clockwise around the Caspian Sea
- World Report 2024: Turkmenistan (hrw.org)
Turkmenistan made no improvements to its dire human rights record in 2023. The country remains closed to international scrutiny. Authorities continue to suppress fundamental rights and freedoms, including freedoms of religion, movement, expression, and association. Recent political reforms have only deepened authoritarian rule. The government does not acknowledge poverty and has failed to take measures to address continued food insecurity.
- Messier 67 (Wikipedia)
Messier 67 (also known as M67 or NGC 2682) and sometimes called the King Cobra Cluster or the Golden Eye Cluster is an open cluster in the southern, equatorial half of Cancer. It was discovered by Johann Gottfried Koehler in 1779. Estimates of its age range between 3.2 and 5 billion years. Distance estimates are likewise varied, but typically are 800–900 parsecs (2,600–2,900 ly). Estimates of 855, 840, and 815 pc were established via binary star modelling and infrared color-magnitude diagram fitting.
- Turkmenistan (Wikipedia)
Turkmenistan is a country in Central Asia bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ashgabat is the capital and largest city. It is one of the six independent Turkic states. With a population of 6.5 million, Turkmenistan is the 35th most-populous country in Asia and has the lowest population of the Central Asian republics while being one of the most sparsely populated nations on the Asian continent.
