The ‘tests’ were conducted on samples of hair found in a Siberian cave during an international expedition last year.

‘We had ten samples of hair to study, and have concluded that they belong to mammal, but not a human,’ said Professor Valentin Sapunov, of the Russian State Hydrometeorological Institute.

Nor did the hair belong to any known animal from the region such as a bear, wolf, or goat, he claimed.

Analysis was conducted in the Russia and US and ‘agreed the hair came from a human-like creature which is not a Homo sapien yet is more closely related to man than a monkey’, said the Siberian Times, citing claims made on a regional government website in Russia in the area where the hair samples were allegedly found.

It stated that long-awaited scientific tests were conducted on their hair at two institutions in Russia and one in Idaho in the US.

‘All three world level universities have finished DNA analysis of the hair and said that the hair belongs to a creature which is closer by its biological parameters to Homo sapiens than a monkey. The Yeti’s DNA is evidently less than one per cent different to that of a human.’

Continue reading, Click here

According to the story, the hunter said the Bigfoots appeared sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four legs. They got aggressive with him and moved very close to him. At one point, one got on a ledge above him and seemed to be threatening him. He shot it out of fear it was going to attack him.

For a period of time no one knew if the story was true, but then Derek Randles of the Olympic Project released an official statement correcting some of the “misinformation” circulating the Bigfoot community. That official statement from Randles set the stage for what is now called the “Sierra Kills”.

Justin Smeja, a hunter from Sacramento, CA was out bear hunting near Gold Lake with his friend (the driver) back in October 2010. This is his story:

I Killed Bigfoot – A Conversation With Justin Smeja (Full Movie)

FAIR USE Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law: This video is fair use under U.S. copyright law because it is (1) noncommercial (2) educational purpose only (3) transformative in nature, and (4) does not compete with the original work or have any negative effect on its market

The Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project invites institutions and individuals with collections of cryptozoological material (cryptozoology: the search for animals whose existence is not proven) to submit details of the samples they hold, and then on request submit the samples themselves, particularly hair shafts, for rigorous genetic analysis. The results will then be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Believers in the yeti suggest it could represent a survival of creatures such as the huge ape Gigantopithecus - Credit: Profimedia

Professor Bryan Sykes, a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, who will lead the project with Michel Sartori, Director of the Lausanne Museum of Zoology, said: “Theories as to their species identification vary from surviving collateral hominid species, such as Homo neanderthalensis or Homo floresiensis, to large primates like Gigantopithecus widely thought to be extinct, to as yet unstudied primate species or local subspecies of black and brown bears.

“Mainstream science remains unconvinced by these reports both through lack of testable evidence and the scope for fraudulent claims. However, recent advances in the techniques of genetic analysis of organic remains provide a mechanism for genus and species identification that is unbiased, unambiguous and impervious to falsification.”

These techniques were not available to biologists like Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, whose 1955 book Sur la Piste des Betes Ignorees (translated into English as On the Track of Unknown Animals) helped foster widespread public interest in the subject. Between 1950 and 2001, the year of his death, Dr. Heuvelmans, as well as investigating numerous claims, assembled a considerable archive that is now curated by the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Professor Sykes said: “It is possible that a scientific examination of these neglected specimens could tell us more about how Neanderthals and other early hominids interacted and spread around the world.”

Source: Oxford University [May 23, 2012]

Bill Penning and his wife, Julie decided to take a hike one June afternoon, and after setting out their planned route, got slightly waylaid on a different path.

“We were just walking and talking, heading up to Notown Reservoir when the path split. I wasn’t sure which path to take, so we choose one and started walking on it,” Bill began.

He said they continued walking on the path when they began to hear movement in the surrounding forest.

“I thought it must have been a deer or something, but it was leaves and branches crunching and breaking. I got a weird feeling, and so did my wife,” Bill explained.

The pair decided to keep moving forward, so they walked a little further on the path, when they realized they were not heading where they wanted to end up.

“I said to Bill we could continue on till we came to the power lines, but he said no let’s turn and go back the way we came,” Julie explained.

When they returned to the spot where they initially heard the rustling, they were shocked as to what they found.

“We had just been there, and when we came back there were footprints, with five toes, and at least three and a half inches deep in the mud, they were some serious tracks,” Bill said.

