ISET President Eric Livny and head of the Private Sector Development Policy Center Sophiko Skhirtladze held a training session for the staffers of the European Integration, Economic Affairs, and other Committees of the Georgian Parliament regarding the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the European Union.

I was 13 when my family took the fateful decision to make ‘Aliyah’ to Israel back in 1977. ‘Aliyah’ (the act of going up in Hebrew) is a nice term describing Jewish ‘repatriation’ from the Diaspora (St. Petersburg, in my case) to the Holy Land. Etymologically, ‘Aliya’ originates in the ancient Israelite tradition of annual ‘pilgrimage tours’ to Jerusalem (situated almost 1km above sea level).

Some years ago my dad, who is an avid blogger, wrote a piece about a plague of disorderly advertising that was choking Kyiv. Notices promoting everything under the sun were plastered on the walls, fences, lamp-posts, in metro cars, on the bus stops, even on the pavement. Our own building’s entrance was a sad sight – always covered with debris of paper and glue.

In recent years, winter tourism in Kyrgyzstan develops rapidly and becomes much more popular. There are more than 6 ski resorts with chair lifts and several small bases with regular lifts in Kyrgyzstan. Besides them, there are a lot of building projects for new, modern ski resorts in various regions of Kyrgyzstan. The mountain territory of Kyrgyzstan provides comprehensive opportunities for their development.

The International School of Economics at TSU (ISET) invites applications for the 2015/16 program “Finance for Professionals”, aiming at executives, managers, and administrative personnel who want to upgrade their competency in finance. Managed by Paul Henri Forestier (former director for Caucasus, Moldova and Belarus, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)), the program will be delivered from November 2015 to June 2016.