Due to torrential rains during the last ten days, the Elegest and Durgen Rivers have swelled and flooded two settlements in Tuva-- the Elegest villiage and the Bai-Khaak villiage, located in two neighboring districts, Chedi Khol and Todzha. Last night more than six hundred people were evacuated from those villiages by helicopter. In the first villiage seventy-three children and around fifty adults were rescued from rooftops and other high places. In the second villiage five hundred local residents had to abandon their homes.

The Ubsu-Nuur Biospheric Reserve located on the border with Mongolia has been included into a list of monuments of the World Natural Heritage of UNESCO. On its territory there are over a thousand kinds of plants and over three hundred species of rare birds which are included in the Red Book of Russia. Among the eighty kinds of mammals are unique snow leopards, a cat-manul, northern deer, and mountain goats.

After a year, a marathon of an election in Ulug-Khem district has finally reached a close. On July 27 Victor Puruna, an ex-head of the Ulug-Khem district, was elected into the Chief Administrator position over runner-up Kaadyr-ool Koshkendei by thirty-nine votes. A year ago, Koshkendei won the election, but the results were challenged in court as Koshendei was shown to have included false information in his documents. He claimed to have a higher education, but actually has none. For a year the district has gone without a head. With the elections ending so dramatically, after election night on July 28, one of Koshendei's supporters was killed in the villiage of Aryskan-- he died of gunshot wounds.

Archaeologists of the Hermitage expedition from St. Petersburg are finishing their fourteenth field season on burial mounds near the Dogee-Baary mountains in the vicinity of Kyzyl. According to the head of the expedition, Sergei Havrin, some of the burial mounds can be completely liquidated-- many of them have been plowed up by local citizens who use them as garden areas. Excavations are conducted on two graves-- one from Scythian time (5-6000 BC), and the other is from Hun time (3-1600 AD). There is a scarcity of funeral stock in contrast to the notable burial sites in Arzhaan.

In July a group of scientists from Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the Tuvan Institute of Complex Natural Resource Development-- Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences will carry out geological research in Mongolia. Doctor of Geological Sciences, Vladimir Lebedev, and candidate of Geological Sciences, Amina Sugorakova, are supervising the work of this expedition. The group will study the age and a sequence of the formation of magmatic, ophiolite complexes of the Caledonian and Herzin zones. It should be noticed that before perestroika such work was conducted by permanent Soviet-Mongolian geological expeditions, which has subsequently been broken up.