The Pennings both experienced an eerie feeling and decided they wanted to get out of the area.

“Where it was early spring there was a lot of brush and berries around us, but not a sound could be heard by anything, no birds, or other animals, just a weird feeling,” Julie said.

Bill said he felt disorientated, and they both spent more time trying to find a way out due to the feelings they had.

“I was kind of scared,” Bill said.

After finding their way back to the road and eventually their car, the couple headed home, still in shock over what they found.

Bill explained that the footprints, all six of them appeared to have jumped out of the wooded area. There were also deer hoof prints, yet no sign of a deer in the area either.

“I think that whatever was there gave us a warning noise, that’s all I can figure,” he said.

After some time of thinking and trying to rationalize what they saw, Bill contacted family friend Ron LeBlanc Jr. and told him what happened. LeBlanc said he has always been fascinated with things that cannot be explained, and has spent time doing research on such things as Big Foot.

“I told Bill I had a casting kit and wanted to go back to the area and make a cast of the prints,” LeBlanc said.

When Bill and Ronnie went back, the large indent of the footprint was still there, even after a few rainy days in-between. The men started making the plaster cast of the foot to bring out of the woods with them. LeBlanc was also surprised by the size of the prints, and knew from so much reading they could not have been made by a human.

“The length is ten and a half inches, but the width is totally huge. It is not a bear, they do not have toes. This has toes like a human,” he said.

The depth of the prints also could not have been made by any human, nor would a human be barefoot in such rough terrain.

“The feet were directly one in front of another, not like the gait of any man,” Bill said.

Once the castings were safely brought out, LeBlanc began making phone calls, and more research on the subject of Big Foot. With some contacts he made, the information got over to The Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet folks, who were very interested in seeing and hearing what the trio had to say.

Penning said part of the experience of being in the woods, “was we were being watched. It was totally silent with other animal noises when we were there, and both I and my wife had the weirdest feeling,” he noted.

LeBlanc said that every year, new species of wildlife and plants are identified, so finding something new is not a stretch.

“There are approximately 100,000 different species identified each and every year.”

Penning spent much of his life hunting, fishing and being in thewoods, so the hike he took was also not out of the ordinary.

“I started to think back to the area in Leominster that was known as Monster-land, and a story that someone went out there and never came out. Kids used to go there to party way back when and I remember stories of things people would see out there. Who knows what was living out there.”

From research done, sightings have also occurred in Gardner and Ashburnham, and all seem to follow the power lines that run east to west across the state. There are woods, water, and plenty of food for anything to live out there.

LeBlanc’s research of the unexplained shows the size of the footprint to be that of a female Big Foot, measuring 10 to 12 feet long. Male footprints can be up to 17 feet.

“I know what I heard and I know what I found,” Penning said. “We were never out there looking for a Big Foot, never even thought about it,” he added.

Stories of knocks in the woods and trees snapping are common in Big Foot sightings, and Penning said he heard the snapping and a grunt.

“All I know is I found prints that made no sense at all.

Julie Penning said if there is another explanation for what the couple found, “I would be interested in hearing it. If someone could scientifically tell me what we saw, I will listen.”

Bill, Julie and Ronnie said they were a bit skeptical telling anyone what they found.

“I hadn’t told anyone I work with about it, but after it’s on TV they’ll all know,” she smiled.

Julie is a special education teacher at the Florence Sawyer School in Bolton and Bill is a facilities manager for Progress Software in Bedford. LeBlanc works for a Boston newspaper.

“There are always people saying they saw a Big Foot, but all I know is you are not going to see one sitting on your couch. We were in a wooded area that according to research is the perfect place for something like that to be,” Penning concluded.

Author: DIANE C. BEAUDOIN | Source: leominsterchamp[January 12, 2012]

Well, think again. This is Yowie hunting 19th century style.

From the time those early colonials first headed out from the relative safety of the expanding settlement by the banks of Sydney Harbour into the unknown wilds of the Australian bush, stories quickly spread of terrifying encounters with a huge hairy, and often smelly, ape-like animal.

Many of those first encounters occurred in the rugged Blue Mountains that lay to the west of what is today the ever-expanding metropolis of Sydney. Check them out in The wild hairy man of the Blue Mountains.

