Latest news with #non-Russian
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Ex-Oiler, Finnish Olympian Returns Home
Finnish forward Teemu Hartikainen, 35, with KalPa, the reigning Liiga champion announced on Friday. KalPa is the club Kuopio-born Hartikainen grew up playing for, but hasn't played there since 2010. 'It feels good to be here,' said Hartikainen. 'We have been able to settle down with our family in peace, and after the summer we won't have to go out into the world anymore. After all, we've been waiting for this for the past few years, to be able to settle down at home with our family again.' Hartikainen was chosen in the sixth round, 163rd overall, by the Edmonton Oilers in the 2008 NHL Entry Draft. Between 2010 and 2013, he split three seasons between the Oilers and the AHL's Oklahoma City Barons. In 52 NHL games, he recorded six goals, seven assists and 16 penalty minutes for the Oilers. Hartikainen then spent nine seasons playing in the KHL for Salavat Yulaev Ufa. In 2018-19, he made the KHL First All-Star Team and led the playoffs in points and plus/minus. In 2020-21, he had 64 points in 53 regular-season games, which led all non-Russian players in the league. Hartikainen spent the last three seasons in Switzerland playing for Genève-Servette, where he amassed 136 points in 161 National League regular-season and playoff games. In 2022-23, he helped the team win its first-ever national title and the following season Genève-Servette won the Champions Hockey League. Hartikainen was one of numerous Finns on the Genève-Servette team; most of whom have since returned home. Finnish teammates of Hartikainen in Switzerland included goaltender Antti Raanta, defenseman Sami Vatanen and forwards Valtteri Filppula and Markus Granlund. Confirmed: Sami Vatanen Returns To Hometown Club It had been rumored since early last season and now it's official. Finnish defenseman Sami Vatanen, 33, has signed a two-year contract to play with his hometown club JYP, the Liiga club announced in a press conference on Tuesday. Internationally, Hartikainen represented Finland at three IIHF World Championships and one Winter Olympics, winning gold in each three months apart in 2022. Hartikainen represents the only KalPa player under contract for 2025-16 that has any NHL, Olympic or World Championship experience, but he's nonetheless confident about the club's continued success. 'The club is growing year by year and there is a way of doing things here in the long term,' he said. 'It has been great to see how many of our own young people have grown up here to become Liiga players and under their leadership we are able to win the Finnish championship. It's great to be a part of this.' Photo © Anne-Marie Sorvin-Imagn Images Antti Raanta Signs With Hometown Finnish Team Antti Raanta is finally going home. On Monday, Liiga club Lukko, located in Raanta's hometown of Rauma, on Finland's west coast, announced that the 36-year-old goaltender had signed a one-year contract.
South China Morning Post
05-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
As Pyongyang marathon returns, North Korea's tourism remains frozen amid Russian pivot
When Simon Cockerell returned to the Pyongyang International Marathon last month after a five-year break, he felt a familiar energy – but the landscape had clearly shifted. Advertisement The general manager of Koryo Tours, the marathon's official travel partner, brought just 200 international visitors to North Korea , a stark drop from the 700 his company hosted in 2019. He attributed the smaller turnout to a combination of stricter access, limited travel options, and a reduced registration period. Unlike previous marathons announced nearly a year in advance, this year's race was confirmed only a month before the event on April 6, giving participants barely two weeks to register. Flights from Beijing were the only international entry point, and instead of the usual five to seven hotels, only one – managed by the athletics association in North Korea – was available. Visitors toured local landmarks and sampled North Korean beer, but under the official designation of a 'sports delegation', not tourists. Analysts say the highly restricted format – along with North Korea's general reluctance to reopen its borders to foreign visitors – reflects a deeper strategic shift. Amid tighter information controls and a growing military and economic partnership with Russia , Pyongyang appears to be turning its back on international tourism in favour of more politically aligned and financially dependable avenues of engagement. The costs of tourism have outweighed the benefits, and it seems North Korean decision-makers have come to realise that Dr Rüdiger Frank, analyst North Korea has remained largely closed to tourists since it sealed its borders in 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic . While Russian nationals have been allowed in since early 2024 , a brief reopening in February to non-Russian visitors in the northeastern city of Rason lasted just three weeks before the border was closed again without explanation.
