Round 5 can be called “The (K)nights..or is it..the day of the draws”…Click on the images for a larger view… on the second image…. Radjabov’s attention was caught by…. I wonder…by what! hehehe On this next image you can see the end position of Kamsky and Carlsen’s game… on the side bar of the blog..you will find a “live” link where you can play through the games of the day…and on THIS LINK you will find a games-link to all the games played so far in all the finished rounds.
On these images you can see the pairings for round 6-8. Tomorrow is a free day.
The Fortress Wall of Old City Baku
By Fuad Akhundov
The fortress wall of the old city of Baku is a source of pride to Bakuites. Not every city with a rampart constructed at the time of the Crusaders is so well preserved. Nor do many extend for a distance of 500 meters, as Baku’s rampart does. The rampart also enabled the preservation of the medieval image of the old town, with its numerous lanes, snaking streets and the flavor of an oriental city.
Initially, two ramparts encircled Baku. The internal rampart is almost completely preserved. It was constructed by King Manuchekhr II (1120-1149). The outer wall was much lower in height, and was installed by the local ruler, Zufuqar-khan in 1608-1609. The walls were surrounded by a deep moat that could be filled by underground water in times of danger.
The khanate of Baku (a kind of Muslim duchy) was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1806. The fortress walls were last used for defense in 1826. Cannons mounted on the walls repelled a last, desperate Persian attack.
At the beginning of industrial exploitation of oil in the 1870’s, Baku grew rapidly. In 1859, the population of the city barely exceeded 13,500 inhabitants, most of who lived inside the old city walls. By 1903, there were 143,000 Bakuites, and by 1913, the “black gold” had increased the population to more than 214,000.
The tiny medieval fortress was, of course, too small to hold all these people. So the outer rampart was taken down in 1884, along with the wall on side of the old city facing the sea. Stones from this wall were used to renovate the inner wall.
But Bakuites did not want to lose the old, outer wall forever. The primary entrance to the old city, Shemakha Gate had one gate in the outer wall, and one in the inner wall. So, as the outer was dissembled, stonemasons skillfully inserted a copy of the outer entrance into the inner wall, side by side with the original inside gate. A visitor with a sharp eye for color will notice that the stones of the left entrance are slightly whiter. City residents renamed the gates “Gosha-Gala Gapysy,” meaning, in Azeri, the Twin Gates. This is the only double entrance among the five gates of the fortress wall.
The most interesting detail over both entrances is the oldest coat of arms of Baku. It is composed of two lions, and the head of a bull with two discs around the bull’s head. The German traveler, Kempfer, deciphered the symbols in 1863, as follows:
Lions were often used in Oriental heraldry as symbols of strength. The bull and the cow were sacred animals to the Zoroastrians (even today, killing these animals is prohibited in India). The discs symbolized the sun and moon. So, Kempfer concluded, the lions (that is, the fortress walls) protect the bull (i.e., the city) during day (the sun) and night (the moon).
This oldest emblem of Baku probably did not meet with favor when Islam arrived in Baku, and was at some point consigned to history. Other emblems took their place until the 1880’s. Then, a new coat of arms was designed with three torch flames representing the Zoroastrian tradition. But the way the flames were carved in the limestone of the mayor’s office, they resemble moneybags. So people used to joke that the emblem had nothing to do with fire, but represented the wealth of Baku during the first oil boom.
Source:
Read HERE MORE! about Baku.
see some wonderful photos about Baku on: bakuphotos.blogspot.com
Read on THIS LINK about the world’s 25 dirtiest cities, which Baku is apparently one of them. Baku 2016 Olympic…Baku is officially bidding for the 2016 Summer Olympics …read on the link more…
Pollution
The World’s Dirtiest Cities
Tiffany M. Luck 02.26.08, 3:15 PM ET
Unless you’re in the oil business, there’s little reason to brave the choking pollution of Baku, Azerbaijan. Fetid water, oil ponds and life-threatening levels of air pollution emitted from drilling and shipping land the former Soviet manufacturing center at the bottom of this year’s list as the world’s dirtiest city.
Baku is bad, but far from alone. For residents of the 25 cities on this year’s list, black plumes of smoke, acid rain and free-flowing sewage are part of everyday life. Not as immediately visible: the impact on the population’s health and life expectancy.
To see which cities in the world were dirtiest, we turned to Mercer Human Resource Consulting’s 2007 Health and Sanitation Rankings. As part of their 2007 Quality of Life Report, they ranked 215 cities worldwide based on levels of air pollution, waste management, water potability, hospital services, medical supplies and the presence of infectious disease.
All cities are positioned against New York, the base city with an index score of 100. For the Health and Sanitation Rankings, the index scores range from the worst on the list–Baku, Azerbaijan, with a score of 27.6–to the best on the list–Calgary, Canada, with a score of 131.7.
Lead-poisoned air lands Dhaka, Bangladesh, the No. 2 spot on the list. Traffic congestion in the capital continues to worsen with vehicles emitting fatal amounts of air pollutants daily, including lead. The World Bank-funded Air Quality Management Project aims to help.
“Addressing air pollution is the easiest way to be able to fix someone’s well-being because we’re always breathing, and there are all sorts of harmful particulates in the air,” says Richard Fuller, founder of the New York-based Blacksmith Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to solving the pollution problems of the developing world. “In fact, the biggest pathway for lead poisoning is particulates in the air. So in areas with a lot of air pollution, shutting down the worst forces of these types of pollution really does make a difference.”
Nos. 3 and 4 on this year’s list are the capital cities of Madagascar and Haiti, respectively. Antananarivo, Madagascar and Port au Prince, Haiti, both face the challenge of a rapidly growing urban population and the ever-growing need for efficient water and waste management.
Mexico City, Mexico, ranks No. 5 on this year’s list. Residents can thank industrial and automobile emissions for air quality so bad that city ozone levels fail to meet World Health Organization standards an estimated 300 days of the year. But things could be worse.
“Mexico City has actually seen great improvement recently in terms of air pollution,” says Dave Calkins, founder of the Sierra Nevada Air Quality Group and former chief of the Air Planning Branch of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco. “So much so that the government actually has to campaign to let everyone know that pollution is still a problem.”
Economies suffer, too. Health care costs and lost productivity drag on business. Companies also face added costs in the form of remuneration packages when relocating employees and their families to some of these cities, noted Slagin Parakatil, senior researcher at Mercer. Cost-benefit analysis certainly suggests making progress toward cleanup. According to a study done by WaterAid, for every $1 spent on improved sanitation, the benefit equals $9 resulting from decreased cost of health care and increased productivity.
“If you do the numbers,” says Fuller, “to clean up the worst of it doesn’t really cost that much. It’s the 90/10 rule. To do 90% of the work only costs 10% of the money. It’s the last 10% of the cleanup that costs 90% of the money. For relatively little, we can do an awful lot to save a whole lot of lives.” Source: See the link in the start of this article.
Baku Round 5 from the Fide website
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Chessalee 