Claims that a Yowie was shot

One of those earliest reports, from around 1820, is of the intriguing, yet unfortunately unsubstantiated, account of a colonial soldier startled by such an ape-like creature while out hunting for food. Apparently, the creature approached the unsuspecting soldier from out of the trees and began making “threatening gestures”. Obviously in fear of his life, it is said he shot the creature dead.

No convincing photo or video, no body, no DNA. But who knows? With the remoteness and ruggedness of the area, it’s unlikely the soldier could’ve dragged such a huge body back to civilisation. He would’ve had little choice but to leave the carcass to quickly rot in the bush and return to camp with his more appetising bounty.

As more colonists moved into the mountains, more encounters were reported. The creature was now well known to those hardy residents of the mountains. They often referred to him as the wild hairy man or the Yahoo. Today, we affectionately know him as the Yowie. He was said to like chickens, and was blamed for raiding many a local’s coop.

Opportunities for moneymaking

It didn’t take long before some of the more enterprising chaps of the colony began thinking of the entrepreneurial opportunities. One such chap was Mr Cummins of the Royal Hotel in Springwood. He offered 50 pounds for the capture of a live Yahoo so that he might “fasten him up in a hen coop and exhibit him to an admiring public, or sell him as an advertisement to a hair-restorative company”.

The Australian Town and Country Journal, in August 1885 also saw the merit in Yowie hunting.

“The rising generation in and around Tarago have been almost frightened by the appearance of an orangutan, or hairy man. Some short time ago one of these certainly very peculiar animals for this country was reported as having been seen near Parker’s Gap.

“Here is a chance for curiosity hunters,” the paper stated.

Yowie Hunters go bush

It was the good townspeople of Bredbo and Jingera who soon took up the challenge.

In An Esoteric Guide to Australia’s Capital, weirdaustralia reported the case of the Jingera Yahoo, spotted by a young man looking after stock on a Bredbo station and later also observed by several other reputable locals. The Yahoo was described as “walking with an unsteady, swinging, and fast step, his arms being bent forward and nearly reaching the ground, whilst the colour was described as bay, between a red and chestnut”.

Perhaps it was that same entrepreneurial spirit demonstrated by Mr Cummins of the Royal Hotel, perhaps it was for the advancement of science, or perhaps it was the fact that they did not fancy a huge, hairy apeman wandering the district terrorising farmers and their stock. Whatever the reason, the Queanbeyan Age reported: “It is the intention of Bredbo and Jingera residents to scour the bush in a strong body and capture the monster alive or dead. For this purpose they will meet at Mr. Kelly’s hotel … on Monday next to organise their forces and obtain a supply of ammunition.”

Unlike the high tech recording equipment and cable TV contracts of today’s Bigfoot Hunters, this party of 19th century Yowie Hunters would go in search of the creature with nothing more than their guns, lots and lots of ammo, a swig or three of liquor from Mr Kelly’s hotel … and quite possibly a few flaming torches and pitchforks for effect.

This early Yowie hunting party did share one similarity with their modern counterparts, however. They returned home empty-handed and extremely disappointed.

A Tom Biscardi moment?

This was not the first time that disappointment had been experienced in relation to such cryptozoological wonders. Back in October 1871, The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, announced to the world, (well to the inhabitants of the Hunter Valley at least) an astonishing revelation. A mysterious creature had been captured in the Lower Hawkesbury, said to be a Bunyip or Yahoo and that “it was determined to forward the wonderful animal to Sydney, and there exhibit it to a wondering and gratified public”.

Sound familiar?

But, yes, like so many similar promising breakthroughs since, this exciting news soon proved a huge letdown for the wondering and gratification-seeking public. The article concluded with the following heartbreaking bombshell: “An inspection proved the animal to be a large wombat … peculiar to New South Wales. The brute weighs about 100 pounds, and gave his captors a tough job to secure him”.

A captured Yowie … for real this time?

And then, a few years later, in 1912, hopes were again raised with the headline: A Queer Capture. Enormous Creature Resembling A Man.

“There is considerable excitement in the Bombala district over the reported discovery of a hairy man on Creewah station,” the article announced.

