To celebrate Europe Day, euronews took over a room at the European Council in Brussels, which is usually reserved for heads of state and government. Here Herman Van Rompuy answered questions, put to him by euronews viewers. READ MORE

Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambaev, in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant on April 10, said that while some may want to drive a wedge between Russia and Kyrgyzstan, “this will be hard to do.” Considering Atambayev’s streak of bewildering statements on Russia, and Kyrgyzstan’s policy over the last month, fallout appears to be becoming a permanent possibility. READ MORE

In April, Rustam Latifov, the head of the Tajik Parliament’s Ecological Commission, announced Tajikistan’s intention to seek international donors to help secure more than 50,000 tons of radioactive waste in Taboshar and distribute humanitarian funds for 2,000 people in the immediate vicinity who are particularly exposed in the villages of Old Taboshar and Somoni (ozodi.org, April 12). Taboshar, situated in the Ferghana Valley of Sugd Oblast just north of Khujand (Tajikistan’s second largest city), is one of ten Soviet-era nuclear sites in the country. While a part of the Soviet Union, Sugd Oblast was a center for both the extraction and enrichment of uranium. Mines in Taboshar and Adrasman provided uranium to the Leninabad Mining and Chemical Combine (now the Vostochnyy Rare Metal Industrial Association, or Vostokredmet) in the city of Chkalovsk. The then-Leninabad plant processed up to 1,000,000 metric tons of uranium a year to enrich yellowcake and uranium hexafluoride and provided the material for the USSR’s first nuclear weapon. READ MORE

It appears that Uzbek President Islam Karimov’s efforts to obtain a one-on-one meeting with US President Barack Obama are coming up short, an informed source indicates. Obama's preliminary schedule for the upcoming NATO summit reportedly does not include individual meetings with any of the Central Asian leaders who are planning on attending the event. READ MORE

Kazakhstan as one of the largest countries of Asia is gradually becoming a center of political transformation of the Islamic world. As head of the 38th Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the country is making every effort to resolve the pressing problems of the Islamic community. READ MORE