Free Republic

At least three transport planes from China reportedly flew to Iran in the three days after Israel began attacking Iran’s nuclear program and military command structure, their cargoes and missions unknown. The UK Telegraph reported on Tuesday that all three of the cargo planes “flew westward along northern China, crossing into Kazakhstan, then south into Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan,” and then dropped off radar screens as they approached Iran. All three of the planes apparently filed false flight plans that showed their destination as Luxembourg, but none of them flew anywhere near Europe. Later flights from the same region did head...

Afghanistan Myanmar (Burma) Chad Republic of the Congo Equatorial Guinea Eritrea; Haiti Iran Libya Somalia Sudan Yemen

WASHINGTON—President Trump has signed a sweeping travel ban on 12 countries and introduced more-limited travel restrictions on seven others, the White House announced, reintroducing a controversial immigration policy that came to define the early days of his first term.

The upcoming summit in Samarkand will bring together for the first time the leaders of the five Central Asian countries and the European Union. Following years of reform and European assistance, the five Central Asian countries - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - are embarking on a strategic pivot towards Europe. The EU is seeking reliable partners in the current rapidly changing geopolitical reality. This is for political and also economic reasons, such as trade, investment and energy. On Thursday and Friday, the Uzbek city of Samarkand will host the first-ever high level meeting between the EU and the...

How FUBAR is Afghanistan? More FUBAR than ever. Details in video. Transcript at link below video.

How Turkmenistan Became the Most Evil Country on Earth – Contents of this video ---------------------------- 00:00 - The World’s Strangest Dictatorship 07:07 - The Cotton Colossus 17:01 - Great Leader of the Turkmen 25:00 - A Dictators Marble Paradise 32:31 - Echoes of the Throne

A 2-mile-long methane plume in New Mexico. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Anew instrument aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has been used to identify more than 50 “super-emitters” of methane — a major step toward slashing global warming. The challenge: To combat global warming, we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide accounts for the majority of those emissions, and transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy will significantly reduce those. Methane is a much less common greenhouse gas than CO2, but it’s far more potent, with each ton emitted causing 80 times as much warming in...

(at 10:42, video contains an ad Curiosity Stream, YouTube seems to have redacted from the transcript, which skips from 10:41 to 11:04)The Aral Sea: The Toxic Soviet Sea | 23:46Geographics | 1.05M subscribers | 1,782,979 views | February 13, 2020

Over the past ten years, China’s Communist Party (CCP) has strategically relied on its $4 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to boost its image and influence with at least 149 countries to date. But success has eluded its efforts, and the BRI strategy may be doomed as a result. Consider for example the CCP’s stalled attempts at pushing the BRI strategy across countries in Europe. Not anticipated were the barriers and delays created by sanctions imposed on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. Before the sanctions, China used Russia as a convenient transit point for the shipment of BRI...

"China is our most important partner," says Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on the prospect of Afghanistan becoming part of the New Silk Road initiative

Vladimir Putin was given a stern dressing down by the president of Tajikistan in another indicator that the Russian dictator has lost respect and influence in his own backyard. Fellow longstanding dictator Emomali Rahmon, ruler of the Central Asian state of 9 million since 1994, seized upon Putin's woes back home and in Ukraine to give him a piece of his mind and tell him how he really feels during a summit in the Kazakh capital of Astana. A glum and awkward looking Putin slouched back in his chair and took the seven minute tirade as a host of Central...

Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered the remains of an ancient palace that may have belonged to Hulagu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan.The site in eastern Turkey's Van province, in the Caldiran district, is currently being excavated.Hulagu Khan, a Mongol warlord who lived from about 1217 to 1265, achieved military renown for leading several expeditions, including the sack of Baghdad in 1258.After the Mongol Empire splintered in 1259, Hulagu Khan became the ruler of the Mongol Ilkhanid State in the Middle East, which at its height included territory in what is now Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Georgia, Afghanistan,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with fellow heads of state on Wednesday at a massive table in Turkmenistan that dwarfed a comically long table at the Kremlin that previously captured global attention. Meeting with the leaders of Turkmenistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan, Putin sat far from other leaders at a massive rectangular table as they discussed cooperation in the Caspian Sea region, the Kremlin said. According to the Turkmenistan government, the 6th Caspian Summit was held at the "luxurious Arkadag Hotel."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and four allies have been mocked for meeting at an oversized table in Turkmenistan one day after Group of Seven (G7) leaders met at an average-sized table in Germany. Putin met with Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Iranian President Sayyid Ebrahim Raisi for the sixth iteration of the Caspian Summit in the Turkmenistan capital of Ashgabat on Wednesday. Leaders including President Joe Biden completed the annual G7 summit, which was hosted by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in Bavaria on Tuesday. Photos of the Caspian Summit quickly circulated online,...

Vladimir Putin will visit two small former Soviet states in central Asia this week, Russian state television reported on Sunday, in what would be the Russian leader’s first known trip abroad since ordering the invasion of Ukraine. -snip- Pavel Zarubin, the Kremlin correspondent of the Rossiya 1 state television station, said Putin would visit Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and then meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo for talks in Moscow. In Dushanbe, Putin will meet Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon, a close Russian ally and the longest-serving ruler of a former Soviet state. In Ashgabat, he will attend a summit of Caspian nations...

Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front, an opposition group, is claiming this evening to be on the verge of victories over the Taliban in several districts in the country’s Northeastern provinces. The NRF, which describes itself as “the last force fighting for the restoration of democracy in Afghanistan,” expressed hopes that these victories were the first steps in an effort to liberate the country from Taliban rule. It noted, though, that it was working without foreign aid that could bolster its efforts. Security analysts, meanwhile, expressed skepticism over whether the NRF could topple the new regime in Kabul, though noting the Taliban...

Rahim Esenov, one of the most well-known Turkmen writers who openly refused to follow the orders of the Central Asian nation's authoritarian leadership, has died in Ashgabat at the age of 95. Esenov's relatives and friends told RFE/RL on April 25 that the writer died over the weekend. No cause of death was given. Esenov openly rejected the cult of personality that was created by Turkmenistan’s first President Saparmurat Niyazov in the 1990s and was blacklisted for his refusal to go along with the leader. He rejected Niyazov's demand to change the plot of his book The Crowned Wanderer which...

Turkmenistan's president has ordered the government to find a way to extinguish a colossal gas fire burning since the 1970s. Dubbed the "Gates of Hell," the fire was rumored to be started deliberately in 1971 when a gas-drilling site collapsed into a gas reservoir, and geologists decided to set it on fire to keep the methane from spewing into the atmosphere—in the expectation that the fire would die out on its own in a few weeks. It didn't. The crater currently measures more than 230 feet by 65 feet and is a major tourist attraction in Turkmenistan, which has proven...

President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov wants to extinguish the flames of the “Gates of Hell” – a gas crater that has been blazing for decades. The site, also called “Door to Hell,” is located in the middle of the desert about 160 miles north of the capital, Ashgabat, and has become an attraction for the country’s few visitors. The hellish hole, which measures 190 feet wide and 70 feet deep, was formed in 1971 following a Soviet Union gas drilling collapse, according to Turkmen news site Turkmenportal.

Iran is hosting a meeting of... the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Russia holding talks in the Iranian capital Tehran on Afghanistan's political future and the formation of a new government...Iran's population is majority Shiite but Sunni minorities live predominantly in the areas near the border with Afghanistan. The Sunnis have long complained about discrimination by Iranian authorities.Due to dilapidated infrastructure and a lack of health and educational facilities, the areas near the Afghan border are the poorest and least developed in Iran...But Fatemeh Aman, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI),...