The Guardian
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Cosmic metros, UFO circus tops and a 3,000C sun gun: the mesmerising architecture of Tashkent
A pair of huge turquoise domes swell up on the skyline of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, perching on the jumbled horizon like two upturned bowls. One gleams with ceramic tiles, glazed in traditional Uzbek patterns. The other catches the light with a pleated canopy of azure metal ribs. Both recall the majestic cupolas that crown the mosques of the country's ancient Silk Road cities of Samarkand, Khiva and Bukhara. But here, they cover structures of a very different kind. The ribbed metal dome crowns the home of the state circus, its futuristic-looking big top seeming to have been crossed with a UFO. Built in 1976, it's big enough to hold an audience of 3,000. The ceramic dome, meanwhile, looms over the bustling chaos of the city's main market, Chorsu Bazaar, built in 1980 as a wonderworld of fruit, meat and fish, sprawling across an area the size of two football pitches. Both are dazzling works of Soviet modernism, and part of a remarkable group of buildings that the country has just submitted to Unesco, in the hope of having them granted world heritage status. 'People tend to think of Uzbek heritage as our ancient Islamic monuments,' says Gayane Umerova, chair of the country's Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF). 'But we need to realise that we are in danger of losing the more recent layers of history, due to urban development. We have to act now.' Over the last few years, the ACDF has been highlighting Tashkent's unique postwar heritage, hosting conferences, commissioning expert research, and now publishing two hefty books about the period, as well as putting the topic in the global spotlight with an exhibition at the Venice architecture biennale, opening shortly. This push was triggered in 2018, following a public outcry over the demolition of a beloved cylindrical concrete movie theatre, the House of Cinema, built in 1982. It was hastily bulldozed to make way for a $1.3bn commercial development, a bloated cluster of generic glass towers known as Tashkent City. 'It was a big loss for our society,' says Umerova. 'It wasn't just about the building –people had grown up with the cinema as a place to go on dates, see friends, hang out. Its sudden loss made us look at what else might be in danger.' In the line of fire, potentially, is one of the most unusual collections of modernist buildings anywhere in the world. About 2,000 miles from Moscow, Tashkent occupies a fascinating position in the history of the Soviet Union as a showcase city, bridging east and west. It was designated a 'beacon of socialism in the east', conceived as a vast vitrine to display the successful socialist transformation of a non-Russian city. Its image of prosperity, abundance, leisure and progress would show how communism could be adapted to the diverse, far-flung populations of Central Asia – and therefore to the rest of the world. An earthquake in 1966 provided a convenient excuse to raze much of the historic city and impose a masterplan of wide avenues dotted with grand, orientalist structures that would speak of Tashkent's new role as the modern gateway to Asia. The buildings are a fascinating mix, combining the latest technologies and construction techniques of international modernism with ornamental details that hark back to the 15th-century architecture of the Timurid dynasty. That became adopted as the official national style, and remains so to this day, despite it being of little historic relevance to Tashkent. 'Interestingly, the buildings designed for Tashkent in Moscow were much more decorative and 'orientalist' than those designed locally,' says Ekaterina Golovatyuk, a Russian architect whose Milan-based practice Grace has been leading the preservation strategy. 'It was like they were trying to present an imaginary, exoticised image of Tashkent back to local people.' She is standing outside the former Lenin Museum, now the state history museum, a gleaming white marble jewellery box. Wrapped with supersized latticework screens, it appears to float above a recessed glass lobby on a hidden steel frame. The building was created in 1970 by the snappily titled Central Scientific Research and Experimental Project Institute for Entertainment and Sport, an elite Moscow bureau that delivered prestige projects across the USSR. Despite the bold modernist form, its design consciously draws on tradition, with the geometric screens referencing vernacular Uzbek panjara, or latticework grilles that provide shading and ventilation, as well as Islamic patterns (a fact not mentioned at the time). 'The design was criticised locally for being superficial,' says Golovatyuk. 'But it launched a new direction. Gradually, this would become the language of modernist Tashkent.' The domed circus is a striking example of how these aesthetic attitudes evolved. It was first drawn up in the early 1960s, by architects Genrikh Aleksandrovich and Gennady Masyagin, as a brutalist flying saucer, studded with porthole windows. Construction began in 1965, but was halted by the earthquake. As time went on, the space-age design became historicised, clothed in traditional fancy dress. The inspiration was no longer a UFO, but an Uzbek piala, or teacup. Decorative concrete sunshades were added, in a form that echoed ancient Kufic script. The interior is a surreal mashup, where concentric cosmic rays radiating from the doorways became encrusted with traditional ornamentation, like a spaceship decked out in chintzy wallpaper. Other experiments to celebrate the regional context focused less on decoration than on local typologies. One of the most radical projects of the era is the Zhemchug (or Pearl) housing block, designed as a vertical expression of the traditional mahalla courtyard homes. Built in 1985, the 16-storey tower features a pair of communal courtyards every three storeys, providing space for children to play, while elderly residents sit out playing chess and drinking tea. Front doors are reached via outdoor galleries that look down into these back yards in the sky. 