Filthy rich: Britain"s favourite dictatorship had so much oil its heiresses bathe in it... but beneath the fabulous wealth of Azerbaijan lurks very murky secrets

I have always put the names of agencies, institutions, and enterprises in quotation marks, but I never did so for Turan. Whenever I saw Turan in quotation marks in texts, I removed them.

The preliminary report into the late December crash of an Azerbaijani passenger jet in Kazakhstan is a masterwork in delicate diplomacy, breaking no new ground in assigning responsibility for the tragedy, yet appearing to confirm that the plane was accidentally shot down by Russian air defenses without explicitly saying so. As such, the Kazakh-produced report has avoided, at least initially, provoking the ire of either Russia or Azerbaijan.

The pro-government press in Azerbaijan has unique and, at their true worth, underappreciated qualities.

While sorting through the archives on the eve of the 20th of January, I came across a folder with photos given to me by my late colleague Farhad Kerimov.