This winter is very cold in Tuva – the air temperature has been staying below -40 degrees centigrade for already the second month.

Yesterday and today morning, the local media announced that the temperature is -44 degrees, but the actual thermometers of Kyzyl inhabitants were registering -50 degrees.

Two recent free days, when the thermometers registered only -35 degrees, were welcomed as a serious warming.

It is interesting that the station “Taiga” is much warmer, with its -18 degrees.

A filming group from the TV channel “Rossiya” has arrived to Tuva.

“We will travel throughout Tuva in search of Genghis Khan’s grave, - announced the leader of the filming team, Nina Baklanova. And, smiling, she explained: - That is, provisionally speaking, the theme of our future documentary film, around which we will, so to speak, dance. But that is, I repeat, provisional. Of course, in the first place we are interested in that which you consider the heritage of Tuva, which makes Tuva different from other regions of Russia. I mean throat singing, Buddhists, shamans, and many other things.”

In the summer of 2010, the group “Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha” will depart on a promo-tour of Europe and North America with a new album “Poety i mayaki” (Poets and Lighthouses). The solo album of the legendary Siberian rocker, which was recorded in the summer of 2008 in Scotland on the island of Jura in the private studio of musician and producer Giles Perring, is now completely ready to come out. It is interesting that the illustrious writer George Orwell wrote his last novel, “1984” on this same island.

1206 items of Nikolai Konstantinovich and Nadia Rushevs, were given to the National Museum of Republic Tuva.

100 of Nadia’s drawings, more than 200 of Nikolai Rushev’s paintings, photograph albums, booklets, posters, and also pins, which Nadia Rusheva used to collect as a schoolgirl, were donated to the museum by the young artist’s mother, the first ballerina of Tuva, Natalia Azhikmaa-Rusheva.

The director of the TV channel “Rossiya 2” (formerly “Sport”), Aleksandr Papyn, will be among those who provide direct broadcasting of competitions which involve Russian athletes from the Olympics in Vancouver.

On February 13, exactly at the eve of the Lunar New Year – Shagaa, Aleksandr will be working at the opening of the Olympic games. This way, the necessary condition for the year of Metallic Tiger to be successful, that is, wakefulness during the night before Shagaa, will be completely inescapable for Aleksandr.

The series of ethno-activities in the club 16Tonn continues, and is growing every minute.

On February 9, there was a premiere: Tuvan singer, who combines throat singing with electronic elements and free-jazz, supported by famous multi-instrumentalists – Sergei Letov, and the founder of the Night Prospect, Aleksei Borisov; neither needs an introduction, and they quarantee serious interest in how all this looks and sounds live.

In February-March of 2010, under the aegis of the WWF of Russia, the workers of the biosphere nature reserves “Sayano-Shushenskiy” and “Ubsunurskaya kotlovina” will be carrying out a census of the key groupings of the snow leopard (irbis), in the south of Krasnoyarskii Krai and in Soutwest of Tuva.

Television program “Narodnyi Reiting” (People's rating) carried out voting this week about the project “Nine Treasures”, which was announced by the head of Tuva, Sholban Kara-ool, on January 13. the viewers of the channel were asked to make up their list of the main treasures of Tuav. “They suggested the Tuvan language, shamanism, the Center of Asia monument,- said the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Plyus Inform”, Elvira Lifanova, who is also an adviser to the Chairman of the Government, to Tuva Online. – but most of the votes went to khoomei, Tuvan throat singing.”

Today, the artist Nadia Rusheva would have been 58 years old.

According to the Lunar calendar, the New Year, Shagaa, will be met in Tuva with the first rays of the sun on February 14. Because this day falls on a Sunday, the free day will be transferred to Monday, February 15, as specified in the law of the republic, “Concerning the holidays of Republic Tuva”. The day of welcoming Shagaa is calculated every year by astrological tables. As the administration of Kamby-lama of Tuva announced, the coming year is the Year of White Metal Tiger.