'I love its uniqueness,' says Dilara, who has lived here for decades. 'We've used the courtyards for weddings, barbecues and drinking beer together. There is a strong sense of community.' A rooftop swimming pool, now a pond, was added to increase stability in the event of an earthquake. It is surrounded by mushroom-shaped sunshades that double as ventilation for all the kitchens down below. Sadly, this inventive design didn't take off. 'It was the first building in Uzbekistan to use sliding concrete formwork,' says Golovatyuk, referring to a system where the moulds are moved up while concrete is poured continuously. 'It was supposed to be cheaper and faster, but it turned out to be slower and much more expensive.' Still, its occupants seem to love it. They've even curated a little exhibition about its female architect, Ophelia Aydinova, in the lobby. Cost may have deterred any repeat, but money was no object when it came to symbols of national pride. As the planned economy began to falter in the 1980s, the baubles of Soviet pomp became ever grander. As Golovatyuk puts it: 'When a regime isn't doing so well, the need for representation gets even bigger.' She is standing outside a prime example, the gargantuan Palace of People's Friendship. Unveiled in 1981, its ornate hall seats over 4,000 in a pharaonic temple of culture, dripping with gilded ceramics and crystal chandeliers. Designed by the team behind the Lenin Museum, led by Yevgeny Rozanov and Elena Sukhanova, it is a tour de force of Uzbek modernism. Raised on a plinth, the museum is wrapped in a muscular facade of panjara-inspired grille-work, crowned with a colossal frieze of abstract muqarnas, the sculptural stalactite motifs found inside the domes and niches of Islamic architecture. Inside, the ceiling of its triple-height atrium groans with pearly chandeliers, evoking dangling branches of cotton bolls, while the walls are lined with fluted blue tiles and expressionistic ceramic sculptures by Alexander Kedrin. The floors, meanwhile, writhe with geometric marquetry. It has the look of an immense marble Transformer, seemingly about to unfold into a great robotic creature and march towards the circus. There are more wonders dotted throughout the city, beautifully photographed by Karel Balas for a Rizzoli coffee-table book, and meticulously examined in a 900-page tome for Lars Müller, with pictures by Armin Linke. The metro system is a particular treat, especially Kosmonavtlar (or Cosmonauts) station, built in 1984 as a cosmic fantasy of blue tiled walls, green glass columns and celestial light fittings, evoking the wonders of space exploration. Perhaps the most spectacular of all lies an hour outside the city, perched on a hillside in Parkent. Looking like something dreamed up by a Bond villain, the Sun Heliocomplex is an astonishing sight, a 20-storey convex cliff of mirrors, able to channel the sun's energy to a temperature of 3,000C. Completed in 1987, it was designed to test the resistance of materials to nuclear explosion and develop heatproof ceramics for the Soviet military. Since the collapse of the USSR, it has hobbled along, working with agriculture, textile and mining industries. Although it was a classified project, off-limits to most, it was intended as a showcase of applied arts, featuring sculptural ceramic screens and dazzling planetary chandeliers by artist Irena Lipene. A seven-tonne example will be shown in Venice, capturing in crystal the end-of-the-world glamour of the nuclear age. Sergo Sutyagin, a leading Uzbek architect, hailed this 'cosmic architecture', praising how it 'poetically and fantastically emerges' from the hillside, 'prompting philosophical reflections on the reality of the unreal, on the possibility of the impossible'. The space race having moved elsewhere, you can now visit the complex and harness the immense power of the sun to boil a kettle or fry an egg. Tashkent: A Modernist Capital is out now
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Czechia announces full independence from Russian oil
Czechia has become completely independent of Russian oil supplies for the first time in history. This happened after the TAL pipeline had been upgraded. Source: MERO ČR, Czechia's state-owned pipeline company Details: "Almost 60 years later, our dependence on the Druzhba pipeline is coming to an end and Russia can no longer blackmail us by cutting off supplies," the press service for MERO ČR quoted Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala as saying. The prime minister noted that the first larger shipments of non-Russian oil had arrived at the storage facilities. Czechia was one of three EU countries that imported Russian oil. Hungary and Slovakia still receive supplies via the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline, which remains exempt from the European embargo. Background: Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stated that stopping oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline would constitute a violation of the Energy Charter Treaty and the Association Agreement with the European Union by Ukraine. Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Trump and Putin are making the same error about patriotism