The owner of the station, Mr Sydney Jephcott, came across some peculiar tracks while out mustering stock. He described them as “like a human footprint, nearly 20 inches in length and 8 inches across”. Mr Jephcott, realising he had stumbled upon some remarkable evidence, or wanting to prove he was not a stark, raving lunatic “sent to a Bombala storekeeper for a quantity of plaster of paris with which to take an impression of the tracks”.

A neighbouring landowner, Mr Summerill, then claimed to have also seen the Yowie. “In a thick bush yesterday he saw an enormous creature resembling a man, covered with long hair. The animal was carrying a big stick and with long leaps made off through the bush.”

The article ended with the startling statement that: “A report was received later to the effect that the creature was captured today.”

And of course, that’s where the story ends. At least Mr Jephcott took some plaster casts!

The scientific debate rages

Like today, the scientific establishment seemed unwilling to accept the possibility that the Yowie or similar creature may actually exist, as the following correspondence to Australian Town and Country Journal from Mr H J McCooey of Mandurama Survey Camp illustrates.

In the journal’s The Naturalist in 20 October 1883 Mr McCooey wrote:

“A telegram from your Blayney correspondent appeared in the Evening News … announcing the fact that ‘a strange animal, like an ape has again been frightening the residents on the road from Orange to Bathurst, at a place called The Rocks. Several ineffectual attempts have been made to capture it’.

“Now, it is probable that you and many of your country constituents may remember that in your issue of December 9, 1882, I gave a somewhat lengthy description of a large ape, (or Yahoo, as the animal is called by bushmen) I had seen a few days previously in a rugged mountainous locality on the coast between Ulladulla and Bateman’s Bay …

“But strange to say, Mr. Ramsay, curator of the Australian Museum, disbelieves in their presence. Not because it is not possible for apes to be in the country up to date without being captured, but because of the deficiency of food plants for them to exist upon.”

McCooey goes on to argue that these Yahoos “have been frequently seen throughout the colony and that they were known to the aborigines of this colony, and were dreaded by them, long before a museum was ever founded in Australia”.

He then makes the tantalising, but sadly unproven, claim that “one was actually captured and killed near Braidwood within the memory of persons still living”.

But again, no photo, no video, no body and no DNA.

Mr McCooey, however, remained optimistic about obtaining suitable evidence with which to convince the stubborn curator that the Yahoo did indeed exist.

“The curator of the Museum, last December, offered me a bonus of £100 if I brought him either alive or dead an indigenous ape, and I think it is highly probable, that before many months elapse, I shall be in a position to claim his bonus.”

Unfortunately, that proved wishful thinking on Mr McCooey’s part. However, that did not stop him continuing his debate with the curator. In a second letter published in the journal in November of 1883, McCooey made the following valid point:

“The position taken by the curator of the Museum in regard to the presence of indigenous apes in this colony is wholly untenable. His argument is this. That as there are no fruits or food plants in Australia there can be no indigenous apes. Now, I readily admit that this argument would be of some weight if no ape had ever been seen in the colony, or if it were satisfactorily proved that without fruits or food plants it was impossible for the Australian ape to exist, but when it is notorious that apes have been seen in all parts of the colony at different times and by different persons, and when it is not shown that fruits or food plants are absolutely necessary for their existence, the curator’s argument becomes illogical.”

Well, it seems not much has really changed over the past 150-odd years.

Author: Andrew Nicholson | Source:weirdaustralia[January 13, 2012]

The answer appears to be a resounding negative, as Coleman, author of the 1989 book Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti which covered the story of the Pangboche hand, goes on to ask the question that could profoundly affect all hominology DNA sequencing: Pangboche Yeti Finger In Context: What Does Human Mean?

Elsewhere, another hairy biped, one that roams the forests and swamps of North America, is helping a group of researchers stay gainfully employed, as described by Bibi Nurshuhada Ramli in the report In Search of Bigfoot.

Also, a nine-year-old sighting of what is arguably the world’s most famous cryptid has been lingering below the radar until now when Roland Watson, author of The Water Horses of Loch Ness, unveils the comments of a respected angler and naturalist, Tim Richardson, in Nessie Sighting from 2002. And a translated German cryptozoology site has the history of a creature washed ashore in New Jersey ninety years ago and still much discussed among sea serpent afficionados, revealed in Cape May-Globster 1921.

