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/ 25 April 2008

Turkmenistan to drop late dictator’s month names

In Turkmenistan getting the date right was a tricky business. Instead of April there was Gurbansoltan — the name given to the month by the country’s late dictator, who renamed it after his mother. But on Thursday the Central Asian nation took another step towards ending its isolation, when its new president suggested dumping the names invented by his predecessor,