Their rhetoric is replete with references to nation and country, but the one thing among many that Presidents Trump and Vladimir Putin don't understand at all is the actual power of nationalism and patriotism. And it's perfectly clear why. Both are empire builders who believe they have a sacred duty to expand the borders of their realms — regardless of what anybody might say, do or think. Putin aspires to revive the Soviet Russian empire, including all 14 non-Russian republics and as many of the East European countries as he can gather in. Trump, meanwhile, hopes to annex Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and even the Gaza Strip. As Putin saw it, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine appeared ripe for the taking. After all, the Belarusians and Ukrainians are really Russians, as Putin and his subalterns have repeatedly claimed, while Moldova and Georgia were too small to resist. Trump's logic is similar. The Canadians are really Americans. And Greenland, Denmark, Panama and Gaza are too weak to say no to the American behemoth. Putin expected his invasion of Ukraine and his hegemony over Belarus to be a cakewalk. Instead, the war against Ukraine has been a disaster for Russia's army, economy and people. Even Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus's wily leader, has cleverly managed to retain more breathing room than Putin would have wished. Trump appears to have similar expectations regarding his imperial targets. Like Putin, he will discover that empire building in the age of nationalism and patriotism is no easy task. Moldova has resisted total annexation by Russia for three decades, as has Georgia. Belarus retains a surprising level of semi-sovereignty, most clearly shown by Lukashenko's refusal to get directly involved in Putin's genocidal war against Ukraine. And Ukraine, which was supposed to have been captured in a few weeks, has successfully resisted Russian imperial aggression for many reasons, the most important being that Ukrainians have responded to his invasion by becoming full-fledged nationalists and patriots. They believe that their nation deserves to have its own sovereign state and they have come to love their country. Canadians, Greenlanders, Danes, Panamanians and Palestinians in Gaza have reacted in precisely the same way. Canadians and Greeenlanders in particular have almost universally rallied around their flag and country and are determined to resist Trump's aggression. They too have become ardent nationalists and patriots. Putin and Trump don't 'get' nationalism. They don't understand that the desire for independent nation-statehood has defined modernity since at least the American and French Revolutions. Nor do they get nation, country and patriotism. Nations have arguably existed since ancient times (the Israelites were surely a nation by any definition), whereas country and love of country are at least as old as the Latin word 'patria' and the Biblical Promised Land. Like it or not, the world is divided into nations, most of which aspire to independent statehood, and into countries, which always manage to elicit the emotional support of their countrymen and women. Like it or not, nationalism and patriotism rule the day. As imperialists with imagined divine mandates, Putin and Trump don't see any value in the existence of other nations and countries; only their own matter. As a result, they regard resistance to their imperial schemes as temporary aberrations that need not be heeded. Such a dismissive attitude may have worked during the age of European imperialism in the 19th century, but it is doomed to failure in the 21st. For one thing, just about everybody is a nationalist and patriot today, usually without even being aware of it. Persuading the world that it's wrong, or forcing it to acquiesce to the sword, won't work anymore. For another, resistance is so much easier. Most of the world is educated, has its own elites and access to material resources. People have become aware of their power, especially in the age of the internet. Technology has also contributed to leveling the military playing field, as the Russians killed by swarms of Ukrainian drones have unhappily learned. Finally, today's resistance movements generally have the support of large popular constituencies and are firmly rooted in their cultures. For better or for worse, cities can be demolished and their residents deported or placed in concentration camps, but the spirit of resistance cannot so easily be destroyed. It's thus no surprise that the age of empires ended in the 20th century, during the age of nationalism and patriotism. Putin and Trump will both learn the same bitter lesson as did the Europeans before them: You can kill nationalists and patriots, but you can't kill nationalism and patriotism. They will inevitably prevail and serve as the gravediggers of both imperialist misadventures. Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as 'Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires' and 'Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