Bigfoot researchers claim that a “nest” of trees found in the Kemerovo region is evidence that the creature was roaming the region and building homes in the same way that orang-utans or gorillas would.

Bigfoot experts from Russia, Canada, the US and Sweden recently met at a conference in Moscow before mounting an expedition to Siberia, where stories of the “Wildman” abound, the Sun reports.

John Bindernagel, a biologist who took part in the expedition, told the paper: “We didn’t feel like the trees we saw in Siberia had been done by a man or another mammal.

“Twisted trees like this have also been observed in North America and they could fit with the theory that Bigfoot makes nests.

“The nests we have looked at are built around trees twisted together into an arch shape.”

Bigfoot, also known as sasquatch, is an apelike cryptid that purportedly inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America.

Sightings of similar creatures have been reported in Russia, France and the Himalayas, where it is known as the Yeti.

But scientists have in the past discounted the existence of Bigfoot and consider it to be a combination of folklore, misidentification, and hoax, rather than a living animal, in part because of the large numbers thought necessary to maintain a breeding population.

Source: The Telegraph [Nov. 15, 2011]

­In early October, “yetiologists” from the USA, Canada, Sweden, Estonia and Russia came to the Kuzbass region to look for evidence that would prove the existence of the Bigfoot. The trip was not in vain – footprints apparently belonging to the yeti were found dotted all over the inside of the Azass cave where the creature is thought to live.

The follicular evidence was found stuck to a huge footprint on the cave’s clay floor. Professors from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Idaho Universities got themselves a couple of precious hairs each to do the necessary research. The hairs turned out to be identical to ones that allegedly belonged to a Californian yeti, another from the Russian Urals and a third from the Leningrad region, writes Komsomolskaya Pravda.

The first to make the fantastic discovery was Professor Valentin Sapunov, a member of the New York Academy and Peter Academy of Sciences and Arts – a geneticist and biophysicist.

“In St. Petersburg the hairs were examined through a special microscope,” said Valentin Sapunov. “This is a complicated, but a very efficient method. The hairs were sprayed with a chemical composition, and then various slices of the hairs were examined. This gave us an opportunity to draw comparisons between the hairs of different biological species,” the professor explained.

When the tests were finished, the hairs found at the Azass cave were compared to those brought from California, the Russian Urals and the Leningrad region. “And they all proved to belong to one and the same species! The research of our American counterparts showed the same,” said Sapunov with ill-concealed excitement.

The results of the analysis made it possible for the scientists to officially rate the probability of the Bigfoot really existing at an astonishing 95 per cent, the professor says.

“For the record, I state that the possibility the yeti exists exceeds 95 per cent. I had long ceased to doubt the Bigfoot is real – this is why I have been trying to collect as much information about him as possible for the last 20 years,” Sapunov said.

The next step in the scientific quest to prove the existence of the yeti will be to use the hairs to examine and interpret its genetic code.

“A group of researchers from the Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences have already started doing that. But the process is very complicated, so it might take quite a long time,” Sapunov told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“It is hard to persuade the world we have some real results,” complained Sapunov. “But I believe that one day scientists will meet the Bigfoot in person. This is inevitable,” he concluded.

Source: RT.com [Oct 30th, 2011]

The Christian Science Monitor reported in April on an “Oriental Yeti” trapped by hunters in central China. One of the hunters said it appears to be a bear but has no fur. It also was said to sound like a cat.

Loren Coleman, a mystical creature researchers who opened the International Cryptozoology Museum in Maine, told the Monitor it could be a few different types of cats such as an Asian palm or common civet cat or a masked or a Himalayan palm civet.

He said it could have been hairless because of a skin disease called mange, which also has been said to be the culprit in some alleged sightings of the elusive chupacabra.

According to the Occultopedia , there are two types that are said to exist. One is said to be a hybrid of man and ape, standing more than 6 feet tall with dark brown to black-colored fur. The other is said to be smaller than an average man with a reddish-brown coat of fur.

The website Abominablesnowman talks of three types. There is the mih-teh, a giant ape-like creature said to be man-like but not a human being. It has short red hair and a robust face and is said to be the most dangerous, a stocky, carnivorous beast said to be between 5 feet and 6 feet tall but stronger than humans.

