The ultimatum by the interim Kyrgyz government for ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to surrender looks more like the beginning of a trade-off than a prelude to a civil war, a leading Russian Central Asia expert, Arkady Dubnov, told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
Twenty years ago, on January 31, 1990, some 5,000 people gathered in Moscow"s Pushkinskaya Square, waiting for the opening of a McDonald"s restaurant, the first to start working in the Soviet Union.
Iran plans to invest $200 billion in its oil and gas sector over the next five years to prevent a production decline and boost refining capacity, the trade journal Upstream reported Wednesday on its web site.