{"id":4948,"date":"2004-04-08T12:40:09","date_gmt":"2004-04-08T11:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grayblog.co.uk\/?p=4948"},"modified":"2004-04-08T12:40:09","modified_gmt":"2004-04-08T11:40:09","slug":"maddespotwatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/2004\/04\/08\/maddespotwatch\/","title":{"rendered":"MadDespotWatch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s soooo long since we had a round-up of news stories coming out of Turkmenistan. As you may recall, the President-For-Life, Saparmurat Niyazov, is completely barking mad. Who could forget when he renamed the days of the week and months of the year after himself (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.grayblog.co.uk\/archives\/old_blogging\/001885.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"yesterblog\">first reported here<\/a>), or when he decreed that youth lasted until the age of 37 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.grayblog.co.uk\/archives\/old_blogging\/001859.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"yesterblog\">here<\/a>). So, to bring you up to date on the latest mad happens in Turkmenistan, I present a Niyaozov News Update:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/asia-pacific\/3607467.stm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"BBC News\">&quot;Those of you whose teeth have fallen out did not gnaw on bones. This is my advice.&quot;<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/asia-pacific\/3522855.stm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"BBC News\">Midwives and nurses to be replaced by army conscripts.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/asia-pacific\/3142311.stm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"BBC News\">Turkmen leader inspires love towards watermelon.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/business\/2729053.stm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"BBC News\">Turkmen leader hands out free Mercedes cars<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/europe\/3137943.stm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"BBC News\">Man makes giant shoe in honour of Turkmen leader<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can catch up on all the &quot;latest&quot; news from Turkmenistan through the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tmpress.gov.tm\/eng.htm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"in English\">official Turkmen news agency<\/a> &#8211; shame there hasn&#8217;t been any news since October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s soooo long since we had a round-up of news stories coming out of Turkmenistan. As you may recall, the President-For-Life, Saparmurat Niyazov, is completely barking mad. Who could forget when he renamed the days of the week and months of the year after himself (first reported here), or when he decreed that youth lasted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}