The dzu-teh is said to be 7-to-8 feet tall but not as dangerous.

The third kind is the teh-lma, said to be a little more than 3 feet tall. Some have suggested this is a baboon while others have said it is a young version of the other two species. Continue reading, myfoxdfw.com

Dushanbe is a hodge-podge of dirt tracks, sodden sewage holes, tiny whitewashed homes with corrugated-iron roofs. It swarms with under-fives, their veiled mothers, jobless dads, chickens and a nocturnal orchestra of wild dogs. Dushanbe is a slum for more than 650,000 people and the capital of a country where 70 per cent live in abject rural poverty. Tajikistan has soaring birth-rates, rising illiteracy, fraudulent elections, de-urbanisation and a 1,200km border with Afghanistan.

Rakhmatillo Zoirov has vacant pale eyes. His slacks are fraying. He lives in a dilapidated, garbage-strewn row of flats overlooking a desolate motorway. Repairmen have been absent since the fall of communism and children play gangsters in courtyards of broken glass. No one takes schooling here seriously. Zoirov is the only opposition politician publically to criticise the dictatorial leader Emomali Rakhmon.

“We have a corrupt authoritarian regime.” Zoirov’s voice sounds dulled, sensing his cause is lost. “More than 50 per cent of the labour force has fled the country for work in Russia, the countryside is sliding back in time and this regime has no answers about how to tackle chronic unemployment, collapsed public services and a flood of drugs money.”

His office is in a dusty apartment adorned with an old map of Tajikistan. A placard displaying Europe’s starry flag is pinned to the chipped paintwork on the wall. His organisation, the 12,000-member Social Democratic Party, is on Western life-support. “This economic situation cannot hold for more than three years. But the peasants are so passive.” I ask about the corrosive penury of his fellow citizens — Tajikistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. “Poverty is this regime’s policy. If people are poor and the enterprising leave for Russia, this country is easier to control.”

I walk along the quiet concrete ring road, trying to find a car to take me to the offices of the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP). Popular and enterprising, the IRP would be the government if there were free elections. I pass a beggar in a burqa, a one-eyed man renting out some scales for a few coins, smoking street urchins and mating stray dogs. Grassy gardens laid by keen Russian hands are overgrown, hiding needles and loitering teenage boys picking up fag ends. I hailed a passing car that has suspension problems and no wing-mirrors.

Hamid drives his Soviet-era rust-bucket towards the IRP office, skirting the freshly- laid gardens that encircle the golden-domed, marbled-walled presidential edifice. He asks me if I trust in God. “I decided to go to the mosque with my friends this year. The young people do this. Many, many of us. The imams help. Teach us. The government just steals.”

We pass poster after poster. President Rakhmon wearing a worker’s cap is pointing forward like Lenin. He is the children’s friend like Stalin. The regime thinks it has the answer: a gigantic dam built by financial contributions from all citizens. The state is demanding that everybody buy shares, paid out of monthly salaries which average £40. Reports circulate of money being deducted from bank accounts, people being turned away from schools, hospitals, any government institution, without the necessary proof that they have paid up.

A senior Western diplomat says: “Raising money from your own population for a project that could theoretically offer a solution to chronic energy problems is fine. Tajikistan has great potential for hydro-electricity, but you need an officially recognised body for this money to go to. We don’t know where it’s going. Civil servants were told that to keep their jobs they had to contribute bigger loans. They couldn’t afford them. So they turned to deeper corruption, making everything worse.”

Outside the modest HQ of the IRP, three tightly veiled girls are milling about the door, but my driver has no time for sensitivity. “I’ll wait here and blast out some loud pop. They’ll love that.” A sickly, bald, very short man opens the door and clasps my hand. “Peace be with you brother.” I am unsure if he is a recovering heroin addict or cancerous. He has the eyes of someone who believes himself saved. “The chief of the political council is upstairs. Let me take you.”

We pass a large hall converted into a mosque. The floor is carpeted in scores of colourful rugs and it smells of feet. Khikmatullo Saifullozoda, the IRP leader, is what you would call “a people person”. Charming and with the glare of conviction, his eyes lock on to mine in his drab, spartan office. Continue reading, standpointmag.co.uk