election Commission has announced the final results of July 23 elections, officially confirming that Kurmanbek Bakiev has been reelected to a second term in office with more than 76 percent of the vote. Bakiev, who turns 60 on August 1, was a city and regional Communist Party official when Kyrgyzstan was a Soviet republic, and after independence was a district head in southern Kyrgyzstan. In 1997, he became governor of Chu Province, where Bishkek is located. In 2000 he was named prime minister.
He resigned in May 2002 amid popular unrest and widespread protests at his government’s failure to address the shooting of protesters by police during a demonstration two months earlier. (more…)

Galina Toktalieva for die Wiener Nachrichten
Photo Galina Toktalieva
It seems not long time ago I stood before Moscow grocery store, chilled to the marrow and hungry, eager to get my portion of buckwheat, in line with hundreds of other hopping, popping and clinking with empty bottles Muscovites. It was after putsch time, when Boris Eltsin – then boisterous and robust-looking man who instigated spirit of rebel in red-carpeted corridors of ruling power, would appear in front of White House mounted on the tank, like Lenin in 1917. Eltsin conquered particular admiration and support from inhabitants of suburban Zelenograd, where I resided at that time. It was center of national electronic industry with military styled, barbwire fenced plants standing in ruin, with workers getting no salary for years in a row. We greeted all the revolutionary change could bring. It brought hope. But also disorder. Shop windows stared back at us with blind sockets of empty shelves. Pensioners could buy only a box of vodka for their lifelong savings. We kept in purse not money but ration cards. Life was wasted in queues.
The broken window was secured with piece of carton, and February wind
whistled in cracks of small hotel room. I pooled old newspapers and jacket at the top of my bed, but could not fall asleep. Tranquility and slumber eluded me. The sheets of manuscript at the table seemed snowy blue in lucid moonlight. Rolling over, I eventually sprang to the feet. I boiled some tea with camp boiler from my travel set, and after sipping it hastily, came out. (more…)

By Alex Kirby, BBC
Edited by Galina Toktalieva

Twenty years after independence, this small Central Asian state remains one of the poorest among former Soviet Union respublics, struggling to make its way in a complex and sometimes hostile world.
There is something of Arcadia about Kyrgyzstan in the spring. Heading out of the southern city of Osh, you pass apple and apricot orchards, with the road climbing every now and then to cross a spur of the mountains.There are not as many sheep as there were in Soviet times, when Kyrgyzstan was expected to provide winter overcoats for the world’s largest army but there are still plenty. We were heading for the small town of Khaidarkan, home to the only mercury mine in the world which is still exporting its output. (more…)