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The world is talking, are you listening?

“Good news Pamiris,” writes [ru] Bektour Iskender, President of Kloop Media, a Kyrgyz news portal and blogging platform. “Wikipedia has provided permission to begin a version of the site in Shughni.” Shughni is one of the main languages spoken in Gorno Badakhshan province (GBAO), a remote, eastern part of Tajikistan dominated by the Pamir Mountains. Iskender helped local internet users file the request to create a Shughni section of Wikipedia following a new media training session in Khorog, the province's administrative capital, over two years ago. “Now begins the small matter of realizing [Wikipedia in Shughni]. But I can't help there, since I don't know a word of the language,” he says.

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Postage stamps featuring some of Kyrgyzstan's wild mushrooms – edible and non-edible. Images taken from ianbek.kg, used with permission.

“Never eat overripe, clammy, flabby, wormy or spoiled mushrooms,” writes Ian Claytor, translating advice from Kyrgyzstan's Department for Disease Prevention and Expertise in his blog, Postcard from Bishkek. With the mushroom picking season underway in the former Soviet state, the Ministry of Health have come up [ru] with guidelines to help pickers enjoy the pastime safely.

It is a pity that instead of the ‘leninization’ of the monument space we now have its ‘somonization’. Every town erects a Somoni statue. How much more can we take? Why do we need so many identical monuments? Somoni might have been a heroic figure (which is impossible to ascertain now because the country’s history is excessively ideologized and politicized), but we should not turn him into a new Lenin, a ‘father’ or ‘grandfather’ of the nation.

Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, is very active in social media, and her provocative Twitter posts and photos shared on Instagram often raise eyebrows among the mostly conservative audiences in Uzbekistan and other countries in the region. Blogger Ayana Seidimbek presents a collection of the most controversial posts and images the ‘Uzbek princess’ has shared in social media.