The residents of Tuva will welcome the Lunar New Year with the first rays of the sun on February 3.

The decision about this date for celebrating Shagaa was made by the lamas of the republic at a general meeting at the Tsechenling temple with participation of representatives of Buddhist clergy from all various kozhuuns.  This is also the date that Buryat Buddhists will start the celebrations of White Moon Sagaalgan.

Russian scientists found three snow leopards, a lynx and mountain goats with the help pf photo-traps in the "Ubsunur depression" nature preserve in Tuva, as announced by  A. N. Severintsev Institute of Problems of Ecology and Evolution of RAN.

The snow leopard (irbis) is the least studied species of large cats in the world. This is caused by the fact that it inhabits remote, hard-to-reach areas, as well as that it is a really rare species.

The administration of Ministry of Justice of Russian federation for Republic Tyva registered an new regional public organization - center of Tuvan-Japanese friendship "Kargyraa".

First, the center is planning to organize courses of study of the Japanese language for everyone who wants them. This was announced by the founder of  the center, famous musical producer Otkun Dostai. In his words, lately many people in Tuva expressed interest in learning Japanese.

This rare natural phenomenon happened long ago, in 1962, in Tuva, on the banks of the mountain taiga river Elegest, about 10 -15 km from the  Khovu-Aksy village.  I have told my friends many times about the night rainbow, this gift of nature that I witnessed,  but very often I was not believed. Now there is a lot of information about this phenomenon on the Internet, and nobody denies the possibility of a rainbow appearing at night, caused by moonlight during rain.

But regardless of the fact that there are many photographs by eyewitnesses, in almost 50 years after our rainbow I have not met anybody who has actually seen a night rainbow.

Usually people start thinking about arzhaans closer to July, around the time when they "ripen". But we have several reasons to talk about healing springs in December. First, our ancerstors would start preparations for  a trip to an arzhaan six months ahead of time, to get ready, and think everything out in great detail. Second, the project "Nine Treasures of Tuva" is coming to a close, and we would very much like arzhaans to be among the treasures. And the main reason is that after a political period in her life, Kara-Kys Arakchaa, a scientist-chemist, an author of  the popular brochure "Story of the Arzhaans of Tuva" and a delegate  to the State Duma, returned to Tuva.

- Kara-Kys Dongakovna, we are glad that you returned to the republic , and happy that you returned to the arzhaans. Did you vote for the "Nine Treasures"?

- I voted, and I voted for all the arzhaans that were on the list.

The best artistic collectives of Tuva will perform on December 29 in a benefit concert in support of building a monument to the founder of  Tuvan statehood, Mongush Buyan-Badyrgy, an educator, philosopher, poet, and statesman. The head of  the large Daa-kozhuun, Buyan Badyrgy was one of  the first Tuvan noyons to ask for Russian support and protection on  October 26, 1913.  Later he took part in working out the first  constitution of Tuva, and in preparation  and  realization of the centralized meeting of People's Republic Tannu-Tuva in August  of 1921.

The leaders of the special project "Nine Treasures", which involved voting for so-called treasures of the republic, is the snow leopard and lake Sut-Khol. The representative of the organizing committee  announced that the majority of  participants in the internet voting voted fro the snow leopard (17% of total votes), and lake Sut-Khol was voted for by the SMS voting, which went on during the period 1-10 December.

The project "Nine Treasures" was started in January of this year, and associated with the Year of Tourism in Republic Tuva. More than 230 entries were submitted by March 15, and the Expert council selected 110 attractions; then 45 were selected for the final voting. These include rivers, mountains, snow leopard, Scythians, more exactly their gold, national holidays, and ancient Slavs also were included, with their history.